Assignment Week 2
Think about one of the best learning experiences you have ever had in your life. How do the articles help explain why it was a good learning experience? Use at least one of the assigned readings to reflect on your experience. Your writing does not need to be long, but it should be thoughtful. Please post your writing on the course website by Sunday evening so that others will have time to read your thoughts before the class on Monday.
In my junior year of high school, after taking a graphic design class my sophomore year, I joined the yearbook staff as an Assistant Design Editor. Although yearbook was officially a class, and we worked in a somewhat classroom-like setting, it was not a traditional class. As a result of this, I learned more practical life and design skills from yearbook than I did in many of my other, more traditional classes in high school. My yearbook classmates resembled a team more than a class, and our advisor’s role was primarily as our coach, cheering and mentoring us on, but rarely directly teaching/lecturing in the traditional sense.
Our learning in yearbook was in line with Bransford, Brown, and Cocking’s ideas regarding the importance of learning in context rather than just rote memorization. The yearbook lab was as close to a real-world publication context as could be found on a high school campus, and provided much context for what it was like to work on an interdisciplinary staff of copywriters, designers, photographers, and editors. We had deadlines, just as in the real world, set by a real-world publishing company, and a common goal: to produce a fantastic book of memories for everyone at our high school, which contributed to a community-centered learning approach. Our assessments were “formative assessments” (Bransford, Brown, Cocking), as student editors gave feedback to our team members, and sought to understand each others’ ideas and thought process in their work. Everyone was encouraged to learn more skills within their jobs (design, copy, photo), to take risks in learning beyond their job title, and to understand the importance of their own ideas and work, contributing to a learner-centered and knowledge-centered classroom/lab environment.
Though I would never claim that the yearbook class environment would be conducive to learning in all subjects, for this particular publication community, it was especially conducive to the development of team skills, journalism skills, business skills, and technology skills within our learning community.
When I was at my community college, I remember specifically being taught the concept of diminishing returns in my microeconomics class. After three years, it remains vividly in my mind. Our economic teacher asked us to actively define “diminishing returns” by getting us to manufacture a widget, which comprised of a circular cut piece of paper that was tacked on to rectangular piece of paper. Our goal was to manufacture as many “widgets” as possible in an assembly line fashion given a set amount of time. We started out with just one person manufacturing and counted how much he produced. I joined in as the second person, and we were faster. Then we had three people – and we were even faster. But after adding a fourth person, we had slowed down. The fifth person slowed the process even more. We graphed the timed intervals of production and found a bell shaped curve – the maximum marked the optimal amount of labor for production. After that point, he explained, the unnecessary labor expended was called diminishing returns.
My economics professor demonstrated a distinct connection between “Conceptual Knowledge,” presented in the Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning article, and “Robust (or Active) Knowledge.” The activity that was spurred in class solidified the conceptual understanding of diminishing returns. It becomes clear how this economic concept is applied to everyday life – and that relevancy helped to create a connection for me. It has also motivated, for me at least (I would assume for others as well), more of an interest in economics. In the last article, The Having of Wonderful Ideas, the author explains that in sparking curiosity in students fuels their imaginative energy in which they build off of to discover more ideas (or other wonderful ideas). I attribute my success in that class due to my professor’s active way of teaching.
As an English major at the University of Texas, I became interested in Arabic literature, particularly the Thousand and One Nights. I decided to take an Arabic course, with the ultimate goal of reading that text in its original language.
Because of the dynamic teaching practices of the Arabic professors at UT, I quickly became hooked on this language, and I ended up taking enough courses to gain an Arabic minor. Mahmoud Al-Batal and Kristen Brustad, my professors and the developers of an Arabic curriculum now used widely around the world, clearly held the view of cognition outlined in Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) – that knowledge is contextually situated, and learning that knowledge thus occurs best through enculturation and authentic practice.
As language apprentices, we were taught to be practitioners of the Arabic language, not mere repositories of grammar rules and vocabulary definitions. In earlier Arabic courses, we staged elaborate cultural rituals, learning the vocabulary needed for funerals, ordering at cafes, even prayer. We sang traditional songs together, thus embedding pronunciation rules in our minds. As our skills evolved, Mahmoud and Kristen brought Arabic news and literature into the classroom. We listened, interpreted, and discussed debates on the Israel-Palestine conflict, read poems by Nizar Qabbani and yes, the Thousand and One Nights. Every learning experience was mediated by an authentic activity and led by an expert practitioner, and we understood as a consequence that the Arabic language was a tool with which we could learn more about our world.
