Mickey Mouse Teaching

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality” Walt Disney

Walt sure knew what he was talking about, didn’t he? It doesn’t matter how great a thing is, if it isn’t important to people, the dream will never materialize. I think teaching is the same way. No matter how important a concept is to a teacher, if the kids don’t give a rip about it I guarantee there will be no magic.

This seems like pretty basic “Teaching 101”, but achieving this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Creating lessons that are indeed magical, is in itself a feat worthy of Disney-style fireworks. If we want our students to really be engaged in what they are learning, they need to be involved in the designing and creating process. Researchers, theorists and educational experts refer to this as “Constructionism”, but I’m going to call it Mickey Mouse teaching because:

a)      Walt Disney was one of the most creative minds of our time, and
b)      Mickey Mouse Teaching sounds way more fun than "Constructionism”

So let me tell share one example of what I think good quality Mickey Mouse teaching looks like. There are about a bazillion (my all-time favourite teacher questions this term) different ways to incorporate Mickey Mouse teaching into a classroom. This is just one way and I would love to hear about others, so please be sure to leave me a comment!

Generating and Testing Hypotheses:

In a nutshell, we’re talking about posing a question, postulating the answer, and investigating the actual outcome, right? So let’s bring in Mickey and see if we can’t generate some magic!

Nasa’s Design a Planet has to be one of the coolest, most magical interactive tools I have come across in the last year. This interactive web site allows the user to create a new planet based on what is already known about existing planets. The tool challenges users to create a planet that can sustain human life. By manipulating numerous variables, the user is guided through a process of creating this new world.

This interactive, animated tool requires users to consider the impact each variable has on the resulting planet. Will there be volcanoes? Tectonic plate movement? Water - what form? What will the planet's orbit and mass be? What kind of sun will the planet have?  My first planet was not able to sustain life, and the tool explained why.

TELL me that isn’t cool!

This is such a great Mickey Mouse (formerly known as Constructionist) way of teaching that gets kids to ask the right questions, take a stab at an answer, and then test their theories by looking at the results of their own creation. This fits in perfectly with these Alberta curricular objectives:

• Grade 9 (Space Exploration) examines technologies available to us for space exploration
• Grade 6 Science examines control of variables, and Topic C Sky Science focuses on planets, and Earth’s relationship with its surrounding celestial bodies.

This process of posing questions, predicting answers, and examining outcomes doesn’t have to be limited to scientific or mathematical settings. We can use this model for any inquiry based learning we want to present.

Check out this video from Apple’s Challenge Based Learning web site to see how this model can be applied to investigating the social significance of voting.

  

This same process works for any subject area for virtually any grade level. But remember, Mickey Mouse-ifying your classroom is NOT going to be an overnight process. Creating effective and meaningful projects with your students takes a great deal of planning, a lot of sweat, and tons of organization – but it pays off a bazillionfold in the end (sorry Mr. Krull ;)!

There are scads and scads of fantastic project based learning web sites. Here are a few that might pique your interest!

1. http://pbl-online.org/ is a good resource for getting you started with project-based learning in your classroom.
2. Not sure WHERE to start? Consider the best practices discussed at http://www.saskschools.ca/~bestpractice/project/index.html from Regina Public Schools.
3. If you need a few ideas to get your Mousey goodness flowing, check out some Project Based Learning examples from the US Department of Education at http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/SER/Technology/ch8.html

So roll up your sleeves and BE the Mouse!

Eyeballs and Teaching

Some people have eye-opening experiences. Some people go through life with their eyes wide shut. Today I had more of a ripping-my-eyelids-off-my-face experience.

I worked with some very…challenging high school students today. I was invited to be a guest speaker about the 1990 Oka Crisis involving the Mohawk people of the Kanehsatake Reservation outside Montreal, Quebec. For my older readers, you’ll remember how the Canadian military converged on this small community over a territorial land dispute between the Mohawk people and a golf course owner looking to expand his operation onto Mohawk territory.

