The day I learned...

[caption id="attachment_33" align="alignright" width="321"] An example of an analogue medium[/caption]

One of my most memorable learning experiences happened during the year I worked as a journalist on a radical newspaper. I had reported in a few boring and literal sentences a city council meeting at which subsidies for kids’ clothing were cut. The kindly editor added a preliminary sentence: “Conservative Councillors would rather see children in rags than help striking miners”. Since that day, I have approached writing differently and purposefully wielded a blue pencil when students have submitted lacklustre opening sentences.

"What are the moments in your PK-12 education that were transformative, or had the most lasting impact on you?"

This question, posed by Alex Hernandez, was what took me back to my reporting days. He calls them 'signature learning experiences' and wonders: "what might a school look like if it were comprised largely of signature experiences?". My understanding of the exceptional nature of SLEs suggests that it is not an attainable goal.

But it resonates with a belief about education I have which sets the bar a little lower. My idea seems too simple to call a philosophy or theory. It is this: We learn when the experience is memorable. I can picture the time the construction of the Arabic word for 'library' was explained to me; Salvador Dali's obsession with ants; how James Clerk Maxwell derived the speed of light; an elusive chord in an Iggy Pop song. Each time, there was a sense of joy at making connections which has been transmitted to the present day.

[caption id="attachment_38" align="aligncenter" width="420"] Four things I'll never forget.Sources: ants, wave, iggy[/caption]

 

As I say, this seems a very simple thing, almost tautological: you learn when you remember the experience. In this view, it is not the 'knowledge' which is memorable, but the process of acquiring it. Crucially, we are talking about an interaction between people. So the experience is subjective and occurs within the mind of the learner inspired by the teacher (a teacher in the broadest sense: in one of my examples it was a good friend; in another, a YouTuber). And we cannot define what types of lesson will spark the tinder; any experience: an inquiry-based project; a skilfully scaffolded explanation; a telling mnemonic might do the job.

So my job as a teacher is to organise my students' learning experiences so that they are most likely to remember them. This is more than 'making learning fun' or 'easy', rather it is about interest, engagement, relevance, challenge. It can even be "painful" (Thomas and Brown). Making it memorable is what I think we should do. How is the next question, but this post would become too long.

[caption id="attachment_40" align="alignright" width="201"] Can't wait to read this[/caption]

In A New Culture of Learning, Thomas and Brown suggest that traditional schools "are ill equipped to deal with a world of constant change" and "treat education like a machine". The 'New Culture' can be seen as "a one room school house that scales to a global world with an almost unlimited set of resources". They recognise, however, that "the roots of modern education in the West have their start in the Socratic method, which was all about questions and seldom about answers". So it's not that we must do new things we've never done before. We already know what good learning looks like, because everyone recognises the feeling of revelation when it happens to them. But we seem to lose sight of that knowledge very easily when the grading tail wags the learning dog.

In addition to the traditional utensils of the classroom such as discussion, explanation and demonstration, I now also have technology in my arsenal. The question I frequently address these days is: How can technology, along with everything else, assist me in making the learning experience memorable? I am not short of opportunities, since:

“there are many ideas and topics that have always been important but were left out of traditional school curricula because they were too difficult to teach and learn with only paper, pencil, books, and blackboard. Some of these ideas are now accessible through creative use of new digital technologies.” (Resnick in Krueger).

[caption id="attachment_39" align="alignleft" width="200"] That moment when it sticks[/caption]

Using the old media of typewriters and notepads, I learned an important lesson about engaging an audience. Now, composing on a blogging platform, I have many more means at my disposal to make the message more compelling.

Surely it should be the same in the classroom.