Fun & Exciting Stuff

Our recent home building project at school made the paper and got some good press. Check it out for another perspective on the whole sh-bang.

Many thanks to Jacquie for pointing this out to me. It has led to a great deal of insight into how kids who have trouble should study.

The system I use for learning I’m going to call holistic learning. But in order to fully appreciate what holistic learning is, you need to take a look at it’s opposite – compartmentalized learning. …

People who learn through compartments, try to organize their mind like a filing cabinet. Learn a new chemical equation, these people will try to file that information. Hopefully they will file it near some other chemical equations so that they will stumble upon it when they need to on the exam. Compartmentalized learners make distinct file drawers for science, math, history and language arts. Placing all the things they know into little boxes.

Holistic learning takes an opposite approach. Learning holistically is not done by trying to remember information by using repetition and force. Holistic learners instead organize their minds like spider webs. Every piece of information is a single point. That point is then consciously related to tons of other points on the web. There are no boxes with this form of learning. Science becomes literature which becomes economics. Subject distinctions may help when going to class, but a holistic learner never sees things in a box.

I like to think I learn/remember using both styles. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do some of the amazing accomplishments of this student.

Here are a few suggestions for how you can better interlink your web:

1) Ask Questions …
2) Visualize and Diagram …
3) Use Metaphors …
4) Feel It …
5) When in Doubt, Link or Peg It …
Dirt Roads and Superhighways

An effective web should heavily interlink between ideas of a similar subject, but it should also have links that extend between completely different ideas. I like to think of these two approaches like comparing dirt roads and superhighways. You need lots of cheap dirt roads to interconnect closely related areas and a few superhighways to connect distant cities.

When I was learning history I would make dirt roads connecting the aspects of one particular time period and culture to itself. Linking the artistic achievements of the Song Dynasty with their political situation. But I would also make highways and superhighways. I would compare Song China to India and to the politics in the United States.

Some people build a lot of dirt roads but forget the highways. They understand things well within a subject, but they can’t relate that subject outside of the classroom. Hamlet is one of my favorite literary works because in the classroom where I learned it, our teacher went to great lengths to help build superhighways. We would discuss how aspects of Hamlet related to our own life, politics and completely different areas. As a result I remember more from that play than almost any other piece of literature I studied.

I was someone who saw the superhighways in History/English, but had a lot of difficulty seeing it (or feeling it, in this case) Math and Sciences. Now, how do we teach this?

I know this is the _least_ web 2.0 topic, but I was thinking about it, so I thought I’d ask.
As we are coming down the home stretch here in NY state, we have the dreaded Regents exam here, it got me wondering what other states and countries do as a final exam. Here are 2 links to ours:

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/regentsexams.htm

http://regentsprep.org/

There’s an oil shock going on. It started April 30, 2007. The world oil supply is falling short of demand – by 1.5% at first, but it’s expected to increase to 3% or more throughout 2007.This is a real-life simulation that uses all sorts of Web 2.0 resources.

World Without Oil.

I think feed readers are underrated. The above showed up in my Google Reader ™ and I think it is a great idea for a Web 2.0 project that will have both a real world impact and demonstrate new uses of technology. This would be a great simulation for school. Here is a great example of how they are using new technology tools to get the message out there.

What is going on here?

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an alternate reality event, a serious game for the public good.

It invites everyone to help simulate a global oil shock. People participate by contributing original online stories, created as though the oil shock were really happening.

The game’s masters rank the participants (“players”) according to their contributions to our realistic portrayal of the oil shock. The game also places value on player-created communities, collaborative stories, and collective efforts.

Each contribution helps the game arrive at a larger truth. No team of experts knows better than a given individual what effect an oil shock would have upon that individual’s life, or what action he or she will take to cope. Personal reactions to our simulated oil shock, placed in context with many other points of view, will help us all realize what’s at stake in our oil-fired culture.

We are in the middle of the Cold War unit and we are talking about the Korean War (1950-1953) today. Another teacher recommended that I show an episode of M.A.S.H. The other teacher had a copy of some episodes and recommended one to me. So, I watched the episode and it was a little slow in parts and wasn’t like modern TV obviously and I felt it would bore them somewhat.

When I told the kids in first period what we were watching and why we were watching it, they erupted like it was the latest blockbuster straight from the studio.

“Someone is putting me on.” said I.

But it happened again and again throughout the day. They loved MASH. Their parents made them watch it,  they used to watch it as little kids. The whole nine yards. It was a very surreal experience for me. Here is this group that loves their cellphones and probably doesn’t watch much TV, yet they love this 70’s TV show from a grainy videotape. Very strange.