The Victorian Internet

I found The Victorian Internet much easier to read than Vygotsky, most likely because it was written in a much more conversational style, but also because I’m fascinated with history and the connections to what has happened in the past that have influenced how our lives are today. (Graham crackers started out of a vegetarian, fad diet, and Oneida silverware started out of a Perfectionist communal society!). Everything has consequences, some foreseen, but more often, not predictable. Who would have considered that the rise of printed material would lead to capitalists, more centralized governments, and a shift in how we solve logic and reasoning questions. Our memory strategies have changed dramatically. The telegraph led to worldwide news spreading instantly, and the pace of business increasing dramatically. Communication that used to take 2-4 weeks was now able to be shared instantly, so orders and messages had no "wait time." I doubt Mr. Morse expected all of these developments, which led to the “speaking telegraph,” which has led to so many more developments. I doubt the telegraph inventors had any of these things in mind when they created their telegraph key.

I am constantly reminded of how we adapt our lives to new technologies every day. Like the people in the mid 1800s who saw the beginning of telegraphy as a useless fad, there have been certain trends in technology (particularly apps, but also the “Selfie stick” – we are that narcissistic…) that I first heard described and didn’t consider legitimate. However, some are still around and even quite popular, despite some frivolous features. This most likely shows my age, but I recognize I need to see things from a different perspective to keep on top of what my students will need. They will most likely have jobs that don’t even exist now, but they will need to skills to adapt, learn, and make decisions that we can’t even consider now. (Another argument for the PICKLE, huh??) One down-side of the instantaneous nature of communication is the perception that we don't have "think-time" to weigh our options before we respond. In the day and age of tweets and insta-communication, a response seems to be expected immediately.

In practice, I know I need to help my students be comfortable working with new technology and be willing to play with it to learn how it works and what it can do for them. The tools they will use most likely doesn’t exist yet, but they need to have strategies to use whatever tools they encounter. (Perhaps my students will CREATE the new tools when they see a need!) I need to make sure they have communication skills to be able to express their positions and concerns and be able to represent themselves accurately. They need to be willing to explore and experiment, but they also need perseverance. They must also have the ethical decision-making skills to stop and think before making choices. Everything we do and say has consequences. The new technologies we create have consequences, too.

Vygotsky and the Learning Principle

Ahhhh, Vygotsky… We tackled it! (Thanks for giving us 2 weeks to work through this book, Dr. Norton!) As Jasmine pointed out in her reflection from last week, all of our brains together are better than any of ours alone. Go team! I remember the Zone of Proximal Development from undergrad psychology courses, and it makes a lot of sense educationally. If a brain isn’t primed and ready to learn, it will not learn, but if a brain has reached readiness, with background knowledge ready to support learning, then learning will take place with modeling, coaching, and fading.

I think most of us understand that students of all ages learn through play – play is serious business! Children and adults both figure things out as we work through them, or play with them. We discover the rules of how things work by playing with them. Finally, our discussion about internalization made me feel better about the fact that when I’m trying to master or conquer something new, I will sometimes “talk myself through it” until it becomes natural, or internalized. We do it with language, which Vygotsky classified as symbols and tools. I am watching my daughter’s 5-year-old mind expand exponentially with learning how to read, learning her letters and sounds, learning addition and numbers… Her mind is so busy with learning, but she is literally playing with these tools, symbols, and concepts. I need to get more Post-It notes in my house… We have letters, words, and addition problems posted everywhere, including on me!

As for how it could impact my practice, I need to figure out a way to bring students to the edge of readiness, then allow them to figure out concepts. I see how this could be easy with the scientific method. Science, which is easier to make “hands-on,” seems easier to do this with. In social studies, some of the 3^rd grade concepts could work easier than others, though I’m still struggling to figure out how to S-P-D the West African Kingdom of Mali. Is there a “Big Idea” we really pull out of this unit?? In math, if I could get my classroom up and running as a Math Workshop model, I could differentiate for the various levels of readiness I have going on in there.

As we discussed in class, we will get better at being able to work through the S-P-D with practice, but I really like the idea of working together with the other 3^rd grade teachers (since there are 3 of us in here!) to work through the process together. This process is a long one right now, laboring to figure out the S-P-D, then use the AeCTS, then finally use the ABCS. However, I can definitely see how going through this process would be a benefit to my students and their quality of learning and engagement.
 

The Knowledge Principle

The “Situated Cognition” was indeed a dense article. Priscilla was not joking when she warned us!

The word that kept popping into my head as I read was “context.” Everything was pointing to how context and connectedness makes learning more purposeful. Knowledge as a tool to learn new things is definitely a new way of thinking about education for me. I think we’ve always kind of thought of knowledge as a tool for solving problems, but we often look at the knowledge as the ends - our goal - and not necessarily as a tool.

I think I can see how I can apply the ABCS of activity to my lessons on the ancient civilizations with some design work. The AeCTS article gave us a good outline of how to use knowledge as a learning tool. The texting with Don followed this pretty closely, with Priscilla explaining her “I will email Don tonight” is the exit experience or strategy, so we have a clear ending of this experience. I appreciated the debrief from that activity, where we looked at different Structures, Processes, and Discourses of several different topics we teach in elementary school in Virginia. I think working together to figure some of these out would be awesome. Anyone else? It’d be a good place to start thinking of designs for our future lessons.

I think that I need to continue processing enculturation as a way to teach in my classroom. I understand that being exposed to the entire context of a concept helps learners see the “why I’m learning this,” but how does it work in practical use in an elementary classroom? When I’m teaching ancient Greece contributions, how do I include the idea of enculturation? I could take the position of an anthropologist and/or archaeologist while studying the contributions of the ancient civilizations. During these units, I often show a video on Safari Montage of a man playing this role…  I can clearly see how some of the major contributions from Greece and Rome tie into our language and US Government, so finding clear contributions and “big ideas” and generalizable knowledge for those two is relatively easy. However, I’ll have to work a little harder when we add in teaching Ancient China and Egypt next year.  Off to tackle Vygotsky!