Orchestrating Learning and a few of my favorite metaphors

I always thought this picture of an orchestral conductor was the perfect metaphor for what I want to do when I teach. Don't make the music yet signal the music, control the cadence, let  each play their own piece, yet play in harmony with each other.

Much has been said about being a facilitator of learning. Stand aside and let the students explore and experience learning. Stop talking and let the learners engage in discussions.

Facilitating learning can be standing on the sidelines like a coach observing and offering expert advice when needed.

 

Learning takes place in informal settings, while students are chattering. Higher cognitive work takes place as learners synthesize knowledge and ideas under informal circumstances. Submerged below the surface it is often difficult to measure informal learning.

Orchestrating learning:1. to compose or arrange (learning) for performance by a classroom full of learners 

2. to arrange or manipulate, especially by means of clever or thorough planning or maneuvering, a collaborative, experiential, problem-based, constructivist learning environment.

 

School starts Monday, August 24, 2015

 



  

Informal Teaching: What are you teaching?

I talked about informal learning in my last blog. We learn more informally than formally. Informal learning transpires in everyday life events, work, conversations and collaboration of people.

The natural accountant in me thinks about debits and credits all the time. Wait, wait, don't run and hide this is not about teaching you accounting. But let me put forth just this one lesson from accounting: for every debit there is a credit.  This is really not an unusual idea. The Chinese have a philosophy called the Yin and the Yang. That is contrasting forces complement each other.  One needs the other. A debit is not complete without the credit, a yin is not complete without the yang.

So it is with learning. If we learn informally, that is with out the structure of a formal place of learning like a school or college, who is the teacher? We have teachers roles clearly defined in formal learning process. They organize the learning activities, provide material to achieve outcomes of intended consequences, and measure it.  If you are at university you can look up teachers in a database to determine if you want to take their class, or not. So it is clear we know the teachers of our formal learning experiences. Who is the teacher of your informal learning experiences?

Informal learning has it good side and bad side. We can learn good character from good teachers of character or we can acquire bad character from our informal teachers. For example, just about everyone agrees that racism is bad. Yet people learn racism to this day. There is no Racism 101 offered at universities that formally teach people to be racist (far as I know, so help me God). It is part of that 80% of informal learning. Someone teaches it to others, some collaborate with others in the workplace to teach and learn the ways, some see demonstrations and model the example when they learn racism. Funny all those examples sound just like philosophies of teaching (Pratt).

How we know if we are informally learning good or bad is a function of critical thinking and mindfulness. Simply asking questions and being aware of what you are learning.

I was at a Pastoral Migratoria meeting one day. The US Senate was still debating immigration reform. Someone mentioned a negative comment from an opponent of immigration reform. In my past, I have come to despise a few of these opposition leaders. Mere mention of the name John Boehner conjured up negative emotions, rejecting all his policies and perspectives. But this time I hear a voice say " He is opportunity for prayer." I turned to see Elena Segura, from the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese. My friends around me said "yes, she says that often."

I recognized this as an informal learning experience. What a wonderful perspective it is to think of the "enemy" as one in need of prayer. All the lessons from the Bible streamed into the critical thinking, Love thy neighbor, love thy enemy, love conquers all, love never fails. I am not one of those people that pulls chapter and verse out of my hat, but I recognized the teaching. Opportunities for prayer seemed to embody the spirit of love and hope that through prayer that person will come to see mercy and treat humanity with mercy. That day Elena was my teacher. I have used the 'opportunities for prayer' many times since then.

Now when someone does something disagreeable, like lying or misrepresenting the truth, I just respond with they are an opportunity for prayer. And the best prayer for that opportunity, in my opinion, is the Lords Prayer.

 

What will you teach today?

Informal Learning from an Online MOOC

It's summertime officially. Yea, we can go out to play. My memories of summertime involved lots of play time in a vacant lot next to our house. We organized our own games and sometimes played neighborhood legacy games. We taught each other the rules and strategies of games like kick the can, flashlight tag, and SPUD.

What actually was transpiring was informal learning.

Through my research I discovered that we learn 70% to 80% of our knowledge via informal learning. We learn 20% to 30% in classrooms, schools, and universities. Wow, that's a lot of learning going on over the summertime. But it is so much fun, how could we be learning?

Informal learning is intrinsically motivated. We do it because we want to do it. Makes a big difference is how deep we learn. We might be able to remember games of SPUD learned 30 to 40 years ago, but fail to remember our third grade math teacher's lesson plan. Often if we are intrinsically motivated we will remember what we learned longer. (For the record Sister Matilda was my third grade teacher and I will never forget that ruler she used to rap our knuckles)

Wondering about what you would like to wonder about more this summer?

There are plenty of MOOCs online. MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Course. A popular course may have students from all over the world, have hundreds even thousands taking the course. Some course are taken at your own speed, some are guided over 8 to 10 weeks. There is usually no credit given for the course, but you can pay extra for a certificate that you completed the course. A nice thing to hang on your wall. At the end of the course you know what you know. You use what you learned in your life or in your job. Or perhaps you just take a course out of curiosity about something. MOOCs can help you become a smarter person who when tested in the formal school earns better grades and higher credentials.

There are plenty of offerings available online for FREE. Kahn Academy has a great math section. They do a good job determining what you need to learn and what level of math you are competent. Coursera has a number of offerings from prestigious universities all over the world. I will be taking a course to help me get better organized called Get Organized: How to be a Together Teacher.  EDx is a joint effort between Harvard University and MIT. I took Leaders of Learning last summer and was really impressed. This summer I plan to take Introduction to Data Wise: A Collaborative Process to Improve Teaching and Learning. It is weird to take it alone, since it is all about getting a team of teachers together to use data correctly to improve instruction. Data is a new horizon and I will be getting new data tools for analysis at work. So this course could benefit my instruction and the institution. EDx is also offering a course called Design and Development of Games for Learning. This sounds interesting if you want to create an application to present a learning game for your students. Udacity is another source for engaging online courses in the area of programming, data development and computer science.

Open Courseware is online courses mostly for free from the top universities. You could take a history class at Yale or a class in Managing Refugee Healthcare from John Hopkins University. You could invent a money making smartphone app in a free online course from MIT.

What will you find to learn informally this summer?