Learning Communities: The Future (the Now?) of Education

I am lucky to have found a great passion in my life (in addition to being an educator) and that is pottery making.  Due to local opportunities, I have mostly worked on my pots in community pottery studios.  The key word is community.  We are more than a group of potters working in the same space or room.  We ask and share information about techniques used to create the pots.  We are a learning community.  What strikes me most about this pottery learning community is its diversity in terms of gender and age range – from mid-teens to late 70′s.  The experts are not necessarily the elders of our group.  The expert is the person who understands and could explain a technique about which another member wants to know.  It is situational expertise.

A useful and descriptive definition of learning communities comes from Etienne Wenger in his discussion of communities of practice:

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In a nutshell, communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Some of the characteristics of  learning communities include:

• Self-organizing
• Not limited by age barriers
• High levels of interaction, sharing of resources, and collaboration
• Driven by intrinsic motivation

Self-organizing

What happens when groups of people gather together to provide mutual support for learning and performance? How would that work? Rather than being controlled by a teacher, learners might “self-organize” into functioning communities with a general goal of supporting each other in their learning. That is to say, the function of guidance and control becomes distributed among group participants. Specific roles of group members are not assigned but rather emerge from the interaction of the whole. http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/dlc.html

Not Bounded By Age Level

Grouping students by age and advancing them in lock step is an artifact of the agrarian calendar and factory model of schooling that emerged in the late 19th century. That it is still with us is a commentary on just how conservative schooling is.  As every parent and teacher knows, children’s developmental trajectories vary widely, and the notion of grouping children by age is a convention without meaning. http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/26/opinion/oe-doyle26

Currently, our society is mostly marked by age segregation -  both imposed (in school) and self-selected (through leisure time pursuits). A major advantage of learning communities driven-by-interest is that members of all ages choose to join.  Young people learn from the life experiences of elders,  Elders learn to view things from the fresh eyes and often idealist thinking of young people.  Online learning communities organized through Facebook, forums, and massively multiplayer online game have dramatically increased these mixed age groupings.

High Levels of Interaction, Sharing of Resources, and Collaboration

The ultimate payoff for involvement in a learning community is developing more expertise in one’s area of interest.  As such, there tends to be an ease of sharing knowledge, information, and resources.  A simple example is when a request for information is broadcasted on Twitter or Facebook with the result often being a poring in of information to address this request.  This is why I believe concepts-areas such as crowdsourcing and the open education movement have become so popular.

Intrinsic Motivation

As stated, the payoff for being involved in a learning community is increased expertise and skills – and the possibility of leveling up.  Intrinsic motivation as discussed in the context of learning communities can be viewed as the following:

• Anticipated reciprocity. – A member is motivated to contribute to the community in the expectation that he or she will receive useful help and information in return.
• Increased recognition -  The desire for prestige is one of the key motivations for individuals’ contributions in a learning community.
• Sense of efficacy – Individuals may contribute because the act results in a sense that they have had some effect on the community. (Adapted from http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/190499)

Learning networks have always existed with groups of people organizing around their interests and passions within community centers and  clubs focusing on books, games, sports, etc.  How the Internet and Web 2.0 have changed learning communities is through the ability to announce face-to-face meetings and through online forums-networks. As such, one of the greatest gifts we could offer to our learners is how to find, join, and interact with their own personal learning communities – online and face-to-face.

As kids have more connectivity and access to resources than ever, one challenge is to develop new practices and tools to support them in how they choose to manage learning opportunities.

The challenge presented to us (as educators) is to empower them to consistently share those interests and activities that happen elsewhere and that paint a fuller portrait of who they are as learners. http://dmlcentral.net/blog/akili-lee/check-learning-and-social-learning-networks

Some resources for assisting students in learning about and developing their own learning communities:

• Personal Learning Networks Are Virtual Lockers for Schoolkids by Vicki Davis – http://www.edutopia.org/pln-web-pages
• Personal Learning Networks by Will Richardson – http://weblogg-ed.com/2011/personal-learning-networks-an-excerpt/

http://www.phoenix.edu/uopx-knowledge-network/articles/current-conversations/connection-collaboration-creation.html

Team and Community Building Using Mobile Devices

Cell phones today allow users to do so much more than just a few years ago. Students can use their cell phones to write and send text messages, take and send digital photos, and even take and send short digital video clips, in addition to making phone calls.  http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/cell-phones-in-the-classroom

As such, mobile devices provide great opportunities for learning.  One such use is for team and community building.  What follows is a list of smartphone-based, community-building activities.

