Archive for Sam Gliksman

Making the Case for Student Control of Devices

March 7, 2012 Sam Gliksman One comment

This post orig­i­nally appeared on the iPads in Edu­ca­tion web­site.  
The post is authored by Sam Gliks­man    
Email samgliksman@gmail.com ; Twit­ter: @samgliksman

How Much Con­trol Do Schools Really Need?

One of the ben­e­fits of get­ting older is that you can reflect back on a time when things were done dif­fer­ently. Sim­i­larly, you can also clearly see when other things are essen­tially the same. Although the world around our schools is dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent, many of the pil­lars of our edu­ca­tional sys­tems remain unchanged. Given the dra­matic and accel­er­at­ing trans­for­ma­tion in the world around us, it’s cer­tainly time to reflect upon how we con­duct the busi­ness of schooling.

Many have already started down this path. We acknowl­edge the clear need to move from “sage on the stage” teach­ing to stu­dent empow­ered learn­ing. We real­ize that our old con­tent deliv­ery mod­els of edu­ca­tion need to be replaced with more expe­ri­en­tial and dis­cov­ery based processes. We under­stand the lim­i­ta­tions of a text only approach and try to inte­grate dif­fer­ent forms of media. Now it’s time to revise another sacred cow that has been symp­to­matic of insti­tu­tional edu­ca­tion since its inception.

It’s time to let go of the notion that we need to con­trol stu­dent behav­ior. It’s time to real­ize that we can­not and should not dic­tate the man­ner in which stu­dents learn. One area where the desire for con­trol is clearly man­i­fested is our use of tech­nol­ogy in school.

Now before you fire up that impas­sioned response let me clar­ify that I’m not advo­cat­ing a com­plete hands-off pol­icy that gives stu­dents the free­dom to do what­ever they desire. There’s a clear dis­tinc­tion between “pro­tec­tion” and “con­trol”. Pro­tect­ing stu­dents from acci­den­tally get­ting a com­puter virus or being routed to a pornog­ra­phy web­site is important. Deciding what apps they use; pre­vent­ing them from man­ag­ing their devices; undue cen­sor­ship of inter­net activ­ity; using soft­ware to watch their screens dur­ing class — these are con­trol issues.

It’s ironic that we insist on cen­sor­ing and con­trol­ling tech­nol­ogy use. Out­side school tech­nol­ogy is char­ac­ter­ized by free­dom and empow­er­ment — the abil­ity for any­one to eas­ily access or pub­lish infor­ma­tion, con­nect with peo­ple across the world and uti­lize media for new forms of cre­ative expres­sion and knowl­edge expan­sion. Inno­va­tion leads to new tech­nolo­gies which in turn can nur­ture fur­ther inno­va­tion. How­ever that can only occur if we allow it…

  • Tech­nol­ogy empow­ers stu­dents to explore and cre­ate. In schools how­ever it’s often used in the pur­suit of effi­ciency where we require stu­dents to use tech­nol­ogy in the same man­ner and with the intent that they pro­duce sim­i­lar results.
  • We under­stand that they have vastly dif­fer­ent tal­ents and dis­tinc­tive learn­ing pref­er­ences. At home some use tech­nol­ogy in more struc­tured, log­i­cal ways while oth­ers grav­i­tate to more visual or cre­ative pursuits. Technology empow­ers them to find their own space as learners. In school we decide what appli­ca­tions they must use and we dic­tate exactly how they will use them — step by step — even in the face of our full under­stand­ing that stu­dents are far more expert at learn­ing and using tech­nol­ogy than teachers.
  • The inter­net has enabled the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of infor­ma­tion — pub­lish, dis­cover and learn any­thing. Any­one can pub­lish. Every­thing is avail­able. In schools we attempt to strictly con­trol what they can see and do (yes, I used the word “attempt” — try Googling “ways to get around school web fil­ters” and see what you get).

Tech­nol­ogy is a prod­uct of change how­ever we often design our imple­men­ta­tions in man­ners that latch onto the com­fort­able old struc­tures we’ve always used. Teach­ers con­trol the class and it’s always been hereti­cal to sug­gest oth­er­wise. We there­fore decide what tech­nol­ogy stu­dents use and more impor­tantly, how they will use it — even though they rep­re­sent the first gen­er­a­tions in his­tory that are mas­ter­ing many of the essen­tial tools of every­day life before the adults that came before them.