It has been several years since I have really used my Arabic “tools” – thus, they are growing rather rusty. In my current community and culture, I have little use for these tools, as my professional interests now revolve around American education. However, learning this language in such an authentic way was in invaluable experience, as language acquisition is a powerful analogue for learning other skills. As a middle-school English teacher, I often drew on practices that I witnessed in Mahmoud and Kristen’s classes. For example, my students suggested writing letters to convince Michael Pollen to visit our school during a unit about nutrition, and within this activity, we learned vocabulary related to persuasive writing and its structure. Overall, while I may not remember the Arabic word for “knowledge,” I actively appreciate that I learned so much about learning during those years.
One of my best learning experiences during my time in high school was when I was in a jazz band class. Although it is not a class in academia, it is a class in which I have been able to learn both music and life skills that include management, organization. The teacher was one who actively engaged the class in a variety of ways to develop these skills. For a music example, he would have us write out the chord progressions and improvise upon this progression to gain a better understanding and feel of what we ought to play given what we have.Then afterwards, perhaps even after recording ourselves, he would tell us to critique and analyze what might have been good during the time we have improvised.
This process, as noted in the Bransford, Brown, & Cocking article, seemed to have been well articulated with ‘Active Learning.’ The instructor did as much to guide us into how to think about the music we created. First, he created the building blocks on which we can then have the most active process in learning what makes an improvised solo exceptional. He did not necessarily teach us any particular thing, but gave us the chance to be able to think in-depth about the music we created; whether or not we played a ‘wrong’ note or if we seemed to play continuously without any breaks/pauses as we listened to ourselves perform and critique one another, allowing a type of ‘formative assessment’ as described in the article. This has been the most effective way for me personally to be able to help me learn in any subject.
There is a famous scene in Wordsworth’s autobiographical Prelude in which the poet (led, as he explains, by Nature herself) steals a boat. It is a riveting piece of poetry, and the Romanticism seminar I was in spent the better part of an hour putting this verse through the all the sorts of analysis one learns to perform in literary studies. We discussed the style, we picked apart images, we argued about all matter of ambiguous phrasing, and we connected the text to various theories as well as historical knowledge. To borrow the vocabulary of Brown, Collins, and Duguid, we employed all the “conceptual tools” that we had learned through “cognitive apprenticeship” in a lot of classes more or less like this one. We were thoroughly “enculturated” into a certain way of reading.
Just as it felt like we had thoroughly explained every nook and cranny of the scene, one student brought up a very different kind of question about the passage describing the young thief’s escape on the stolen craft:
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me.
This student’s question was not of a psychological dimension, nor a stylistic one. It was not really a “literary” question at all. It was much simpler. If the poet is rowing away from the mountain, why does this mountain seem to be getting bigger–“growing in stature”?
There were a few silent, chin-scratching moments. We turned toward the esteemed professor. She smiled and shrugged.
It turned out that, despite our thorough literary comprehension of this moment, none of us had a very clear mental picture (a moving picture) of what that poetry was describing.
Literary criticism is by and large a sedentary activity, even in its social settings, so what happened next is very atypical: one of my fellow students got up and started acting it out. “It’s like this,” he said, “the mountain is coming up from the ‘craggy steep’ so you see it gradually.” And he started moving backwards, rowing in thin air, describing the mountain that was emerging in front of him.
Another student understood, so she started drawing on the board. It looked something like this:
The farther he moves out from the craggy point, the more the mountain becomes visible.
For an “aha!” moment, this was very modest, yet our discussion snapped me out of a certain complacency, pointing to an entirely different way of working with the text. Reading is often conceived of as a silent activity that occurs while sitting and following along with the eyes. But getting up and drawing can also be a form of reading.
