Questions, how to make questions and learn more

How to make good questions?

You could do this exercise on your own or with some (up to 4) students. It is sort of brainstorming. Making questions is a great way to learn. Questions are great help to remember and understand. You will get better test results when you do use this exercise on your homework.

Start making questions

• write down as many questions on the subject as possible
• do  not discuss, answer, or assess the questions, just write down
• write the questions in good language
• change statements to questions

Improve your questions if possible:

• mark each question as open or closed ending question
• what are the better questions, open or closed?
• change open in closed or reverse if necessary

Pick the best questions:

• pick the best questions
• why are these questions the best?

Use your questions

• How do you use your questions now?

What do we teach? Happy Easter

Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, says the goal of education today  should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.  (nytimes)

Students must learn to be  curious, persistent, and willing to take risks. They must be able to find new opportunities or create their own — a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear.”

We teach and test things most students are not interested in, maybe nothing in school is exciting for your child. and will never need, and facts that they can find on internet and will forget as soon as the test is over.

So  xMOOCs for young students which are  build to teach facts only is a diasaster to education.  Of course some facts and basic skills are needed, but the facts and information should be learned in a connecivist way, because of the need for connectivist skills and creativity, innovation and curiosity.

We could ask some ethical questions when universtities and colleges are using xMOOCs to teach students.

Do  these courses teach students the right skills and habits?

These xMOOCs are still experimental, so schools should be carefull when applying these experiments to students. Scientists do have standards and regulations for exposing testees (subjects) to experiments.

Testing for facts makes students learn facts and kills curiosity and motivation.

Image The Moongate Garden, designed by architect Jean Paul Carlhian, Smithsonian Wash DC.

Sterotypes

Knowledge of today writes: “
People are not being educated; they’re being tested for levels of obedience. School is about memorizing what you are told short term and repeating it. The bulk of how you are graded is by completing daily work. Obedience is, in fact, work force’s most important quality in a worker bee.”
Is this what xMOOC’s do to students? With video and quizes, medals or badges for compliance? Is a xMOOC student just learning what someone else wants them to learn?
At the other end of the spectre we find student autonomy.
But what of the expectations of the student? If we look outside the context of the classroom, we find that learning happens whenever it can, in whatever order is necessary, in response to real performative needs. … The promise of MOOCs lies not in what the format lets us do, but in what the format lets us question: Where does learning happen?
What is the right way of organizing education?

Stereotypes in a MOOC, pedagogy #etmooc #mooc #edsmooc

What stereotypes do designers of MOOCs use when designing? What stereotypes do educators and teachers use in schools?
What is the meaning of these stereotypes?
Some xMOOCs seem to view upon their students as followers or consumers.
Stephen Downes in the old Daily made me think of this subject again, by writing about Noam Chomsky. “Our kids are being prepared for passive obedience, not creative, independent lives.”.

My question: Is education a means to prepare obedience? What should educators teach about being human? Is education equal to be prepared for a job?

We can begin simply, with an assertion made by George Siemens and Stephen Downes, that MOOCs facilitate “knowledge production rather than knowledge consumption”, and that this automatically shifts the pedagogy from teacher to student — or rather, participant. 

Education as  instrumental: “Education is how to make sure we’ve got a work force that’s productive and competitive,” said President Bush in 2004. “Countries that outteach us today,” as President Obama put it in 2009, “will outcompete us tomorrow.“

In part because of budget cuts, hundreds of thousands of students in California’s three public higher-education systems are shut out of the gateway courses they must pass to fulfill their general education requirements or proceed with their major. Many are forced to spend extra semesters, or years, to get degrees.
Under the legislation, some of the eligible courses would likely be free “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, like those offered by providers like Coursera, Udacity and edX; others might come from companies like Straighterline, which offers low-price online courses, or Pearson, the educational publishing and testing company. (NY Times3/13/2013)

Or a liberal arts education: “of what a college should strive to be: an aid to reflection, a place and process whereby young people take stock of their talents and passions and begin to sort out their lives in a way that is true to themselves and responsible to others”

Or something different from both?

Open letter to a teacher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Dear colleague,
On your website I do find great and useful educational material  that I would like to use. It is great stuff. But you have a copyright sign © on your website.
Now I do not know why you’ve put that copyright mark there. But now there is a problem because I am not allowed to use your beautiful material  because you explicitly want to apply copyright.
So I cannot tell you whether I like using your material in my lessons, because I am not free to use it. Because that is what a copyright notice  on your site stand for anyway?
Maybe you have good arguments as to why you want to retain copyright on your website, which is unfortunate.
Maybe you really want me and other teachers to use your educational materials. The copyright sign © an obstacle.
You could delete the copyright symbol and add a copyleft sign or creative commons. Then I can use your great materials, I would really appreciate it.
It is important that you make very clear which rights you want to apply, because if you just leave it copyright laws apply.

