Cherice x Your Mind = ?
It occurs to me that I am a product of all the people whose minds I have experienced. With every blog or book I read, every conversation I have, every del.icio.us account I explore, every non-verbal communication I notice, every piece of music I listen to, every website I view, I am taking the best of other people's minds into myself . . . internalizing them . . . making them a part of me.
Cherice x School = ?
I have concluded that, for the most part, the institution of school gets in the way of learning. Its conventions and structures constrain natural patterns and rhythms of learning (which I believe to be highly complex, embodied, non-linear, and relational) and limits understanding by chopping everything up into itty bitty decontextualized pieces in the name of making it all comprehensible.
So with what answers would YOU complete the equations above? :-) Do the answers change when you insert your own name into them?
Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts
Thursday, November 01, 2007
An Aesthetic Feast
What do multiple literacies look like, feel like, and sound like? What happens when you layer aesthetic, conceptual, discursive, emotional, intellectual, rhetorical, and visual elements using mixed media? Take a look at Dave Werner's Portfolio to find out.
The design of the site and the thinking that it reveals are intriguing to me—especially as you explore pages like the reflect/respect page (be sure to watch the video and click on the process images). Note the multiple paths to navigation, the mix of non-linearity and linearity on every page, and the convergence of inquiry with social activism, community engagement, and arts-based education. I also liked the way the site invites you to interact with it, and in the process, helps you to establish a relationship with its author, its content, and its form. You can see and hear Dave's mind at work (and come to understand more about HOW and WHY it works as it does) as you explore it.
The portfolio is a good example of many of the values of the iGeneration—inter-tainment, identity, individuality, information, innovation, interactivity. It engaged me in considering how our representation of content gets tangled up with our values, and how that influences the ways we choose to represent ourselves personally and professionally. I also couldn’t help but think of the research on cognitive flexibility, complexity, design, engagement, perception, multiple representations, and visual thinking as I was exploring this.
It would be interesting to show this to educators and teacher candidates and ask questions such as:
Of course, there are many counterarguments. (Incidentally, it would be interesting to see a visual representation of some of them.) There will be many who will find the site overwhelming and who will argue vociferously that it has nothing to do with education, literacy, the future, or the challenges inherent in those endeavors . . . .
For me, however, it is the happiest site I've encountered in a very long while--an aesthetically, conceptually, emotionally, and intellectually pleasurable experience.
The design of the site and the thinking that it reveals are intriguing to me—especially as you explore pages like the reflect/respect page (be sure to watch the video and click on the process images). Note the multiple paths to navigation, the mix of non-linearity and linearity on every page, and the convergence of inquiry with social activism, community engagement, and arts-based education. I also liked the way the site invites you to interact with it, and in the process, helps you to establish a relationship with its author, its content, and its form. You can see and hear Dave's mind at work (and come to understand more about HOW and WHY it works as it does) as you explore it.
The portfolio is a good example of many of the values of the iGeneration—inter-tainment, identity, individuality, information, innovation, interactivity. It engaged me in considering how our representation of content gets tangled up with our values, and how that influences the ways we choose to represent ourselves personally and professionally. I also couldn’t help but think of the research on cognitive flexibility, complexity, design, engagement, perception, multiple representations, and visual thinking as I was exploring this.
It would be interesting to show this to educators and teacher candidates and ask questions such as:
- What do these ‘products’ reveal about what the person who created them understands? What do they reveal about what he may not have considered? What do they reveal about him professionally? What do they reveal about him personally?
- What kind of experiences could prepare someone to create such products? What kinds of experiences would preclude the development of the skills required to create such products?
- What kind of technological pedagogical content knowledge would be required in order for a teacher to facilitate the development of such products or skills?
- What implications might this have for the kinds of things we do in our classrooms and for the kinds of assignments we give to students (PreK-12, undergraduate, graduate, doctoral)?
- What might this mean for the future of education, as well as for cultural, economic, political, and social contexts?
- What questions should we, as educators, be asking that we currently are not?
Of course, there are many counterarguments. (Incidentally, it would be interesting to see a visual representation of some of them.) There will be many who will find the site overwhelming and who will argue vociferously that it has nothing to do with education, literacy, the future, or the challenges inherent in those endeavors . . . .
For me, however, it is the happiest site I've encountered in a very long while--an aesthetically, conceptually, emotionally, and intellectually pleasurable experience.
A String of Quotes
Well, they say it is bad academic form to string a bunch of quotes together. Perhaps so, but I intend to do so anyway and leave you to make of them what you will!
I believe that experience plays a key role in learning, so this quote from Eduscapes grabbed my attention today: "To really experience many topics, you need a wide range of materials."
