The joy of running for me, in addition to spending quality time with the kids, is theidle time it offers me. My mind wonders off, and connects several dots that are floating around in my brain.
One of these dots is this image I mentioned before. I mentioned that creating a process to move student from the first behaviour to the second was difficult.
Another dot is why I like Moksha yoga, but could not be bothered at all by Bikram yoga.
I could not resist posting this cartoon. It defines what teaching is: creating a process that moves a learner from the left-hand circle to the right-hand circle, nothing more, nothing less. Creating that process efficiently and effectively, however, is of course a completely different question.
Amanda and Marina created a module to introduce Grade 1 kids to microbes for the programLet’s talk science. They picked a very challenging subject to introduce something we cannot see to 6 year-olds. However, they pulled it off very successfully using pictures, glow-in-the-dark powder and black lights, and a couple of microscope. I joined them for the final presentation (in my son’s class), and these are the pictures I took.
Creating a concept map as a teaching/learning tool is all about what Chris Orwig refers to when he describes the poetics of pictures: it is not only about reducing and simplifying, but also (especially) about deepening (or synthesis in teaching terms). It is this last part that makes it very difficult, and rewarding. And to make this deepening work, it is all about dialogue and collaboration, which is why I believe that class room interactions are crucial in this day and age of moving more and more to digital interactions.
Teaching a course is a lot of fun. The difficult part is to convert all these highbrow ideas to a group of 22-year old “kids” at 8:30 am in the morning. I really like the concept of serendipity (or is this just a justification for being glued to Google Reader and my new RSS feeds), but I stumbled across this blog post at the beginning of the semester: Are our kids ready for this?
As an undergraduate, I always dreaded group work. Being an introvert, I always preferred to do things on my own, especially when I didn’t know my group members. The first phase of group work is the worst (in my opinion)–getting to know each other and revealing our egos. Who are these people? Do you like them? Can you work with them? Do you connect, or exist on completely different planes?