 

Hear and learn? Horen en leren?

My granddaughter (1 year old) is learning. She discovers ears. When we say ‘where are your ears?’ she touches an ear. So she knows the word ‘ear’. And she wants to touch my ears. She occasionally is touching her ears and does say ‘ear’. She knows the word, but she is playing and repeating. She has to grip the meaning and she must work on reflection and on different uses of the word. Is ‘ear’ the name of my ear, or is that word a name for all ears?
This playing around and connecting the meaning and uses of this word is what advanced learning is about. Some MOOCs are all about remembering facts, and that is basic learning. Some MOOCs are about connecting meaning, and that is advanced learning.

Kristen Domonell in universitybusiness.com writes on the difficulties of universities to keep students in their MOOCs, she has some answers. But online teaching needs online peer to peer connections. “With our courses instructed asynchronously, having peer-to-peer, student-to-student communication throughout the program increases the level of commitment to continuing on in the program.” My question Would these connections not only be useful to commitment, but also to reflection and advanced learning?

Mijn kleindochter (1 jaar oud) is aan het leren. Ze ontdekt  oren. Als we zeggen ‘waar zijn je oren?’ raakt ze een oor aan. Dus kent ze het woord ‘oor’. En ze wil mijn oren aanraken. Af en toe  raakt ze haar oren aan en zegt ‘oor’. Ze kent  het woord, maar ze blijft ermee spelen en herhalen. Ze werkt aan de betekenis en ze moet ermee spelen.  Is ‘oor’  de naam van mijn oor, of is dat woord een naam voor alle oren?

Dat spelen en verbinding maken met de betekenis en het gebruik van dit woord is geavanceerde leren. Sommige MOOCs gaan over feiten, en dat is basaal leren. Sommige MOOCs gaan over het verbinden van betekenissen, en dat is gevorderd leren.

Kristen Domonell in universitybusiness.com schrijft over de problemen van de universiteiten om studenten in hun MOOCs vast te houden, ze heeft enkele antwoorden. Maar online onderwijs heeft online peer-to-peer verbindingen nodig. “Met onze cursussen geïnstrueerd asynchroon, met peer-to-peer, student-student contacten in het hele programma verhoogt het niveau van betrokkenheid bij de in het programma voort.” Mijn vraag: zou deze verbindingen niet alleen nuttig zijn voor inzet, maar ook voor reflectie en geavanceerde leren?

Verschil tussen cMOOC en xMOOC #SA_MOOC

Chevin schreef op haar blog dat ze digital storytelling helemaal niet leuk vindt. Daarom heb ik een blogpost geschreven over verhalen vertellen met het storyboard.. Zij beschreef een voor mij heel herkenbaar probleem en daarom probeerde ik er een oplossing voor te vinden.
Deze manier van werken komt in de cMOOC vaak voor, daar hebben deelnemers onderling contact. Dat contact wordt gestimuleerd en mogelijk gemaakt door de organisatoren van de cMOOC.
De xMOOC heeft vaak wel een forum, maar het contact tussen de deelnemers is in de xMOOC niet primair. Dat blijkt bijvoorbeeld uit de manier waarop de xMOOC het forum georgaiseerd hebben. Al in de derde week van #Introphil was het forum een onontwarbare knoop van diskussies en boodschappen.
De xMOOC heeft een student/leraar-verhouding van meer dan 10.000 : 1. Soms doen er meer leraren mee en is de verhouding 2000:1. De cMOOC heeft in de aktieve kern een heel andere verhouding tussen deelnemer en “leraar”. Die verhouding wisselt, maar is ongeveer 1:1,  en hangt af van de individuele  deelnemer.
De verklaring van dit verschil is de andere rollen van deelnemers van een cMOOC. De deelnemers leren van elkaar, de organisatoren van een cMOOC hebben niet de rol van leraar zoals dat in de xMOOC wel het geval is.