It brought to mind Elliot Eisner's comment that, ". . . the selection of a material or activity is also the selection of an array of forces that will influence how students will be challenged to think . . . . The curriculum is a mind-altering device" (Elliot Eisner, pp. 13, 72).
And the combination of those 2 quotes led me to wonder about underfunded schools . . . which recalled this little chant that is often attributed to Mother Teresa:
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
And so now I'm musing about the irony of teachers who believe in the value of immersing students in rich experiences with the topics they are teaching, but are working in extremely underfunded schools and the contrasting irony of teachers who believe that lectures and worksheets are the best ways to promote learning, but are working in schools that are so well-funded that they have difficulty spending their budgets each year.
All of THAT makes me wonder if anyone is learning anything at all!
Eisner, Elliot W. (2002).The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09523-6.
I believe that experience plays a key role in learning, so this quote from Eduscapes grabbed my attention today: "To really experience many topics, you need a wide range of materials."
It brought to mind Elliot Eisner's comment that, ". . . the selection of a material or activity is also the selection of an array of forces that will influence how students will be challenged to think . . . . The curriculum is a mind-altering device" (Elliot Eisner, pp. 13, 72).
And the combination of those 2 quotes led me to wonder about underfunded schools . . . which recalled this little chant that is often attributed to Mother Teresa:
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
And so now I'm musing about the irony of teachers who believe in the value of immersing students in rich experiences with the topics they are teaching, but are working in extremely underfunded schools and the contrasting irony of teachers who believe that lectures and worksheets are the best ways to promote learning, but are working in schools that are so well-funded that they have difficulty spending their budgets each year.
All of THAT makes me wonder if anyone is learning anything at all!
References
Eisner, Elliot W. (2002).The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09523-6.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Of Motivation, Meaning, Method, & Madness
The work sucks me in--
Pushes my thinking,
Changes my mind--
Synthesizes substance,
Sculpts shape,
In a del.icio.us Flickr of time
That lasts for hours
And passes in seconds.
But prevailing paradigms
Pull . . . ideas, teeth, fingernails,
Imprison . . . change
Force . . . fearful flickers of thought
Smother . . . creativity
In tomes--
Filled with dead words
That pass in seconds
But linger a lifetime.
Epitaph (or epilogue, depending on which meaning, method, and/or madness you prefer!)
Cherice Montgomery, September 4, 2007
Saturday, July 07, 2007
More of My Photography
Who needs grad school when you've got a digital camera?! My camera gives me the opportunity to try on new perspectives, think in new ways about familiar things, discover new ideas, explore intellectual insights, share that understanding with others, and express the "real" me in new ways--all things a PhD is supposed to do for you (or so I'm told). Click here to see more of my photography (which is a lot more fun to produce than the writing I'm supposed to be doing right now)!
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Shifting Paradigms . . . Again!
I can feel my thinking shifting (finally) . . . bits and pieces here and there. In the classroom, I moved from thinking about teaching to thinking about learning. Here, I think I've moved from thinking about learning to thinking about living. What a paradigm shift!
On a practical level, those thoughts have changed the questions I ask. Instead of saying to myself, "What am I going to teach today?" I've moved to asking, "What are students going to do today?" That moved me much more toward the idea of student-centered instruction. However, since that time, I've started thinking more about the importance of experience in learning. That has transformed my question to, "Why should it matter to students?"
Yesterday, I realized that I might be on the verge of still another shift . . . . what if instead of focusing on knowledge, we focused on needs? Teaching to their needs is very different than teaching a set curriculum . . . which, if the goal is that the curriculum reflect the field, shouldn't ever be all that set anyhow because the field is always shifting and changing.
So now it becomes a question of integrating the students into the experience and the experiences into the students. And THAT leads me to ask why we spend so much time "creating" experiences when there is a whole world out there just waiting for us?!
On a practical level, those thoughts have changed the questions I ask. Instead of saying to myself, "What am I going to teach today?" I've moved to asking, "What are students going to do today?" That moved me much more toward the idea of student-centered instruction. However, since that time, I've started thinking more about the importance of experience in learning. That has transformed my question to, "Why should it matter to students?"
Yesterday, I realized that I might be on the verge of still another shift . . . . what if instead of focusing on knowledge, we focused on needs? Teaching to their needs is very different than teaching a set curriculum . . . which, if the goal is that the curriculum reflect the field, shouldn't ever be all that set anyhow because the field is always shifting and changing.