About Me

• Ask participants to locate a photo, song, or video from their mobile device that best represents them.
• Each person then shares his or her media and the reason it was selected.
• Bringing portable speakers can assist with the sharing of songs so others can hear them.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Playlists

• Prior to the activity, create a list of at least 10 categories of playlists. Possible categories include pop music, boy band music, country music, holiday music, bits of TV or movie dialogue, classical music, college fight songs, love songs, TV or movie theme music, and cartoon character voices.
• For the activity itself, have participants form teams of about 10 members each, then ask all participants to make sure that their cell phones are turned on. Next, tell them that you are going to call out a playlist category. If they have this style of ringtone in their phone, they have to find it, hold up their phone, and play the appropriate ringtone (or music) for everyone.
• Points awarded to groups based on how many in group can “play” the sound.
• Example List
  • Boy band
  • Girl band
  • Love song
  • TV or Movie tune
  • Cartoon or movie Voice
  • Voice of significant other
  • A phone ring
  • Your own voice
• Source:http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Team-Building-Activities-for-the-Digital-Age-eBook

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Categories – Do you have?

• Form students in small groups.
• Ask them to find a picture on their mobiles that contains (just one per group to get a point)
  • Pet
  • Grandparents
  • Something in Nature
  • Person doing a sport’s activity
  • A group of friends
• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Team-Building-Activities-for-the-Digital-Age-eBook

• Alternative – ask each small group to assign one person to take digital photos during some of the small group activities (e.g., team-building activities).  This person should be told nothing but to get a visual record of the group during the activities.  After the a number of group activities, this activity can be conducted.
• Call out the following.  If the the photographer for that small group has that image, then they get a point.
  • Picture of someone with the GPS
  • A Group Shot
  • A close up of someone concentrating
  • A close up of someone smiling
  • Someone helping another person
  • A picture with hands
• Source  – Jackie Gerstein

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Spot the Eyes

• In small groups, ask group members to take close ups of one another’s eyes.
• Show the entire group the pics using the LCD  – other group members guess whose eyes they are. This is a good name game.
• Alternative – group members can send the facilitator full face shots and eyes-only shots of themselves.  The facilitator can post these randomly on Flickr, a Wiki, 0r Facebook. Group members then attempt to match the faces with the eyes.
• Safety – only first names should be used.  Pictures should only be head and eye shots.
• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Team-Building-Activities-for-the-Digital-Age-eBook
• Alternative: Jackie Gerstein

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Community Puzzle

• Separate group into smaller groups.
• Explain – Your group is to use images from you cell phones to create a group story.  The story can be sequential where one cell phone picture leads logically to the next.  Cell phones and the pictures can only be used once to tell the story.  The logic and connection to be obvious to the viewer with little or no need for verbal explanation.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Values Photos

• Ask participants to choose their three top values.  They can be given a list of values.
• Give participants the task to locate objects in their environment that symbolize these values and take a photo using their mobile devices.
• Photos with directions are directly emailed to a Flickr page set up for this purpose.  Lisa Nielson describes this process in her blog entry, Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

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Texting Gossip – Telephone

• Prior to the activity, choose a phrase (with fewer than 300 characters) that has meaning to your group and translate it for text messaging (for help, visit http://transl8it.com/cgi-win/index.pl). Make sure that all participants have one another’s cell phone numbers stored in their own phone’s memory.
• After arranging the group in a circle, text your message to the first person (it helps to have the message already loaded into your phone). The person who receives the text then whispers the message to the next person in the circle. That person must then text the message to the next person. Continue in this fashion (i.e., alternating texts and whispers) until the last person receives the message via either text or whisper. The last person then verbally shares the message with the entire group.
• Example:
  • Fear stops you in your tracks. Self confidence propels you forward. to Fear stops U n yor tracks. Self confidNc propels U 4ward.
• Discuss problems with texted gossip
• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Team-Building-Activities-for-the-Digital-Age-eBook

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Human Machine

• Separate group into smaller groups – 4 to 8 per group.
• The group’s task is the create a human machine that has the following attributes
  • Two cell phones that are to be “synchronized” in some manner to make a sound
  • One or two cell phones that create some type of visual effect for the machine
  • All group members need to be connected in some way.
  • At least half the arms and half the legs of the group need to be moving in some way.
  • A group spokesperson needs to be able to explain the purpose and function of the machine.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Two Truths and a Lie

