Live Your Learning: Inspiration Talk for the Active Learning Summit

Transcript

1. Live Your Learning Theory, Design, and Practice for New Ecologies of Education Thomas Steele-Maley @steelemaley Active Learning Summit 2015
2. Backgrounds
3. Today, innovation and tradition are at nexus in education
4. “A [person] who carries a cat by the tail learns something they can learn no other way” -Twain
5. Getting ready
6. “without question, experiential learning enhances scholastic learning....this type of learning builds confidence, encourages risk taking, reduces the fear of failure, gives oxygen to collaboration, nurtures imagination, promotes problem solving, allows reverie, and grows a taproot from which scholastic learning flowers”. - M. MacKenzie (2013) “alI studies grow out of relations in the one great common world. When the child lives in varied but concrete and active relationship to this common world, [their] studies are naturally unified. It will no longer be a problem to correlate studies. The teacher will not have to resort to all sorts of devices to weave a little arithmetic into the history lesson, and the like. Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated”. - Dewey (1905)
7. Four “near future” vignettes to consider.
8. Practice: New Visions of Learning Theorize: New Educational Ecologies Design: Participatory Landscapes of Practice
9. Theorize: New Educational Ecologies Read into trends Mind your dragons Create Design Fiction
10. Design Fiction- the deliberate use of written and physical prototypes to suspend disbelief in change and provoke action —purposeful —speculative —diegetic —playful —imaginiative
11. D E S I G N F I C T I O N in highly experiential and collaborative ways with groups of young people of varied ages, adult and youth mentors with knowledge territory specialties and organizations focused on ensuring sustainable and resilient societies, economies, and the environment. This is a snapshot of her day. A day in the learning ecology of Piper Hahn Piper gets ready for her weePiper Hahn’s Networked Learning Ecology by sitting outside sipping tea and looking at her smart phone. She is checking project updates sent from the team she has been working with for the last two months on her Google Reader and Twitter feed. The project Piper is checking in on deals with food justice in the rural communities of her bioregion. Seeing many updates, and much activity she decides to look at the overall “mesh” schedule for the day. She notices that the MNLP van will be moving across the local region starting in an hour. To get a ride on this local transportation system she has to ride her bike to a station stop or have her parents drop her off at the regional mesh meet-up location. But before deciding this she reviews her weekly schedule on her mobile. Piper notices that she and three others will be presenting at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars organization to a large group on the history of local food cultivation in the region. She and her Food Justice project group have spent a good deal of time completing ethnographic studies of the areas “locals”. These participant interviews are seminal to their presentation as they show that local sustainability and resilience projects are not “outside” or “rich Peoples” pursuits, but can save local economies and the historical heritage this stakeholder group cherishes. The group has also been working in restoration crews on local farms as a service learning tie in to their studies. The project has been extensive. Piper and her group have covered mathematics, experimental sciences, writing, social sciences and much more in an integrated project framework. They have relied on their mesh mentors, local experts (educators, authors, historians, scientists….), and the internet for research, recording (writing, video) and exhibiting their knowledge and understanding to multiple community stakeholder groups. As the project presentation pre-work is done, Piper contacts her group via twitter hashtag to remind all that they will need an hour to meet-up before the presentation and to ride their bikes to the VAW hall from the meet-up. Immediately she gets a response from three of the four other group members that they will meet prior to the VAW event. They remind each other that a collaborative learning session will be going on for applied algebra and trigonometry concepts at Noon. This session will be special, as an innovative regional planner from rural Scotland will be mentoring at the Self Organized Learning Environment today along with their local quantitative reasoning/systems thinking mentors. She video chats with one participant letting her know that she will be at the SOLE, and is hoping to get a ride to her house (or dorm) after today’s VAW presentation. That done, Piper checks with her parents (or dorm parents) and decides to ride her