Thriving too

Barter for knowledge - bringing Trade School into libraries

Celebrating practical wisdom, mutual respect and the social nature of exchange.

Trade School is a non-traditional learning space that runs on barter. Anyone can teach, and pupils sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.

 In this case, barter does not mean haggling, or bargaining. It simply means the social exchange that takes place when you offer someone an object, some advice, or a new skill in exchange for their knowledge.

 

Creating a supportive global network

Trade School was founded 3 years ago in New York by Our Goods – a collective of creatives who wanted a way to more effectively share their skills and resources, and reduce a reliance on money or outside funding to run their projects. 

Using a strong idea, some core principles, an attitude of generosity and trust with the project, and a well designed replicable website, Trade School has grown from the initial founding group to be a global coop with over 35 Trade Schools in nearly as many countries.

We co-founded Trade School London nearly 1 year ago – and are continuing the ethos and aims of the global coop by sharing our experience so far and helping others set up.

 

Self organised learning in libraries

Why might an enterprising library be interested in hosting and nurturing a Trade School? 

+ It offers a tangible way to surface and engage skills, talents, resources locally. There is currently a lot of interest in ‘asset mapping’ or ‘asset based approaches’ and Trade School offers a way not just to list and map, but to engage and connect.

+ The social exchange mechanism (barter) creates new richer connections and networks around learning. Because the exchange is non-monetary, the experience has a different quality, that is more personal and lasting.

+ It lowers barriers around teaching and learning through creating an informal social setting and novel learning experience, and through the barter mechanism allowing for non-monetary involvement.

+ This exchange also flattens hierarchies between the teacher and learners – who are all a group of people with value to bring to the class in different ways. We have seen that people who join a class to learn, often gain confidence and come back to teach themselves in a later season.

+ Trade School offers an opportunity to move from service delivery to co-production as it is not something that can be delivered, but something that only works if there is a group of co-founders, and lots of different people bring their knowledge and barter items.

 

Everyone has something to offer.

 Trade School starts with the premis that anyone can teach. We all know something that is of value to others, perhaps we just have not thought of our abilities in this way before. To test this out, we imagined we were starting a new Trade School – named after the Whitechapel Idea Store in which the Enterprising Libraries event was being held. We asked everyone to think about what they could teach, and what they might want in exchange. The results were the unique and inspiring list of classes you can see below. From our experience, you can ask any group of people and be constantly amazed both at the variety and depth of their collective knowledge, and at Trade School’s ability to offer an engaging and enjoyable way to share more of it.

For more about Trade School see www.tradeschool.coop and www.tradeschool.coop/london

Trade School in the UK is partnered by Social Spaces www.socialspaces.org

And we have also jointly developed the Pot Luck website to encourage social dining www.potluck.so

Lightbulb icon credit to www.thenounproject.com 

 

Trade School everywhere

Trade School London is back! Summer season opens Sunday 1 July with 'You versus Photography' and 'Keep cool and carry on: making icecream with dry ice". Not things you'd normally find in an education centre...

As last time, there is a growing sense of excitement as the class list starts to fill up... I never knew I wanted to learn how to cast and pour concrete to make beautiful unique bricks, but now I can't imagine not knowing how! And as last time, we are oversubscribed with teachers - people wanting to share what they are passionate or knowledgable about - and trying to fit more classes into the schedule.

As Trade School moves home again, to a large outdoor site for the summer season, I am reminded of the power of a project such as this being run as a platform - with the team in New York supporting people to open Trade Schools everywhere.

If you're wondering what it's all about, sign up for class and come along to Canning Town Carvanserai in July and swap cookbooks, paintbrushes, basic French, pieces of fruit, art supplies, advice and more for the chance to learn some amazing new skills. It's all there around us, Trade School is a fantastic way to surface, share and link what we have in our heads and around our communities.

We want to build an open source software platform to share with local Trade School chapters around the world. Help us open Trade Schools everywhere! 

Trade School London - barter for knowledge

Today Miriam taught us about analogue photography and how to make cyanotype prints with sunlight. Last week Ansel brought his wormery in from home to teach us how to make compost. The week before (among other things) we were turning whales pink with photoshop thanks to Tanya, designing usable websites with Rae, and growing food in the city with Kristen.

