Learning Objects: One of these things is not like the others….

One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Can you tell which one is not like the others

By the time I finish this song?

From earliest childhood, learning objects have been used to teach critical thinking skills.  Matching, pairing, discerning similarities and differences: All these activities can utilize the same learning objects but in different contexts. The same can be true for online learning objects.

How nice it would be to have a database of useful objects that was organized in such a manner that an educator could pick and choose objects to teach great lessons without so much background work. Unfortunately, as stated in this same article, “We strongly doubt that the educational content industry has not learned a lesson watching these other[music, video, etc] industries; this will likely prevent this industry from making or marketing digitized versions of its content. Publishers’ fear of file-sharing networks will likely prevent an “educational object economy” from ever materializing. How sad.

Even though it can be overwhelming to gather or create enough learning objects to teach a given idea, I think it is immensely easier now than in any other time in history. The Internet is loaded with such objects and most things are there for the taking. Supplementing the collection with self created objects is necessary at times.

CFT: Think for yourself!

Again this week I thoroughly enjoyed the process of working through the Plantation Letters learning module but hated the readings about the learning theory. Maybe something’s wrong with me, but I just get angry reading that kind of on and on and on and on kind of explanations when I feel like it could be explained so easily with an annotated example.  When working through the letters and other materials, I was highly engaged to the point that I attempted to read the original manuscripts just to get a more accurate feel for the writer and his intentions. Kevin did a great job partnering modern situations to the plight of the early American slaves.  In my mind it created another idea of poverty as being an enslavement and just as relevant to the modern world as it was back in our country’s infancy.

I think it would take a lot to create a learning module using CFT. Gathering the resources even using the internet seems overwhelming. It makes me wonder if there wouldn’t be a huge market for creating these modules for individual school districts. Maybe someone could set up a web based company and take submissions from teachers and districts to create the modules for a fee. Then an entire research team could go to work designing the module. It seems to me that it would take that kind of input from many minds to make it work.

Case Based Research

I don’t know if I can say anything better than what Candice shared on her blog about CBR. If you haven’t seen her blog yet, check it out: http://thelifeandtimesofcandy.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/case-based-reasoning-me-likey/#comment-16

Everybody loves to hear stories. Story telling is our oldest human tradition and one that has retained it’s intimacy like no other over time. When you share a story, you selflessly share part of yourself. How better a way is there to teach the really important lessons of life? Our authors mentioned that CBR was used for medical, legal, and high tech learning. Is it any wonder that we would teach in this way to those who hold our lives in their hands? Do we want to leave any room for misunderstanding when a mistake made by a doctor or nurse could cost us our life? Could a wrong assumption by a lawyer cost us our freedom? CBR is the very best way to learn from the victories and mistakes of the ones who have gone before us. It teaches us best practices and teaches us how to avoid disaster. The lessons are heart felt because the ones who went before us paid the price and are sharing their stories to spare us from the same hurt, humiliation, and failure that they experienced as well as those victorious mountain top experiences that we can work to emulate in our work.

I found myself very interested in the plight of the souther slaves by working through the CBR example this week and began to wonder why I was having so much fun doing my homework. It mattered. The stories mattered. They were real and we could all learn from them. That’s why CBR works. It matters.

Case Based Reasoning

Case based reasoning; we see it on the detective shows, in the court-house scenes, and the hospital shows. In real life, these scenarios play out in a similar fashion. Through research we find situations that are similar to the challenges we face today and look for solutions based on the other’s experiences in the past. CBR allows us to benefit from the lessons

learned by others. Even if the cases don’t completely relate to present circumstances, we can draw conclusions and gain the resources and context to understand and debate the present situation.

I like this type of learning experience if for no other reason than it gets younger students to rely on, or at least consider, the experiences of their elders. I think it is an easy way for students to visualize the solutions too as the stories illustrate a concrete solution to their problems that they can use as they see fit, or revise to fit their current situation. It also gives the older more experienced learner a glance into the thinking process of their younger counterparts when they work to revise the cases to fit their needs.