• Each group members takes or locates (copyright free or creative commons) three images  – two that represent “facts” about them; one that is plausible but really a “lie”.  These should be symbols rather than portrait type shots . . . a favorite dog, a flower if likes gardening, a country’s flag is from or visited that country.
• These are uploaded on a “public” site such as Facebook, a Wiki, or Flickr only with a brief caption.  Remember that the goal is to fool others so the third picture, the lie, needs to seem like a truth.
• Other members guess which one is the lie by leaving their guess in the comment section.
• Safety:  Only first names are used.  No pictures of self, family member, or friends
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Building Communications

• The facilitator builds a prototype model using Legos or another building kit.
• Two or three volunteers act as the communicators.  They have the prototype in their location. The rest of the group is in a remote location.  They have all the parts of the prototype but it needs to be built as an exact replication of the prototype.  The communicators either text or voice chats with the group who must build the prototype based on these directions.
• Two or three times during the building process – a “runner” from the building time can run over and view the original prototype.
• If the group struggles with the task, they can send an image to the receiver.
• Pictures of “results” can uploaded onto Facebook or a Website – and placed side-by-side for comparison.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Text a Group Story

• One person starts a story – either a word, phrase, or sentence (can be negotiated with the group or predetermined by the leader), and texts this to the next group member who adds a word, phrase, or sentence.  When it gets to the last person, s/he reads the story aloud.
• If done virtually, the last person can post the story onto a wiki, website, or Facebook.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Memory

• Form smaller groups – 6 to 8 people per group.
• Group members choose an image or single word to display on each of their cell phones.
• The phones are laid out on a table.
• The other groups are give a minute to memorize the images-words.
• The group that collectively remembers the most cell phone displays wins.
• Each group is given a chance to display their cell phones.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Pass the Task

• Smaller groups of 6 to 8 members are formed with equal number of members per group.
• Give members some time to get the phone number of the person who is “next in line”.
• Group members are given slips of paper with tasks.  Each smaller group gets the same slips.
• The first person looks at his/her slip and texts the task to the next person.  The next person does the task, then looks at his/her slip, and finally, texts this task to the next person.
• The first group to complete
• Tasks:
  • Hop 10 times on one foot
  • Hum or whistle your favorite song.
  • Shake hands or high five the next person in line.
  • Do Head, Shoulder, Knees, Toes three times.
  • Pat your head and rub your tummy
  • Say Sally Sells Seashells at the Seashore three times
• Clarity in communication??
• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/Team-Building-Activities-for-the-Digital-Age-eBook

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Spot the Difference

• This activity is like the Find the Eight (or so) Differences between the two pictures.
• Group members take an original-first group picture.  They then make subtle changes – eight to ten of them – to the group.  It could be change of clothing, hair, background, etc.
• Each set of pictures is displayed via some sort of LCD.  The other groups are to identify the differences.
• Virtual – individuals can do this using their home setting – making the eight alterations in the scene.  The two images could then be uploaded to Facebook or a wiki.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Reflections

• As a debrief for the day’s team building activities, ask participants to go a take picture of something that represents that day’s events.
• Ask participants to use a song or ringtone to go with that image.
• Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Texting or Facebook Feedback -

Students send their classmates via textbook or Facebook three adjectives that describe their classmates’ performance during the class activities.

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Using Mobile Devices to Create a Personalized Feeling Chart

Students are introduced to the feelings cards by selecting the cards that matched their feelings at that moment . . .

In small groups, students select 10-15 feelings cards and set up scenarios that represented each of feelings selected. They used their own mobile device to take photos of these images . . .

The photos are directly uploaded to Flickr via an email. The full process is described by Lisa Nielson in Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

The uploaded images create a personalized feelings poster. Students are provided with scenarios and asked to locate on the Interactive White Board which of these displayed images that they created best represented how they would feel in that situation.

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Texting Communications Activity

This activity is an adaptation of the Back-to-Back Communications Exercise. Students pair up. One volunteered to give the directions, the other to be the drawer. They exchange phone numbers and the drawers go to another room. The direction givers are provided with the following drawing and told to text in words (one student asked if he could send a picture) the description of the drawing. The goal was for the drawer to reproduce the drawing to scale.

Beginning the School Year: It’s About Connections Not Content

Most classes, starting with about middle school, begin the school year with reviewing the content to be covered, expectations regarding grades, and other academic information provided by the teacher or instructor.  The human or social element is often disregarded.

What is interesting is that most learners enter the classroom wondering who is in the course.  They want to know about the teacher and the people in the class not what material is to be covered. What this says to me as an educator is that it all begins with a social connection – between the educator and the learners, and between the learners themselves.

