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#CAedchat on Mindfulness

12/12/2016

Using Google Photos in the Classroom

12/11/2016

Reading Response: Redefining Teacher with 21st Century Education 'Story'

12/8/2016

Thom Markham challenges teachers in the US to act as interconnected individuals that prepare students for our increasingly globalized society. I think he makes some valid points about what teachers in the US should focus on to match the rapid innovation that is seen in top performing organizations.
“Appreciate the power, beauty, and challenge of the present.”

I am particularly drawn to this sentiment because it calls on so much more than the often heard “Live in the now” or “Be present.” It asks you to value the experience and privilege of being a teacher; we are faced with an incredible responsibility and opportunity to develop young minds into contributors of society.

“Contribute to a global vision”

Building off of this idea that our students are contributors to society, not just vessels for knowledge, we must involve them with a globalized community of education. As a life science teacher, part of my assessment for success will be the involvement of my students in citizen science projects - research projects that individuals can contribute to.

“Redefine smart”

“Smart” in our academic culture is often synonymous with success and high scores. Markham says that within education that dynamic should change so that it better reflects reality, where smart “includes grit, resiliency, empathy, curiosity, openness, creativity, and evaluative thinking.” I wholeheartedly agree that broadening the focus of “smartness” should be something we strive to achieve as 21st century educators. The complexity of the real world cannot be summed up by mere tests and using these as be-all, end-all measures of our students is terribly limiting.

“Live the collaborative reality”

In taking advantage of this opportunity to interact with so many students, technology should be leveraged to amplify our class’s signal. Students should treat the work they do in class as something much more than for an audience of one teacher, but for a global audience. Using tools such as Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube, the work done inside classrooms can suddenly become something that can be accessed by most anyone with an internet connection. Social media has already had direct implications for collaborating with my own colleagues in education and moving forward, I would like to better involve my students in publishing work to the web.

Markham, T. (n.d.). Redefining Teachers with a 21st Century Education ‘Story’. Retrieved December 08, 2016, from https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/11/redefining-teachers-with-a-21st-century-education-story/

Reading Response: A Veteran Teacher Shadows a Student

12/7/2016

A high school teacher's short study discovers some glaring issues with typical school days that our students experience. The rigors of daily student life may have been forgotten by educators who have spent a great amount of time in front of the classroom. With my history in nature education, I was already well aware of these issues in formal education as something that I would like to solve for my students. Each of this teacher's key takeaways are met by many lessons from nature education -

“Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.”
1. Outdoor ed has students up and moving and interacting with their environment. And this doesn’t need to be relegated to organizing field trips; exploring and using the school area itself to collect data or as inspiration for writing or even to draw parallels to history. With creative lessons that take advantage of the whole school site, beyond that of the classroom, students can break from the physical monotony of their school day in periods beyond P.E.
“High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.”
1. Actively encouraging exploration and discovery is tantamount to effective experiences by giving students personal buy-in on their education. Obvious to me as a nature educator - you have to draw off of their fascination and leverage that to build appreciation.
“You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.”
1. This one is a bit more personal, but I have to comment because nature education tends to produce an interesting reaction in students. They have been invited to explore and interact with an environment that they may or may not understand; thus, they may feel out of place or hesitant, but they look at the educator as an expert in the field. I have to echo Wiggins in that you have to be careful in how you treat your students, especially regarding sarcasm and playful mocking. Particularly outdoors, when they look to your mastery for safety, it is key to approach students with utmost sincerity and be genuine in your responses.

Within my school setting, I have found some opportunities to apply my lessons from outdoor education. I have had experts from fields come visit my students; I have had my class explore the school site to find correlations to the content taught in class; I have even brought in specimens borrowed from local nature centers. All to the benefit of the students.

