Where do posters come from? This poster came from one of my colleagues, who recommends Ken Bain's book about Great College Teachers

"I watched the dancing quotations video and really enjoyed it."

Ken Bain's Whatthe Best College Teachers Do has inspired one of my colleagues to send me the following note and quote from his book:

I watched the dancing quotations video and really enjoyed it. One of the quotes reminded me of a phrase from Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do (an amazing book--it will rekindle your love of teaching if you're ever down). This isn't an exact quote, but it's close: "A grade is the beginning of a dialogue between the student and I as we explore how well the student has understood the material." And then, I couldn't stand not having it right, so I went looking for it. Here's the paragraph:

...the syllabus summarized how the instructor and the students would understand the nature and progress of the learning. This was far more than an exposition of grading policies; it was the beginning of a dialogue in which both students and instructors explored how they would understand learning, so they could both make adjustments as they went and evaluate the nature of the learning by the end of the term.

 

Great stuff. 

Why not look at the book?

Link to the video  youtube.com/KpHagen1

By the way, KPHagen.com has an excellent video about how professors can work together to accelerate feedback to students

Here's one of the links to the dancing words.

A recipe for do-it-yourself learning...

This week's post is about FREE RANGE LEARNING. A delightful "recipe" for learning in a random, "follow your heart" way is described on Youtube.com.

"outside the mainstream"

DIY learning vs. evil caged learning?

highly structured education that takes place with "somewhat captive" participants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWdSz2nHQNY

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What does it take to become a successful learner...

(summary of her talk):

We need a recipe...

a) information (high quality ingredients)

b) we need a set of directions -- we need to reengage

c) we need to reflect (writing) ... blogging is a form of learning -- when we write about something, we eventually stumble on our words in a previous blog.

d) (space for reflection) white noise helps us reflect... we need space for brain to relax and -- procedure, tell your brain to focus on a problem...

e) spices to make food more enjoyable, so we need spice to learning by engaging in social activities... join the right social network or go to a conference -- standing appointment once a week -- learn a language by talking -- how about twitter in another language?

"when someone tweets about a new game design, i get excited about it and reconnected to my area of interest."

f) Get variety -- humans can provide new resources.

g) cook time: 10,000 hours... structure

h) we need a way to deal with decision fatigue... paralyzed by too many

A guy named Eddinghouse is important...

each reengagement helps you store the info in biological information...

i) Set a learning challenge that is hard to postpone

Set a presentation date... pressure to make sure I learn everything I can about a topic.

To learn Spanish, buy a non-refundable plane ticket to Spain 9 months from now.

What happens during a dissertation?

classes stop, assignments stop, tests stop. It's up to you to write about a topic of your own choosing.

40-70% of Ph.D. don't complete their dissertation within 7 years... (depending on the degree specialization)

good learners, but unable to progress with a free range project.

Have you learned how to learn on your own?

How do you eat an elephant?... one bite at a time.

We need to apply this recipe with students...

For example, a documentary had the following line: The US produces more trash than two Chinas or 15 Indias.

So I did a search and learned that the USA in 2009 produced 230 million tons of trash. Assume 310 million people ... how much trash per person?

In China, how much trash per person?

In India, how much trash per person?

None of these thoughts were explicitly given in the documentary. But we can then go farther... "the U.S. is xx% of the world's population, but the nation produces xxxx% of the world's trash."

It's all part of "learning the global skills" and integrating the subjects to analyze a situation.

Please send comments to VisualandActive@gmail.com