Trade School London has been up and running for a few weeks now - and there is still a chance to come along to the last few classes in our first season. Breadbaking, poetry and cycle maintenance are still open to attend - just book online and bring your exchange item to give to the teacher.

Trade School runs on a barter and exchange system. Not in the sense of haggling someone down to the cheapest price possible - but offering things of value other than money, in exchange for the opportunity to learn something new.

It has been a fascinating experience seeing how people react to the idea, and how we can revalue what we find important. We are still mid season, and I'm sure more realisations will trickle through in the coming weeks, but some initial thoughts...

Normally, on the way out of the door, I grab bag, phone, keys, wallet and off. I know if there is something I want during the day, I can exchange money for it without consciously thinking beyond the numerical price attached to it. (Actually, my ethics are stronger than that, but for the sake of argument..!) For Trade School I was thinking several days in advance of the class what I would bring the teacher, wondering if it was suitable, weighing up if it was a fair deal, and remembering to get it sorted out. It's a fundamentally different way of thinking from the start.

At the classes, sometimes before, and sometimes after, each person would explain their item and pass it on to the teacher. It felt much more personal and intimate than paying with money. People had baked cakes, brought plants they'd grown from seed, passed on books they had enjoyed, gathered various belongings. As a teacher of one class myself I had a longer attachment to the experience and the people that came as I ate some of the swapped bananas for breakfast the next morning, started reading the book and looked up some music suggestions I was given. Not only does each item have a story attached to it. more importantly it has a person attached to it. It's something that links two or more people together in an experience, over time. Now tell me the last time you felt like that about a banana!

It does take a while to get your head round - although the Trade School concept is simple, the underlying ideas around alternative economics and exchange are complex. The current financial economic model is so embedded in our thinking and behaviour it takes a while to unpick and feel comfortable with something else. But based on the positive feedback from people so far - there is a lot of value in this way of treating one another and the resources we have, that we are often currently over looking.

***

Trade School is a great way to learn, share resources, and make new connections. The first season runs until end April, then we are taking a quick break. If you would like to find out more, or start a Trade School in your area - get in touch!
london [@] tradeschool.coop

www.tradeschool.coop/london

Does Education Lead to Happiness?

 

Via: BM Design

The Value of Education: Why Did 17 Million Students go to College?

 

In an article called Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College they make some pretty bold assertions/assumptions about the value of education.. and the lack of value of some employment.  Is education just to enable *better* employment? 

"Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree."

I much prefer the position that education is good for the overall wellbeing of a country.  The best example of this is Costa Rica, which an article on in The New York Times described the long term effects of widespread education:

"What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists."

 "In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others

Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe."

Open University

One man university Salman Khan is running the Khan Academy with a mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere". WIth over 1400 educational videos on YouTube, he's certainly doing his best to achieve it!

Wonderful Whole Education Launched

 Whole Education launched last week - Looking forward to seeing how it develops and where it goes!

Books in the Home Beat Parent's Education

 
 Science Daily reports that: "Whether rich or poor, residents of the United States or China, illiterate or college graduates, parents who have books in the home increase the level of education their children will attain, according to a 20-year study led by Mariah Evans, University of Nevada, Reno associate professor of sociology and resource economics."

"For years, educators have thought the strongest predictor of attaining high levels of education was having parents who were highly educated. But, strikingly, this massive study showed that the difference between being raised in a bookless home compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate (3 years of education) compared to having parents who have a university education (15 or 16 years of education). Both factors, having a 500-book library or having university-educated parents, propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average."

[Pic below is Karl Lagerfeld`s studio in Paris. 

“His books cover every wall of his studio from the ground, up two stories, to the skylights. Plus he owns the bookstore that is right next door.”]

Via: Book Watcher

 

The Power of Creativity

 

Garnet Millar has just published his book The Power of Creativity.  The book documents the results of the 50-year follow-up to The Torrrance Longitudinal Study of Creative Behaviour.

'In 1958, Dr. E. Paul Torrance began his longitudinal study of creative behavior in order to discover the answers to two questions. 1) Could a test to measure creative potential predict creative achievement later as an adult? 2) What other factors might influence, encourage and sustain creativity over time?

Fifty years later, Dr. Garnet Millar continued this study by analyzing whether or not the Torrance® Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) still had the power to predict creative achievement over a 50-year period; and whether other factors supported or sustained creative achievement." 