In her chapter on “The Having of Wonderful Ideas,” Duckworth argues that what students need is “acceptance”–allowance to go outside of a particular lesson to generate and pursue questions, often idiosyncratically (7). When this happens, students can have learning breakthroughs in which they come to understand something in their own way, building on previous knowledge or approaches (7). (This previous knowledge is crucial because “[m]aking new connections depends on knowing enough about something in the first place to provide a basis for thinking of other things to do–of other questions to ask” [14]). Duckworth’s Piagetian approach is meant for very young, developing children. Perhaps, however, it is true also for older learners, especially those already entrenched in a certain “repertoire” of thinking. In my Romanticism seminar, the professor accepted our foray into a repertoire of skills that is not commonly practiced in the reading of literature. Our ability to diagramming the scene of a poem by applying some very basic prior knowledge about how we perceive very large objects, such as geographical objects, in relationship to each other. The application of this basic knowledge, however, felt quite exciting. I do not know if we had any “wonderful ideas,” but the scene of young Wordsworth stealing the boat is wonderfully precise in my mind. Reading can become more vivid when the definition of reading is expanded to include a diverse repertoire.
This is a really provocative post, Kyle! I’ve also wondered about how we create spaces for adolescents, secondary students, and college students to express themselves “idiosyncratically,” thus reaching these wonderful ideas (and I do think your classmate’s notion was a wonderful idea!). In our current school system, such questioning is rarely encouraged. How can this damage be undone? What are strategies that instructors can use to nurture curiosity and unconventional thinking?
As stated in the article “Learning: From Speculation to Science,” only 14% of of time growing up is done in school. That means that the vast majority of our time is spent outside the classroom, as we continue on with our lives. One of my most developmental learning experiences for me falls right into that category. When I was younger I never saw a point of making friends when I went to extracurricular activities, like dance class. I was there to dance and to improve my own skill. In my opinion I did not need to make friends in order to get better. I had this preconceived notion that even if I did make friends with the people who were there, it would be no benefit to me and would only make me a worse dancer in the long run. You could say that I was on the same page as Piget, when he explains how sometimes you just can’t teach certain ages certain things. As I grew and matured I still never really understood the importance of being friends with the people you’re working with, and why socializing is important. However, once I got my first job I began to realize the benefits to making friends in a group environment. It took me a while to get to that mindset, but ever since I got there I have never been so sure on my ideas and the reasoning behind them. Bransford, Brown, and Cocking bring up a valid point in their novel, “How People Learn,” in the sense that I went into my classroom, so to speak, with a preconceived idea of how meeting people went and when I was trying to learn how to be friendly I had to go back to this original mistake.I had to find the key point in my learning misunderstanding.
My managers were the teachers in this example. They first had to get to know me and see how I respond to different people and in different interactions. From there, they had to find the right times to give me developmental feedback. There were times that I remember them telling me that I had to make friends with my peers in order to succeed, and I would just simply respond by saying, ‘I’m here to work, not to make friends.’ They never really liked that. However, after hearing it and thinking about it enough it finally clicked for me. After reading Duckworth’s “The Having of Wonderful Ideas,” it all became clear to me. He explains the fact that if you plant a seed of a thought in a child’s mind, it will grow when it’s supposed to. In my example, the seed was planted long ago, it just took a while for the seed to blossom.
When I started thinking about this question my mind went straight to childhood learning experiences, which I found surprising since the learning I’ve done since entering graduate school has been so intense. Nonetheless, I found myself reminiscing about the hands-on education I received during summers at a high-altitude wilderness summer camp. Part of the experience was an educational one and it included learning about “nature,” ecology, environmental impact and preservation. The camp itself was located at 6,000 feet in the Sierras and we were also taken on multi-night backpacking trips into the deeper back country of the Sierras each week. It was on these trips that I learned (and still remember!) the directions, names of rivers and mountains, birds and trees and began to develop a strong sense of environmental preservation as we hiked past hoards of cattle who were allowed to open range during the summer, disturbing the local ecosystems significantly. Brown, Collins and Duguid write about the importance of “authentic situations” and the fact that “understanding is developed through continued, situated use” (33). They also emphasize the importance of the learning environment in cognitive development and the fact that both social and physical environments come into play in student learning. My learning in the mountains was, quite literally, situated in the physical environment in which it exists. I was able to interact and engage with the physical world in order to understand it. I was, of course, supported by expert adults who were keen to provide information, which embedded deeply in me as we were able to touch, smell and see what we were being taught. The article also emphasizes the importance of cognitive apprenticeship, which “supports learning in a domain by enabling students to acquire, develop, and use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity” (39). We were apprentices of sorts, following the very real and tangible footsteps of our instructors into the woods where we were able to develop our thinking about ecosystems we were interacting with.
