Lego, School, and the Box: Part II

(Part 1 of Lego, School, and the Box can be found here)

Imagine that you have been given the following selection of Lego bricks, and asked to create this machine:

 

You are then given the following selection of parts:

 

What would you do?

Chances are that you would ask for some instructions.  (And, of course, these clear, step-by-step instructions exist).

 Now, instead, imagine that you were given these bricks:

 

And, these items:

And anything else you wanted to use.
 
And instead of having to create what someone else chose, you were allowed to create whatever you chose to create… but the big challenge was that by creating something, you needed to contribute to solving one of the world’s issues or create something of significance to society.

Would you still ask for instructions?  Or would you try to make your own sense out of the situation?

Which scenario would motivate you more?

Naturally, all of these seemingly silly questions are a metaphor designed to elicit thoughts on today’s education system.  In most schools, just as with the first building scenario, our children are told what to learn, where to learn it, how to learn it, and even when to learn it (interestingly, the question of why they need to learn it doesn’t seem to come up too often).   They are boxed in by arbitrary limits that exist purely because some ‘expert’ curriculum writer, or even, in some cases, ‘expert’ administrators and teachers have identified, often without even meeting your child, exactly what, how, where, and when your child should learn.

As Will Richardson and many others point out – this was fine practice in an era of information scarcity.  However, in a changed and rapidly changing world being ‘boxed in’ will never bring about ‘outside of the box’ thinking.  In the classroom of the future – and in excellent classrooms today – children are in the driver’s seat with regards to their education.  The world is their playground and the challenge is not learning things in a set way; rather, it is seeking out the finest experts and materials to solve real problems.

How does your school measure up?

Why Scratch was the Best Tech Activity of the Year

A brief post for today:

Yesterday my Grade 5 tech class worked with Scratch.  The excitement in the room was palpable; the level of learning was high enough to warrant the children calling the class “fun”.  With some professional reflection, this is why I think we had such success:

1)      The children were allowed to ‘open-source’ learn.  I was not the expert in the room – instead, there was hours of Youtube, peers with more experience than me, and miles of blogs.
2)      We learned together.  When a design issue popped up, the entire classroom worked to find a solution.  In this way, we found multiple solutions and learned more than we ever would have in the traditional ‘delivery of knowledge’ method of teaching.
3)      The games they created were of their own design.  Nobody likes to be told what to do.  That said, there are some students who have been so transformed by the school system that they don’t know what to do unless told.  For them, there were some general guidelines.

The conclusion: Make as many classes as possible ‘open-source’, work collaboratively to solve problems, and respect the individual’s inherent genius.

Does this sound like the Google office to anyone else?  I wonder why that company has achieved such success?

 

A New Equation for School

There has been an ongoing story with regards to school for decades, one that is being re-categorized from non-fiction to fiction; it is the idea that you go to school to prepare yourself for a job in the workforce. For many, that equation extended to post-secondary education: more school = a better job.

That equation is increasingly becoming a myth.  As Will Richardson writes: “with many college graduates making lattes at Starbucks, the traditional narrative of a four-year degree being a ticket to a middle-class life just isn’t playing out for a growing number of kids.”

I don’t think that becoming a server at Starbucks is what these young people had in mind when they enrolled I post-secondary education.

Where the school = a job equation breaks down is when you consider the type of person that companies are looking to hire (and the type of person so talented that they start their own company or work for themselves).  These people, the ‘game-changers’ so to speak, are not talented because they went through a school system that taught them the same thing as everyone else.  Rather, these are the people who went ‘beyond school’ and followed their passions.  School, for them, was merely a hurdle to pass along the way to doing what they really wanted to do.  They sometimes did the bare minimum to get through school or they dropped out of school altogether to follow their own passions.   It is these people who are being hired for their talents and ideas.  Those other people who went through school assuming it was the way to that mythical job are the ones working at Starbucks.

Parents are starting to catch on to this pattern.  The homeschooling and ‘un-schooling’ movement is growing.  While these parents are, perhaps, on the ‘fringe’ as the biggest risk-takers (big risk = big reward… another equation that is not always true!), leading independent schools are starting to recognize that the rules for school are changing. 

·         In an age where knowledge is a mouse-click away, teacher-driven classrooms make no sense.

·         It is highly unlikely that our children will be able to have their own creative, original thoughts when they’ve been boxed up in schools for years.  See Ken Robinson here, and my own post on Lego and the Box, here.

·         Thus, a whole-scale common curriculum also makes no sense.  There are essential skills for every student to master, but if each student is provided the same schooling I find it difficult to conclude that different ideas will somehow emerge.

·         Projects, extending well beyond a single subject and a system of bells and scheduling, will take a prominent role.  Schools following the new rules will realize that children need to be creators of knowledge, not merely consumers.

Those who play by the old rules will still find success; but the law of diminishing returns will take precedence.  Whether you are a parent or an educator I challenge you to lead by adopting a new equation for education.

Children's Habits are Changing - For Better or For Worse?

Lego, in recognition of the 15^th anniversary of its Mindstorms robotics toy, commissioned a study on the transformative changes in children’s play.  While I haven’t read the whole report, the infographic found at http://www.lmsces2013.com provides more than enough food for thought.

