Joe

Here are my raw notes from the presentations this morning. Very enjoyable and relevant.

"minds" does not equal "intelligences" 4 mega-trends -globalization (=connectedness and all the pros and cons that go with it) -biological revolution (genetics and the brain) -digital technology (emphasis on online information) -learning beyond the K-12 classroom 5 minds __Discipline__ - 3 senses Working steadily and improving Becoming an expert (depends on doing #1) __Learning major ways of thinking__ (historical, artistic, scientific, etc.) [thinking according to the rules and style of a discipline] The disciplines of school e.g. history: role of human agents, no experiments possible, avoid presentism, each generation rewrites Contrast science: correlation not the same as causation, matters of evidence vs. faith, opinion So, "stuff," "subject matter" can be learned online, but the discipline CANNOT be learned online We need to help our students grasp these disciplines. If we are simply conveying stuff, the internet does it faster and better, be only we can teach the disciplines. Reflection: what is your discipline, what is its method, how do you convey it to someone else? __The Synthesizing Mind__ Example of Darwin - Origin of Species a major work synthesizing his copious notes and information -scads of info on the web - the mind must learn what to keep and what to throw out; Towards Synthesis: "term paper," speech, website, etc. -Goal (best guess of what it will be like) -Starting point (including earlier synth) -Gathering -Method, strategy (here is where the discipline above comes in, including creating a taxonomy, etc.) As educators we make a mistake if we tell people how to synthesize- offer methods and help people find what method will work for them. … "In the 21st century, the most important mind will be the synthsizing mind:" we need to be more reflective about how we do this. "How do you synthesize; could you help someone become a synthesizer?" __Creating Mind__ Mastering the discipline and the synthesizing first: __you can't think outside the box if you don't have a box.__ Then you go beyond the known. (Outliers chapter on the computer people- they were born at the right time and worked hours every day using then-existing language FOR 10 YEARS) Being creative is also very much about motivation and temperment Good questions; new questions Robust, iconoclastic temperment The ultimate judgment of "the field" "Should American schools try to cultivate creativity; if so, how? Or are there sufficient lessons about creativity on the streets?" -Gardner says you could argue either way. Option no: the lessons are everywhere The mini-elevator mini-speech Depth, Breadth, Stretch are the first 3 minds __Respectful Mind__ Diversity as a fact of life, at home and abroad Beyond mere tolerance Beyond respect with too many conditions Need to understand others- perspective and motivation- emotional and interpersonal intelligence- "empathy schools" Inappropriateness of 'corporate top-down model' for schools and perhaps even for corporations "What determines an atmosphere of respect and disrespect in a school? How can it be improved?" __Ethical Mind__ Higher level of abstraction that respectful mind Conceptualizing oneself as a good worker Conceptualizing oneself as a good citizen Citizen of community, state, nation, world Three E's of good work -excellent (expert), ethical, engaging -consider teaching: ethical might mean spending extra time on students who need additional help; might mean teaching a different curriculum, what do you do when students plagerize? Study of good work in youth: disturbing result: -students "try to do the right thing," -some do it -too many decieve themselves and others-why should I be more ethical than my peers -is it enough to intend to use proper means in the future? (some day we will be ethical, but for now we want to be given a pass) Acting appropriately in both roles How this plays out in an educational community
 * 5 minds for the future **Howard Gardner

Example: wikileaks- is this a good thing? **interesting how many people (clear majority) answered "don't know." makes me wonder about educators' ability to teach ethics. Are we too worried about perceived "objectivity?" (view from nowhere)** Educator's Solution: Creation of a commons where students, teachers and staff can reflect on dilemmas and how they could best be solved and lessons learned- old and young cooperate. __Five Minds in a Digital Age__ Discipline: depth could lose out to breadth- can one learn method online or is offline apprenticeship essential? Synthesis: more available, what kinds of aids are available? Will they ACTUALLY be liberating? Creativity: web 2.0 is promising but young people are very risk-averse and careerist Respectful/Ethical: perhaps to inner circle but not do the wider community, 'how to become a cyber citizen' mastering the ethics of roles __The Figure-Ground Struggle in Education Today__ Figure-ground (subject background in art) What will be the figure? Test scores and country rankings or the kind of individuals we nurture and the kind of society we create? (America's troubles are caused by the best and the brightest) Goodworktoolkit.org Goodworkproject.org

__**Critical Thinking and 21st Century Skills - Daniel Willingham**__

Structure:

Can we teach students to be good thinkers?