When I was in second grade, we learned how to make circuits. The tools (as I remember them), included copper wires, two batteries, two bulbs, and a switch. This practical lesson was part of an ongoing taught curriculum on the properties of circuits in our science class. We were taught that metals make good conductors – materials that support the flow of energy, while non-metals such as plastic, wood and rubber are non-conductors – materials that stop the flow of energy.
We were partnered with another student in the class and given our materials to test a circuit – to enable the bulb to light. We were told to test this theory by building a complete circuit using our conductors, but to then also experiment with non-conductors in order to see how they disrupt the flow of energy – i.e. prevent the bulb from lighting. After testing the circuit with eraser on the bottom of my giant Care Bears pencil, it occurred to me that perhaps it would be worth testing the top. I had remembered our teacher explaining in a previous lecture that pencils have lead within them, and in a following talk learning that lead was a metal, and thus I wondered whether the pencil tip would make a good conductor. After being scoffed at by my lab partner (Alex Vermachuck – the weasel), I tested my theory independently. To my delight, although dim, I could see the faint outline of the filaments within the bulb were indeed alight.
My teacher, thrilled with this new finding, asked me to demonstrate this in front of the entire class. She then called the other second grade class in to see my presentation. She effused praise over the ingeniousness of this finding and my ingenuity in discovering the miraculous-ness hidden in the giant pencil in front of both classes. From that day forward, I was a science devotee.
Hence, the readings from this week – Duckworth, for obvious reasons, and the Brown, Collins and Duguid piece, deeply resonated with me as it pertained to this learning experience. The former, “The Wonderful World of Ideas,” helped to situate this memory within the context of Duckworth’s theory that, “wonderful ideas do not spring out of nothing. They build on the foundation of other ideas” (p. 6). Meaning, I came to the discovery that my pencil tip would make a conductor because I had been taught that a) metal is a conductor, b) my pencil was made of lead, and c) lead is a metal. And it was only with this armory of knowledge was I able to make a new discovery. Further still, it was through the support and encouragement of my teacher to “uncover” new knowledge that this “wonderful idea” was allowed to unfold.
This occurrence also helps to contextualize the article by Brown, Collins and Duguid. Their theory that “robust knowledge” can only be developed when one applies conceptual knowledge to practical use was exemplified by the aforementioned teaching practice. Accordingly, the building of my circuit involved some prior instruction on the properties of metals, energy and matter, though was fully comprehended once we transformed theory to practice. Simply reading from our science textbooks would not have been sufficient enough to truly understand how the circuits worked, nor would have allowed me the opportunity to put my giant pencil to good use.
Though this latter article also leads me to wonder how this lesson could have been enhanced had it been lead by a working electrician, or engineer – i.e. through “cognitive apprenticeship”. Rather than making a circuit that had no application to our everyday lives, might it have been more intriguing to see how circuits were used in operating household appliances, for example? Would this help to have both reified these concepts further, while also later saving me the trouble of buying a new electric kettle when my last one stopped working (Cuisinart, $50)?
One of my best learning experiences occurred just this past semester in a beginning ceramics class. From the first day, learning how to turn lumps of clay into household items was a process of enculturation. As Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) suggest, learning via enculturation involves observing and practicing the behaviors of members of a community or culture, picking up “insider language,” and otherwise adopting the particular “ways of being” of a social group (Lave, 1988). My classmates and I began learning potter-specific ways of being from our teacher Jim, a professional potter, from the moment we arrived. No long introductory lectures on clay types, the various tools in the mandatory kit purchased from the supply counter, or “proper” pulling techniques; instead, we learned where to find the smocks, how to throw clay without air pockets, and how to set up our wheels. Jim told us that these “opening moves” were the same for all potters in our community, regardless of experience level; as newcomers, we were expected to adopt the norms and quickly acquire studio-specific behaviors.
