For all the professional conferences I attend and/or present.
Category Archives: Conferences
The Power of Play: Infusing Fun into Professional Development
March 12, 2010 – 1:41 pm
My tags
I just had the most fun facilitating a session here at the MACUL conference! As promised, this blog post will outline our thinking (from my perspective) in planning the session, the inspiration for the activity, and why these types of activities are so rich when integrated into professional development sessions or classroom learning.
The outline of the activities are here.(Please read the document if you did not attend to get a taste of what occurred). I first encountered this activity at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting. I was intrigued by the idea of re-creating a social networking experience by actually socially networking with the people in the room. I liked that in order to highlight different aspects of what occurs online, we were asked to talk to strangers. We were able to see the cognitive tasks of what occurs in online environments in new ways because those interactions, so commonplace as to become invisible, were now made visible by making it strange.
By going around and discussing our tags, our words in common, we were able to make new connections and further our own learning. Debriefing with the lens of game and play theory, we were able to highlight the risk-taking that is necessary to really integrate something new. Failing to master something, especially something challenging, should be encouraged, because it is through failure that we learn. When we learn through trial and error, we make that learning part of ourselves, those neural pathways become set, and we have a new piece of knowledge that also has meaning. Facts and how-to’s are immediately available from a quick Google search, but to integrate that learning into our psyche: that has stickiness. We won’t forget.
Fostering play and risk-taking is important especially for adult learners. Most of us teachers were really good at school and loathe getting “Fs.” But with technology, there are no grades, only the ability to puzzle through a tricky problem and come to a solution. And so we play, we fail, and we try again.
Feedback and questions on the session are welcome.
Memorization and roller skates
February 4, 2010 – 11:49 am
The quote is taken from Dave Barry who said, "If the good Lord had intended us to walk, He wouldn't have invented roller skates."
“If your questions are Google-able, then you are not asking the right questions.”
This past weekend at the Educon 2.2 conference, I heard this sentiment repeated far and wide. At first blush, I agree with it. In a classroom, inquiry is important, and fostering the ability to ask the right questions, in both myself as a teacher and for my students, is imperative. Being able to ask the right questions is no easy task, and I encourage and support that endeavor.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trinity-of-one/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
However, I really want to make the case for Google-able questions. I want to make the case for rote memorization.
The skill of memorizing is not inherently bad, even in the age of information abundance. For instance, I am much better at math if I have my multiplication tables and key formulas committed to memory. When I used to work the cash register at various jobs I’ve held, even memorizing common combinations of change came in handy (I’ve found that no matter the place, because of sales tax and prices and human behavior, one finds that certain combinations of change arise more often than others.). When our registers went down, I always could do the sales tax in my head.
Beyond math, I believe that in an age where our communication moves increasingly online, we will come to value the oral storyteller more and more. As it becomes rarer, we will value the skill. The Moth and This American Life, both featuring well-honed storytelling skills, rely in live performance on the ability to memorize key facts. Without the memorization, we cannot ad lib. Every jazz musician knows this.
I remember once being an audience of one for a boy’s moonlight recitation of a certain e.e. cummings poem. It was beyond a powerful moment. I was completely willing to go out for a second date because of it. If that isn’t a real world application, I don’t know what is.
For me, I love memorizing things. Scrabble words that begin with Z. An Educon encienda presentation. A set of statistics. Quotes from The Simpsons. A poem. A phone number. While there is a whole cognitive science argument to be made, that we should memorize information in order to keep our brains sharp (our brain is like a muscle!), I maintain that there is something remarkable about a person who delivers a well-memorized piece of information.
2011-12 Annual Review