The other day my daughter’s school invited to christmas celebration. Besides a really lovely program they prepared and shared with the guests, I talked to her teacher and was startled: What they do there in this small primary school is trigger the individual potential of every single child AND teach them the basics! At the same time! Simultaneously, so to speak.
The teacher recalled an incident with a school practicant: The practicant explained currency values and let the children calculate with them. The children acted little stories of buying and selling and instead of filling out form sheets, they discussed WHAT to buy and sell.They where busy for quite some time with this task. The practicant was getting nervous and wanted to end the “game”, but the teacher stopped her. Learning, he explained, was going on the exact moment when the children started to extrapolate the given task and were NOT thinking about the form sheet anymore. So why bother about that more than necessary to fill it out AFTER the learning situation?
I continued talking with the teacher and learned once more: Lots of primary schools spoil the learning desire in children during the first six months they are schooled. Instead of triggering what is inside of every single child, teachers put enormous effort in imposing what has to be learned on the children.
The same holds true for teaching in college: You have to consider and count on the knowledge and experience the students bring into your classroom. As a good teacher you have to develop and know methods to trigger what is inside – not so much to impose you own knowledge. This might be a paradigm shift. And it includes working together – with the students and with your team.
PS: In Looking through “Authentic Learning” in #change11 I just found corresponding research: Alex’s blogentry proves that creative children in the classroom are watched as being disturbing rather than welcome. Transferred to college settings I’d stick with Jan Herrington:
“So in a physical sense, it is easy to organize, but in a pedagogical sense it is actually very challenging to plan and enact because of the need to cleverly design an all encompassing task, and deal with the limitations imposed by curriculum requirements and institutional restraints.”
We will have to do all we can to foster authentic learing and thus get the creativity out of our students. We, every single one who teaches. We, the teaching staff as a whole in a given course or department. We – together with our students.
Jupidu recently expressed my thoughts: Starting a blog and filling it with blogposts does not depend on the question if and how many comments my writing may arise.
It is a matter of expressing yourself,
filing your thoughts,
archiving ideas in a networked way,
leaving and eventually provoking the possibility to develop ideas even further with comments and in discourse/discussion/conversation.
The beginning of a blog must be found in yourself, though. Outside motivation could be a trigger, in best cases, nothing more. MOOC got me hooked. I found my motivation for blogging in MOOC. Let’s see…
Yesterday a collegue told me something new: that she was attending a MOOC, a massive open online course. Named change11. – In listening to her all of a sudden something was changing inside myself: MOOC was hooking me. Never good in remembering names or difficult scientific expressions, not to speak about acronyms, MOOC was hooking me immediately. I had to have a look. I had to sign up. As if some unknown source was pulling me in.
#change11 even drove me into remembering my blog, long time abandoned. For that reason I am writing here right now. Still rather unassertive about the sustainable quality of this revival, though. I know me. And I know that I am not the extrovert guy writing about herself a lot. Maybe MOOC turns out to be a topic enough. Maybe.
What I especially liked about the conversation with my collegue yesterday was the language philosphical aspect emerging immediately while talking about the topics in #change11 MOOC: Would talking about theorectical concepts in a didactic field become clearer when you’d try to translate it from your mothertongue into a foreign language or vice versa? I said yes, because the different languages would act like a filter – the more filter you’d apply, the better the output. In natural sciences, my collegue replied, it never made any difference for her to read something in English or German or any other known language. Different in humanities, I’d say.
My brother just presented me with a CVD, the 1998 recording by Wim Wenders: Buena Vista Social Club. He knows I like latin american music and watching this piece I do have to note something down: Ibrahim Ferrer says when introducing the (american) visitors to his home, something translated like this: “We are lucky, we Cubans. Really, somos buenos. If we would think about money, we wouldn’t be here anymore. Somos buenos, indeed.”
As far as I know (and have experienced) that is so much true and so simply uttered that I would kiss this film just because of that – if it wouldn’t have been for the music beforehand.