My primary concern is that children are spending 20% less time outdoors.  Richard Louv, in LastChild in the Woods, makes a compelling case that children need to be outside for their health and for our collective future.  He makes connections between the rise of Attention Deficit Disorder and the fall of children’s opportunities to connect with nature.  Most telling, he points out that children are just having “less fun” locked in the boxes that we call school.

I’m also concerned that children are, in increasing numbers, creating online personas and engaging in virtual relationships rather than those that are face to face.  The happiest teenager I know has no active email address, does not participate in virtual networks, can go days without using the internet, and has one of the island’s fanciest tree houses.   Sadly though, the number of friends that join him in outdoor and authentically creative (versus online creative) pursuits has dwindled as they find themselves drawn to the screen. 

Alan November, a major promoter of tech-driven education and one of my favorite education personalities recently tweeted about a boy in Bali who said that “Google is preventing creativity”.  While the internet may be a tool for individualized learning and sharing, it can also become a crutch that stops creativity.

Most educators will argue, with good reason, that we need to accept that most of our students will be found online and that Minecraft may be the best way to get them creating.  Virtual creation and virtual relationships may be better than no creative thought or relationships at all. 

However, to accept this argument would be to accept things the way they are.  I would rather provide an opportunity for children to be outdoors, to prefer face to face communication over virtual relationships, and a chance to simply have “more fun”.  It will take a complete transformation of the education system and we may even have to create our own schools, such as Bali’sGreen School, to do it.  Out of those schools will come self-reliant children in touch with nature and their true selves (rather than tech-reliant children living primarily through a virtual persona).  They will be uncommon… they will be happy.

“Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not?” – George Bernard Shaw

 

Making More Makers

The Richmond Math Salon

Lego, School, and the Box

I spent some time this afternoon reading Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School For? (available here).  At Section 51 Godin points out that Lego recently had to transform itself; the aisles of Lego no longer feature big buckets of bricks in need of imagination (they weren't selling) - rather, they feature predefined kits which, when built, will each look the same; no imagination required.

In this way each child will create the same thing in the same way as every other child.  There will be no risk that they will look silly or get it wrong... and if they do, it can easily be corrected back to the mainstream.  Sounds a lot like school doesn't it?

What is the real mission in your school?  Is it that each child should act the same way and learn the same thing?

This loss of imagination is not Lego's fault.  Lego is not broken... rather, it is the children who have been broken.  We've put them into boxes we call classrooms and given them the same information at the same time and allowed them to move only with the bells that move the herd from one box (or cell) to another for more of the same treatment. After years of being inside these boxes we then expect these same children turned young adults to think outside of the box...

My finger recently spent eight weeks immobilized.  In that time it lost its ability to move independently.  Eight weeks to ruin a finger and it will take twice that long to fix it.  It makes me wonder what twelve years of sitting in a box will do to your child?  By what magic will he then be able to move beyond that proverbial box?

Why I Wouldn't Sign My Child Up for School

Why I Wouldn’t Put My Child in the School System

If I had a child (I don’t) it would be no more likely to sign him up for school than I would be to send him to work in the coal mines. An exaggeration, yes… but seriously, it seems to be that the current system of schooling is about as modern as the steam engine, as forward thinking as smoking, and as ready for the 21st century as the teacher who has her students produce a Powerpoint presentation and calls it integration of technology.

Back when I entered kindergarten, in the year 1989, the world’s population was 5.2 billion people strong. Neither my classroom nor my home had a computer and the rage in technology was the Nintendo Entertainment System that had 2 kilobytes of RAM. Boys like me dreamed of being firefighters, farmers, and police officers. If I could learn to sit still for the next 17 years, conform to the system, and do what the teacher asked of me I was practically guaranteed a comfortable spot in North America’s middle class.

On Monday our world population will hit 7 billion and its projected to hit 8 billion by 2025. I’m writing this blog post on a computer with 4 million kilobytes of RAM in my home and each child in my classroom has access to the collective knowledge of over 2 billion internet users. If those children do merely what I say, sit still, and conform to the system they are practically guaranteed a not very comfortable spot in the soon to be non-existent middle class. It would be an utter failure on my part to let them do so.

Many teachers and parents find comfort and solace in the predictability of a curriculum that is arranged year by year. At ten years old children find the greatest factor of two numbers and multiply three digits by three digits, with and without decimals. They should read books at a grade level of 5.0-6.0 and study ecosystems in science. Who says so? What do they know about your child? Do they know his unique learning needs, his interests, and his talents? You know, those things that are not defined by a birth date?

We both know that your child has talents and weaknesses. He’s a talented story teller, but he can’t keep positive and negative numbers straight. He builds exceptionally, but he has difficulty with spelling. He’s a swimmer, but he can’t throw a baseball. For this he is forever relegated to a mixed review report card. The unit on positive and negative numbers passes… he still can’t manage to add -3 and +2 but the curriculum says he should have; the class must move on. In this way his weaknesses remain ever-growing weaknesses, exacerbated year by year as the curriculum spirals back and builds on what wasn't learned the year before. When he has the opportunity to work to his talents and goes above and beyond the standard he is told “that’s great… but we don’t cover that in Grade 5”. End of story.

I, like you, am tired of reading about the problems with education. I’m offering a partial solution: Find someone who will teach to your child’s strengths; someone who will ensure that time is spent on her weaknesses while letting her grow her talents. ‘Unschool’ your child: replace conformity with education.