The Third Teacher Collaboration

 Fantastic Project!!
 

• 1. Everyone can be a designer
• 2. Do no harm
• 3. Cherish children's spaces
• 4. Put safety before study
• 5. Think Small
• 6. Assign the solution
• 7. Make janitors guardians
• 8. Design for speech and hearing
• 9. Let the sunshine in
• 10. Shuffle the deck
• • 11. Make it new
  • 12. Support great teachers
  • 13. Build neural networks
  • 14. Multiply intelligences
  • 15. Display learning
  • 16. Emulate museums
  • 17. Form follows function
  • 18. Unite the disciplines
  • 19. Bring the outside in
  • • 20. Make peace with fidgeting
    • 21. Decide on dynamic
    • 22. Swivel to attention
    • 23. Make classrooms agile
    • 24. Respect fitness facilities
    • 25. Take the "ground" out of "playground"
    • 26. Promote healthy play
    • 27. Naturalize play spaces
    • 28. Scale the wall
    • 29. Free choice
    • • 30. Build close to home
      • 31. Let your grassroots show
      • 32. Build for change
      • 33. Move in together
      • 34. Imagine like a child
      • 35. Consult widely and early
      • 36. Roll up your sleeves
      • 37. Blaze the way
      • 38. Make them proud
      • 39. Be a good neighbor
      • 40. Build a nest
      • • 41. Leapfrog LEED
        • 42. Reveal how stuff works
        • 43. Get eco-educated
        • 44. Highlight the site
        • 45. Attract like minds
        • 46. Let students lead
        • 47. Rally the results
        • 48. Do your homework
        • 49. Get out of the city
        • 50. Slow the pace
        • • 51. Make caterers caretakers
          • 52. Spend now, save later
          • 53. Grow your own
          • 54. Think hands-on
          • 55. Trigger the senses
          • 56. Design in multiple dimensions
          • 57. Paint by function
          • 58. Define the learning landscape
          • 59. Slip off your shoes
          • 60. Open the doors
          • • 61. Adopt a young mentor
            • 62. Put the fun in fundamentals
            • 63. Design with words
            • 64. Recruit difference
            • 65. Get accessibility aware
            • 66. Break down social barriers
            • 67. Make it feel good
            • 68. Take it to the top
            • 69. Domesticate classrooms
            • 70. Create a movement
            • • 71. Consult with kids
              • 72. Put theory into practice
              • 73. Expand virtually
              • 74. Embrace purpose
              • 75. Plan for the unknown
              • 76. Unleash learning
              • 77. Bridge the digital divide
              • 78. Dream big and be brave
              • 79. Add to this list

The Right Brain Initiative

You can only really use the left brain/right brain metaphorically... but it works well in this very good video from The Right Brain Initiative.

Via: Craig Roland

 

A Metacognitive Approach to Learning Inspired Teaching

 Sue Bentham and myself have started enrolling for the revised MA Ed Module at University of Chichester running in the summer term.  The module 'Learning Inspired Teaching' presents and critiques new research, which helps students become autonomous self-regulated learners both for learning and for their own health and well being.  The programme takes contemporary research on human functioning and demonstrates how teachers can enhance their students’ meta-cognitive processing skills through direct instruction, classroom practice and tutoring.   Systems thinking in this course aims to uncover, explore and understand the underlying systemic interrelationships between important factors effecting the development of student’s self-regulatory skills for their learning and behaviour. 

Aims of the module:

 - Develop a considered and analytic understanding of the connections between cognition and emotion.

 - Develop a critical understanding of the complex nature of meta-cognition and be able to critically evaluate how meta-cognitive awareness can be enhanced through tutoring and within everyday teaching practice.

 - Be able to critically evaluate and apply theories regarding developing autonomous self-regulated learners.

The course starts on 27th April and runs for 8 Tuesday evening sessions until 22 June with a whole day introduction session on the 8 May 2010 at Bognor Regis campus. For more information and to enrol please email me.

The module includes:

·          -   Underlying Mechanisms for Human Functioning and their importance for personal autonomy.