I like the idea of including cases that sometimes give contradictory information so that the students will have to use some higher order thinking skills to solve their problems.  It’s all about solving problems by remembering old problems and adapting the solutions to fit a new situation.

Get more with MOST

The MOST model is designed to give at risk students a visual connection to the text. Many of the at risk students have a limited background knowledge to relate to the concepts being taught at school. This proves to be a tremendous deficit for young readers, and consequently becomes a huge stumbling block to their overall education and learning.

This model would be a good companion to the teaching concepts put forth by Ruby Payne who wrote the book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.” In her book she explains that children from poverty come to school with very different tools for understanding than children from middle class homes.  The MOST model would help teachers provide a rich environment full of pictures, sounds, and action to explain the meaning of the text and provide at least a virtual experience for those students who have never been exposed to the cultural variety of experiences that their middle class peers have. At risk students may be more comfortable with the multimedia framework, would be engaged immediately, and may be less likely to act out and get in trouble while learning with this model.

This is a great teaching  concept and one that I have used without knowing a name for it. It is time consuming to create the modules, but with good organization and filing, the modules can be used over and over again. Over time a teacher could create quite a library of modules, but working in collaboration with other teachers, the library can quickly be created and utilized.

The STAR LEGACY module

OK, I get it. The STAR LEGACY follows a simple 5 step process beginning with an interesting problem or challenge to be solved. Students are asked to write down their initial thoughts and questions about the problem and will return to those initial ideas later so they can see their progress. Students get statements from “experts” via websites, video, etc. that give them direction but does not give them the answer directly. A variety of assessments lead the student to realize what they know and what they still need to learn. When the challenge or problem is solved, students are asked to reflect on their learning and are expected to leave some sort of legacy for the next learners.

The part that is the biggest workload for the developer is of course step number three, perspectives and resources and step number four, the assessments to test learning. I think one of the things I would want to make sure to include would be multiple leveled sources, primary sources, secondary, etc. so that students would get a better understanding of  the difference between them. I’d also want to include different perspectives so that students can see that the same situation can be reported honestly but very differently from many points of view.

I liked this module about teaching students to be independent learners: http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/sr/challenge.htm and suggested that we perform this one as a staff for professional development.

Anchored Instruction

I could totally see myself having a ball with anchored instruction but for very different reasons than most. I teach elementary technology and often have my students make tutorials and teaching aids for younger audiences. Doing this serves as remediation for students preparing for the EOGs and gives them a good background in a variety of different and new technologies. I can visualize brainstorming sessions to write the story line, creative writing to write the scripts for the videos, kids with cameras and tripods filming their friends acting out the drama, kids busily editing the videos to make them just right, and finally, the website team uploading the pictures and video while others worked on the layout and text that explains the challenge. Then when they’ve finished, I can see these same kids as teachers, guiding the younger students through the challenge.

I greatly appreciated the examples that were included in the unit this week. I was having a difficult time reading the text as it was extremely repetitive.  I spent a lot of time on the Jasper Series website reading through the examples there and feel like I got a pretty good handle on the AI design principles. I think it would be interesting to try and build a template to make creating anchored instruction modules a bit easier.

GBS: Learn By Doing

Every time I read one of these articles I am so glad that I teach children and not adults. My goodness these articles are dry! Education-ese is not easy to digest. I learn best by doing and watching. Reading is last on the list and non-engaging reading is even farther down the list. Not that you picked bad articles Kevin. It’s just all that way for me.

