This YouTube video so impressed Fleetwood Mac songstress Stevie Knicks that she invited the students to perform with her at Madison Square Garden. So, obviously, the reason you should post student work to the web is "So you can meet Stevie Knicks." Question answered! I'll be at the bar.
Most importantly: great education demands frequent, positive reinforcement. Period. Prospective teachers hear it constantly, in every education class, and even the barest experience bears it out -- students won't succeed without praise, support, and encouragement, and it's your job to heap it on them, because for some kids, no one else will. The good news? By sharing their work online, the WHOLE WORLD can encourage their efforts. We only need to look again at Kaia's story to see what impact even a single post may have. My science fair projects never enjoyed international acclaim, but you can bet that if they did, I'd be building hydroelectric dams left and right (And this time, it'd friggin' work. I wondered then why my teacher kept calling it "That dam project of yours.")
Second: to innovate, we need evidence of what works and what doesn't. The internet is many things: an infinite resource of information, a boundary-free public medium of personal expression, the strangest and most comprehensive shopping mall conceivable, a chainsaw attack upon print media and copyright protection, and, often, totally creepy. As a research tool, it's revolutionary and indispensable. To develop stronger practices and methods, we must experiment and share the evidence widely. The internet frees educational research from the heady bondage of academia and scholarly journals, giving actual teachers practical (and practicable) methods and classroom strategies. As Mr. Pausch demonstrated, we are graced with new ideas, and can see how students respond to them in real time.
Third: Responsible thinkers continuously reflect upon what they've done, and retroactively learn from experience. Teachers, who teach other people how to think, really should be responsible thinkers, dedicated to improving their craft and expanding their consciousness. (Please note that despite my word choice, I"m not subtly endorsing self-medication -- I just mean, y'know, reading more and stuff.) By archiving student work online, teachers not only reexamine and reflect upon the process and results, but may receive insightful commentary from outside parties or students themselves, commenting upon their own work. A classroom blog is a portfolio with a heartbeat, if not redefining the hoary term "living document," then at least bringing the concept closer to reality with the Frankensteinian application of electric current: unpredictable, with thought independent of its creator.
Above: your classroom blog. (Please note: it's alive.)
Posts
Excellent! Funny, on target, intelligent and witty (different from funny). Two great quotes which I hope I remember:
ReplyDelete"Our instructor, who art in Cloud"
"A classroom blog is a portfolio with a heartbeat"
I think I'll add the latter to the masthead of the class blog!
You are an amazingly talented writer. Unfortunately I disagree with two of the three reasons you have given.
ReplyDeleteThe first is to equate psychological theory as educational fact. While animals can be trained to respond to positive feedback (including humans) we should never let that be the focus of our attention in the classroom. We want our students to be intrinsically motivated, not working for the payday.
The second is that we need evidence to innovate. If I waited for evidence to show that blogging could be a positive learning experience for you would have a different teacher this year (and a much different learning experience!) My willingness to take a leap three years ago led directly to Dr. Strange not retiring.
What is more important: to try or to succeed? For every success I have had in my classroom I have had countless failures. My students fail regularly, that is a good thing!
When it comes down to brass tacks, there are two things I would like to leave you with. First, if we treat our students with kindness and respect they will return it. Second, if you think something would be good for your students, you are morally obligated to give it a shot. Never hesitate because it hasn't been done before.
I don't want this comment to sound negative, and I hope it doesn't. I really appreciate the thought you have put into all your posts and I have enjoyed scanning through them. I will be skyping in to the Wednesday night class at 7:00 and would love for you to attend if possible so we can extend this conversation.
One last note, if you play as well as you write you may need to rethink your choice in profession!
Mr. C
I appreciate your comments! (Also, you're way, way too complimentary, but thank you dearly for stroking my ego.) I hope this isn't terribly shocking -- I'd like to counter-counter your counterpoints.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we shouldn't treat students as we would mice who are especially good as navigating mazes, doling out reinforcement like delicious, delicious laboratory pellets. But this treads into the murky waters of cultural myopia -- that is, in public education, a lot of students have not had the opportunity to cognitively develop intrinsic motivation. It's not that they don't WANT to work, or CAN'T work; for many students, tragically, success has never been a realistic option, as observed and modeled by their experience. All I mean by "heaping positive reinforcement" on students is that teachers have to patient, positive, and relentlessly supportive of their students so that they are encouraged to become self-motivated learners.
My experience in special ed. classes and with critical theory regarding special education is woefully limited; my standard disclaimer, that my ignorance knows no bounds, applies. What I've seen is in an underprivileged public school, and I've seen the difference between "over" praising those kids and not. So far, I lean towards the former.
And you're right, innovation often occurs in a vacuum. See, for example: all artistic disciplines. And education is certainly art. But it's also, to some degree, science, by which I mean certain techniques are measurably more effective than others. I doubt you'll find anyone under the age of 140 who will argue that memorization is a better learning method than direct experience. Good science simply looks at what's been done and asks more questions. (I hate the common misconception, propagated by enemies of science, that science exists to find indisputable "answers.") As a rabid pragmatist, I don't like guesswork -- I'd rather use the experience of others to help define my practice.
We agree that it's crucially important to not necessarily wait on evidence before trying new things. Innovate, experiment, pour those unmarked test tubes together and set it all on fire. Do new things! But evidence and experience can help us more rapidly, and collaboratively, develop new methods and philosophies. And isn't collaboration one of the great advantages of the techno-teaching? We find an idea that works, and share it.
That's what I mean by dissemination of evidence -- not necessarily poshing the ol' monocle and settling down in the foyer with a hefty stack of leather-bound educational studies -- which, of course, are written entirely in Latin -- and adapting methods in response to startling new evidence of leech-ing black humours from corroded ephemeral lobes or whatever.
But hey, I'll try anything once.