·       -  Metacognition overview: A Systems Thinking approach to enhancing metacognition in schools

·       -  Psychology: Self-regulation, self-efficacy for learning and wellbeing

·        - Neuroscience: Applications to educational practice

·        - Cognition: Mirror Neurons, Reactions and Dual Processing 

·        -  Emotion: The Detail 

·        - Learning theories: Behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism 

        - Thinking skills: Creative thinking, critical thinking, analytical thinking, design thinking, synthesising, optimism

·        - Personal learning: Social learning and technology and classroom practice.

The Happy National Effects of a Good Education

  

Wonderful article on Costa Rica in The New York Times.

"What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists."

"In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others

Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe."

Via: Jennifer McCrickerd

Visible Learning

 

Make no mistake, this book is remarkable. It is the result of 15 years of work by John Hattie.  Visible Learning is the synthesis of 800 meta-analysis  based on over 50,000 studies, and many millions of students.  Although the book includes only quantitative studies and focuses on main effects rather than interactions, the insights are fascinating.

If you work in education, especially involved in choosing priorities for innovations and interventions for schools then this book gives you insights you won't find elsewhere (worth every penny of its £21 price tag).  Hattie creates a visual barometer for each effect (see cover) from - 0.2 to 1.2 making each influence on learning very easy to compare.  Having only had the book a few days I have only had a chance to dip in and out ... but have checked some of the areas most important to me personally ... things I believe make a big difference.

Teacher-student relationships scored a 'high' at 0.73 - (229 studies, 355,325 people) Hattie writes 'In classes with person-centred teachers, there is more engagement, more respect of self and others, there are fewer resistant behaviours, there is greater non-directivity (student-initiated and student-regulated activities)'.

Metacognitive strategies scored a 'high' at 0.68 (63 studies, 5,028 people)  Hattie writes: 'Such 'thinking about thinking' involved in this second layer of problem-solving has recently been referred to by the term "meta-cognition"; this refers to higher-order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. The most effective meta-cognitive strategies were an awareness of textual inconsistency and the use of self-questioning.  The more varied the instructional strategies throughout a lesson, the more students were influenced'.

Hattie's closing conclusions: 

"The message in this book is one of hope for an excellent future for teachers and teaching, and based on not just my explanations of 146,000 + effect sizes but on the comfort that there are already many excellent teachers in our profession."

Big Picture Inspiration on How They Design Their *Amazing* Schools

Going Outside and Doing Stuff is Good for Learning

Institute for Applied Aesthetics has just produced a new Research Brief entitled Going Outside and Doing Stuff is Good for Learning.  I love it!

  

We are the people we've been waiting for

This new film, We are the people we've been waiting for, looks amazing!

"This landmark independent documentary, inspired and guided by Lord Puttnam and Sir Michael Barber, explores the education system in the UK and asks whether the current system provides young people with the opportunity to develop their talents. 

High-profile figures sharing their personal experiences and views include Sir Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler, Bill Bryson, Sir Ken Robinson and a wide range of education experts from around the world. This thought-provoking film offers unique insight across generations and nations, and reveals a very inconvenient truth about education. The world is changing rapidly but our education system is not keeping pace."

Green School

I see myself as a bit of a connoisseur of schools - I really love them. My parents travelled with their work, and I went with them.  I have attended schools in India, Australia, America, Holland, Wales, South Africa... Altogether I have attended over 16 schools (my  parents lost count).

It seems fitting that I would become an educationalist in later life (I am sure Gladwell would make some sense of that). Over the last few years I have had the good fortune to visit many schools (25 or so), some pretty standard, but others extraordinary. 

I love small, unusual schools, with progressive curriculum in particular, and I believe them to be very powerful testing grounds for ideas.  Some of these schools are *magical*.

Yesterday I discovered Green School.

The school is in Bali and has been open just over a year. It has one of the most progressive curriculum I have ever read about, very focused on environmental issues, creativity and emotional intelligence, in a very practical framework.  The architecture is amazing and the school operates on very low carbon use. The staff to student ratio is 6:1.  

What a blissful educational setting and experience! 

What l have taken away from looking at Green School is how inspiring schools can be when they are built from the imagination and determination of a group of individuals.  I wish more people would take the bold step to do this... 

Educationalists could learn some valuable lessons from the school, regardless of the harshness (by comparison) of their own school's setting.

Good Luck to Green School! I hope they share their experiences!

This school in the Lake District might give it a run for their money on the architecture front.