Because of this belief, I begin all classes focusing on having the students make connections between themselves and me.  I want students to learn about one another in a personal way.  I want to learn about my students so my instructional strategies can be more personalized and tailored to their needs and interests.  Beginning class with a focus on connections rather than content gives learners the following messages:

• You are the focus of the class not me.
• You are important as a learner in this class.
• You will be expected to engage in the learning activities during class time.  You will be an active learner.
• You will be expected to do collaborative learning during the class time.
• I, as the class facilitator, will be just that – a facilitator.  I will introduce the learning activities, but you will be responsible for the actual learning.
• I will get to know you as a learner and try to help you find learning activities that are of interest to you.

Based on age/grade level, I have begun my classes in a variety of ways.  What follows is a sample of activities I have used to begin the school year or college course.

Team Contract

Class members meet in small groups to develop guidelines for making the classroom a safe place to learn and to take risks.  The groups then create a visual project that represents their guidelines.

Team Building Games

There are tons of team building games that can be used in the classroom.  Some of my favorite sources of these include:

• Wilderdom
• Teampedia

The activity in the pictures is called Puzzling Moves Tangrams - a favorite of students of all age students.

All About Me Activities

Some example activities I have done:

About Me Posters

These are store bought posters.  They provide a great way to get to know students.  After they are completed, I ask students to share them with the rest of the class and allow time for questions of each presentation.

For the older students, I had them randomly select another class member and they used the Biography posters to create a biography for the selected student.  These were posted on one of the classroom walls drawing immediate attention of classroom visitors.

I Am Poems

Students created I AM Poems using magnetic poetry.

Personalized Wallet

Students began by creating an origami wallet. They then drew self portraits and included identifying information.

Roomination

When I taught 6th grade, I did not spend the week prior to the school year decorating the classroom for the students.  I just piled the furniture and wall decorations in the middle of the room.  In small groups, students developed blueprints for the classroom.  Teams presented their designs to the rest of the class and their favorite design was voted upon.  Students arranged the room according to the winning design.

Building Cubbies

After the Roomination exercise, students built and painted their own cubbies.  I provided the wood pieces and specifications, but the students built them needing to assist one another to do so.  They individualized their cubbies through painting them as they desired.

Where is reflection in the learning process?

Today, we finished the second week of an interpersonal communications course.  The students in the course are first term college students, a few fresh out of high school.  As is my common practice, I end my week of instruction with reflective questions for the students:

• What was your significant learning this past week?
• What principles for everyday life can you extract from our class activities? (Note: The activities are experiential).
• What did you learn or what was reinforced about yourself?
• What can you take from the class activities to use in your life outside of class?

I asked the students to get in small groups to discuss these questions.  They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their faces while remaining silent.  I tried rewording the questions and providing examples and still got blank looks when they returned to their group discussions.

Products of a Standardized System

I began to get frustrated by their lack of response until a major AHA struck me . . . They are products of a standardized system where they were asked to memorize standardized information and spit that information out on standardized tests. When finished with one unit of information, they were asked to quickly move onto the next unit.  They were not given the time, skills, and opportunities to extract personalized meanings from their studies.  Reflection was not part of their curriculum as it cannot be measured nor tested.

Critical Reflection in the Learning Process

There are those who believe as I do that deep, meaningful, long-lasting learning is left to chance if it is not a strategic, integrated part of the learning process.

Critical reflection is an important part of any learning process. Without reflection, learning becomes only an activity — like viewing a reality TV show — which was never meant to have meaning, but was only meant to occupy time.

Critical reflection is not meditation, rather it is mediation — an active, conversive, dialectical exercise that requires as much intellectual work as does every other aspect of the learning process, from analysis to synthesis to evaluation. But in reflection, all the learned material can be gathered about, sorted and resorted, and searched through for greater understanding and inspiration (https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/612829/wiki/heres-what-to-do-on-saturday).

Educators as Reflective Practitioners

When I entered my doctoral program, I was quickly introduced to David Schon’s Reflective Practitioner (in an adult learning course), and was immediately drawn to to importance of reflective practice.  Later, as a counselor and teacher educator, I have held tightly onto the belief that good counselors and educators need to be engaged in ongoing reflective practice.

The critically reflective habit confers a deeper benefit than that of procedural utility. It grounds not only our actions, but also our sense of who we are as teachers in an examined reality. We know why we believe what we believe. A critically reflective teacher is much better placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well as to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment. She knows why she does and thinks, what she does and thinks.  Stephen Brookfield

The only way that educators can teach and promote reflective practice by their students (of all ages) in their own classrooms is to engage in, embrace, and fully understand this process themselves.