Many of the students I spoke to today are Aboriginal students. I thought they would be 100% into what I had to share because it involved other First Nations people. The students recently learned about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so I thought this would be a perfect segue for my discussion. I could not have been more wrong! These kids are in a modified program and have been treated poorly by the education system for most of their school career. They were no more interested in hearing what I had to share with them than a bulldog is in sharing his supper! I knew I had my work cut out for me, but was confident I would win them over.

But hang on...They didn’t care! Here I was trying to talk to them about the basic rights afforded to all Canadians being denied to the Mohawk people in this crisis and they didn’t care. How on earth could this be possible when the majority of the students in the room were First Nations students? This was when I lost my lids. Wasn’t this important to them on a personal level?

So I rolled up my sleeves and I dug my heels in a little deeper. I was there to go over the Charter, but what a cumbersome thing THAT is to look at! These kids are not strong readers, and asking them to look over my four-page, already condensed document was much like what I imagine pulling teeth from an alligator must be like – dangerous and more than a little yucky.

I told them it was a pig of a document and threw it over my shoulder asking how many of them felt like reading all that “Blah, blah, blah”. My eyelids were starting to crawl back to their rightful place when I noticed a smile creep across some of those downturned lips. Ok, so maybe I can get their attention again with a little realism. I told them I agreed it made my own eyes roll to the back of my head when I thought about reading the Charter. I asked them what they would say if I told them I thought there only about 15 words in that entire document that I thought were worth reading. They laughed. I told them it was true and I was going to show them.

Summarizing and Note Taking

They already had a copy of my condensed version of the Charter (still four, very full pages) and I pulled up my copy on the LCD projector. I showed them how most of what is written in the Charter is just “fluff” as far as I was concerned and that we could just cross it out and disregard it. I showed them the key words and got them to highlight them. I showed them how they can cross out entire sections and sum them up by just writing the main idea. Then they highlighted that newly written main idea. I started them off to show them how to do it, and then I asked them to try it on their own.

By the time we were finished with that big wordy Charter, we highlighted a total of 18 words. They said they felt guilty marking up the Charter, but I told them there was no point in kidding themselves that they would ever read that entire document. I told them that learning less than 20 words was going to prove to be more beneficial to them in the long run.

This strategy is a pretty common one and is a really great cognitive tool for students of any age. Cognitive learning theories (Grider, 1993) tell us that when we learn, we are hooking new information onto that which we already know. Having students summarize a text requires that they think about and make judgements about pieces of information:

“Is this part duplicating what I already highlighted?”

“Can I reword this to use simpler terms?”

“Is this piece of information really adding to my understanding?”

What these questions translate into is a subject finding a way to hook the new information onto something already known about the topic. These questions force the subject to think about the new information and actually find a place for it to live in that great big filing cabinet in the head. This cognitive process ultimately makes it easier for a subject to recall the information at a later date.

Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers

Filing and organization just might be the secret keys to learning something new. I know this, so I tried to slide a few nuggets of cognitive gold while working with those tough kids I was telling you about.

These strategies all require a student to actively engage in thinking about what they are about to learn. They cause a subject to pause and consider how new information fits with existing schemas. The best thing, from the perspective of a subject struggling to remember information, is that all three of these strategies put the focus on key points, rather than oddities (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007)). Pitler et al. describe these strategies in great detail in “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” (2007).

Cues should be like Flash files – in your face and really obvious. Their purpose is to let a person know that something really important is coming up next; something worth paying attention to. This in-your-face trigger is a great cognitive tool, isn’t it? The response to a cue is something like this, “Hey brain! Are you with me on this one? Whatever happens next goes in the "stuff-to-keep-drawer”

Questions work the same way. Great teachers know the value of great questions. Asking questions that promote Bloom’s higher-level thinking kick the filing system into overdrive “Oh, I know the answer to this one! I know that character behaved in this way because he is living during the Russian Revolution. That means he’s too afraid to let his nephew know where his parents are in case the Secret Police are lurking in the shadows!” or something like that. Higher-order questions, and especially longer wait times, allow students to dip into their existing knowledge base (Pitler et al, 2007). They find ways to hook new information onto something they already know.