Chevin wrote on her blog that she does not digital storytelling. Therefore I wrote a blog post about storytelling with the storyboard .  She described a very familiar problem and that is why I tried to find a solution. This way of connecting is normal ina  cMOOC .  Connecting is encouraged and made ​​possible by the organizers of the cMOOC.
The xMOOC often has a forum, but the contact between the participants in the xMOOC not primary. This is evident from the way the forum xMOOC  is organized. In the third week already of #IntroPhil  I found  an inextricable knot of the forum discussions  and messages.
The xMOOC has a student / teacher ratio of more than 10,000: 1. Sometimes with  more teachers the ratio is 2000:1.
The active core of a cMOOC has a very different relationship between the participant and “teacher”. This ratio varies, but is about 1:1, and depends on the individual participant. The explanation of this difference is the different roles of participants cMOOC. Participants learn from each other, the organizers of a cMOOC do not have the role of teacher as in the xMOOC .

photo: wikipedia

Leren kan je niet meten How to measure learning? #etmooc

Mijn kleinkind Evelien ( 2 maandenoud) heeft een nieuwe baby gym,  Ik haalde hem uit de verpakking zette het ding in de box en na drie seconden was ze er helemaal gek mee. Ze gaat er druk mee aan de gang. Slaan en vastpakken, het rinkelt en piept.
Heeft ze iets geleerd in die eerste paar minuten van de kennisnmaking?
Ja, ze heeft geleerd, maar wat? en Hoeveel?
Leren is geen deterministische activiteit, [Cormier]  het is geen oorzaak en gevolg proces. Wat Evelien geleerd heeft kan heel iets anders zijn dan wat die andere baby leert van haar baby gym.
Je kunt van Evelien niet zeggen hoeveel ze heeft geleerd. Je kunt achteraf (na jaren misschien) wel met haar praten over haar leren.
Maar de vraag is, weet je altijd precies wat en hoeveel je geleerd hebt? Kun je dat weten?

My (2 months old) grandchild Evelien has a new baby gym, I gave her the thing, and after three seconds she was totally crazy with it. Hitting and grabbing the rings and beeps. Has she learned anything in those first few minutes? Yes, she has learned things, but what? and How? Learning is not a deterministic activity [Cormier] it is not a cause and effect process. What Evelien has learned, can be very different from what the other baby learns with the same baby gym. You can not tell how much they have learned. You could talk to her about her learning when is has learned to talk. But the question is, can you know exactly what and how much you have learned? Can you tell?

Ockham en de ziel. Ockham and Mind #introphil

Entia non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda: “Men moet de zijnden  niet zonder noodzaak verveelvoudigen”. (Willem van Ockham) De ziel, de geest is een overbodige hypothese. Je kunt alles van een mens verklaren zonder daar de geest of de ziel als vooronderstelling in te moeten voeren.  (Alleen godsdienst en religie maken gebruik van deze vooronderstelling als ze een voortbestaan van de menselijke ziel veronderstellen) 

Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is a principle of parsimony, economy, or succinctness used in logic and problem-solving. It states that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected. The hypothesis of mind, or soul is not necessary to explain human affairs. (Only religious people use the hypothesis of a  soul if they believe life after death)

VanessaVaile commented:  ”…  just because a mind is different, has a different way of knowing (whatever that is) the world, does not mean …”  We do agree on different ways of knowing, but we ourselves are doing this knowing. The concept of a mind is not necessary to explain human knowledge. Mind is a kind of metaphor of our experience of self. And metaphors are confusing.

So what would be the difference in ”I know this” and ”My mind knows this” or “In my mind it is This” ?

Why did philosophers in early times not get rid of the concept of Mind? I have a feeling the the history of  religious and political suppression of enlightened philosophers (Johnathan Israel books on Enlightenment) is a  part of an explanation.

picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_of_Ockham.jpg

Confucius and scepticism. Mind as a myth. #introphil

Confucius *)  heeft een kennisleer die niet is gebaseerd op de scheiding tussen lichaam en geest die (sinds Descartes) de Westerse filosofie beheerst. Gezien de moeite die het de Westerse filosofie kost om het scepticisme te weerleggen is het de moeite waard om die scheiding tussen lichaam en geest eens te onderzoeken.

Confucius*) is not a victim of the post-Cartesian superstition of mind as ‘ghost in the machine’ And as Western philosophy has great difficulties to counter skepticism, we could take a better look at this “ghost in the machine ‘ theory.

Als je van het duo lichaam en geest het lichaam wegdenkt, wat houden we dan nog over? Het idee van een gescheiden lichaam en geest is zo diep in onze filosofie  doorgedrongen dat het antwoord op deze eenvoudige vraag er moeilijk geworden is. 

If we subtract (body+mind)-body what is the answer? The mind-body duality has penetrated thought and philosophy. That is why  this simple question is hard to answer.

 

*) A.C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, philosophical argument in ancient China, 1997, Open Court publ.  page 26