Jim taught us through a craft apprenticeship model, making explicit his knowledge through modeling techniques and strategies at the wheel. He would give a mini-lesson as we watched, and then we would try techniques at our own wheels while he walked around, answered individual questions, and helped us troubleshoot problems. As we became more comfortable with forming clay and relevant jargon, he continued to offer support through workshops on more advanced topics (e.g., glazing), encouraging us to be bold and creative as there was no single “best” technique (although some were admittedly better than others). The combination of authentic tasks and low-risk/high-creativity made learning this difficult art form much more enjoyable than I initially imagined. When I destroyed a bowl (often), Jim would say, “Ok, so you learned something – what was it? What do you think you’ll try next time?” I generally hate ruining things, but I learned so much about being a potter through consistent and repeated destruction! Duckworth (1989) is right – sometimes it’s worthwhile to destroy some property for the sake of exploring an idea.
Another great aspect of this class was the variety of instructors to which I had access. Jim was the designated teacher, but as our beginner class was taught during open studio hours, we newcomers also learned how to be potters by observing the “old timers” that came to use the studio (Lave, 1988). I learned my most valuable lessons on glazing by watching expert potters and trying their techniques, and they also showed me how to check the different firing trays, how to dismantle my wheel for cleaning, and how to attach a handle (very handy when you’re trying to make a mug). Knowing and doing were certainly interlocked and inseparable (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) in my experiences at the studio, and I think that is precisely why I learned so much in a relatively short amount of time.
Mines to her right, the border to her left, only fifteen seconds left and no possible combination of steps to get her out of there moving forward i.e. taking steps to the front, to the left or to the right. -Time is up! Next team please step in- he said and Lya stepped out of the giant board. Our team had not found the solution…
The next team stepped in. Claudia was the one in charge. One step to the right, two to the front, a few to the left, right, front, back…did I say back? Bingo! That was it; in order to get to the exit of the labyrinth the player had to take steps back.
I was around sixteen years old and I was having the time of my life at a beautiful camp outside Caracas. It was my last High School field trip and the whole class was there. And I just thought that my life was never going to be the same after we reflected upon what that labyrinth exercise had been about: the fact that in many future situations, I would have to go back to be able to find “the way out”.
After reading Brown, Collins and Duguid’s paper on situated cognition, I could identify that without a doubt, the two things that made that experience so memorable were first, we got to play the game and see what the following team was doing, i.e. we acted. And second, we reflected together on what had happened and came up with the conclusions in collaboration. However, there was a key part of the situated cognition approach that was missing: context.
It was indeed one of the best learning experiences I have had in my life, but it is one of the concepts/tools I find hardest to apply. I wonder, had the concept been introduced in an authentic situation, would it be easier for me to apply it now? After all, we live in a world, culture, time that pushes us to look, go, move forward.
After reading “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”, I remembered the inventive school project I did in elementary school. The teacher asked students to come up with an innovative idea, write a paper expressing how it would better help the world, and then use materials to create a small model of what it would look like. Since I was never one to excel at memorizing and understanding in school, I longed to use creativity, design my own ideas, and have a hands-on experience. After seeing adults get speeding tickets, heavy traffic on the freeway, and a treadmill on T.V.; I decided to have the idea of a moving conveyer belt freeway. I thought that this large conveyer belt would allow a steady speed, reduce the risks of accidents, and create a traffic-free freeway. After explaining my theory, I also got to “produce knowledge through activity” and use materials to make a small model of my freeway (Brown, Collins, Duguid, P. 1). I used rubber material to work as a continually moving platform and super-glued miniature cars onto the belt. After discovering this idea and learning how it would work through creating it, I received support from my teacher and recognition from the science fair by receiving an award. Even though my conveyer belt freeway would most likely never work in reality, I was able to use my imagination, and gain confidence in realizing “that my ideas are significant” (The Having of Wonderful Ideas, P.8).
