Live and Learn

Ken Robinson has said that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

In today’s Corner Office interview in the Business Section of The New York Times, Jeffrey Katzenberg discusses how his leadership style has blossomed over the years. He introduces two equations that go hand-in-hand with Robinson’s statement.

original + unique = risky

risky = some failure

His point is that if you want to come up with something (in his case, film ideas) different from what everyone else is coming up with, then you have to be prepared to take a risk. And if you are prepared to take a risk, you have to accept that there will be a certain number of failures.

Hmm, isn’t that a big component of life learning?

As part of a series on “Thoughts on Teaching” for Michigan State University’s Teaching Assistant Programs, an author (article unsigned)  has written about taking risks in the classroom. The author discusses risk taking from the perspective of the teacher, and provides some tips about how to take risks with lecturing (don’t lecture, try another approach), discussion (use the group), and assessment (gather it and respond to it). The author mentions Dr Alice Dreger’s comments given at a MSU Seminar on College Teaching.

According to the author, “the ‘heart’ of Dreger’s risk-taking philosophy is the belief that shared success and failures create trust between teachers and students.”

Hmm, model risk taking and turn the teaching process into a two-way learning process. I like the sound of that!

The Whole Brain Catalog

Think of your local Library catalog. Think of a catalog of your favorite sports gear. Think of the old Sears Roebuck Catalog. Now try to imagine a catalog of the whole brain. Scientists at the University of California at San Diego have embarked on the creation of the Whole Brain Catalog, “a client-server platform that provides rich 3-D views for researchers to zoom in, out, and around structures deep in a multi-scale spatial framework of the mouse brain.”

The online support for the Catalog is rich with documentation, images and background information. The Catalog is open-source and you can download it here.

Its’ that time again…

It’s that time again – November is coming, and with it the annual Learning & the Brain conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The theme of this fall conference is Modern Brains: Enhancing Student Memory & Performance in this Distracted, Digital Age.


Given that I have been teaching about computers for 28 years, and given my interest in the brain and learning, I am pumped to see them come together, and most curious to hear what neuroscientists, doctors and educators will be sharing in terms of research and strategies. I am also excited to be introducing three of the speakers on Saturday afternoon. Perhaps this is the start of a trend!

Brainy Henry Markram!

I have just watched this fascinating TED Talk: Henry Markram builds a brain in a supercomputer. (The link goes to a high definition version of his talk.)

Markram is the director of a project that runs on high intensity IBM computers and is called Blue Brain. (Hmm, does the Blue refer to  IBM’s also being known as Big Blue?”) Blue Brain is “a supercomputing project that can model components of the mammalian brain to precise cellular detail – and simulate their activity in 3D.” The graphics, let alone the math and science, are incredibly striking. And after listening to Markram, I couldn’t help but think of a tenth grader at my school who recently attended the Singularity Summit that took place in New York City over the weekend of October 3-4.

The Singularity represents an “event horizon” in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future may cease to give reliable answers, following the creation of strong AI [Artificial Intelligence] or the enhancement of human intelligence.

You can read about the Blue Brain Project, also described as “the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.” Or check out this SEED article by Jonah Lehrer, Can A Thinking, Remembering, Decision-Making, Biologically Accurate Brain Be Built From A Supercomputer?

What reaction do you have to this possibility? To the stunningly vibrant images?

Opening Faculty Meetings: The Simulations

Embracing Diversity in Learning and Teaching

SIMULATIONS
The purpose of the simulations was to get everyone actively engaged in experiencing what it is like to have a learning issue where something that is normally taken for granted does not function as expected. The simulations also helped get everyone in gear for the workshops that would follow. There were four simulations in total, and each one is listed and explained below.

Simulation 1
A short story is going to be read aloud to you and you will then be asked to respond to some questions about the story. The story will also be displayed on the screen.

Once upon a time, in a country called Clarita, there lived a gadious bemple named Chup. Chup lasied Mormie and together they goppered and morted throughout the dotter of Clarita. Clarita was a rablited fott. From every wesson and vaxter, Chup and Mormie could hetter numally. It was a duffours webbe!

• In what country did Chup live?
• Who lasied Mormie?
• What did they do together, and where did they do it?
• What was Clarita?
• What kind of webbe was it?
• What type of genre is this?

Okay, now for the second set of questions.