It is important to realize the implications for our students of our own critical reflection. Students put great store by our actions and they learn a great deal from observing how we model intellectual inquiry and democratic process. Given that this is so, a critically reflective teacher activates her classroom by providing a model of passionate skepticism. As Osterman (1990) comments, “critically reflective teachers – teachers who make their own thinking public, and therefore subject to discussion – are more likely to have classes that are challenging, interesting, and stimulating for students” (p. 139). Stephen Brookfield

I fear that many educators and educators-in-training are not reflective practitioners. There are several resources to assist educators in gaining knowledge and skills for reflective practice:

• Stephen Bloomfield Becoming a Critically Reflective Practitioner
• Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice
• Reflective Practice Online Resource
• Educational Leadership: Getting into the Habit of Reflection

If reflective practice is not encouraged within one’s teacher education program or school work environment, then it becomes that educator’s responsibility (verging on an ethical responsibility) to do so on his or her own.

Reflection in the Classroom

Learners do not just receive information only at the time it is given; they absorb information in many different ways, often after the fact, through reflection. The most powerful learning often happens when students self-monitor, or reflect.

Students may not always be aware of what they are learning and experiencing. Teachers must raise students’ consciousness about underlying concepts and about their own reactions to these concepts. ETE Team

Reflection in the classroom can begin at a young age.  Reflection during instructional time can be facilitated through:

• Structuring lesson plans to support reflective thinking.
• Providing lesson components that prompt inquiry and curiosity.
• Providing resources and hand-on activities to prompt exploration.
• Providing reflective thinking activities that prompt students to think about what they have done, what they learned, and what they still need to do.
• Providing reflection activity worksheets for each lesson plan to prompt students to think about what they know, what they learned, and what they need to know as they progress through their exploration. ETE Team

There are specific classroom activities that can assist students in engaging in reflective practice.

• Think-Pair-Share
• Think Books – Reflective Journals
• Exit Tickets
• Blogging - Application of Blogs to Support Reflective Learning Journals
• Podcasts or Vodcasts

I further discuss reflection as part of  the learning process in The Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/petesimon/5197395116/

Reading: A Natural Human Phenomenon Given the Right Conditions

The written word is a fairly new development in human evolution given the history of humankind.  Even so, it has become a common and natural way of communication for a lot of people in our current times.  School curriculum often presents reading and writing as a forced, unnatural skill to be acquired through hard work.

As an elementary student, I was required to do the requisite book reports.  I wasn’t interested in the books I was told to read.  I learned how to creatively tweak the book cover summaries to write these reports – receiving A’s and B’s for books never read.

Fast forward to 9th grade.  I don’t know how but somehow I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and was hooked into reading.  Reading became my survival to my painful and boring high school experiences.  I would bring books of my choosing into class, would hide them in the class textbooks and joyful escape into the worlds of these books.  Without any prompting or direction, I located and read many of the books by the following authors during high school (note the following are direct links to websites dedicated to that author):

• Kurt Vonnegut
• John Steinbeck
• Alice Walker
• Ayn Rand
• Richard Bautigan
• Margaret Atwood

Fast forward – today.  We have seen this natural drive to read by this current generation of youth through the Harry Potter and Twilight series.  I recently asked a group of about 25 sixth graders if they liked to read and received a resounding, “No!”  I then asked if they had read Harry Potter and most had.

So I get frustrated when I read about all these formalized and structured ways to teach reading (and have a gut-level, nauseous reaction to discussions around Success For All and Reading First).  I understand that many kids do not have the skills and motivation to independently locate books of personal interest, but I do believe that one of the responsibilities of educators (of all content areas) is to provide learners with reading recommendations.

This past year, I started reading YA  novels, finding them intelligent, engaging, and thought provoking.  I believe if kids are introduced to the choice menu of these and similar books, then kids will become naturally interested in reading.  Some recommendations I would offer (if I was teaching middle or high school) include:

• The Hunger Games Series
• Uglies Series
• Maze Runner Series
• Ship Breaker
• Life as We Knew It Series
• Delirium
• Matched
• Flip
• House of Scorpion
• Looking for Alaska
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox

This is just my own list.  Imagine if educators and young adults shared all of their favorite books and discussions about these books became the norm in English classes.

Technology and social networking have the potential to increase interest and engagement in learning.  A few years ago I taught gifted education for elementary students.  Philip, a charismatic and sports-driven young man, said he was not interested in reading because he did not like the books the teachers gave him to read.  I introduced the class to Shelfari.

I don’t know what it was about this Web 2.0 tool but Philip totally took off, becoming motivated to read and add books of his choosing to his Shelfari. These can be viewed at http://www.shelfari.com/phillip12/shelf.

I am waiting for the day that the guiders and managers of education realize that forced education does not become lifelong learning.