In order for both parties to successfully navigate the “C’s of Change” in an increasingly digitized education, students need to learn to play with concepts, and teachers need to allow time for this while demonstrating the process themselves. For teachers who want to help students be correct as quickly as possible, this will be a struggle. Lecture style instructors will have to let go of their locus of control. Educators who are not “techies” will need to adapt to internet-based learning. Teachers need to embrace change in their classrooms and implement new ways of teaching/learning in order for educators and educatees to sail the choppy waters of educational change together.
In the YouTube video below, John Seely Brown discusses the power and importance of play in education. By play, he means playing with a concept. This practice forces students to develop problem-solving skills and gain a better understanding of the content by allowing them to make, and learn from, mistakes. This idea reminds me of a sign I saw at the Connecticut Science Center which read, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This quote from Thomas Edison beautifully sums up Brown’s idea. We have to let kids work through a cognitive process in order for them to develop a more complex relationship with their learning.
How do we go about teaching students to work through a learning process in an age of instantaneous information? Navigating the C’s of Change by McVerry, Zawilinski, and O’Byrne provides an excellent model for integrating “Internet Reciprocal Teaching” into content areas in order to teach critical thinking, comprehension, communication, collaboration, and creativity. “The 5 C’s,” as the author’s call them, are the key skills individuals need to approach an idea, play with it, and come to their own realizations. The reason I like this approach is three-fold: 1. it is highly structured, 2. it engages students but also challenges them through the use of open-ended questions, and 3. it teaches real-life skills alongside content knowledge. While educators are sometimes hesitant to change their teaching practices, following a model such as this one would make the task less daunting.
In order for both parties to successfully navigate the “C’s of Change” in an increasingly digitized education, students need to learn to play with concepts, and teachers need to allow time for this while demonstrating the process themselves. For teachers who want to help students be correct as quickly as possible, this will be a struggle. Lecture style instructors will have to let go of their locus of control. Educators who are not “techies” will need to adapt to internet-based learning. Teachers need to embrace change in their classrooms and implement new ways of teaching/learning in order for educators and educatees to sail the choppy waters of educational change together.
4 Comments
7/16/2015 01:10:18 am
Erin,
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Erin
7/16/2015 01:26:24 am
I agree with your thought on the classroom being less structured, I feel the method itself is structured. Meaning there is a clear progression in the steps of teaching internet reciprocal teaching and the release of control from teacher to student.
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7/16/2015 03:11:54 am
I love the blog. The layout and design are crisp, clean, and draw the reader in. :)
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Erin
7/16/2015 04:08:18 am
Thanks for the compliment Ian! I agree that some teachers won't ever convert to using technology, but I have seen "techno-phobic" teachers work around it by co-teaching with another teacher who is more adept with technology. It is like the release of a new operating system. When a new OS is released devices and programs must be able to support/work with both the old and the new, but eventually the older system is phased out. I think that change will happen in education as well as new teachers enter the field already knowing how to use technology and teachers who rely on more traditional methods begin to retire. For now at least, education must support both "operating systems."
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Erin Berthold
1st grade teacher, former special education teacher, Zumba Fitness instructor, graphic designer, cupcake baker, wife, and pet mama working towards a 6th Year Certificate in Instructional Technologies and Digital Categories
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