So now it becomes a question of integrating the students into the experience and the experiences into the students. And THAT leads me to ask why we spend so much time "creating" experiences when there is a whole world out there just waiting for us?!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Things of Eternal Consequence
I've moved from thinking about teaching, to thinking about learning, to thinking about living. This is the comment I made to a friend today--and I was shocked by the profundity of its implications as I heard it escape my lips! What I was really saying is that as a result of experience, my perspective has expanded, and I am able to see that the most important aims and objects of educational experience ought to involve things of eternal consequence. By implication, I was also admitting that I have allowed trivia to consume more of my time than it merits, while neglecting things far more deserving of my attention.
On the other hand, the connotations of each of those three words (teaching, learning, and living) also imply that I have undergone a powerful transformation--one that has helped me to reframe my role as a teacher, students' roles as learners, and the purposes of the time that we spend together each day.
I think about Deloria & Wildcat's Power and Place and their insistence that we should consider every action through the lens of the impact it will have seven generations after it is initiated. I think of Tom Barone's book, Touching Eternity, and the impact that the teacher whose career it chronicles had on the adult lives of his students. Then I think about the people and ideas that have most influenced who I am, what I value, and where I'm going. How do I actively invest my time in building relationships with ideas, people, and things of eternal consequence? How do I use my personal influence to purposefully design places and set aside times and spaces that will catalyze, nurture, and sustain such work? What would happen to my students if I could accomplish that in ways that riveted our mutual attention on the joy of living instead of on the task of learning or the responsibilities of teaching?
The trick is developing a sense of discernment sharp enough to distinguish what matters and what does not. Saying is different from seeing, and seeing is different from doing. Saying that things of eternal consequence matter is a far different endeavor than seeing which things those are, and identifying things of eternal consequence is far different from knowing what to do about them once they have been named.
For me, I suppose there is a simple pleasure in recognizing that the words I chose represent at least the beginnings of an enduring personal transformation!
On the other hand, the connotations of each of those three words (teaching, learning, and living) also imply that I have undergone a powerful transformation--one that has helped me to reframe my role as a teacher, students' roles as learners, and the purposes of the time that we spend together each day.
I think about Deloria & Wildcat's Power and Place and their insistence that we should consider every action through the lens of the impact it will have seven generations after it is initiated. I think of Tom Barone's book, Touching Eternity, and the impact that the teacher whose career it chronicles had on the adult lives of his students. Then I think about the people and ideas that have most influenced who I am, what I value, and where I'm going. How do I actively invest my time in building relationships with ideas, people, and things of eternal consequence? How do I use my personal influence to purposefully design places and set aside times and spaces that will catalyze, nurture, and sustain such work? What would happen to my students if I could accomplish that in ways that riveted our mutual attention on the joy of living instead of on the task of learning or the responsibilities of teaching?
The trick is developing a sense of discernment sharp enough to distinguish what matters and what does not. Saying is different from seeing, and seeing is different from doing. Saying that things of eternal consequence matter is a far different endeavor than seeing which things those are, and identifying things of eternal consequence is far different from knowing what to do about them once they have been named.
For me, I suppose there is a simple pleasure in recognizing that the words I chose represent at least the beginnings of an enduring personal transformation!
Sunday, October 15, 2006
The Ever So Elegant Universe
Preface
She had encountered several bloggers who seemed to use their blogs as a notepad--especially when sitting in conferences and professional meetings. The notes were often very telegraphic in nature (as notes tend to be) and often intermingled with personal observations, applications, and/or metacommentary. She found that she really appreciated such notes because she could quickly get a sense of the key ideas without having to wade through tons of text or added interpretations.
On the other hand, she found that she had tremendous difficulty posting her thoughts in that fashion. Perhaps the strategy worked well when one was attempting to sift through someone else's pre-organized presentation, but she suspected that her present thoughts would appear to be gobbledygook to the casual observer unless and until she added a bit of context and signposted the way through the web of conceptual connections her brain had been making. She wasn't even sure what to make of them, so she couldn't imagine that they would make sense to anyone else! However, someone had told her once that writing is not about telling what you know, it is about figuring out what you think. Well, she certainly needed to do that, so . . .
She was also fascinated by several recent conversations she had had in which she had tried to elucidate her thinking for others. Bouncing around from concept to concept during the course of her conversations was helping her to begin to untangle the threads of association that bound them, and to thicken the connections between them. However, she was intrigued by how difficult it was to marshall all of those beautiful and complex clumps of thought into a linear and sensible package. How does one preserve and convey the beauty and dynamic/reciprocal elegance of a magnificent array of wildflowers in a static flower arrangement? An artistic eye, a skillful hand, and a beautiful vase all help, but much is lost in the "translation!"