Inspiring Reading and the New Literacy

There is something very nice about knowing that a whole country has read the same books in school.  It is a conversation I have had with my daughter, currently doing A levels, on several occasions.  As lovely as reading the exactly the same books may seem, it frustrates me enormously that she isn't set any of the amazing literature of the last 20 years, in fact I would be pretty impressed if they set new books of the last 100 years.  Wuthering Heights was written in 1847, Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 1891.  They are of course classics of literature and highly worthy.  My daughter's response is generally a practical one: these books have tons of essays written on them, the critical thought on them is established and hundreds of examiners know them backwards.

I was really inspired to read in a New York Times article over the weekend about a teacher in the US who is not setting a particular book, but is permitting her students to read what they wish to.

"The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on.

In New York City many public and private elementary schools and some middle schools already employ versions of reading workshop. Starting this fall, the school district in Chappaqua, N.Y., is setting aside 40 minutes every other day for all sixth, seventh and eighth graders to read books of their own choosing.

....fans of the reading workshop say that assigning books leaves many children bored or unable to understand the texts. Letting students choose their own books, they say, can help to build a lifelong love of reading."

This approach obviously is a much more personal approach and makes (I believe) quite high demands on teachers.  But how wonderful it sounds to be a student of inspiring Ms McNeill! (She also transformed the classroom layout).

Wired magazine has also published an interesting article on the New Literacy and examines new research results from a huge study conducted by Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University.  The study called the Stanford Study of  Writing found some fascinating results:

"The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It's almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago."

Links via: Konrad Glogowski [Teachers Without Borders]

Licence to Teach

Phil Beadle published an important article in the Guardian this week on the government's plans to introduce a new scheme making it easier for out of work bankers to choose teaching as a new career option.... ideally replacing teachers who might not be capable.

What Phil introduces to the debate isn't a moral stance on the issue in the defence of teachers in general, but rather an insight into the realities of teacher assessment.

"In case you have not run into this, any teacher who consistently comes up with less than satisfactory observation grades, or whose classes' results have not vaulted sufficiently highly over the benchmark, all too quickly finds themselves subject to a series of accountability procedures, the intent of which is to either improve their performance sharpish, or to make them leave the school. Anecdotally, those who fight this procedure tooth and nail tend to survive it. Most don't. After a brief, desperate and humiliating struggle, they recognise that leaving before they can be certified incapable is the better part of valour. If they leave before the capability procedure has reached a mature stage, they will be more likely to find another job; and so, they resign."

The teacher assessment system is pretty ruthless, but also rather strange.  It makes many assumptions and ignores others.  Teachers who perform well under occasional observation do not work to that level every day.  Teachers who find it difficult to perform under scrutiny do not necessarily under perform in the privacy of their classrooms with just their students.  It is not necessarily true that the observation system is objective and that the school environment isn't relevant to the process either.  The drop out rate of new qualified teachers (NQTs) after only a single year of teaching in some areas can be as high as 30% (34% according to last year's figures)

As Beadle points out:

"Schools are all different. A certain type of teacher may well be shocking in one environment, perfectly successful in another. The licence to teach scheme suggests that such teachers, rather than finding a school environment in which they might thrive, should only have one strike before being not only out but permanently retired.

"We will, I predict, come the recovery, have to get down on our knees and beg for them to be reinstated the moment, three years in, when the bankers realise en masse that teaching is far from the dossy, permanently uplifting stroll they had been sold by the glossy brochures and adverts."

The new Masters in Teaching in Learning (MTL) being slowly introduced potentially seems an interesting new way of assisting teaching with professional development in a highly practical way, as it focuses strongly on classroom practice and mentorship. 

I can see many bankers finding teaching a refreshing change, however challenging.  But  the article is certainly food for thought.

Children as Teachers

This week I am in Philadelphia for the Mind, Brain and Education Conference and I will be putting up some posts today and tomorrow about some of the speakers. This morning we had a talk by Antonio Battro, the current President of the Society on the 'Teaching Brain'.

 

Battro believes that insufficient attention has been given to research into the teaching brain, and he has particularly strong feelings about giving children opportunities to teach as well as learn.

