I took the list backwards, starting with the bottom
~Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation
*It kind of blew my mind that contingent motivators (most of our rewards structures) actually block results.
*I would say that most of what we're trying to do in schools is the candle problem (not the simplified tacks out of the box problem) and thusly contingent motivators aren't our best bets.
*I wonder if the system is adjustable at all for teenage brains? Dan Pink's focus is business related, how does this information apply to education? Can we get student buy-in for autonomy, mastery and purpose? We don't really fit a ROWE system though...our students HAVE to be in school, so we're already on the wrong foot.
~Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
*Creativity should be treated with the same importance as literacy
*Kids are not afraid to be wrong...by the time they get to us in the secondary grades they are. My middle and high schoolers are TERRIFIED of having the wrong answer. How much of this is because of them being hormone bombs? Are they afraid of social reasons (trying to look cool) or for educational reasons?
*I LOVE the idea of reorganizing our priorities, but how can I make any difference there. Especially when the major push is to test test test. How do you test for creativity?
*OK, so if the universities have created the system to suit them (and this is out of date) then the argument that, "What we're doing doesn't prepare students for college, so we can't do that new thing because it doesn't meet University needs." Is no longer valid. We have to stop letting the outdated top of our system dictate the way it works. So this huge push to make all students A-G ready for college seems outdated. How can we get rid of it?
Howard Gardner: Five Minds for the Future
*We need to now be lifelong learners to stay relevant and successful. The days of stopping at 20 or 25 and 'resting on your laurels' are over. This is part of why I am in this program, I wanted to learn some more. In fact I've fold people for a number of years that, "If money were no object, I would be a professional student. I would get at least one PhD. Unfortunately money is an object."
*Most of what people think of as discipline is really subject matter.
*Creative minds often go hand in hand with irreverence. Not being too broken up about failure/being wrong. (Maybe even a little bit of, don't take yourself too seriously.)
*Can we make a respect/ethics class a requirement? I think everybody would benefit.
*Yo-yo Ma's Silk Road project seems like a great pbl crossover between history/music/sociology/math(?)
*Does grade inflation for along with resume inflation? Are we contributing to the sense of lying about ourselves because, 'It's ok, everybody does it." ?
~John Seely Brown: New Culture of Learning
*This again just reinforces the ideas that as long as someone is invested in the work their doing, they will keep trying, repeated failure isn't a block. Brown uses the analogy of the surfers from Maui.
*It brought me back to the last time we watched a video from Brown. How can we structure things so that our students are invested in their education? How can we get them to buy-in so that the effort is important to them?
*Epiphanies come from play, how can I make learning like play?
Tags: 701, HW, Video Responses, Creativity