• Describe the image of a “gadious bemple.”
• What does the author suggest when she says “Clarita was a rablited fott?”
• What do the verbs “goppered” and “morted” suggest about the view of life shared by Chup and Mormie?
• Explain where the author might be leading us when she writes it was a “duffours webbe.”

This simulation reflects the problems of a student with poor vocabulary. They may be dyslexic, have attention issues, be bilingual or have language comprehension weaknesses. As teachers we can be fooled because we feel that they can answer some questions but just don’t seem to get it when we ask more higher level questions. We then make the assumption that they aren’t very bright and perhaps shouldn’t be in our school–when in reality, they need some intensive work in vocabulary development and support for their reading. These same students may be able to memorize vocabulary for tests but not hold on and inculcate it into their repertoires.

—–

Simulation 2
Please use your paper and pencil to do either A or B as described on the screen. It is your choice which you do, but you MUST use your NON-DOMINANT hand for writing.

(A) Write 3 sentences about your summer. As you write, make the following letter replacements:

every /a/ becomes /n/
every /t/ becomes /b/
every /i/ becomes /h/

(B) Or, solve this problem on paper, and reverse every number so that you are writing its mirror image:

382 x 546 = ?

The reason this is frustrating is that you are not getting the kinesthetic feedback to and from the brain in your non-dominant hand. The reversal of numbers or letter substitutions simulates the lack of automaticity that the writers with graphomotor issues have. It takes over a thousand motor movements to operate a pen or pencil and only two to use a keyboard. And with a keyboard there is no issue with remembering how letters and numbers are shaped.

—–

Simulation 3
We are going to put your working memory through the mill. Pay close attention to the next set of directions because you cannot write them down. You must rely on your working memory to carry out the instructions. We all have long term and short term memory, and we also have working memory.

Working memory is the memory we have for holding on to information while we are using it, such as holding a phone number in your mind while dialing it. Working memory plays a critical role in school, particularly in the areas of written expression and multi-step math problems. Now we are going to do a math activity.

Put your pencils down; this is mental math!

• Choose any 3 digit number whose ones and hundreds digits are different.
• Reverse the order of the numbers.
• Subtract the smaller number from the larger one.
• The result will always have 9 as the tens digit. The other two digits will always add up to 9.
• Now reverse the digits of the result.
• Now add that number to the one before it.
• The final number will always be 1089.

—–

Simulation 4
This last simulation also requires you pay close attention and listen carefully.

Visit the PBS site Misunderstood Minds and locate the link for Auditory Activity, then click try it just below Listening to Directions. Follow the directions on the window that opens.

The fact that the teacher’s voice became muted with the background noise is a very common situation for those with either auditory processing or auditory attention issues. They cannot distinguish the salient voice and focus in on it. These students usually tire easily as they struggle to hear all day long. They benefit from Fm systems and fortunately for us, carpeted, small classrooms.

—–

EXIT CARDS
At the conclusion of each workshop, participants were asked to respond to three prompts on an index card. All of the exit cards for all of the workshops, including the book and movie discussion, were collected and collated into a Google Doc where they were organized by workshop. There emerged several themes which will serve as the topics for our follow-up sessions during the Fall.

The Exit Card prompts:

• List an Ah-ha moment that you had.
• List one question that did not get answered.
• List one topic about which you would like to know more.

Opening Faculty Meetings: Intro to Simulations

Embracing Diversity in Learning and Teaching

For this second day of opening faculty meetings we wanted to set the tone for what would follow, which was two sets of 45 minute workshops. Keeping in mind that just about everyone was still in a summer mindset, gradually making the transition from summer mode to a fixed schedule, with far less time for being active, and we knew what we had to do. Engagement was the name of the game!

As folks entered the auditorium they were greeted with upbeat music and a continuously looping slide show displaying some 40 people – many of them well known, including students at our school – who have learning differences. We could detect definite “I didn’t know…” comments in response to seeing some of the better known faces on the screen.

Below are our introductory remarks. I invite you to pick up a pencil and piece of paper, and join along!
———

INTRODUCTION TO THE SIMULATIONS

Good morning and Welcome back!

You will now need a piece of paper and a pencil. If you do not have one, please raise a hand.

We are going to take a moment and do a little sketching. Please turn to look at a colleague sitting next to you. You will have 30 seconds to draw each other. Begin now! [If you click the image of the person's face, you will be taken to Tim Brown's TED Talk on creativity and play, from where the drawing idea was taken.]