Can we teach critical thinking in subject domains?

Implications for schooling.

Leads with a conclusion: yes (to questions above) but is rarely a stand-alone skill, and is more often intertwined with a discipline

What does it mean for thinking to be intertwined with knowledge?

-Tumor example (about 10% solve - rays of different intensity centering around the tumor)

-but when reading a story about a general who had to divide his forces, solutions come more easily

-if the general story is one of three stories told, back down to about 10%

-the problem is RECOGNIZING the relationship between the stories

Deep structures vs. surface structures: in order to be a good critical thinker, you need to be thinking at the level of deep structure, get beyond the surface structure to the deep level.

Problem: the surface structure is __obvious__- anyone can see it

Deep structure COULD BE ANYTHING

Maybe you should make the deep structure explicit- make sure it is processed and practiced

-why don't we teach logic anymore?

PROBLEM: college students with a semester of logic are NO BETTER at solving the card problem

When the surface structure changes, the deep reasoning is forgotten.

__Can we teach critical thinking within subject domains?__

Scientific reasoning (example)


 * 1) Concepts
 * 2) Think scientifically

The second piece cannot proceed in the absence of the first one - you need some domain knowledge to think scientifically.

Anomalous results are important - you have to know what to expect

In making a scientific study- in order to know which variables are important

Reading- hard to read critically if you don't have background knowledge

Vocabulary - obvious

Less obvious - every conversation leaves things out

If you don't "get" what's left out you get confused and bored and stop reading

Being a critical reader?

Reading strategies

Apply background knowledge

Graphic organizers, etc- relate sentences

(if you don't have domain knowledge, you won't know how to do this)

Think about whether or not you are getting it.

(if you say, no, where do you go from there?)

Caveat - # of sessions matters because students are learning that reading is communication.

-more than completing the task

__Critical thinking skills must be taught in the context of domain knowledge__

Implications:

Strategies are rooted in beliefs about the nature of critical thinking

-if you think knowledge and skills are two separate things

-it makes sense to teach them on their own

-BUT THIS IS FALSE (view that access to data is all they need)

-more accurate: content and skills intertwined, thinking and skills together,

21st century skills = 21st century skills __and knowledge__

(throw out the 80s models of "skills")

Outcome of this was "positive" because the measures were exactly the same as the training.

Small boost for a fairly big investment of time and money

How to teach critical thinking:


 * 1) Define specifically what students should be able to do upon graduating: __This__ is the definition of critical thinking. (Don't just say "we teach critical thinking.")
 * 2) Analyze these skills in two ways:
 * 3) What are the prerequisite skills?
 * 4) What content best supports learning the skills?

Reading - very broad but shallow

Science- moderately broad, deep and conceptual

Math- very focused, but automatic


 * 1) Teach the skills in the context of that content.

willingham@virginia.edu

__** Sherry Turkle **__

We make our technologies and then our technologies make and shape us.

Technology promises a connection and leaves people disappointed

Studied a cohort from ages 13-18

Focusing less on the good news - the bounties of social networking- reunions and Arab Spring, etc.

None of that is taken away by saying her research (ethnographic and clinical) revealed some human problems and issues in the areas of intimacy, solitude, relationships, attention, and presence and how these manifest themselves in teaching and learning in the digital age.

(Thumbs up bringing down dictators, thumbs down texting at funerals)

Discontents - why focus on them? They force us to reflect on our underlying values. Can we identify the things that are going amiss and ask where we want them to go? Discontents used to self-reflect can point us towards our deeply held values.

-put technology in its place- can make us forget what we know about life (and in the area of education)

-fog of technology - is this the kind of technology we want to have around

(example - multitasking: turns out nobody can, we just get dopamene from adding tasks as the performance degrades) We need to learn to gather ourselves and uni-task.


