Who is successful?
How do we measure success?
Which raises the question do we have to get hung up measuring success (meeting the standard) and is it taking away from the creativity? Are we breathing down the necks of our students to make sure they fit our mould of what we would consider achieved forgetting to give our kids the chance to play and find the answer out for themselves through exploration? I think we need to stop sometimes and slow things down. Through inquiry the big idea means so much more to kids than being spoon feed. MAYBE WE NEED TO LET THE KIDS DISCOVER IT! THEN JUSTIFY IT.
The essence of creativity is that people who are successful know what makes their ideas great!
They know 'The Why' why they are doing what they are doing.
They provoke
and They have a process.
The motivation is then there because they know why they want to learn it.
Often we consider the children achieving at or above where they should be as successful. But those that find reading or writing or maths difficult can be successful performers. Perhaps once I have found each child's success I need to use this to help to help make the other areas successful. Eg: Having had a child who picks up songs lyrics at the drop of the hat it has worked well for me in the past to teach that child to their times tables through song. How could I help the ones that are great at technology to read better? Or the mathematicians to add more detail to their writing? Could I liken it to in maths we need to stretch the problem out to show our working. Writing is the same where we stretch out the description so that the reader sees the same image as we do?
He picked up on Guy Claxton's six pillars.
Challenge
Collaboration
Responsiblity
Respect
Motivation (real things)
Choice
Children want challenge-they don't buy a video game that they are going to clock in two hours. But sometimes this can be a balancing act for those with low resilience I find sometimes they do need a task they know they can succeed in balanced with a task that is going to push their understanding further.
Collaborate-Ewan said you won't find any lone genius in creativity who is successful because everyone works in a team. But he touched on an interesting point. Sometimes working as a team means all working together but sometimes it can also mean working interdependently passing it onto someone else in your team once your portion is finished.
Responsiblity-Kids want to be responsible for their learning.
Respect-Let them go down tangents don't shut down their ideas too early on, let them inquire and explore because it is often the ideas that are off track that the kids will learn the most from.
Real things-motivation if it is not experiential how do we learn from it? It has to be relevant.
Choice-When do I give my kids choice? How could I give them more? In maths I do have like a daily 5 board where they have to do maths with a buddy, maths by themselves, maths writing etc and they can choose which ones they do when so long as they do a range of tasks over the week.
Could I give them more choice in reading for example by getting them to come up with their own follow up? How would you like to show what you learnt from that book? This would then open up the opportunity for them to showcase their creativity.
When the world Zigs, Zag. Ewan showed us the Levi advertisement for the introduction of black jeans so out of the realm it doesn't even show a picture of jeans but got people talking and was extremely creative. The words 'When the world zigs, zag,' has become the companies slogan now, which means the story of how the company became a success is told. Ewan said imagine a kids project defining your schools image or logo like the Levi campaign How could I get the kids to showcase their learning? Is there an app that the kids could use as like an advertisement for the children's learning? What would they advertise? Would it look like an overall showcase of the terms learning? Would it be a showcase of the process of learning something tricky? Would it be an advertisement of...
He talked about not letting technology become a means of substitution rather than transformation. Eg: Using the i-pad to take notes instead of using pen and paper is no different. But to set those notes up as a google docs means that people are bouncing ideas off one another and getting more from the notes that are taking transforming the notes. This is something I need to be wery of with the more technology I have in my classroom. Asking myself what is the purpose of this app? What is it actually teaching the kids? How is it benefiting them?
He talked about Googleable vs Non-googable. Moving the title of the topic away from an essential question to more of a statement to hook them in and get them to have an opinion and justify it. Eg: When does music become noise? When does noise become music? Became 'Music is just noise.' Make the subject line tantalising for the kids, for them to take it where they want it to go. Use the googleable questions to go and find it out but then spend the rich learning time to find the non-googleable answers. The people that will succeed in the world the way it is heading is that they are not just problem solvers they are problem finders who can see the gap that no one else can. He spoke about using master classes more where a kid asks to learn something and you find out who else wants to learn that so that learning becomes just in time rather than so much of the learning being just in case. This googleable/non-googable questions has been difficult to implement at the beginning of the year. It has also highlighted the valued googleable questions have in helping us further our understanding as the kids in their interdependence inquiry into why there are more birds in our backyards was very broad and they had to answer the googleable questions to be able to have a better understanding of the non-googleable.
He introduced the idea of a wonderbox where kids can explore a new topic and take an object out of the box and after a week of research they are able to share what they know about that object.
The wonderbox is something I have used to help introduce the idea of Interdependence. It was a great way to get the kids thinking about what we were going to be studying this term without giving them the answer. I pulled out an object one at a time and they had to link the ideas together to think about what it was we were studying. Interdependence is a big word and I cut it up into In ter depen dence. I pulled these chunks out in the wrong order and the kids looked at it. They went well there is the word dependence and inter it could be interdependence. So although they had no idea what interdependence actually meant they were able to piece it together to make the word using their prior knowledge of other words.
I loved his idea of creating TED talks giving the kids a place to share their ideas and speak to an audience in a comfortable setting. They were able to 'perform their learning.' Because kids live to perform. He Tweeted his students TED talks to provide the wide audience and the kids even set up a TED sign. They were challenged with their idea for a topic. Ideas went from 'My mum is the best,' to 'Why do we never tell those the closest to us that we love them enough.' Another idea was 'Do animals have a secret language?' The first idea of my mum is the best well most people are going to say that about their own parents at 7 years old and where is the so what, who cares element to that title (again I guess it is that concept of selling/advertising your learning with a catchy phrase or title to make others want to find out more about what you learnt). I loved this idea and would like to try it out around speeches time. Raising the question 'how can we inspire those always remember moments in our kids?'
He talked about how we often use ping pong questioning. Instead use Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce technique. Pose a question then pause ten seconds then let someone pounce. What do you think of this answer? Then bounce it onto another child what do you think about these two responses? Put ideas down on post it notes challenge kids to come up with 100 ideas in 10 minutes. Record a lot of the inquiry, exploration, investigation side of the project in photos on i-pads.
Another great idea around emotions was to use photographs to get kids to start talking about how they feel about their learning. Emotive photographs that have nothing to do with learning but represent hiding or being pulled in all directions or a long road ahead or joy. Often kids can see then that others are feeling scared or nervous or challenge showing they are not alone and suddenly giving them the pick me up they needed to carry on.
A very inspiring speaker with lots of new ideas to try and food for thought.
