Tag: Failure

Researcher’s Journal – Learning is Hard

On By paulmcguire2013In Academic Life, Digital Transformation, Historical Thinking, My Researcher's Journal, Teaching Canadian History1 Comment

I am writing this for me, but you can read this if you want.

Whoever said that failure is good, that’s how students learn. Have you tried it? It is good learning, but it is really hard.

So, I want to read this post in January when my comprehensive exams are over. I did a mock version of my research question and I failed miserably. I think there is probably a comment on every paragraph I wrote. And I appreciate every comment. Two very busy academics took the time to go over every word I wrote, the fact that I came up short is good, it gives me something to work on.

It is hard after a long and pretty successful career to start over. It is like learning Spanish in downtown Consuelo (in the DR) you feel a little like a baby, each step is tentative, and everything is risky.

taking baby steps again

I certainly didn’t have to do this, but I have to take the long view right now. The courses were the easy part, the comprehensives are really serious and no one is going to give you a break here. I have six months to get ready for the comprehensives. My original research question was too much, it was a bit like flying in the face of a hurricane. I winced, so I need to move on.

My old question is gone, I don’t think I even understood what I was asking. I am going back to something I have experienced – how does one assess and use digital resources as a credible learning tool when there are no rules? Textbooks were easy, they were written by credible publishers and they have been approved by our provincial government.

starting with words and pictures

Web information is different – this is a totally unregulated field. Does anyone understand how dangerous this can be? What is a good source? Who is behind the site? What is available at 8:30 in the morning when you have a 90-minute class to teach?

I think I was focusing on themes that were not my own. If you are going to spend four years studying something, you better choose something that you care about deeply. My advisors gently moved me away from a theme that really didn’t resonate. Digital literacy and the curation of learning resources for teachers and students is something I am passionate about. While textbooks are still produced for schools, people (school boards) don’t want to invest as much in digital materials. The temptation is to use Google – Google is free, Google will tell you what you need to know.

When I worked on a committee that advised the school board on digital implementation this attitude was shared by many. When something is free and it looks good it is very hard to convince people to invest in content and staff training to effectively use this content. This was shocking to me, but it makes sense. Digital curation is really hard and it costs money. School boards still focus on expensive textbooks. The idea that you should pay for digital content is still a bit of a reach.

So here is my new question:

Digital literacies and the teaching of history – the development of critical thinking skills to assess and curate learning material for the classroom.

This is my old question, not answering this well has taught me a great deal:

Drawing on existing history education scholarship, how have different writers sought to critically address the teaching of history education in Canada? In your response draw on the scholarly literature to show 1) the role of historical thinking concepts in Canada; 2) the tensions that currently exist; and 3) how these relate to settler colonial narratives about Canada’s past.

Thanks very much to my course prof and my academic advisor for taking the considerable time to go over my work. I am sure this was not easy to do and it took lots of time. Yes, in the trial run I didn’t do very well, but I will keep and read again every comment that they have written. Failure is tough, failure is liberating and it can be a wonderful teacher.

This where I start again. I am getting really good
material on comprehensive exams and new resources!

Advertisement

The Podcast Broadcast – a Week of Rich Listening and Learning

On By paulmcguire2013In Innovation, leadership, The Podcast Broadcast, voicEd RadioLeave a comment

 

It has been a while since I did one of these posts, but time is available right now, so I am excited to jump right back in with a review of a few new podcasts – all available on VoicEd Radio.

There is no real theme this week, just podcasts that I find interesting as I scroll through the new material that gets uploaded daily to our Radio.co site. I will add them all to a playlist that I will put up on VoicEd Radio today – Friday, March 29th.

This week, we are starting off with a great student podcast – Books R Us.

Books R Us is a 6th-grade student podcast featuring new books that others will want to read. These students are from Hopewell Elementary School in Bettendorf, IA and believe in the power of sharing great books with others to help foster A Culture of Readers. Each podcast reviews a new book and features a contest for a book.