***
So, I've made it to p. 176 of The Roots of Things, and to Ch. 10 (p. 276) of The Elegant Universe. I'm left with much to ponder and little to say except, "Wow! Is it ever elegant!" (And I'm pleased to be able to include that word with a purposeful eye toward its mathematical connotations!)
I was ineptly trying to explain the implications of the ideas to a friend, who sat and nodded politely. There was no reciprocal spark of response to indicate that I was successfully conveying any of it on even a superficial level. So I defaulted to superlatives, "It's absolutely elegant." As I was thinking about what I meant by that in hopes of being able to extract and convey its significance to her more clearly, the profundity of it all overwhelmed me and I surprised myself by spontaneously bursting into tears and exclaiming, "It's just so incredibly beautiful!"
Now honestly, what was THAT about?! Me crying over math? Granted, I've shed many tears over it during the course of my lifetime, but only in frustration; certainly never in admiration, much less the reverence, awe, and deep joy that accompanied these particular drops!
Yes, I will eventually get to WHY it is all so beautiful, but that post will take more time than I currently have to devote to it. And once I accomplish that, ohhhhhh the implications! I can't imagine how people would behave if they really understood! (Of course, that presumes that I am correct in thinking that I do!)
She had encountered several bloggers who seemed to use their blogs as a notepad--especially when sitting in conferences and professional meetings. The notes were often very telegraphic in nature (as notes tend to be) and often intermingled with personal observations, applications, and/or metacommentary. She found that she really appreciated such notes because she could quickly get a sense of the key ideas without having to wade through tons of text or added interpretations.
On the other hand, she found that she had tremendous difficulty posting her thoughts in that fashion. Perhaps the strategy worked well when one was attempting to sift through someone else's pre-organized presentation, but she suspected that her present thoughts would appear to be gobbledygook to the casual observer unless and until she added a bit of context and signposted the way through the web of conceptual connections her brain had been making. She wasn't even sure what to make of them, so she couldn't imagine that they would make sense to anyone else! However, someone had told her once that writing is not about telling what you know, it is about figuring out what you think. Well, she certainly needed to do that, so . . .
She was also fascinated by several recent conversations she had had in which she had tried to elucidate her thinking for others. Bouncing around from concept to concept during the course of her conversations was helping her to begin to untangle the threads of association that bound them, and to thicken the connections between them. However, she was intrigued by how difficult it was to marshall all of those beautiful and complex clumps of thought into a linear and sensible package. How does one preserve and convey the beauty and dynamic/reciprocal elegance of a magnificent array of wildflowers in a static flower arrangement? An artistic eye, a skillful hand, and a beautiful vase all help, but much is lost in the "translation!"
***
So, I've made it to p. 176 of The Roots of Things, and to Ch. 10 (p. 276) of The Elegant Universe. I'm left with much to ponder and little to say except, "Wow! Is it ever elegant!" (And I'm pleased to be able to include that word with a purposeful eye toward its mathematical connotations!)
I was ineptly trying to explain the implications of the ideas to a friend, who sat and nodded politely. There was no reciprocal spark of response to indicate that I was successfully conveying any of it on even a superficial level. So I defaulted to superlatives, "It's absolutely elegant." As I was thinking about what I meant by that in hopes of being able to extract and convey its significance to her more clearly, the profundity of it all overwhelmed me and I surprised myself by spontaneously bursting into tears and exclaiming, "It's just so incredibly beautiful!"
Now honestly, what was THAT about?! Me crying over math? Granted, I've shed many tears over it during the course of my lifetime, but only in frustration; certainly never in admiration, much less the reverence, awe, and deep joy that accompanied these particular drops!
Yes, I will eventually get to WHY it is all so beautiful, but that post will take more time than I currently have to devote to it. And once I accomplish that, ohhhhhh the implications! I can't imagine how people would behave if they really understood! (Of course, that presumes that I am correct in thinking that I do!)
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Missing an Organ--Just Print It!?!
Okay, so maybe it isn't quite as simple as the title of this post might lead you to believe. Nonetheless, while looking for good headlines that show how future trends in technology that might affect the literacy skills required for students' future success, I came across this article about biological printers that "print" the components of organs onto special gel-coated biopaper and then allow cellular processes to take over to finish self-assembling the structures. Can you imagine having been on THAT research team the day the chicken cells started to beat . . . in synchrony!?
Yet in the name of preparing students for "the future," we still have them sitting in rows, completing avalanches of worksheets, and practicing for standardized tests! This article makes it clear just how "standardized" the future will be, along with the kind of thinking it will require! :-( I think Einstein summarized the whole matter very nicely in this little image.
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