bike to a mesh station stop. She then rides the mesh van into town and catches up on posts in her Reader and replies to myriad comments and responses in her network on the way. At the Meet-up location (a wide open space that reminds Piper of a open market of some kind), she settles in with the other young people in study, discussion and deliberation. Today she takes out her tablet and reads a work in global literature that was suggested by a mentor she has in South Asia. She will take notes on the work over the next hour and send those notes via blog post to the mentor. The mentor, other participants and Piper are involved in a global project combining cultural understandings of place into a wiki resource for future learners to use. She sees connections everywhere in her learning and after being inspired by an P I P E R H A H N ’ S N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y
12. N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y U B I Q U I T O U S , M O B I L E , B L E N D E D , P E R S O N A L I Z E D N E T W O R K E D L E A R N E R : I N D I V I D U A L I Z E D L E A R N I N G P L A N B A S E D O N B L E N D E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y: E X P E R I E N T I A L F I E L D W O R K ; E S S E N T I A L S K I L L S D E V E L O P M E N T; A P P L I E D R E S E A R C H ; E X H I B I T I O N S N E T W O R K E D P R O J E C T T E A M S : M U LT I G E N E R AT I O N A L A N D I N T E G R AT I V E R E S E A R C H T E A M S C O L L A B O R AT I N G I N D A I LY, W E E K LY A N D M O N T H LY L E A R N I N G N E T W O R K S L O C A L C O N N E C T I O N M E S H : I N D E P E N D E N T L E A R N E R N E T W O R K S , L E A R N I N G E X C H A N G E L A B S ; E X P E R I E N T I A L L E A R N I N G ; M E E T- U P S ; T R A N S P O RTAT I O N , L E A R N I N G M E N T O R S H I P S ( FA R M , S C I E N C E L A B , P O L I T I C A L O F F I C E , C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E , C R E AT I V E E C O N O M Y G L O B A L C O N N E C T I O N M E S H : F O R M A L / N O N - F O R M A L B L E N D E D V I RT U A L L E A R N I N G C O M M U N I T I E S , N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G ( M O B I L E , U B I Q U I T O U S , S O C I A L LY R E L E VA N T, S C H O L A S T I C ) S E L F O R G A N I Z E D L E A R N I N G E N V I R O N M E N T S I N T E R D E P E N D E N T A C T I O N S : N E T W O R K E D PA RT N E R S H I P S F O R A C T I O N I N S Y S T E M S ( S O C I A L , E C O N O M I C , E N V I R O N M E N TA L B E T T E R M E N T, S O C I A L LY R E L E VA N T A C T I V I T I E S , M U LT I - S I T E D I N T E R N AT I O N A L P R O J E C T C O L L A B O R AT I O N . S O U R C E : S T E E L E - M A L E Y, T. ( 2 0 1 1 )
13. Design: Participatory Landscapes of Practice Employ Design Based Research Theorize, Design, prototype, seek diffusion, iterate Engage those who are organizing success in the field of participatory culture shift in schools Learning in Landscapes of Practice….Wenger-Trayner, E.; et al. eds. Educational Design Research. van den Aker, J; et al. ends. #EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education. Lichtman, G.
14. “During the year a minimum of four hours each week is dedicated to learning outside of the school building in local landscapes on extended Field Studies.” —GEMS Innovation Strands Practice: New Visions of Learning anywhere, anytime “For students to become global citizens they must explore, ask questions, observe, empathize and act in the world without borders..” —GEMS Innovation Strands
15. GEMS World Academy-Chicago employs four pioneering learning innovations to support and inspire our students, as they become global citizens. Focus is on creating “translocal understanding” to explicitly develop the key dispositions in students necessary to learn, live and work in extended partnership with others across the world. Learner as Researcher Field Studies Based Mobile Learning Connected Learning School as a Mesh Network
16. “As educators we need to be more like gardeners than engineers” -Sir Ken Robinson (2015) in Most Likely to Succeed A reminder….
17. Thomas Steele-Maley Director of Innovation GEMS World Academy—Chicago GEMS Americas @steelemaley
18. Implementation phase: Check and evaluate your ideas in regard to their practicability. (Mind your dragons) Prototyping a future of education Storytelling: Answer the following question as a group. What are the barriers that make creating new educational environments in your schools. (2min) What have been the best and worst experiences you have had creating new initiatives/educational environments in your school? (5min) Critique: Answer the following question as a group. Design Fiction phase: Critique: Write a narrative script for the most ideal educational environment you could imagine for students, draw an exaggerated picture of future possibilities. 10min