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Showing posts from September, 2016

Week 3 - Parallelograms

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Week 3 - Situated Cognition

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Yours truly paddling the Ammer River in Southern Bavaria I can see why Brown, Collins and Duguid's Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning  is a seminal text for anyone studying the ways people learn. This paper, from 1989 makes a lot of sense to me. I imagine I'll hold onto this one so that I can refer to it in the future. The authors explain that learning is situated , or contextually dependent and that students learn best when the skills and knowledge they're presented with are learned within the context of that learning culture. The acquisition of knowledge is compared to learning the use of tools. Practitioners of various crafts make use of tools specific to their trades. Students who want to learn to use these tools should do so by using them correctly and within their appropriate contexts. The authors state that most learning that happens in schools is set in and appropriate for the culture of school. But real life isn't like school. In order for stu

Week 3 - Productive Members of Society

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Stacey and others wrote great comments on my "pickle" post from last week. As I started to respond, my reply started to get pretty long. I decided to post it here rather than in the comments because it takes up so much space. This week, Stacey wrote: Hey Zach! I love the questions you ask, and that we need to ask as teachers, and I feel like we all do a fairly good job of answering them for ourselves and in our groups. The one concept I can't really get past is making students into productive, contributing members of society. We need welders, garbage men, factory workers, yet our school systems have a way of degrading manual labor careers. Those are necessary, productive people, but we feel like unless we have at least one college degree we aren't valuable. My reply is as follows: Stacey, I’m going to reply to your comment here, because I want to address your points and respond to your observations and conclusions on our readings.  First, I think you rai

Week 2 - "Situated Cognition" Kahoot

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After reading Brown, Collins and Duguid's "Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning" (1989), take my Kahoot quiz here .

Week 2 Reflection - The Pickle

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This week I added a second design principle to my bag. This is the Ends Principle . It goes something like this: Good learning designs prepare learners to meet community needs by linking living and learning to the PICKLE (problem-solving, information using, community participation, knowledgeable, literate, ethical decision-making). This week I contemplated the notion that good learning design requires identification of a specific  problem . No one can come up with a solution before they know what problem they're trying to solve. Before an educator can even begin to address the nitty-gritty what will happen in their classroom, they have to ponder what they want the outcome to be. What will the students take away from this class? What kinds of learning are important? What will make my students better people? What kinds of things will they need to be responsible, productive members of society? This means-justified-by-the-end thinking sounds Machiavellian, but it's just what

Week 1 - "Designed" Slides and Notes

This week I investigated everyday items in my life that were designed. Here is what I found: I also investigated the websites of a few education organizations. Here is what I found. Education Websites

Week 1 Reflection - Teacher as Designer

Greetings! I'll use this blog to record my reflections for EDIT 780 - Principles of School-based Design. Our exploration of school-based design begins with the notion that teachers are designers. It's difficult to imagine life in the modern world without design. The buildings in which we work and live and the cars that take us back and forth between them are all thoughtfully crafted by designers. These people put effort into making sure some raw materials come together to achieve a purpose. I do believe in teachers as designers, and the end result - the purpose they aim to achieve - is student learning and achievement. This week I learned that planning and designing are not the same thing. A planner may arrange the materials they have at hand, but a designer starts from scratch, crafting an entire experience (car, building, garden) from scratch. When I think of the teacher as designer, I think of my mentor teacher Mr. Thimons. He was a teacher who believed strongly in the v