Ed-tech List Members,
What a different feel our institution has now that the semester has ended. A few summer classes are in session, but nothing like the bustle of the semester. New sod has been laid next to the walkway between the University Center and Richter Library, now that the Farmer's Market is over until next fall. The music/law parking lot is closed, while part of the new circulation(?) road is being built and the parking lot is being reconfigured. The Student Activity Center (SAC) has sprung up and work continues in earnest. (Want to watch the SAC construction? Go to http://129.171.166.15/appletvid.html for a live video feed.)
For most of us, this is a time for important/not-urgent activities. (See http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_91.htm if you are not familiar with the important-urgent matrix.) I posted a lengthy (for me) post on http://vilberg.com this morning. I am including it below, so you don't even have to go to vilberg.com to read it. It certainly isn't urgent, but reflecting on our teaching mission is important, IMHO. If yu want to reply back to the group after reading the article and my comments, just send your thoughts to ed-tech@listserv.miami.edu. No need to include all of this message in your reply.
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LINK TO SOURCE ARTICLE: http://goo.gl/oe1bs
If you have heard about flipping the classroom, read this article. If you have heard of Bloom's Taxonomy, read this article. If you haven't heard of either, read this article. (That covers everyone, right?)
I admit to a curious error when I first saw the image for this article. I saw "cheating" as the starting point. Of course creating and cheating only differ by one letter, and "r" does resemble "h", doesn't it? But now I am wondering, do some (many?) teachers/faculty see Google as cheating?
We live in a Google world. With smart phones and iPads, the answer to most questions is available instantly, anywhere you are. They can use the facts before having to be told all of them. They can construct the rules, not perfectly or rigorously, but they can begin the construction of the scaffold of understanding, without all the practice and drudgery that we had to experience. Ask a question, and they have the answer immediately, if you let them use Google. How is that learning? They are cheating!
We feel sort of cheated, too, since we had to memorize all the facts before we could start creating. Now our students can access the information and start creating immediately. Their creations are not the high-level research that we are doing, but the creation of the relationships of the facts, creation of the basic rules of our discipline, and creation of learning tools that can be communicated with others to help them learn all of this.
How do we assess the attainment of the basic knowledge in our discipline? Normally we use low level testing. This article mentions having the students create an infographic. That sounds too much like fun. It isn't fair. Why couldn't I have learned that way. I feel cheated.
So maybe I need to let go of my feeling that students can learn in this new way, that it isn't cheating, and that I was not cheated because I was born earlier and didn't have this opportunity. They are not mini-me and they will not learn the way I learned. Maybe starting with "create" makes sense.
This article was written by a high school teacher. I wonder, how will higher education react if/when more of our students come to us having "learned" in this way? How does our mission in higher education differ from the mission in high school, and does that difference affect this flipped Bloom's Taxonomy? This was a great article, for me. It generated far more questions than it answered.
(via <a href="http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/flip-this-blooms-taxonomy-should-start-with-creating/">Flip This: Bloom's Taxonomy Should Start with Creating | MindShift</a>)
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Bill Vilberg - bill.vilberg@miami.edu, 786-250-2255
http://vilberg.com - Spreading seeds of education, technology, and more