The students are terrific and I think this would be a great project for other classes to get involved in. It is obvious that the students and their teachers have worked very hard to make this a smooth production. You can hear a part of an episode on The Third Mushroom here:

I don’t know much about this series, but this really animated conversation about books and authors that seems to have been going on for several years. Really well laid out book reviews by these students. No hesitation, full of life and energy!

 

The second podcast I listened to this week is Chris Nesi’s House of Edtech. As always, Chris talks about a number of subjects involving education technology. The segment that drew my attention was about online learning. Certainly, people in Ontario could benefit from listening to this right now. The conclusion of this discussion is important – studies show that students do not do as well in online learning situations. Chris Nesi is a very thoughtful educator and his summary of the findings of this study are worth listening to. The main point that I find important at this time in Ontario are the findings of an academic study on online learning. Basically, students do not like to learn exclusively online and they tend to do poorly. You can listen to the clip here.

Nesi includes the article in his show notes here.

Again, the conclusion in the report regarding online learning is important in the current Ontario context:

Though online learning courses have exploded in popularity over the last decade, we found that relative to courses with some degree of face-to-face teaching, students taking online-only courses may experience negative learning outcomes.

Will technology transform education for the better? (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab)

A few hours of listening produces lots of gems. Next, I listened to Teaching Tales with elementary principal Brent Coley. This is one of those podcasts you can dip into at any point. If it fits any genre, this would be one of those ‘around the staffroom’ conversations, this time between two elementary principals. When I saw the title – Overcoming Fear in the Classroom – I thought they would be discussing students and their fear. I quickly realized that they were discussing teacher fear in the classroom.

Brent’s guest is Craig Badura – his blog, A Teacher, Coach and Dad can be found here.

 

                        Craig Badura

This is a great free-ranging conversation on how to deal with failure in the classroom. Teachers don’t like to fail no matter what they say about the importance of failure. Risk taking is hard to do, especially when you are in front of a classroom full of kids. What makes all the difference is an understanding administrator who makes the effort to support teachers as they experiment with new ideas. I am convinced that one of the greatest engines for innovation in education would be supportive principals like these two who are clearly all about serving others.

Failure is a lot easier if you have people like Brent Coley and Craig Badura working with you. What a great conversation about enabling teachers and kids and getting out of the way. New principals really need to listen to this podcast. Important point – never focus on what went wrong – focus instead on the relationship you are developing with a fellow educator. To make mistakes is a human quality.

The next podcast features two of my favourite broadcasters, Derek Rhodenizer and Jon Harper. For this one, Derek is the host, but he mentions that he has already been on Jon’s – I will have to go back and listen to that one for sure. The show is Beyond the Staff Room and it is always great.

Again, these podcasts are done by school administrators and I am partial to these being a former administrator. Listening to stories of administrators fail is very instructive and it would be great to hear more of this. Failure is not only for teachers and students but administrators can also fail too and we would all be the wiser if we heard more about their stories of failure.

Wouldn’t it be great to hear the failure stories of a superintendent? Would they ever do that? Would our system be a little more humane if they admitted failure from time to time? I think that might be a topic for another post. But listening to Jon and Derek is instructive, and I would encourage you to listen to the entire broadcast.

Just like Brent Coley’s podcast, Beyond The Class Room is another great conversation around the table. This makes lots of sense, Derek is someone who really enjoys connecting to others and he is a wonderful conversationalist. Taking time for conversation seems to be a lost art, but people like Derek and Jon are keeping it alive. Like Brent Coley’s broadcast, you can basically pick a clip anywhere from the podcast and it will be interesting. It is a conversation about failure and interestingly it is very empowering because they do a great job normalizing failure. Again, this is a lesson more educators need to learn, especially those in senior positions in our school boards!

Here’s the clip:

In this clip, Jon uses a personal story – one that we could all tell – about misjudging a situation. It is reflective and honest. Not included here is Derek’s return which is another story that fits well into the title of Jon Harper’s show My Bad. I don’t include this clip here, but Derek’s show is easy to find on VoicEd Radio and I really suggest you take a listen, especially if you are in a leadership position or want to be someday. Being a good leader means being incredibly humble. Sadly, this is not something we see very much in our leaders these days.

This is all that I will write about these podcasts – go out and give them a full listen – you will learn lots!