[30 seconds later…] Okay, pencils down! Hear that laughter? That is the sound of serotonin and dopamine being released in your brains, two of the “feel good” neurotransmitters, which are generated in your affective network and prime you to pay attention. You remember those three neural networks we talked about yesterday – the recognition or sensory network, the affective aka emotional network, and the strategic network, the all-important executive functioning area of your brain that some say is more important than IQ.

By the way, please hold on to the paper and pencil, as you will be using them again.

As a community we read Kristi’s book this summer, and it was part of our inspiration for yesterday’s and today’s activities. As Candy and I met regularly with Kristi throughout the last school year, we couldn’t help but think about the variety of learners amongst us, both the students AND the adults.

Robert Fulghum, the very author who wrote “All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, summed it up quite nicely when he wrote the following [which comes from It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It]:

image comes from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight TED Talk

[the brain] I have one of these things between my ears. It is made up entirely of raw meat at the moment. It is fueled by yesterday’s baloney sandwich, potato chips, and chocolate milk. And everything I am doing at the moment-everything I have ever done or will do-passes through this lump. I made it; I own it. And it is the most mysterious thing on earth. Now I can kind of understand the mechanical work of the brain – stimulating breathing, moving blood, directing protein traffic. It’s all about chemistry and electricity. A motor. I know about motors.

But this three-pound raw-meat motor also contains all the limericks I know, a recipe for how to cook a turkey, the remembered smell of my junior high locker room, all my sorrows, the ability to double clutch a pickup truck, the face of my wife when she was young, the formulas for E=MC squared, and A2 + B2 = C2, the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the sound of the first cry of my firstborn son, the cure for hiccups, the words to the fight song of St. Olaf’s College, fifty years worth of dreams, how to tie my shoes, the taste of cod-liver oil, an image of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and a working understanding of the Dewey Decimal System. It’s all there in the MEAT.

One cubic centimeter of brain contains ten billion bits of information and it processes five thousand bits a second. And somehow it evolved over a zillion years from a molten ball of rock, Earth. ….The Mystery of Mysteries is present and it includes us.

The single most powerful statement to come out of brain research in the last 25 years is this: We are as different from one another on the inside of our heads as we appear to be different from one another on the outside of our heads.

Look around and see the infinite variety of human heads – skin, hair, age, ethnic characteristics, size, color and shape. And know that on the inside such differences are even greater – what we know, how we learn, how we process information, what we remember and forget, our strategies for functioning and coping.

Add to that the understanding that the “world out there” is as much a projection from inside our heads as it is a perception, and pretty soon you are up against the realization that it is a miracle that we communicate at all.

It is almost unbelievable that we are dealing with the same reality. We operate on a kind of loose consensus about existence, at best.

From a practical point of view, day by day, this kind of information makes me a little more patient with the people I live with. I am less inclined to protest “Why don’t you see it the way I do?” and more inclined to say “You see it that way? Holy cow, how amazing!”

Our goal for this morning is for all of us to look deeply into the learning process for our own sake and for the sake of the people with whom we work. As learners, we are all on a continuum, intelligence is not fixed. Science has proved that intelligence is incremental and the more you learn beyond your formal schooling, the healthier your brain will be later in life. Armed with this understanding, our affective networks become willing partners in the learning process. Carol Dweck is going to expand upon this.

Each of us has strengths and struggles that are unique to ourselves. When we acknowledge that in ourselves and others, we can move forward to collaboratively help each other be the best that we can be. We are going to take a few minutes now and do some simulations to get us thinking about a few types of struggles that learners – be they kids OR adults – can have.

[stay tuned for the simulations in the upcoming posts]

Character Study

I co-teach Directing for Film, a class that focuses on film production –  from writing and casting original scripts, to directing, filming and editing movies based upon the scripts. This year we are in a unique position of having not only our lead teacher and me, but also a creative intern who majored in film, and an upper school senior whose passion is to write original scripts and make movies from them; he is doing an independent study by helping to teach and assist in our class.

For our opening class, Alice (intern) set the tone for the year with an opening activity of writing a character study: What’s in your character’s pocket? Standing before the class, she began to paint a picture of a character as she slowly took objects out of her very deep skirt pockets and placed them on the table in front of us all. From the peckle of ten items, she then asked us to choose four objects that would be found in our character’s pockets. Ponder that, and write about our character. The adults also took part in this activity, and purely for the fun of it I present my character study.

