About eight months ago I took a hard look at the methods that I was using when presenting information to my classes. I wasn’t happy with the way they presented and I was board with what I was doing. What I found very quickly was a couple of new tools: Google reader and Rss feeds, and through them I realized that the professional world was screaming for a change.
It seems that entirely too many young professionals we presenting like this. How many of you have seen This slide or one like it. This is the typical slide created by a student for any type of presentation.
The problem is that they aren’t competing for resources and jobs with people in the same town any more they’re competing globally. So to combat this we built 21 st century classrooms.
And we filled our IWBs with slides like this and then we stand back and wonder why our students give boring presentations. Hello…We modeled the behavior over and over until it has become ingrained.
This is the diagram of a 21 st century classroom. Except that it is not a 21 st century classroom. It completely lacks on crucial elelment.
This is a 21 st century classroom. You as learning leader and your students as learning team or teams must interact through this technology before we can begin to call it 21 st century learning. As learning leader your job is to facilitate learning activities, not to give away random facts disguised as knowledge.
All of technology in the world is not going to make students succeed they need to be trained on the best way to use it. This goes beyond the computer science teacher. Just as students need to learn how to read in each specialists content area, they need to learn to manipulate and output the information.
Students need to learn how to problem solve through relevant projects and display their solutions both as a group and as an individual.
This is MIT’s teaching and learning lab. The last entry says it all “lifelong kindergarten” Special thanks to Chris Lehman for pointing this out and for suggesting that all classrooms need to be transformed into something better.
Otherwise, we are creating these barren learning-scapes that we hated when we were their age. Every leader needs to look back at the way the were taught and not say “It was good enough for me.” Instead leaders need to change the way learning is done.
Forget about working inside the box. Forget about thinking outside the box. Its time to repurpose the box. Turn it into what you and the members of your learning team need. Make it work the way that you need it to.
This is not repurposing the box. This is an example of presentation overload. This image actually appeared as part of the US military planning for the conflict in Afghanistan. www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html
Visual thinking accesses the most basic and largest pathways of the brain. Yet most educators confuse visual thinking with reading. Letters and words may be based upon images but reading adds complex decoding that is necessary but not the fastest or most efficient method of information transmission.
There is a difference between the verbal and visual pathways of the brain. Think of the verbal pathway as a two lane road with information going in and out. The visual pathway would by comparison, be a superhighway that standard instruction does not effectively utilize.
The typical presentation does not create engagement. They are to long and use so many bullet points that the end result is an audience that is turned off. The typical PowerPoint presentation is not designed to be an exploration of learning.
This is not just a US education problem. A quick scan of slideshare.com reveals that this is a pandemic. In order to stop it a movement must be created at the primary and secondary levels.
Learning leaders need to re evaluate how they measure success. Test and quizzes evaluate memorization not learning. Projects evaluate learning, and presentations based upon those projects reveal honestly acquired knowledge.
Hands on Learning allows students to manipulate information and increases retention and cognition
When students collaborate their ideas expand.
So this is my drop in the educational ocean. What are you going to do.