I admit it was tough finding the right questions to ask these kids today. I started out a little rusty, but it didn’t take me long to find my groove. The great thing about cues and questions is that students will let you know what is working and what isn’t. The trick is to listen with your eyes more than your ears!

Luckily my eyes told me they regularly glanced over my shoulder to look at what was next the agenda. I had my web site for the day’s discussion up on the LCD projector. I guess you could say it was an advance organizer because it clearly laid out what I had planned for students. Novak compares advance organizers to cognitive bridges (1980). These bridges are so effective because they link information a subject has previously learned to information they are about to learn. Again – another great cognitive tool because they force students to actively think about what they are learning.

So remember when I had my eyelids ripped off earlier today? Well they’re back in place now and I’m very much looking forward to closing them for in a little while. Luckily for me I know about these strategies because they really came in handy today!

Behaviourism: Alive and Clicking in the Classroom?

Teachers have a lot to do in a day. There are attendance records to maintain; assignments to collect and grade; behaviours to keep in check; character and esteem to build; and of course; there is the curriculum to teach. Now with all of these things, let’s throw in how teachers need to ensure their lessons, activities and assessments must churn out 21^st century skilled students. This means students need to be taught in the context of a technological world so they have relevant and useful skills upon graduation.

Sound like a tall order?

I say it sounds like a job that strikes fear in the hearts of the meek, but ignites a blaze of excitement in the rest of us; the teachers.

Now I admit that I am a bit of an odd duck. I was a self-taught techie who trained to be a teacher, then turned back to techie and now again to teacher; a rare situation, I think. I have bounced back and forth between technology positions (systems analyst, software support, desktop support, etc.) and educational positions (K-12 teacher, special needs teacher, ESL teacher, post-secondary instructor) for nearly twenty years. Although each of my numerous positions has been unique, there has always been a common thread: I have taught users something new through the use of technology. 

As far as I’m concerned, technology and teaching are the perfect marriage and this relationship is even more crucial today than ever before.

But what about teachers who do not hail from a background rich in technology? What are they to do? Keeping up on curriculum, educational theory, and students’ lives is a full time job in itself. Learning to incorporate technology to produce engaging lessons that truly support learning can seem an insurmountable task.

In an effort to ease this burden, I offer two instructional strategies/ways in which one might use technology to reinforce and support learning. I have been reading “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn and Malenoski, 2007) and was particularly interested in what they had to share regarding reinforcing effort and homework practice in the K-12 classroom.

Reinforcing Effort

According to Pitler et al., in order to ensure students buy into the notion that effort pays off, two things must occur. The first is that students must be overtly taught that this is true and second, students must assume the responsibility of monitoring their own efforts (Pitler, et al., 2007). Their text offers a behaviouristic approach to using technology to accomplish this task. Their recommendation is for students to use a spreadsheet to monitor their progress. The trick here is to quantify effort and compare that data with ensuing grades. This particular task serves students in a number of ways as seen in the chart below.

See enlarged image here

Homework and Practice

Homework provides an opportunity for practice, but it should be a planned and purposeful part of school work. Pitler et al. address this in their book, “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn and Malenoski, 2007). They recommend that once students have been given adequate time to understand a concept, homework can be assigned to target that same skill/concept. They also recommend students chart their own progress. This can be done in the same manner as noted above.

Have a look at this chart to see the similarities in how a behaviouristic approach can be applied to homework and practice.

See enlarged image here

I used MyWebSpiration for the chart. Check it out – it’s pretty cool!

Behaviourism certainly has a place in managing classroom discipline, but I think it is still relevant in teaching students certain skills and supporting the practice of those skills.

What do you think?