————

He found himself leaning against a column in the book store. Tall, lean, kind of relaxed looking, staring off into space as if he were contemplating something of great interest. He had just purchased two books on sustainable architecture using the cash in his pocket, but he wasn’t thinking about his new books, the receipt for which he had stashed in a pants pocket, or about the book store.

When he reached into his right pocket to make the payment, he had felt a ring, and it was on this ring that his thoughts were now focused. His bag of books was sitting on the floor, nestled between his feet, and his hands were fiddling with a rubber band, trying to contort it into a form of cat’s cradle. He always seemed to think more clearly when his hands were occupied; perhaps that why he liked building enough to pursue it – at least for now – as a profession.

Where did the ring come from? He hadn’t seen it before, and certainly never noticed it’s arrival in his pocket. Had someone dropped it in there accidentally? Did it fit any of his fingers? He withdrew his fingers from the cat’s cradle and slipped the rubber band over his left hand, settling it onto his wrist. The fingers of his right hand reached back into his right pocket and went on a searching excursion, feeling around in the deep recess of material, passing over the dollar bills and coins until his middle finger alighted upon something smooth and round. He closed his hand around the ring and lifted it out into the open air.

Holding it up before his eyes for closer examination, he noticed the wine colored ring was patterned with a flower and a bird. Nothing about this ring was jogging his memory. It could have come from anywhere – from someone at the Cob Company, from one of the teenagers he mentors at the local penitentiary, from the children of his house mates. The ring might not be jogging his memory, but it was certainly nudging his curiosity.

Opening Faculty Meetings: Day 2

Embracing Diversity in Learning and Teaching

The morning after the movie. The second day of full faculty and staff meetings. We were raring to go!

THE PROGRAM – part two

Simulations
The morning’s program began with a thirty minute participatory introduction to the workshops that would follow. Candy and I led a series of simulations designed to get people thinking about what it is like to have a learning difference. All of these simulations will be described in my next post.

Workshops
Following the simulations were two sets of 45 minute workshops designed to get people’s neurons firing. All of the workshops adhered to the same sequence:

• introduction of participants and facilitators (of which there were two or three for each workshop)
• stimulation of the Recognition network (typically the showing of a 3-7 minute video)
• tapping into the Affective network (some type of discussion or brainstorm)
• engagement of the Strategic network (small group activity that included movement)
• summation
• filling out of Exit Cards

The workshops were varied, yet the content overlapped and if we drew a Venn diagram it would have a very dense middle!

The first set of workshops:

• How multitasking impacts functionality
• Designing lessons with the brain in mind
• Does gender matter? A look at gender differences and their impact in the classroom
• The Mind/Body Connection – helping students with motivation, attention & executive function
• How to design lessons for a variety of learners
• Introduction to xylophone playing
• summer reading/movie discussion group

and the second set of workshops:

• Culture in the Classroom
• Making Math accessible for all learners & reducing math phobia
• Assessments that accurately measure what students know
• Stress and Learning – there is a relationship!
• Drawing: Testing and Trusting Yourself…it’s about the journey
• Acappella singing
• summer reading/movie discussion group

At the conclusion of each session participants were asked to fill out Exit Cards (index cards) in response to these prompts:

1. List an Ah-ha moment that you had.
2. List one question that did not get answered.
3. List one topic about which you would like to know more.

Student Panel
The morning wrapped up with a Student Panel moderated by the author of our summer reading book. Each student responded (including the moderator) to several questions designed to inform faculty about what it is like to be a student with a learning difference. The panel finished the morning with time for faculty questions.

Plans for Follow-Up
We have since entered all of the information from the Exit Cards into a Google Doc and will use this as the basis for our follow-up sessions in October, which just happens to be Learning Disabilities Awareness Month in the United States and also in Canada! Below are two of the students from the panel (that’s the moderator in white), flanked by Candy on the right and me on the left.

Opening Faculty Meetings

Embracing Diversity in Learning and Teaching

THE BRAINSTORM
In the last weeks of May, the MS Learning Specialist and I had a brainstorm. We had been part of an eleventh grader’s independent study project – me as the advisor and Candy as the content specialist –and had just received copies of the end result of the student’s project: a guide book for students (and also teachers) about how to make it through an independent school as a student with a learning difference. Our brainstorm was that every teacher in our school should read the book, and while we were at it, how about offering a series of workshops that would open faculty eyes to the diversity of teaching and learning. Within a day, using Google Docs, we had generated a proposal.

