I ended up watching all of the Clay Shirky videos that were posted for the week. To be honest, he is not my type of presenter... I found the information a little boring and over analyzed, but there were a few take home points in all of the videos that I can relate to education.
First of all, in the video Institutions Vs. Collaboration
I found it interesting how he believes that due to collaboration on the web institutions are becoming more and more obsolete. This is true in education as well. There are becoming more collaborations that are forming on-line education that are making some schools and teachers obsolete. I don't fully believe that collaborations will ever take over institutions. There are sometimes that institutions will win out. I agree that web collaboration has changed how we can access information. His example of Flikr hit the nail on the head. We can now easily access pictures about a certain subject from numerous photographers due to Flikr's tag feature. People can also find numerous different types of information thanks to the existence of blogs and wikis.
The other video I watched was How Cognitive Surplus will Change the World.
One take home point from this video was if you want productivity or positive results to decline give them a consequence. I thought is example of parents picking up their children late from daycare was great! He said that parents were told they were going to be charged if they picked up their child 10 minutes late. The daycare providers thought it would encourage parents to be on time, but it ended up doing the opposite. Parents actually were late more often because they figured they would just pay the fee. I believe this is true in education. If I tell my students they will lose 10% if their assignment is late some of them will just say well then take 10% off ... I don't care. Or if I state, I need your assignment or it is a 0 they say give me a zero. On the other hand, if I tell them I expect your homework is done on time.... for the most part they cooperate. There were a lot of other good points in all of the videos, but this blog is getting a little lengthy as it is.
Cooperative Learning
To me the purpose of cooperative learning is for students to learn skills from each other as well as learn to work with people whom have different ideas and thought processes then they do. I use cooperative learning quite frequently in my reading class. We do book clubs a few times a year where the students read books together and then have discussions about the book. Overall, it has been a very successful project. The students like working with others and they like the independence book club gives them. This year I plan on using blogs to help enhance the students discussions! I am hoping they will be more open if they are sharing on the blog versus speaking in front of their group!!
Reinforcing Effort
Reinforcing effort is something I believe all teachers do without even knowing it!! We are constantly encouraging and giving them praise. I am hoping to use technology to reinforce my students. We have Smart Response (Senteos) that I can give them immediate feedback. I think it is easier to reinforce effort without technology... it is easy to write or say Great Job or I like how you did..... Overall, Reinforcing effort is key to students success in school and to me whether it is done using technology or not it is just as effective.
I used to be the after school director at my school and it was amazing how many parents were late picking their kids up at 6 in the EVENING!! We did do the fee thing, but it didn't help. Parents just paid they fee.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, teachers can hand out "caught being good" cards to students.Last week a student wanted to call her mom to cancel her dentist appointment because she wanted to stay for the assembly, where our principal picks a few of these cards and gives them a prize. Half of the time students don't go and get the prizes from the office but the situation mentioned above show that kids like it.
While I think that Shirky's example of the daycare that had late pickups is interesting I also think that the daycare possibly chose the wrong consequence. The consequence you choose should be an inconvenience to "them" and not you. Don't tell a student that they have to stay up for lunch with you to finish their assignment. That takes away your lunch period and inconveniences you. If the daycare center would subtract the "late pickup minutes" at the end of the month from their availability for their children the next month I think things would be different. (30 total minutes of late pickups = cannot drop off kids until 30min later than usual) If these parents are inconvenienced or fear that their the ones that will be late for work, things will change - guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteKristy the example of daycare he used caught my attention as well. My mom is a daycare provider and it's amazing how many parents pick up their children late, and we as my mom children says something about it. If the fee's goes up I don't think the parents would really care. It might work for a while but then again go back to the same issues.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing how saying something with negative words, such as "Don't hit others," makes you think about hitting and the word "don't" brings a negative tone and thought, were, if the same idea was phrased in a positive tone, "Be safe with your body." The word "safe" brings a comfortable and positive frame of mine. Feedback to works the same way. There are so many ways to say the same message, and that doesn't always seem to be remembered.
ReplyDelete