If we know any­thing about the world out­side school it’s that it requires an abil­ity to adapt to change. We insist that mod­ern life requires grad­u­ates that are expe­ri­enced, inde­pen­dent learn­ers. School is the time to start devel­op­ing those skills. When we enable the use of tech­nol­ogy in school we should also grant stu­dents the inde­pen­dence and free­dom to use it their own way.

  • We can and should allow stu­dents to man­age their own devices. Help them learn the rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal and orga­ni­za­tional skills, espe­cially as this has become a vital part of life out­side school.
  • Loosen the Parental Con­trols. Allow them the free­dom and respon­si­bil­ity to man­age their school apps, set up their school email and more. Have some­one instruct them on best practices.
  • Allow them the free­dom to find and use other apps as appro­pri­ate to their activ­i­ties in class.
  • You can pur­chase some apps cen­trally but oth­er­wise ask par­ents to pur­chase the apps. There is an abun­dance of inex­pen­sive choices.
  • A “Respon­si­ble Use” pol­icy should clearly state what is allowed and dis­al­lowed. The pol­icy should be signed by child and par­ent alike.
  • Free­dom and respon­si­bil­ity come with con­se­quence. Define a clear out­come for inap­pro­pri­ate use and act upon it as required.
  • Use a web fil­ter but set restric­tions loosely and only block cat­e­gories of sites that are poten­tially harm­ful. Ensure you have mon­i­tor­ing in place so you can track web usage if needed. The only skill strict fil­ter­ing devel­ops is the abil­ity to find ways to work around it … and they do. Rather than act­ing as “big brother”, set an expec­ta­tion of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and take action when the stan­dards aren’t met.

Most impor­tantly, encour­age cre­ative, inde­pen­dent and inno­v­a­tive use of technology.

  • Allow stu­dents the lat­i­tude to express their knowl­edge in dif­fer­ent ways and with dif­fer­ent tools wher­ever pos­si­ble and sub­ject to your prior approval. The process of learn­ing should be more per­son­ally mean­ing­ful and motivational.
  • Let them find and bring tools that they are most com­fort­able using.
  • Give them the lat­i­tude to be teach­ers as well as learn­ers — when they invent, dis­cover or mas­ter some­thing new have them teach oth­ers and cre­ate tuto­ri­als that you post online.

Our desire for con­trol­ling the use of tech­nol­ogy is emblem­atic of a deeper prob­lem. Top-down insti­tu­tional con­trol isn’t a work­able model in an era where the mar­ket­place requires grad­u­ates to have skills for learn­ing any­thing, any­where and at any time. Fol­low­ing instruc­tion is impor­tant but there’s also an urgent need to develop per­sonal inno­va­tion — the sort of flex­i­ble, cre­ative thought and action that’s required to deal with a world of tumul­tuous change. Inno­va­tion requires that we open the metaphor­i­cal class­room win­dows and doors. Instead we still feel more com­fort­able keep­ing them closed. Is it about con­trol or are we more con­cerned with effi­ciency? Are we mak­ing deci­sions based on their needs or ours?

When­ever I dis­cuss iPad or BYOD imple­men­ta­tions in schools one of the first issues raised usu­ally revolves around prob­lems asso­ci­ated with man­age­ment and con­trol. iPads are dif­fi­cult to man­age on an insti­tu­tional level. That could be a bless­ing in dis­guise. Maybe it presents us with the right tim­ing and oppor­tu­nity to finally allow stu­dents to man­age their devices and develop their skills as inde­pen­dent and respon­si­ble learners.

Sam Gliks­man
samgliksman@gmail.com
Twit­ter: @samgliksman

Supplementing Textbooks with Student Constructed Knowledge Bases

February 28, 2012 Sam Gliksman 5 comments

Orig­i­nally posted on iPads in Edu­ca­tion Ning net­work site
Authored by Sam Gliksman, Twitter: @samgliksman

We’re just a few weeks removed from a major Apple announce­ment regard­ing the release of a new eText­books ini­tia­tive. I’m keenly aware of the sig­nif­i­cance of the move to eBooks, espe­cially as I have a 13 year old that car­ries 20 pounds in his back­pack to school every day. How­ever impor­tant the move from paper to dig­i­tal text­books, I’m still left with a taste for more.