THE GENESIS
It has long been a dream of mine to organize professional development for faculty that provided opportunity to think about learning and teaching while also engaging in activities that were outside of the typical academic realm. Many years ago, an art teacher, upon hearing this description, provided the perfect slogan for my idea: Synapse Sensations. Keeping in mind that last year my school focused on a year long theme of diversity, including the diversity of how people learn, and you will understand why we first brought our proposal to the Director of Diversity, who encouraged us to present the proposal to the next level of adminstrators. And just what was our proposal? To have one day of opening faculty meetings be devoted to workshops covering a multitude of topics related to teaching and learning. We included an opening day movie to set the tone, and a closing Student Panel session to wrap up the activities.

With the Director of Diversity’s accompaniment, it was an easy next step to the Assistant Headmaster, who took it to the next level and returned with approval for our proposal. With just days to go before folks would disperse for the summer, we asked 25 faculty if they would be willing to co-facilitate various workshops. All 25 said yes, and there began a summer of small study groups based around each workshop.

THE PROGRAM – part one
On Wednesday afternoon, September 2, our full faculty and staff watched the documentary A Touch of Greatness. This movie covers a decade in the teaching career of Albert Cullum. Teaching in the 1950s and early 1960s at an elementary school just a few miles from our school, Cullum was a practitioner of experiential education. You can read more about him and the film on this PBS site. By the way, it turned out that one faculty member had known Cullum, and another had Cullum as her fifth grade teacher!

While we ad libbed a bit, what follows are our introductory comments along with the accompanying images we displayed.

——————

Welcome back from summer vacation!

Tomorrow morning we will explore the diversity of learning and teaching by participating in workshops and hearing from some students. If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for two workshops on the sheets in the PAC Lobby. And here’s a short-term memory test: tomorrow morning please bring with you to the PAC a sheet of paper and something to write with. Thanks!

The movie you are about to see is about one man who taught in our community during the 50s and 60s. We are often told that what we remember about our teachers tends to be not what they taught us, but how they treated us. However, that’s not the complete story. If a teacher was really great, you remember how they treated you and also recall how competent they made you feel in their class.

We are fortunate today to be teaching at a time when there has been an explosion of research into the science of how we learn. Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are producing a plethora of information and studies from which we can draw. Like any new information, we need to be responsible consumers, but this new information has much to offer in terms of making the teaching environment more productive, efficient and conducive to learning. In 1996, Linda Darling-Hammond was quoted in a Newsweek article making the statement that: Our school system was invented in the 1880s and little has changed. Can you imagine if the medical profession ran this way?

So much of what we are doing in this program is based on current understandings of how the brain learns.

Everything we are going to do this afternoon and tomorrow morning will tap into the three major Neural networks of your brain. David Rose, one of the architects of Universal Design for Learning at Harvard, describes these as the recognition, affective and strategic networks. [images come from Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning]

The recognition network uses attention and all five senses to take in new information, which is exactly what you are all doing now.

The affective network taps into your emotional brain, which facilitates the storage and recall of information. In fact, the structures in your mid-brain (the hippocampus, amygdala and thalamus) are storage centers for memory. All human emotions are processed in this area of the brain and effected by neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and norepeniphrine.

This limbic system is the chemistry and drama department of your brain. No learning can take place without the use and consent of the affective network because your brain is only interested in what is relevant to the survival and well-being of its own organism.

The last network is the strategic one. If the affective network has decided the information is relevant, the strategic network decides what to do with it.

Al Cullum, the teacher in the documentary you are about to see, was a master of knowing the benefits of tapping into the affective network to create a more rigorous, accessible and engaging curriculum. We are not endorsing this teacher or his style as the one way to teach, but rather as a model for thinking about different approaches to teaching. We find this movie inspiring; some of you may find it provocative. Either way, this documentary, we are sure, will tap your affective network.

Back to School

Technically, it is still summer. The weather seems to be a little bit ahead of the solstice switch, though, with open-windowed evenings cool enough for down comforters. I find this time of year energizing, perhaps due to the weather but also because my body rhythms are so tied in to the school calendar. It’s September; we start again. And one way to start is by looking back to the end of the last school year.

Back in early June, Sir Ken Robinson gave the commencement talk at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). His name has appeared here enough times that it almost feels like he’s been a guest blogger. Robinson was invited to talk at RISD by John Maeda, RISD’s President. Maeda gave a TED Talk back in December, 2008, and you can watch it below. It’s been many years since I’ve been in college, so perhaps Maeda’s page on the RISD site is not that unusual for a college president, but it sure impressed me.