Wiggins, G. (2014). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned. Retrieved December 07, 2016, from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/

Rethinking Education #4 - The Importance of Play

11/28/2016

This TEDx Talk by John Cohn highlights something that I feel isn’t looked at nearly enough within a traditional secondary school setting - playtime! His talk borrows from the ideas of the Maker movement - that is, the movement that promotes do-it-yourself projects of any shape or fashion. Naturally, the driving factors combine well with the ideals of STEAM education and will find their place within my science classroom. Cohn peppers his talk with many anecdotal pieces of having worked as an engineer for many years and how he treats play not just for the purpose of relaxing, but for generating creativity and bliss. As an educator, know I can harness this within my classroom to not only created students that are invested in the tasks at hand, but have some fun myself!
Some may say that I subscribe too much to the idea that fun is critical to one’s well being, but my conclusion stems from the fact that without actively having fun or playing in everything I do, I tend to develop some degree of misery. For my teaching, I want to spread this to my students beyond that of being a genuine, bonafide fun-haver; I want them to enjoy being in my class and be able to play with the concepts we cover in pursuit of life science. Just the other day, my anatomy students had finished a dissection earlier than expected and they asked, “Is it time to clean up?” when we really had another ½ hour before that point. I told them, “No, don’t clean up just yet. Let’s… uh… (thinking on the fly here) I want you to find one section of the kidney you’re dissecting, some part that you find interesting. Something you want to look at under a microscope.” Rather than wrap up, they suddenly had freedom to explore and tinker, to play and discover on their own, beyond my instructions. It went terrifically. The students raved about the different structures they were seeing and we ran out of time.
I have to admit, part of what appeals about Cohn to me is that he is a striking individual - rainbow lab coat, a multicolored pulsating LED headband, the classic crazy scientist hair. He’s a character that seems pulled from some children’s cartoon. What would happen if you were to throw a character like him in front of your average high school science class? Would their stare in awe or would they sneer with disgust - OR would they sneer in awe and stare with disgust? Would they hang on every word or ignore the LED-studded maniac? I believe it’s more of the first. I believe that characters and big, showy presentations have wonderful place in high school to not just impress, but involve many students. The trick is pairing these larger-than-life experiences with reality. Giving your students the opportunity to create something that seems larger-than-life.

Cohn, J. (2013). Retrieved November 28, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NT1-BdOvI

Rethinking Education #3 - The Tyranny of the Curriculum

11/17/2016

Shawn Cornally takes on the problem of students not enjoying school - referencing student celebration for snow days. His approach screams of the ideas of “project-based learning” that can be found in many alternative education centers - locally represented through High Tech High. I admire his approach to student projects, letting them express their interest/problem to solve and giving them a host of supports that effectively act as the curriculum through which the student completes their goals. Indeed, within my future life science classroom, I hope to employ a similar interest-driven approach though focused on the content at hand. I think the power behind Cornally’s approach is letting the students come to the school with a desire to do something, which is such a shift in dynamics from the standard school system.
What makes interest-driven learning so viable is that it does not require any “buy in” from the students and breaks the traditional mode of teacher-centered information delivery. Using personal interests to investigate real-world questions, students can affect real change in their communities and contribute to the dialogue of humanity in real ways. I would love to learn more about Cornally’s school and what takeaways there could be for a more focused approach. Not that I think Cornally’s goals for a completely freeform, interest-driven school aren’t terrific, but what if you created a similar program but specifically for the lens of say… Sustainability? All students create and contribute to projects that are wholly based on the theme of creating a more sustainable community. This is definitely more my bent as environmental outreach means a great deal to me, so perhaps this is an avenue I could pursue sometime down the road. How could environmental outreach centers gain from implementing project-based programs? It would be exciting to see students get involved with local groups that are fighting to maintain the few undeveloped environments in the San Diego area.
T. (2014). Retrieved November 17, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aldMBgT6u-4

