Creating Significant Learning Environments
At a proposed price of $150 this could be the start of the heated competition in the ebook reader space. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until the end of 2009 to see the device and the price point. Looking forward to seeing how this whole ebook market evolves.
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The folks at xplane.com have updated Karl Fisch’s original Did You Know. 2.0.
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Just in case you haven’t see the original or want to see just how much has changed in the last 2 years.
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Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University the article Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance with the following statement:
The most significant problem with education today is the problem of significance itself. Students – our most important critics – are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education.
Wesch argues that the way to judge what is significant in a classroom is to look to the questions that students are asking. For example, if the following type of questions are being asked:
What do we need to know for the test?
How long does this paper need to be?
Is attendance mandatory?
then it should be clear that assessment and not learning is what is significant. In contrast to these questions Wesch suggests that good or even great questions are those that force students to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions and see their own underlying biases–but we seldom get these types of questions.
Significance isn’t just a problem with students but with the educators and with the system as a whole. The statement “some students are just not cut out for school” is an often-heard lament that reflects just how out of touch with our learners our system is. If you exchange the term “learning” for “school” you get the statement, “some students are just not cut out for learning” which is clearly wrong. Wesch states that learning is the hallmark of humanity and it is learning is part of what makes us human.
Wesch points to anti-teaching and the grand narrative of saving the earth as just two ways that significance can be brought back into learning–but to fully understand these points a good read of the article is required.
Read the full article – Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance
Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University is best known for his poignant YouTube videos Web 2.0 The Machine Us/ing Us and more recently A Vision of Students Today. His EDUCAUSE keynote presentation, Human Futures for Technology and Education provides a deeper explanation of the videos and also identifies the key to his message. In this presentation Wesch explains how he and his students came to create the video of A Vision of Students Today and how he views significance as one of the major problems we face in Education today. Wesch makes the argument that what is significant for students not what is significant in the average college classroom.
The way to judge what is significant in a classroom is to look to the questions that students are asking. For example, if the following type of questions are being asked:
Will this be on the exam?
How many pages do I need to write?
Should we write this down?
then it should be clear that assessment and not learning is what is significant.
In the Vision video Wesch’s students ask the question: If these walls could talk would they say? In response to this question Wesch argues that the message the walls (educators) are sending is:
To learn is to ACQUIRE information
- Information is scarce and hard to find
- Trust authority for good information
- Authorized information is beyond discussion
- Obey Authority
- Follow along
What these wall DO NOT say, but should is:
To learn is to Discuss, Challenge, Critique, and Create information
Wesch argues that to learn is to create significance–one creates significance through meaningful connections. The fundamental question that Wesch challenges us to answer is:
How can we create students who can create meaningful connections?
He points to anthropological truisms: There is no connection without meaning and there is no meaning without connection to support his position.
Rather than just offer a critique of our current system Wesch offers the following suggestions for creating significance:
View the Human Futures for Technology and Education presentation.
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Social Media is not a fad according to Erik Qualman. The content from the video is expanded upon in his
book Socialnomics- How social media transforms our lives and the way we do business. and his Socialnomics – Social Media Blog.