I have been crit­i­cal of the ways most schools still rely on text as the pri­mary, almost soli­tary, medium for exchang­ing infor­ma­tion. The “real world” trades infor­ma­tion using an amal­gam of dif­fer­ent media that includes video, audio, images … and text. Of course, it’s also no secret that most stu­dents are way more com­fort­able watch­ing tuto­ri­als on YouTube than read­ing pages from a text­book. So what’s the prob­lem? Apple has given authors of all vari­eties a mech­a­nism for cre­at­ing inter­ac­tive, mul­ti­me­dia school con­tent … but it doesn’t feel like enough.

iBooks could have included aspects of social read­ing so “friends” could exchange ques­tions and notes right within the pages of the book. It may have included a sys­tem for imme­di­ate feed­back, for­ma­tive assess­ment and cor­rec­tive branch­ing — that would have added to its value. The abil­ity to gen­er­ate sum­mary usage reports for par­ents and teach­ers could have helped eval­u­ate the progress of stu­dents. All things con­sid­ered how­ever, Apple has man­aged to estab­lish a solid base and it’s sure to improve as addi­tional updates are released. It doesn’t how­ever solve the core prob­lem of textbooks.

One of the major com­plaints about “20th cen­tury edu­ca­tion” was that it cen­tered on con­tent deliv­ery. We acknowl­edge that stu­dents need inde­pen­dent learn­ing skills that enable them to enter soci­ety con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ties to adjust to chang­ing cir­cum­stances and equipped with skills to learn and relearn as new needs arise … yet many of our tech­nol­ogy appli­ca­tions keep draw­ing edu­ca­tion back into the model of con­tent delivery.

While the eText­Books ini­tia­tive is a won­der­ful stride for­ward from our old paper text­books it’s still essen­tially a re-constituted con­tent deliv­ery sys­tem that wasn’t designed or intended to change the one-way process of edu­ca­tional exchanges. Reliance on any type of course text­book – dig­i­tal, mul­ti­me­dia, inter­ac­tive or oth­er­wise – only fits as a more mar­ginal ele­ment in student-centered learn­ing mod­els. It’s not the nature of the text­book as much as its rev­er­ence in the class­room as “the” sin­gu­lar author­ity for learn­ing. Life­long learn­ers need to be skilled in find­ing, fil­ter­ing, col­lat­ing, eval­u­at­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing, edit­ing, ana­lyz­ing and uti­liz­ing infor­ma­tion from a mul­ti­tude of sources.

Instead we could pri­or­i­tize “con­tent con­struc­tion”. Text­books are an impor­tant gate­way — a start­ing point from which stu­dents can learn and then begin their explo­ration of infor­ma­tion on any topic (although even on that point I feel we should encour­age the “crit­i­cal read­ing” of text­books). How­ever the days when stu­dents could respon­si­bly rely on any text­book as a sin­gu­lar infor­ma­tion source are gone. Also, the process of access­ing, syn­the­siz­ing and uti­liz­ing infor­ma­tion is often as impor­tant as the prod­uct. The skills devel­oped are an essen­tial com­po­nent of edu­ca­tion and life today.

We have access to an expo­nen­tially grow­ing amount of infor­ma­tion to process and apply. There are many excel­lent tools we can all use to help in con­struct­ing and orga­niz­ing that con­tent. Here’s a short selec­tion of some of the more pop­u­lar ones. They can be used by indi­vid­u­als and also by stu­dents or teach­ers col­lab­o­rat­ing in groups.

Orga­niz­ing Content

Con­tent con­struc­tion starts with col­lect­ing and col­lat­ing. Dig­i­tal solu­tions for col­lect­ing resources are mod­eled on the old shoe­box or file cab­i­net we used for stor­ing paper based resources.

Live­Binders, as the name sug­gests, is designed to work and look like the binders we use at school. You can store con­tent of all types in binders and then set the binder per­mis­sions to made pub­lic or keep them pri­vate within any class or group of members.

For younger stu­dents Muse­um­Box (requires Flash) allows stor­age of images, text snip­pets, web pages and more.

Ever­note is a very pop­u­lar resource that works across all plat­forms. It’s an invalu­able tool for col­lect­ing and shar­ing any type of con­tent — images, text, links or your own notes. Set up Note­books by topic and add infor­ma­tion by click­ing on an Ever­note icon or even email­ing it directly to your spe­cially des­ig­nated Ever­note email account. The Ever­note “Clip­per” is a tool that allows you to cut out any por­tion of your screen dis­play and saves it as image. I’ve used Ever­note effec­tively with classes that want to col­lect and share infor­ma­tion and it’s also an extremely valu­able tool for per­sonal use. You can also sign up for pre­mium school accounts now and then cre­ate and man­age stu­dent accounts.