Rethinking Education #2 - Instagram i love you - Casey Neistat

11/7/2016

Casey’s a cool dude, no doubt. Has some great insights to the wide world around us and how our lives intersect technology. With his vast social media presence, he has developed some terrific ways to interact with the various mediums of social media and I think what he goes into with Instagram is, on the whole, valid. He outlined some guidelines for its usage and they reflect well with the photographic medium that it is - don’t flood the world with images, just provide a themed approach once or twice a day. Fast forward 4 years and it’s plain to see that Instagram is still going strong, but perhaps the fervor has died down some.
I’ve been an Instagram user off and on the past couple years, as most of my photo sharing was done with the jack-of-all-trades Facebook. However, as my bio says, I found it a place to share images of “Critters from big to small that creep and crawl. Magical places from this weird and wonderful world.” Nice snippits of the things I had seen while out exploring. There are 10s of pictures of insects I had found on hikes, including some macro shots using some of those snap-on lenses for smartphones. Along with these there are scenes of the oddball roadside attractions I like to visit. Instagramming these little things became another hobby that I was collectively engaging with with a huge amount of people. I follow artists I like and friends from Facebook; this however, describes my personal use of it, not how I approached it as an educator.
There was a funny moment within my assist period early on in my clinical practice. The students had dispersed around the classroom, working on digital chemistry problems. Some of the students asked me to come over to their table for help on something - a request I had to oblige. Before I realize what’s happened, one of the students has grabbed my name badge and informs his comrades that my first name was Grant. “Crums and carrots!” I thought. I had been duped! They found my personal Instagram account - not that there were any inappropriate photos on it, but I keep it fairly personal between myself and my friends. As a response, I created a new Instagram specifically for profession as an educator; it would be something that my students could follow and fellow educators could pull resources from.

C. (2012). Retrieved November 07, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GacoqdKjVyE

Rethinking Education #1 Why You Need to Fail - Derek Sivers

11/4/2016

Boy howdy, can I resonate with this! Learning from failure is one of the key parts of scientific inquiry and one of my goals within my classroom is to expose students to a healthy attitude toward failure. There were many times where I have failed and used the opportunity to reflect upon the experience and improve upon whatever it was I may have failed in. Within the video by Derek Sivers, he outlines 3 reasons for failure:

Learning

Here, Sivers provides evidence for learning through failure through multiple studies and anecdotes that show how failure is represented in learning scenarios. Asking the viewer to complete a similar test to one of the studies helped illuminate how exactly learning comes about from the activity. As I’ve taught in outdoor education over the years, I find that many times it isn’t the repetition of material that drives student learning, but the experience of applying it.

Growth Mindset

I admire how mindsets were described by Sivers - not as a fundamental differences, but as something malleable and built from environmental factors. Within a fixed mindset, one is believed to have natural abilities or talents that set them apart from others and manifest as affinities for certain types of work or topics. The growth mindset comes from the idea of an effort-driven approach that anyone can become a master of anything. I would put myself in the growth mindset camp, believing firmly that great effort results in great talent. How this pertains to failure is, again, taking the experiences of failure and using them as a place to grow from, rather than an insurmountable obstacle as a fixed mindset might believe. Sivers suggestion of praising effort rather than natural ability is something I aim to do within my classroom and, indeed, I have seen improvements in students that I have complemented this way. Towards the end of this segment, I have to concur with Sivers that if we all saw each other’s “sweaty working progress” we would be much more receptive to each other’s varying abilities or aspects.

Experiments

Can’t say enough how much this hits home for me, as a science educator. Experiments are vital to confirming or disproving hypotheses and within a science class it is important to have students attempt multiple ways of developing experiments to learn how to design a proper experiment. I think Sivers example of his singing instructor using the various aspects of a piece of music to show how there is not one way of singing, it is merely one option that Sivers has chosen to follow. I think Sivers gets a little misleading when he says that each shouldn’t be considered a failure, as they are just experiments, but experiments can and should fail if they do not meet the criteria or don’t hold water under examination.

Sivers, D. (2011). Retrieved November 04, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhxcFGuKOys&t=2s