I don’t see a lot of difference in many  of these teaching styles we’ve covered. It seems that PBI and PBL are very similar to GBS except for the “expectation failure” that Schank speaks of. Since I can’t whack a kid in the back of the head when they experience an expectational failure, feedback more aligned to this teaching style would be giving examples of personal instances where similar outcomes happened in the instructors past. Since this class is concerning online modules making personal feedback difficult, and GBS is all about giving timely feedback, this would be my chance to embed videos that play instantly when a learner makes an incorrect choice. I could dress up like a crotchety old woman and scratch out my favorite words, “Why Sonny, back in my day, we (fill in the blank) and WE LIKED IT! Now come over here by old granny and listen to what you should have done.”  Or maybe I could rig up the computer to give the kid a mild electrical shock when they make an expectational failure. That way the learning could be categorized two ways, one as what worked/didn’t work, and one Pavlovian.  Oh the possibilities!

I liked having the examples much more that having to read the 2nd and 3rd articles. I felt a little suicidal trying to get through them, but regained my lust for life when I got to the sickle cell module. (That’s weird!!)

I would love to create modules like that but would want/need help to get them done.

Situated Learning Environments and Cognitive Apprenticeships

Keep it real!

True learning only takes place if it is useful and relevant in the social and physical context within which it will be used. Learners watch as the teacher carries out tasks and solves problems in an environment that reflects the many different ways that the knowledge will be put to use in the future.

Students actively communicate about and practice the skills needed to deal with a given situation and practice  solving problems and carrying out tasks for that situation. Their motivation is intrinsic because they can see the problem and have an understanding that the learning will allow them to deal successfully with the problem. Students work together to solve problems and yet often times are given the same task to carry out so they can compare their results.

Before today’s educational model was created, (none too successfully in my opinion)  all children learned by watching their elders as they performed everyday tasks. When a  solution was needed for a task that the available adults could not model, they would seek out other experts in that area and come back to share the new learned technique.

Modern education has messed it all up. Subjects are separated and taught out of context. Students have no idea why they need to know what the teacher is teaching and have become clueless and bored. Take “computer” education for instance. Elementary schools have “computer teachers” who teach kids how to use word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and presentation software. We’re separating the  tools from the tasks. I firmly believe that when a kids wants to learn how to make a presentation, he will learn the software pretty much on his own. A computer is a tool just like an encyclopedia, a calculator, or a ruler. “Computers” is not a subject. In the situated learning model, we should be teaching the students their way around a computer, demonstrate its capabilities, guide them as they learn to ask pertinent questions, and teach them how to THINK and ACT responsibly. We need to teach them how to use the tool safely and effectively. We don’t need to turn them into little secretaries!

Problem Based Learning

I have used the problem based model in my teaching for nearly 10 years. I am convinced that it is the way kids learn best, and how they learn cooperation, leadership, and how to see beyond the obvious.

Kids learn best when challenged in a way that is true and meaningful for them. The problem they are confronted with should be realistic and something they may either have already faced, or one that could anticipate happening to them later in life. Tools should be in place for the kids to test their solutions. This can be in the form of an interactive online tool or simply a conversation with the teacher or other expert. There should be more than one possible outcome for every problem.

I like that in the PBL model, all students have equally important input. Throughout the process, each child will probably fill the shoes of leader, worker, recorder, researcher, brain stormer, nay sayer and expert. They have to learn to get along because it’s part of the problem!

I have enjoyed the groups that work hard to be different, a little more “out there” than the other students. The kids who throw in an alien aspect to every situation crack me up and I allow it as long as it works with the overall outcome of the solution.

Difficulties I have had with this approach have centered mostly on things I failed to anticipate along the way. For instance, PBL for me now requires a daily journaling from each student individually and each group collectively. Time frames have to be adhered to (at least loosely) and daily check ins or conferencing with each group is an absolute necessity. Since I teach on a rotation basis and see the kids only 50 minutes every 6 school days, PBL doesn’t work unless it is in cooperation with the classroom teacher.

I have found that the children I have taught using the PBL model retain the material and are more able to relate the material to real life and transfer that learning across the curriculum. They take more pride in their work and are intrinsically motivated to research, collaborate, and problem solve than when given similar problems in a more traditional manners.