 * 1)  What it's like to grow up in the always on culture.
 * 2)  Parents just as much driving children crazy
 * 3)  Tech as the architect of our intimacies
 * 4)  Seductive when its affordances meet our human vulnerabilities
 * 5)  We are lonely - offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship
 * 6)  We can control our interaction with it
 * 7)  Substituting connection for conversation
 * 8)  Example - we would rather text than talk
 * 9)  Our lives of connection leave us vulnerable
 * 10)  Too busy communicating to think
 * 11)  ...converse
 * 12)  ...create


 * 1)  Move from conversation to connection
 * 2)  Profound question (asked by Colbert): joked that online connection is learning in little tweets, sips
 * 3)  Don't these add up to the same thing as a conversation, a big gulp of what we used to have?
 * 4)  Answer is no: some kinds of understanding need the give and take of the long form, conversation, the physical presence and eye contact
 * 5)  Not nostalgia but respecting the complexity of people and human emotions
 * 6)  Respecting what we need to say to each other as children grow up and develop, enables attachment
 * 7)  Many young people say they will do anything to avoid conversation.
 * 8)  __We live in a culture that puts greater value on performing a self, rather than being a self__
 * 9)  Facebook, profiles are performing a self


 * 1)  Turkle's development - optimism but…
 * 2)  15 years ago - loved the idea of identity exploration, time out from consequences and freedom to experiment, learn about yourself (identity workshop)
 * 3)  Caveats: people getting stuck
 * 4)  Mantra - use the virtual to enhance the physical (real) world
 * 5)  People used to cycle back into reality (during her early research)
 * 6)  What she didn't see was that we would be wearing the web on us.
 * 7) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Mobile connectivity means we can bail out of the physical world whenever we want, and it turns out that we always want to.


 * 1)  What do we have?
 * 2)  Technology that makes it easy for us to hide - we would rather text than talk
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Communicate when we wish
 * 4) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Disengage at will
 * 5) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> "on the telephone, too much shows, texting you can sculpt your responses" lack control of the time
 * 6) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> We can be very unaware of the skills they do not have - we are making the assumption that they have them
 * 7) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> People don't want to talk to others when its easier to deal with people via electronic communication
 * 8) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> There is something about seeing something in a person where you learn whether you can trust them. Something of the real human slips through, even in a performance.
 * 9) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Paradox: we want an instant response- we ask a simpler question in an email that you know you can get an instant response
 * 10) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> We say that our world is increasingly complex, but our communication is getting much more simplistic


 * 1)  What do educators need to attend to?
 * 2)  Life of performance (college apps, facebook)
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Orgy of self-presentation (advertising executives)
 * 4)  Tremendous new problems with separation
 * 5) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> (example - if a college student had said 15 years ago…)
 * 6) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Just because it falls within the norm now doesn't mean it isn't disturbing
 * 7) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Adolescents without clear moments of separation are problematic
 * 8)  Possible to almost bypass and move to a sensibility of "I share, therefore I am."
 * 9) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> The validation of a feeling has become part of establishing it
 * 10) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> When you use people this way, you reduce them to your purposes- you take what you need
 * 11) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Movement from inner-directed to outward-directed self
 * 12) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Narcissism: using people as objects to butress our fragile sense of self
 * 13) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Not good for innovation or collaboration, where you need to come to the table with a sense of being a whole
 * 14) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Lost the ability to be alone and gather oneself: __if you don't teach your children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. (Loneliness is failed solitude.)__
 * 15) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> This kind of solitude energizes and restores
 * 16) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Growing intolerance for not having a device
 * 17) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> (Thoreau): live deliberately and mindfully, respect solitude, live life but not too thickly; we often feel that we must speak without having anything to say


 * 1)  Final thoughts
 * 2)  Tempted to use the term "addiction"
 * 3) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Good things come by email and text
 * 4) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> The part of our brains that lights up when we see a message on our phones is the part that lights up when we are in love
 * 5)  We will never get rid of these things - they are our partners
 * 6) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> We will, should become better consumers, but we have to get a grip
 * 7) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> No one solution or simple answer
 * 8) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> The life that technology makes easy is not the way we want to live
 * 9)  We are at a great moment of opportunity: people sense that something is amiss.
 * 10) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Does it serve our human purposes
 * 11) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Just because we grew up with the internet, we assume that the internet is all grown up. We tend to see what we have now as the technology in its maturity. ...things are very early...time to make CORRECTIONS.
 * 12) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Institutional rituals - how do we teach students to have solitude, be alone, have conversations
 * 13) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Can teaching be a place to slow down?
 * 14) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Model an approach to knowledge that leaves space for reflection.
 * 15) <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: middle;"> Art of teaching in the 21st century not about teaching a new software but about helping students tolerate the anxiety of being left with their own company long enough to think their own thoughts. Slow down, reflect, and re-center in a hyper-connected world.