The other major project that Battro works on is the One Laptop per Child scheme, and he took the opportunity to share some of his ideas around how the scheme is promoting children as teachers.  Some of the facts that Battro shared were:

- In Uruguay, this month or next, they will reach 100% digital saturation with the laptop scheme - all 400,000 children will possess a laptop.

- Children in Uruguay are often found outside their schools at all hours for the wifi access.

- One observation in India showed that bringing the laptops into the classroom meant that within 2 hours the class was working in groups rather than rows, teaching and sharing with each other.

Really inspiring stuff!

Tribute to Frank Pajares

Over the weekend I was terribly upset to discover that Professor Frank Pajares had died in January.  I exchanged a number of emails with Prof. Pajares over the last few years and although I had in fact never met him face to face, his passing has affected me very much.  

Frank Pajares worked on self-efficacy beliefs, mostly in adolescence.  He edited Self-efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents with Tim Urdan, which is one of the most inspiring and  referenced books in my library.

I shared two intellectual heroes with Frank Pajares.  He worked with and was an enormous supporter of Albert Bandura's work, orginator of social cognitive theory. He created and maintained the Self-efficacy website at Emory University - one of the finest resources on the subject and Albert Bandur's work anywhere.

His other hero was William James. In a recent interview Pajares said of William James:

"For over 30 years, I have been smitten with William James. I read him for work and for play. I read him for guidance. I read him for inspiration. I read him when my spirits are low. I read him to discover what I really think. I read him to learn. I am never disappointed. My admiration borders on adulation. How could anyone fail to see the profundity of this man’s wisdom, the elegance 

of his thought, or the simplicity of his uncommon common sense."

At the end of that interview he was asked how he would like to be remembered.  

"You know, I just don’t think that way. Actually, I don’t much care how I am remembered by the fields of education and psychology. I’d be delighted if at times the thought of me would spark a smile in the face of one of my former students, though."

Frank Pajares had a wonderful intellect and was a brilliant and funny man. I loved reading everything that he wrote. His website and presentations are full of humour. He loved Calvin and Hobbs. His faculty picture for many years was a pic of Sean Connery.  

In his interview he quoted William James's closing words of his famous Talks to Teachers "with the admonition that if we can view our students as essentially good, and love them as well, we “will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers.” 

IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience

I was delighted when David Barrie sent me this marvellous list from IDEO. When the design consultancy ranked as one of the top 25 most innovative companies turns their gaze on education there is a good chance people might start to listen in earnest. 

What is great about this list is how it has been written, what it prioritises and who has written it.  Very insightful.

"In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:"

1. Pull, don’t push. 
Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer. 

2. Create from relevance. 
Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone. 

3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. 
Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges. 

4. Allow for variation. 
Evolve past a one-size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place. 

5. No more sage onstage. 
Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

6. Teachers are designers. 
Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.

7. Build a learning community. 
Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. 
An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

9. Incubate the future. 
What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

10. Change the discourse. 
If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.

Hat tip: David Barrie

Via: Metropolismag

Education Means More Than Job-training

 

Professor Patrick Keeney made an impassioned plea for learning in the National Post this month.

"A search for knowledge and understanding is one of the most fundamental of the passions. Justice Douglas [aged 90] desired to learn Greek for the sheer delight involved in learning. This quest for knowledge is hardly confined to youth, but is something we engage in throughout our life. We have lost sight of the spirit which animated Justice Douglas. At every level, schools have become obsessed with credentials, and with providing students with marketable trades.

No one disputes that universities properly serve a role of social utility. However, education is about something more than simply preparing students for the job market. It is also about the ancient idea that free citizens need to develop a critical intelligence to enable them to live meaningful lives.

Through education we are introduced to other ways of thinking about the world and its people. We encounter new ideas, new questions and new imaginings. We increase our understanding of the human condition."

Machine Project

 

Machine Project describes itself as follows:

Machine Project exists to encourage heroic experiments of the gracefully over-ambitious. We provide educational resources to people working with technology, we collaborate with artists to produce site-specific works, and we promote conversations between scientists, poets, technicians, performers, and the community of Los Angeles as a whole.

Their list of classes and workshops include:

Intro to Soldering/Build Your Own Synth workshop 

Introduction to Crochet

Intermediate Circuitbending 

Instrument Invention Workshop

Computer Music Gaming: Intro to SuperCollide

Currently if you are a paid up member, you can win a musical trip to the dentist!