They, all those musicians in the film, transmit a feeling quite different from everything in an economical dominated world like Europe – and sadly enough we in this so called first world we have lost to notice this feeling, this authenticity far beside all reasoning and far beside all all the well argumented quest of having to achieve something named beforehand.
The Tag der offenen Tür at FH JOANNEUM made me experience something similar: A collegue took positive notice about the authenticity our students presented the degree program there, far different from last year, he stated. I didn’t notice so much difference. But maybe he still has a sense for authenticity and spontanious feelings – as long as they fit into his own reasoning and thinking, I might add.
Nach einem PRVS Steiermark Talk mit Christian Ammer zur Social Media Strategie von wien energie und energieleben schreibt schneeengel zurecht über Corporate Twitter und die Grenzen des persönlichen Einsatzes dafür: Wann fängt der Feierabend für diejenigen an, die sich um den Twitter-Account kümmern? Erst um ein Uhr Nachts? Oder schon um neun Uhr Abends? Er hat recht, der schneeengel, mit dieser Frage. Denn wenn ein Unternehmen wirklich anfängt zu twittern, sind damit unbedingte Regeln verbunden. Anstandsregeln persönlicher Kommunikation, die das Medium Twitter = das schnellste Kommunikationstool derzeit — siehe die Tiger Woods Story und Twitter z.B. hier, hier und bei Klaus Eck — noch weitaus unbedingter einfordert, als jede persönliche Kommunikation es (aus Gründen der Höflichkeit) könnte.
Was mich als PR-Mensch darüber hinaus interessiert: Wenn ich mich als Unternehmen dazu entscheide, zu twittern, muss ich etwas zu sagen haben und kommunizieren wollen. Und zwar mit einer Zielgruppe, die sich im Falle der wien energie von meinen Kunden doch wesentlich unterscheidet. Ich würde fast sagen: Wenn ich als wien energie twittere, rede ich mit einzelnen, nicht mit meinen Kunden oder einer Teilmenge davon. Das muss mir klar sein. Mit allen Konsequenzen. Diese einzelnen mögen Entscheider sein, nach allem, was man über Twitter-Nutzer weiß – aus PR-Sicht sind sie in Nicht-Krisen-Zeiten vor allem Individuen, die nicht nur hören wollen, sondern tatsächlich mit dem Unternehmen reden wollen könnten. Das heißt also auch: Wenn wien energie, wie Christian Ammer in seinen Bemerkungen zur kommunikativen Vorbereitung auf die Wien Wahlen nahe legte, den Twitter-Account auch darum pflegt, weil die vielen Twitter-Follower rasche Krisenkommunikation im Falle des Falles ermöglichen, dann zieht diese strategische Entscheidung Konsequenzen nach sich in vorher nicht gekanntem Ausmaß: Zielgruppen sind – schon allein an diesem Beispiel dargestellt – nicht mehr homogene Gruppen, sondern einzelne Individuen mit ungleich schwieriger auszumalenden Interessen, Werten, Einstellungen.
Die Konsequenzen für Planung, Strategie und Ziele der PR-Arbeit haben gestandene PR-Profis noch viel zu wenig bedacht.
… and about the things the normal user would like to go with any mobile phone naturally:
I am sitting here with earphones in my ear – listening to my favorite music – no need to tell what that would be – fact is: I am a single mother, living with my daughter. When I am not working I am with her – and I love it. No doubt. But since four years or so I can’t remember listening to my music as I used to: loud, without caring about anybody, not thinking if anybody else would like to listen what I like, without any questions to anwer… Being a mum means withdrawal and you don’t even notice it. That’s normal.
But now I have an iPhone with earphones. It was easy to load my music. And it feels good to hear it in my ears. To switch backward and forward. To repeat. To turn the volume on and to listen again and again. It recalls a feeling long lost in something even better. I- that is, my mind – have never missed it. But my body was longing for it all the time. Quietly. Without telling nobody. Today I know that my mind is part of my body: They both are coming home. – and they both notice that they have longed to.
With this iPhone: usefull, practical, easy to use for a no freak. With intuition. Maybe one tool for lots of applications. Sure for lots of feelings of rememberance.
