Nurturing Optimism & An Abundance Mindset:
We live in a competitive world, and kids experience a significant amount of pressure to perform. When they fall short, they feel deflated. We all fail at times — that’s part of life. If we want to raise “can-do” kids who can work through failure and come out stronger for it, it’s wise to nurture optimism.
Optimistic kids are more willing to take healthy risks, are better problem-solvers and experience positive relationships. You can nurture optimism in a school by starting each day focusing on gratitude (what each child is grateful for),
or
on positive focus with each student taking 30 seconds to talk about what he or she is most excited about,
or
on what recent event the student feels has been positively impactful to he or she.
Finally, helping students understand (through data and graphs) that the world is in fact getting better (see my first book: Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think) helps counter the continuous flow of negatives flowing through the news media.
When kids feel confident in their abilities and excited about the world, they are willing to work harder and be more creative.
Tolerance for Failure:
Tolerating failure is a difficult lesson to learn and a difficult lesson to teach. But it is critically important to success in life.
Astro Teller, who runs Google’s innovation branch “X,” talks a lot about encouraging failure. At X, they regularly try to “kill” their ideas. If they are successful in killing an idea, and thus “failing,” they save lots of time, money and resources. The ideas they can’t kill survive and develop into billion-dollar businesses. The key is that each time an idea is killed, Astro rewards the team — literally, with cash bonuses. Their failure is celebrated and they become a hero.
This should be reproduced in the classroom: kids should try to be critical of their best ideas (learn critical thinking), then they should be celebrated for “successfully failing” — perhaps with cake, balloons, confetti and lots of Silly String.
Although the shortest part in this 4-posting series I am convinced that encouraging and nurturing optimism as part of a creative process that also includes critical analysis to expose flaws produces positive end results. I would love to hear from teachers who read the articles posted on this blog site to get their feedback on Diamandis’ ideas about elementary school teaching methodology and curricula. I would also recommend that you review previous postings on “education” using the search field on the website. You will find discussions about education and the 4th industrial revolution, learning in the 21st century, raising children in exponential times, gamification and the Global Learning XPrize.
On this last day of November I once again thank the many tens of thousands of you who continue to visit this site and encourage those of you who would like to provide content to contact me at [email protected].
]]>So how are governments planning education to meet the future?
In some cases the jurisdictions are burying their heads in the sand in an almost comic manner. While others are recognizing the challenges and trying to be pre-emptive. Here are two stories.
Texas Rewriting Curriculum
The headline sounds great but then you look under the covers and what are they changing? Scientific evidence and history by the look of it. Books cite Moses and Mosaic law as the foundation of American democracy. Capitalism is praised. Segregation is sugar coated. Grade 5 science casts doubt on anthropogenic climate change as a valid, proven concept. The Grade 6 science books claim that the science of climate change is significantly challenged by alternate theories ignoring the overwhelming number of science journal articles that provide evidence while citing the few naysayers. Evolution is disputed. And as one history professor from Southern Methodist University states, “Moses shows up everywhere doing everything.”
So one wonders how all of this nonsense science and history helps students plan for their future? To describe the learning as dangerously irrelevant is no understatement. The curriculum seems devoid of brain plasticity skill building such as critical thinking, data analysis, problem solving, adaptability, entrepreneurship, effective written and oral communication, and imagination.
Instead Texas seems trapped in a 19th century time warp. Too bad for Texas children.
Finland Stops Teaching STEM Core Curriculum
Not familiar with STEM. It stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Doesn’t it seem that a country that wants its children to tackle the future would emphasize STEM, not move away from it? But that is not the case.
The Finns think they have found a better way to stimulate learning. Instead of history, students will tackle a moment in time or an historic political movement and integrate into the learning all the skill sets of mathematics, science, technology and engineering. Learn to file taxes or balance a bank statement and learn math as a result. Technology will play a significant role in all learning assignments – from robotics to advanced computing, but always within the context of an event, problem, or challenge, not a course.
At the same time Finn educators will prepare students for the jobs that will be available within their country upon graduation. Early grades will experience play-based learning. In high school subject matter will be interdisciplinary. If you study a country and its history you will also be learning its language. When you graduate you may end up working for a company with a regional Finnish office. Study a human disease challenge and learn to use scientific method, the science of genetics and genomic analysis.
What Finland is doing engages students in a fundamentally different way from Texas which continues to rely on traditional textbooks filled unfortunately with some indisputable “non-facts.” Far more challenging for teachers but absolutely aimed at achieving brain plasticity for a century where young people will need to be adaptable to change.
Some argue that literature will be diminished in this new curriculum. But all literature is based on context within the period in which the author wrote. It is interesting that in the last week Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” has released a sequel novel, “Go Set a Watchman.” If Finnish educators were integrating these important books into lessons it wouldn’t be “English Literature” they were teaching, it would be “Systemic Racism in its Historical Context.” And that curriculum might look at Jim Crow laws, analyze voter registration and job and education discrimination data from American sources, look at primary historical evidence, anthropology and the theory of race, and genetics as a tool for invalidating the rationale for prejudice.
