The Information Diet

The Information Diet was stressful for me to read. For so much of it I was thinking, “well of course” and the rest I was thinking, “no don’t tell me this!” Especially that since as I type this, the sensor in my classroom noticed a lack of motion so it shut the lights off on me. I’ve been sitting for too long and it’s apparently killing me.

It’s like when I’m hungry and lazy and I just want to eat some Lucky Charms. Don’t tell me how many calories are in it or how it’s 95% sugar. I’m going to eat it anyway, but now I’m going to feel terrible about eating it. That’s how my information consumption is. You can tell me that watching Mad Max for the 17^th time is not a productive use of my day, but I’m going to watch it anyway.

What I didn’t really like was that the farther I got through it, the more I felt like I was being scolded for my use of media. I know I spend too much time scrolling through Facebook throughout the day, but I get all my work done regardless. Trashy TV is not at all making me smarter or more informed, but it’s an entertaining way to de-stress and I don’t have to expend a lot of energy or mental focus.

That being said, the book had so many great things to say. The way it was written was funny and lighthearted, and once again reminded me that if we can’t laugh at ourselves then life is going to be pretty rough. The Information Diet should be standard reading material for every adult out there – most people I know could use a refresher on how to review their information that they get so worked up about.

Students as Designers!

This last design principle brings together all of the previous ones.

The Teachers as Designers Principle is exactly the Students as Designers Principle: It is our job to design a solution to a problem (how do we engage students in learning content), just as is it the students job to design a solution to the problem given to them.

The Ends Principle (PICKLE) talks to meaningful outcomes. How can we prepare our students to meet community needs? These community needs ARE the meaningful outcomes that our students will experience.

The Knowledge Principle is all about using tools. This related to each students’ abilities, and our job as teachers is to help them use known tools and discover new ones. We do this by scaffolding, and also guiding and fading once our help is not needed.

The Learning Principle is all about play. Engaging students can sometimes be the hardest part of teaching. We can’t force students to learn anything, no matter how much we talk and shove information at them. They have to want to for themselves.

The Means Principle talks about choosing the most useful technologies (through affordance analysis) to best help students accomplish a task. These technologies, if chosen appropriately, will help students be independent so they need less teacher intervention. A new technology will require teacher help, but the more the students explore and understand, the less they will need the teacher.

This leaves the Students as Designers principle! It’s very Inception-like. We are teachers who are now students learning how to be better teachers for our students. We get to have both roles!

Affordance Analysis

After reading the article, I thought I had a good grasp on what affordance analysis was. I wrote mine about Twitter (I think I meant Facebook or social media in general; I don’t even know my Twitter account name anymore). About the possibilities for communication and any pitfalls one might encounter.

An actual analysis requires two things:

1.   What is your learning goal?

2.   What are the available technologies that might help you reach that goal, and which one has the most pros and the least cons?

So I did half of an affordance analysis. I was thinking of how the high school band that I work with uses Twitter and Facebook to communicate dates, encourage each other (both student-to-student and director-to-student). During the big snowstorm last year, kids were posting pictures of themselves practicing in the snow in their pajamas – it sparked a huge competition of who could practice the most ridiculously. Goofy, but it got them practicing and having fun. It helps the kids relate to their director and their student leaders in a way other than “I am in charge, you have to do what I say” while still keeping the teacher’s personal life private.

The whole purpose of an affordance analysis is to pick the RIGHT technology for the job you are trying to accomplish. There’s an infinite number of possibilities out there. I wanted a way to have my students write out the counts to various rhythms. I looked at apps and games and worksheets, but in the end I decided just to give them whiteboards. It’s easy, doesn’t take a lot of time, doesn’t waste paper, they can work alone or with a buddy, doesn’t require all students to have internet access or a device at home, and the kids enjoy it! Picking the right technology doesn’t mean picking the most expensive or advanced piece of equipment – it means picking what will work best in your particular situation.

The Telegraph!

Especially after Vygotsky, The Victorian Internet was a welcome, fun book to read. I expected the book to talk about things like how the telegraph came to be, important people in its development, and how it progressed. What I didn’t expect was the humor, and how they talked about all sorts of other effects it had. We usually think about ‘effects of technology’ in terms of financial, political, geographical, etc, but not usually in terms of how it affected individuals. The heartwarming chapters on romantic relationships and friendships, but also the chapters on individuals becoming obsolete made me more emotionally invested in the development of the telegraph. For whatever reason I didn’t connect with the TV show as much.

It’s like Will mentioned in class – what are the chances that he would have met his wife if it weren’t for the technology of online dating? My brother and numerous friends met their significant others through the internet; I almost feel like that’s more normal than meeting someone throughout our daily lives.

But I like that last week we talked a lot about the individual. I feel like most of our classes have been talking about society as a whole, or the teaching community, but its individual teachers and students that we should always bring the focus back to.

Design Principal Four: Learning

Good learning designs engage students in “playful” activities at the edge of their knowledge and understanding using symbolic tools to develop and internalize meaningful thought.

I love this principal because out of the ones we’ve studied, it just makes the most sense on its own.

It goes back to our needs for society: we need people to do what society needs, but also people who have the will and ability to do so. I think the will is the more important part. Almost anyone can learn how to do anything. I could study to be a great historian and write lots of books, but I don’t have the will to make writing my career. I could learn to tie balloon animals and become a clown, but I am terrified of clowns so I have no will to become one.

The focus of the fourth design principal is play. At first I thought it meant we had to trick students into learning by disguising a lesson as a game, but that’s not really the case. We’re tricking teachers into creating lessons that are useful and actually make sense for what students are trying to learn.

My classes are loud and full of nonsense and mistakes, but it’s totally worth it to see the lightbulbs go off. Their joy, combined with my relief that yes we can play Hot Cross Buns and it sounds relatively recognizable, is why I love teaching. To them, they just learned something super cool that only 15 people in the school can do. To me, they did that but also learned how to control the muscles in their lips and coordinate that with moving their fingers and regulating their air. We do note-reading activities and breathing exercises, but alone those are boring and seemingly pointless. Only when you put it together with actually playing music that the kids understand WHY those skills are useful.