Instapa­per is a sim­ple ser­vice for sav­ing web pages. It adds an icon to your tool­bar. Click on the Instapa­per icon and it saves a page for later read­ing. Instapa­per is a tool that’s used pri­mar­ily for sav­ing items to read later rather than for col­lat­ing and tag­ging items in libraries for research pur­poses. It is how­ever a very effec­tive tool for sim­ple archiv­ing. You can even down­load web pages for read­ing offline when you’re trav­el­ing or out of Inter­net range. Apple recently added a “Read­ing List” fea­ture to Safari in iOS 5 but Instapa­per still works across all devices and platforms.

Method­ol­ogy: Don’t for­get that the skills required in col­lect­ing resources require teach­ing and train­ing. Search­ing, assess­ing, fil­ter­ing, group­ing and/or tag­ging – these are all skills that require guid­ance and rep­e­ti­tion. It’s about process not just product.

Social Book­mark­ing

Social book­mark­ing is an extremely effec­tive method for col­lect­ing con­tent on the web. My tool of choice is Diigo. Social book­mark­ing works by hav­ing you tag web pages that can then be anno­tated and shared. You pro­gres­sively build a library of tagged links and there’s a sim­ple search and retrieval mech­a­nism when­ever you need to find a tagged arti­cle or note. The two pri­mary fac­tors that dis­tin­guish social book­mark­ing is that it uses tag­ging to orga­nize infor­ma­tion rather than a sim­ple lin­ear struc­ture and sec­ondly, it allows you to con­nect with other users and share tagged information.

Click the Diigo tool­bar icon to anno­tate and tag any web page

Open an account with Diigo and add a tool­bar icon within your browser. Diigo works across all plat­forms includ­ing mobile devices and iPads. When you find con­tent you want to archive sim­ply click on the Diigo icon. High­light any text, add notes to the page and then add some key­words that will allow you to find it eas­ily after­wards. Click to Save it to your Diigo account and when­ever you go to diigo.com (or use their iOS app) you’ll have access to the libraries of tags and links that you’ve col­lected and annotated.

There’s also a promi­nent “social” com­po­nent. Share your links by sav­ing them pub­li­cally. You can start or join a wide vari­ety of dif­fer­ent groups with like inter­ests and share con­tent within your group. When search­ing, you’re also able to search through tags that oth­ers in the group have added.

Sign up for an edu­ca­tor account and each stu­dent in your class can also get an account. Now you can use Diigo to find and share con­tent among mem­bers of your class. It’s an extremely effec­tive way of enabling stu­dents to build an infor­ma­tion library. They can share high­lights, notes and com­ments. Used in that way Diigo will become an invalu­able resource for your classroom.

Cura­tion

We’re exposed to so much infor­ma­tion that it gets a lit­tle over­whelm­ing at times. One of the newer cat­e­gories of tools for orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion on the web is “con­tent cura­tion”. Cura­tors gather infor­ma­tion from any web based resource (news sources, web pages, rss feeds, Twit­ter etc). They then fil­ter the con­tent and add selected web pages to the library of curated con­tent. Other users can then fol­low a curated library and get more select, pre­mium con­tent that has already been fil­tered. A pop­u­lar con­tent cura­tion tool is scoop.it .

Scoop.it:  When you open an account, you select a topic to curate (eg. iPads in Edu­ca­tion) and add any num­ber of con­tent resources such as web­sites, rss feeds, Twit­ter accounts or hash­tags and more. Scoop-it will serve up the con­tent daily and you then decide which articles/sites to add to your curated library. You can also add an icon to your tool­bar and add con­tent on the fly as you surf sites on the web. Typ­i­cally, oth­ers will fol­low a curated topic to get fil­tered con­tent on a par­tic­u­lar theme. Arti­cles can be tagged and searched. Typ­i­cally, this process is par­tic­u­larly effec­tive in a class set­ting when you’re research­ing any theme that has a lot of cur­rent, top­i­cal infor­ma­tion being released on a fre­quent basis. Your stu­dent cura­tors need to browse and read all related resources and only add those that pro­vide the most help­ful information.