My question for Finland is “can they pull it off?” Interdisciplinary teaching is tough. But according to a recent article in The Washington Post, Finnish teachers are better prepared than most to implement such a departure from traditional subject-based curriculum. Krista Kiuru, Education Minister states, “Teachers have a lot of autonomy….they are highly educated — they all have master’s degrees, and becoming a teacher is highly competitive.”
]]>
Allowing your students to play video games in the classroom might seem counterproductive to their success. However, a study conducted by the University of Virginia and the Korea National University of Education found that game-based learning combined with meta-cognitive strategies actually increases students’ performance in the classroom. Gamification, or the process of using game design elements in non-game contexts, allows students to visualize success, have a sense of pride for a job well done and continuously unlock information, reports an infographic created by Knewton. Here are a few ways to add gamification to your classroom:
Positive reinforcement is one of the many reasons gaming is so widely enjoyed. Apply B.F. Skinner’s theory in your classroom to turn learning into an interactive experience. You can reward students with badges, a method that closely simulates the emotions gamers feel after leveling up. If you decide to implement badges, Top Hat cautions that it is important to also integrate bonus points and skill levels for added value. Some good examples of badges include a “Test Taking Expert” for students who get an A on three tests in a row or a “Homework All-Star” for homework turned in on time the entire semester. Additionally, you can use ClassBadges, a free online tool that lets teachers award customized badges to students.
Adding the right amount of competition in the classroom is a great way to motivate and energize students, says TeachHub. Make sure to tailor the difficulty level to your students grade when implementing gaming in your lesson plans. For instance, educational bingo is an appropriate game for all ages, but can be varied based on the content. Spelling bees, game show contests and group versus group activities are other great ways to get students excited about learning new classroom material.
Avoid the negative effects of competition by keeping activities short, fair and symbolically rewarding, states John Shindler, author of “Transformative Classroom Management.”
Mark Griffiths, a professor at Nottingham Trent University, stated that there has been “considerable success when games are designed to address a specific problem or teach a certain skill.” In other words, it is possible for students to build or strengthen language, math and reading skills by playing the appropriate video games.
Introduce this gamification concept by giving students access to educational video games. Create a play space complete with a PlayStation 4, bean bag couches and even a mini fridge, and watch how quickly your students strive to achieve in the classroom. Then, choose fun and popular games like The Lego Movie Videogame, which improves reasoning skills, encourages creativity and cultivates collaboration, says Common Sense Media, an advocate of educational games.
What does World of Warcraft and homework have in common? Quests! TeachThought recommends assigning quests instead of homework to your students because assignments presented in a gamified context gets kids excited about tackling the next challenge. Once a quest is assigned to your students, they must complete it to receive a reward, much like in Warcraft. Classroom-friendly quest ideas include completing the assigned reading to advance on a map of a virtual world, earning experience points for turning homework in on time and math assignments that reveal a code needed to unlock a real or imaginary treasure chest of rewards.
]]>
Schools today are not too dissimilar to schools back in the mid-19th century. There is a standard curriculum, required books, a teacher at the head of the class, and students sitting in rows at desks. There are new wrinkles. Students use computers. They do group projects and group problem-solving. But there are still exams and tests, and students still bring home report cards several times a year with grades and teacher comments. This is an industrial factory education model. We put students in and twelve or thirteen years later with minds expanded they come out the other end.
Meanwhile, knowledge is expanding explosively, harboured on computers and servers across the planet. Access to it comes from the Cloud. And applications like Google Search, Bing, Wolfram Alpha and others deliver information once only found in textbooks and encyclopedias and now appearing on our smartphones, tablets and computer screens.
To make sense of this information explosion it would seem young people need an entirely new set of skills. These include:
Where does rote learning fit in this set of skills? It doesn’t……Yes, I’m glad I memorized by multiplication tables back in Grade 3 and 4. They served me well. And I am glad I learned the “rule of 9” and how to do rounding. Now when I go grocery shopping I can figure out my bill within a dollar or two before I go to pay for it. But the invention of inexpensive digital calculators has made such skills anachronistic. There is no need to crowd those precious grey cells with multiplication tables anymore. You can save your grey matter to serve a higher purpose – questioning, hypothesizing, experimentation, discovery and innovation.
When I spoke today to a conference called “Jamaica 2030: A View of the Future Today,” I described what is in the cards for education over the next two decades.
I stated that technology is changing the teaching and learning paradigm forever, that it is disruptive to teachers, bricks and mortar schools, and traditional libraries and librarians.
I stated that life before “Google” is now being replaced by a continuous learning model with smartphones and connectivity making learning and collective wisdom accessible to all.
I talked about how digital literacy, the ability to use technology, is replacing academic literacy as a prime skill.
I remarked that game-based learning will move to the forefront as education becomes more self-directed and continuous for life.
What does this mean for the bricks-and-mortar school? In two or three decades my guess is these institutions will be far different than the ones you see today because virtual schools and online learning will be their replacements.
As for libraries, they too will become avenues to knowledge but not necessarily book repositories. I must admit I still use my local library to borrow physical books. The ones I usually get are history and science books. These are books I pour over and don’t necessarily read from page one to the end.
