Playing School or Preparing for Life? by Meg Ormiston

These are my notes from Meg Ormiston’s METC 2007 presentation “Playing School or Preparing for Life?” on 27 Feb 2007. (I recorded this session and will post this later as a podcast.)

www.techteachers.com
meg [at] techteachers [dot] com

Isn’t the goal of school to prepare for life? We have to STOP THIS GAME!
– we are doing the same thing, spewing: talking faster and louder
– so if you do, kids turn you out quicker
– we have to stop that, so we engage kids’ brains in school

Picture of Meg as a child playing school
– black and white picture of kids in rows
–

Different challenges in the School Day
– multimedia video made by a teacher in one of Meg’s classes

It is not just about content, it is about the process
– it is not about the race through the book
– how students learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand-in-hand

Latitude and longitude: teaching for understanding
– I am now all over mainly in Illinois, and I am always focusing on changing the way we “do school”
– we have state standards for latitude and longitude

Do kids “get it” when we talk faster and louder?
– maybe they would get it if they look at THEIR SCHOOL in Google Earth
– now we have completely different tools
– how many teachers have tried holding up the globe?
– forget the worksheet you’ve been doing for 112 years, let’s make it real: What is the lat/long for your hometown, your home
– suddenly we have the whole world, and we can show students the world like we’ve never done before
– we have visuals, we can work with it
– the kid that needs it 17 times can do it and get it 17 times, and they can take it home and do it with their families

We need to get the most out of those tools and also filling out 20 pages of worksheets
– if you make the learning

Taking a whole month on the “state report” about the state bird, insect, etc
– in real life we don’t need to know those isolated facts of information
– if I needed those facts, I could google them
– we are wasting all this time with all these isolated facts

My 12 year old met his first paper trained teacher in 6th grade (the first one who said NO, YOU MUST DO IT ON PAPER)
– that is a classroom that is playing school the way I played school and you probably played school

What is the test? What is the way we teach?
– we have 42 minutes to talk as fast as we can, and then we rush to another room where we talk as fast as we can for 42 minutes

When I present I don’t have you sit quietly for an hour and talk to you straight for 60 minutes
– now a conversation assignment: talk about the power of the video you saw
– I try to stop every 9-12 minutes for adult learners to have conversation time
– but we are used to being the ones talking
– it is really important to stop and connect
– the reality is that we need to do this with kids

the “race to cover” is not working!!!!!
– so I am going to show you different ways to cover content but with MEDIA
– video about domestic violence

Let’s change the assignments
– compare making a video about domestic violence to the level of emotional as well as cognitive connections that students make compared to a 2 page assigned paper
– the video footage for this movie example was shot in 20 minutes, because by 7th grade the girls had done so many movies by that time
– the hardest part of the video to make was the parents shouting
– did you feel connected to that story

It is NOT the isolated facts
– we are stuck in those because that is the way we did school
– we raced to do the study guide, then we raced on to take the test, then we raced to move on
– it is NOT ABOUT THE FACTOIDS: it is about the emotional connections

Now our activity: Have 2 minutes to brainstorm as many factoids or stories that you can about this infamous man in history: Marco Polo

Ok, now STOP THINKING! (don’t we do that all the time in school?)

Now your team gets 1 min and 30 sec of help
– try and pull more facts out of this video about Ghehgis Khan

If without the video and the help from your group, would you have passed the test on Marco Polo?
– probably not, even though most of you passed 5th grade

Now look at the 3 pages about Marco Polo in the 5th grade textbook
– what if you don’t read?
– how about thinking of ANOTHER WAY TO DO IT? (Get through 5th grade)
– I used Discovery Education and Unitedstreaming: Engage your student with Video Content

[MY THOUGHT: A GREAT IDEA FOR PARENT VOLUNTEERS: HAVE PARENTS HELP COLLECT VIDEO CLIPS AND MULTIMEDIA ENHANCEMENTS FOR THE CURRICULUM FOR THEIR TEACHER]

Showing 1, 2, 3 minute clips to teachers
– the teachers got excited thinking about the powerful tool at their fingertips
– did teachers use this every day? No
– had equipment problems
– write a “History Alive” grant, got projectors for all classrooms

We didn’t throw out the curriculum, we are focusing on learning in a different way
– United Streaming is an amazing tool to get kids excited about content
– studying using videos: this is now possible
– least effective way to learn vocabulary: writing down words, looking up definitions and writing them down

One of the best things you can do for vocabulary development is FRONT LOADING with video
– Great examples of video in the classroom
– http://techteachers.com/video.htm
– example is included for book “All Quiet on the Western Front”

Great example of establishing the anticipatatory set
– this isn’t about being perfect for Hollywood
– this is about communicating and getting across your message

Reading text increases power because it helps people connect with text (more than a voiceover)

Are students “getting it?”
– are the students connecting to it emotionally?

bookrags website
– lots of websites where students can get isolated content

[MY THOUGHT: OUR ASSIGNMENTS IN SCHOOL SHOULD ATTEMPT TO MAKE WEBSITES LIKE BOOKRAGS AND PLAGIARISM WEBSITES USELESS]

Why do we assign book reports to students?
– to get them to read?
– or to torture the students?
– or to fill time?

I decided it was time to teach my son to fish, he is different and he may never be like his girlfriend who can write a three paragraph essay in 15 minutes that sound
– and with this video, my son is excited and motivated
– led to him storyboarding his movie as he was reading his next book about lightning
– he was jotting notes as he was reading, just like a POWERFUL reader does

What are we trying to do?
– just give kids worksheet, worksheet, worksheet, or prepare them for life?!

Technorati Tags: digitalnatives, digitalstorytelling, education, educationreform, metc, metc07, ormiston, techteachers

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