Other Tools…

There are many addi­tional tools and meth­ods for build­ing infor­ma­tion libraries:

- Wikis have been a pop­u­lar method for cre­at­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively built con­tent and peer edit­ing. You assign each stu­dent a login and groups will cre­ate pages. Each user can add and/or edit exist­ing con­tent. The wiki admin­is­tra­tor can track all changes and roll back to prior ver­sions. One of the bet­ter resources for start­ing your own wiki iswik­i­spaces.

- YouTube is an under­rated source for video based con­tent. Open an account for your class and stu­dents can add videos to a class Favorites list. One way of using YouTube is to use your class account for col­lect­ing tuto­r­ial videos on any topic… and of course, stu­dents can and should add their own. Vimeo is another sim­i­lar resource.

Some schools are uncom­fort­able allow­ing stu­dents to browse YouTube at school. If that’s the case at your school, con­sider using SchoolTube instead.

Lastly, it’s not just the infor­ma­tion library you’re build­ing that has value for stu­dents. As opposed to hav­ing them access a slice of con­tent that some­one has selected for them, the process of search­ing, fil­ter­ing, orga­niz­ing, ana­lyz­ing and edit­ing exer­cises valu­able skills and helps develop their abil­ity to become the inde­pen­dent learn­ers we’re hop­ing to grad­u­ate from our schools.

Sam Gliks­man
samgliksman@gmail.com
Twit­ter: @samgliksman

Everything I Need To Know — About Education — I Learned In Kindergarten

February 2, 2012 Sam Gliksman 3 comments

Orig­i­nally posted on iPads in Edu­ca­tion net­work web­site - http://ipadeducators.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kindergarten

Authored by Sam Gliksman, Twitter: @samgliksman

I had some­what of an epiphany while doing a work­shop at a local ele­men­tary school recently. Walk­ing around and speak­ing to teach­ers and chil­dren it sud­denly dawned on me that many of the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” edu­ca­tional changes that many of us have been call­ing for have already been around for quite a while — just talk a stroll down to the Kinder­garten classes.

If only the rest of school looked a lit­tle more like those class­rooms. In fact, eight impor­tant pil­lars of a 21st cen­tury edu­ca­tion can be found in most Kinder­garten class­rooms every day of the week:

1. PLAY

The first rule of Kinder­garten is to have fun. Our youngest stu­dents love com­ing to school, and if any child doesn’t seem happy then we make it a high pri­or­ity to find and rem­edy the prob­lem. Play is a highly effec­tive method of infor­mal learn­ing that requires imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity. Happy, play­ful chil­dren are not day­dream­ing and clock watch­ing — they are engaged and absorbed in their activ­i­ties. As chil­dren get older how­ever, play starts tak­ing a back seat to “aca­d­e­mics” … which are usu­ally pri­or­i­ties deter­mined by peo­ple in offices far away from the stu­dents’ actual class­room environment.

2. CREATE

Cre­ativ­ity is becom­ing lost in the shuf­fle of the cur­rent “back to basics” school move­ment. While cer­tainly required in any artis­tic endeavor, cre­ativ­ity is also a highly essen­tial cop­ing skill for our rapidly chang­ing lives in the 21st cen­tury. Our tod­dlers are con­stantly being encour­aged to think and play cre­atively. We even struc­ture the class­room phys­i­cally in an attempt to stim­u­late cre­ativ­ity — using bright col­ors, infor­mal seat­ing and allow­ing chil­dren ample room to move. Con­trast that to the staid col­ors and fixed rows of desks found in most upper school classes where “fol­low the norm” has replaced “think out of the box”.

A cou­ple of years ago I attended a lec­ture by Amer­i­can artist, Erik Wahl. As part of his pre­sen­ta­tion he splashed paint around a can­vas while cre­at­ing a por­trait on stage. After­wards he turned to the audi­ence and asked, “How many of you con­sider your­selves artists?”. Out of an audi­ence of sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple only a cou­ple of hands were raised. He then related how he often goes into pre-school classes and asks the very same ques­tion. The dif­fer­ence is that almost every hand in the room imme­di­ately shoots up. The sad fact is that school squashes our inner sense of cre­ativ­ity as we get older. Instead of inspir­ing our stu­dents to be imag­i­na­tive and cre­ate we tell them to fol­low the rules — “Do what I tell you to do … and make sure do it exactly the way I asked you to do it”.