But my e-reader and tablet are filled with mystery, science fiction and light genre reading. And my library lets me borrow e-books. So at age 65 it would seem I have already become a digital citizen.
And what will come of college degrees? With learning ubiquitous (I occasionally audit free courses online offered by MIT and other universities, not for credit, but for the knowledge imparted) what new measures will we use to recognize achievement in learning?
When I was in high school there were a few teachers who inspired me to learn. When I got to university I found professors who occasionally kindled that same enthusiasm for discovery in me. So I believe there will always be the need for an inspiring teacher to provide the right stimuli to students. But education will more and more be something we take on individuallyfueled by access to a universal source of information all at our fingertips.
So no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks…..welcome to the 21st century.
I grew up in a world of books. It is reflected in the thousands of books that line the shelves in my home to this day. And when I couldn’t get a teaching job upon graduating from university in 1973 I naturally gravitated to the publishing industry where I became, first a seller of textbooks and then eventually an editor who worked on new product acquisition and development. As an editor I learned to build what were called managed books, textbooks that reflected local curriculum demand. A managed book had a guaranteed audience because the content was written to the requirements of those instructors who would eventually recommend the text to students. It was a sure fire method for publishing success and I got pretty good at pushing out new product to schools across the country. It also taught me about shaping content to the learner.
I saw a change coming in publishing with printed words giving way to the digital age as the personal computer made its entry on the scene. And when I was asked to present my ideas on the future of textbook in publishing to to industry executives in 1980 I talked about the impact of the digital revolution on publishing. What I described as the industry’s future was knowledge databases with contributions by authors, each an expert in particular subject matter. I stated that instructors in the future would mine these databases and assemble the content they wanted for their students. Publishers would have to put a value on not whole textbooks but on chapters, or novel research and develop new royalty and accounting models to manage the new paradigm. Would publishers continue to print books? I thought not. Instead the assembled content picked by the instructor would be downloaded electronically and printed at local print shops associated with the university textbook store. Did I get the model right? No. I didn’t anticipate in 1980 what truly disruptive technology was about to impact the world, the dawn of the Internet, the development of Google Search, and the knowledge revolution created by the worldwide web.
The age of the textbook as I remember it is truly coming to an end. Educational publishers can feel the heat if they are not already out of business. That’s because educational publishers have never adapted to the way learning has changed because knowledge delivered is no longer the way young people learn.
So it was interesting for me in my online search this week to uncover Principles of Science, Textbooks for the 21st Century. Published by the journal Nature in association with Scientific American, the goal of this series is:
Provide research-oriented, interactive learning
The first “book” in the series is Principles of Biology, containing 196 customizable modules covering chemistry, cell biology, genetics, evolution, animal and plant physiology, ecology and biodiversity. Each module is designed to be self-contained with instructional text, self-tests, interactive exercises and of course formal testing. The text is electronic, accessible from the cloud, downloadable to a tablet or computer in digital version, compatible with Linux, Windows and Macintosh systems, and printable in full colour. It remains current and constantly changing as new research gets published. For teachers the textbook comes with 100 current research papers from journals, a test bank containing 1,000 questions, an instructor’s guide, and electronic slides containing all of the text’s artwork. The electronic edition is listed at $49 U.S. As one reviewer states that makes it not just affordable, but lightweight and it never goes out of date because it constantly gets enhanced and updated through its interactive web content. In a sense the textbook give students and instructors a license to lifetime learning on the subject matter.
Learning in the Age of the Internet Has Changed
Principles of Biology has taken the first step in understanding the nature of how learning has changed in the age of the Internet. A few years ago I read a paper entitled Textbook Publishing in the 21st Century: Changing the Higher Education System. Written in 2008, the authors state that for publishers to succeed in the 21st century they have to discard the old learning model their textbooks were designed to support – the lecture and test methodology, that is, learning delivered and regurgitated. They go on further to state that learning needs to be learner-centered and problem-based, and that the classroom becomes a place to apply basic knowledge to advance learning, no longer a place for instructors to stand and deliver.
Are the publishers of Principles of Biology alone in understanding the implications of learning in the age of Wikipedia and Google Search? In my recent research I found very few of the traditional publishers who have recognized the changed learning paradigm. I have taken note of one, McGraw-Hill, an old rival of mine when I was in the industry. They have launched the first all-digital, cloud-based textbook series for the elementary and high school market. Called the CINCH Project, this new learning model was released in 2011. It embraces all the methodologies described in the paper I referred to in the previous paragraph. Will McGraw carry this approach beyond high school publishing? Only time will tell.
For textbook publishers survival in the 21st century, let alone within the decade, will require much more than publishing electronic versions of their standard print books. Sites like CourseSmart today offer all kinds of e-textbooks. But these are largely designed to support the stand and deliver lecture and test learning model, a methodology that has little traction for today’s learners with their exposure to social media, unlimited web search and Wikipedia. Will these old-school, traditional publishers survive disruptive technological and methodological change? Not many I fear.
]]>