3. SOCIALIZE

We under­stand that young chil­dren are social by nature and encour­age them to min­gle. We don’t seat them alone in fixed desks fac­ing the front of the room. Instead we allow them appro­pri­ate time to roam and social­ize. Impor­tantly, we rec­og­nize the value of get­ting them to work together in small groups. When they get older and try to work together we often label the activ­ity “cheat­ing”. They’re usu­ally told to sit alone, face the front and work qui­etly on their own. Social­iz­ing is con­sid­ered an extra-curricular activ­ity that has no place in seri­ous aca­d­e­mics … well, not until you get out into the workplace!

4. DISCOVER

Chil­dren are curi­ous and love to explore the world around them. They nat­u­rally observe, ask ques­tions and demand answers. Kinder­garten class might be spent explor­ing a bug brought in from the play­ground or lis­ten­ing to a story from a par­ent with an inter­est­ing pro­fes­sion. Their world is a play­ground that they con­stantly explore.

As they get older we tell them that their world is divided into nicely delin­eated courses with pre­de­ter­mined content. Important ques­tions and issues that would nor­mally require dis­cus­sion and expla­na­tion are shelved because they don’t fit into some arbi­trary course cur­ricu­lum. How many times do you hear “we don’t have time for that today”? If course­work is com­pleted then there might pos­si­bly be some time left to explore a topic of inter­est. In the mean­time, explo­ration is put on hold.

5. EXPERIENCE

Effec­tive learn­ing occurs when chil­dren build new under­stand­ings based on expe­ri­ences that help them con­struct new knowl­edge. Kinder­garten teach­ers help pro­vide a myr­iad of expe­ri­ences for their stu­dents. We don’t read about ham­sters — we keep a pet in class and observe how they eat. We might even allow each child to take the pet home for an evening. We encour­age chil­dren to bring things into class so that oth­ers can feel, taste, expe­ri­ence and learn from them. Their expe­ri­ences pro­vide a scaf­fold­ing for the chil­dren to build upon and extend what they already know. We under­stand that chil­dren learn most deeply and effec­tively through experience.

How­ever, con­tent is king when they get to the older grades. It seems that the only valid expe­ri­ence for learn­ing is read­ing from a text book or lis­ten­ing to a teacher.

6. EXPRESS

Mix­ing dif­fer­ent forms of media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an essen­tial com­po­nent of Kinder­garten class. Chil­dren look at pho­tos, lis­ten to music, watch video, tell sto­ries and of course, read books. We under­stand that peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate in a vari­ety of man­ners and we bring them into play in our classrooms.

In upper grades our entire world is expressed through text. For what­ever rea­son, it seems that the only valid form of express­ing knowl­edge is through text. Out of class they con­stantly inter­act and cre­ate video, music and more. In class, we have stu­dents read from text­books and almost exclu­sively require them to respond in writing.

7. MOVE

Chil­dren need to move. We all need to move. It’s healthy for both body and mind. We under­stand that in Kinder­garten. The fur­ni­ture is arranged to facil­i­tate move­ment and we often have chil­dren move around to dif­fer­ent parts of the room depend­ing on the activ­ity. Out­doors, it’s essen­tial to pro­vide time and equip­ment for play.

The mantra of upper school is to sit still and face the front. Classes are designed for quiet, motion­less, obe­di­ent activ­i­ties. That can be excru­ci­at­ingly dif­fi­cult for many students.

8. RELATE

Finally, in Kinder­garten we strive to make learn­ing as mean­ing­ful as pos­si­ble. Learn­ing has mean­ing as defined by its rel­e­vance to the lives of stu­dents. If chil­dren can’t relate to it then it won’t hold their interest.

On the other hand, the vast amount of bleary eyed, day­dream­ing stu­dents in upper grades is tes­ta­ment to the fact that they don’t relate to much of what passes for learn­ing in class. It’s usu­ally a pre­de­fined pack­age of con­tent defined by an “author­ity” sit­ting far from the lives of our stu­dents — phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. Just as impor­tantly, this pre­de­fined con­tent pack­age is becom­ing increas­ingly inad­e­quate in prepar­ing our stu­dents for their lives after school.

So if you have a few moments I’d strongly encour­age you to take a stroll down to the lower grades in your school. In fact, the lower the bet­ter. Spend a few min­utes observ­ing the dynam­ics in class. Note the energy, laugh­ter and enthu­si­asm … the gen­uine thirst for learn­ing. Then ask your­self why it can’t be that way through­out school.

Sam Gliks­man
samgliksman@gmail.com
Twit­ter: @samgliksman
http:\\ipadeducators.ning.com