Wow, that’s a really cool idea! I’d certainly feel much safer on a conveyor belt freeway…
One of the best learning experiences I have ever had was when I took a digital photography class. It was a good learning experience because my teacher used the concept of cognitive apprenticeship, as described in the Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning article, to instruct the class. According to the article, “Cognitive apprenticeship methods try to enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction in a way similar to that evident—and evidently successful—in craft apprenticeship” (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Similar to a traditional apprenticeship, I learned photography under a teacher who demonstrated how to take photographs through the phases of modeling, coaching and scaffolding, articulation and reflection, and exploration.
In my instructor’s first lesson, he taught us the basic elements of photography and modeled how to take photographs for different occasions in different environments. He also explained in detail his thought processes as to what camera settings to use for certain situations and the reasons behind his actions. This method of teaching aligns with the modeling step in cognitive apprenticeship, which involves showing how a process occurs and giving reasons why it happens that way.
Next, my teacher instructed us by coaching us. He let us take the concepts that he taught us and put them into practice. He led us as a class to different destinations so that we could practice taking photos in a variety of settings while he was there to oversee our learning. During this time, he also implemented the scaffolding method to guide us. He did so by giving us hints, reminders, and feedback as we experimented with the settings of our digital cameras. However, he would never give away the answers; he would only guide us through our problems, leaving us to figure out the solutions on our own.
After the coaching and scaffolding phase, my photography instructor moved on to the exploration phase of cognitive apprenticeship. He assigned us the activity of partnering up with a buddy and completing a photo scavenger hunt activity together. This independent exploration portion was intended to help the learning come more naturally to us. Our teacher would only be available to assist us during this time if needed.
The final lesson ended with the articulation and reflection phases, in which we were given the opportunity to verbalize our steps and describe our thinking processes. For this final phase, my partner and I had to show the class all the photographs we took for the scavenger hunt and explain our thought patterns in order to clarify what we did. We were graded based on how well we were able to articulate our photography methods for each photo. During the reflection period, we were given the chance to share our learning experiences with the rest of the class. We could share what we learned or anything that we discovered through the taking the course.
Overall, the photography course was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had because as a cognitive apprentice, I had the privilege of listening, observing, and modeling what my teacher demonstrated rather than just learning digital photography through reading a book. This type of learning environment helped me to develop a conceptual model of the processes involved in photography. It was also helpful to be able to practice the concepts that I learned and to get feedback from my instructor, who provided coaching and assistance. Ultimately, learning photography through the procedures of cognitive apprenticeship helped me to learn how to solve problems in the context that produced them.
Good learning experiences in my life have not typically been confined to a classroom. My best learning experience is when my architecture professor, Dick Williams wrote up a list of people to meet, places to go, and activities to do when I moved to the Bay Area. When I following the ‘list’ I would ultimately, end up having dinners with people who all reflect on stories of my professor. Dinners typically start out with wine and cheese and as I understand more information about my professor, his travels, research, values. The conversation by dinner is filled with stories about design and building architectural projects.
These dinners are very intense experiences, typically lasting several courses and in various rooms. The conversation varies from passing along favorite local buildings or activities to how my dining companion would reacts to a possibly problem at work.
I realize, dinners have been helping me to become enculturated with “curator tools” which include “a shared vocabulary and the means to discuss, reflect upon, evaluate, and validate community procedures in a collaborative process”. By gaining a vocabulary, I feel I can understand the unspoken belief system Professor Williams had been trying to tell me about. To hear the context of how for example, a floor plan was missing a detail which caused the entire project to wait 3 more weeks, makes me try to be more precise in my own work. This is truly a cognitive apprenticeship where it seems over time I’d gain confidence to express myself in the craft of the practice.
One of the best learning experiences I’ve ever had was in a calligraphy class at college. It was a three hour class – a time block that students generally tried to avoid, but this particular class even had a waitlist. For the first hour, the professor would usually lecture on history and the different styles of Chinese calligraphy. For the rest of the class, we would take out our brushes, ink, and xuan paper and practice for two hours while he made his way around the room, giving pointers and making corrections.
This experience reminded me of the apprenticeship mentioned in the “Situated Cognition” article. It is perhaps a better example of craft apprenticeship than cognitive apprenticeship, complete with modeling and teacher support, in order to cultivate a skill. I don’t know if practicing calligraphy made it more enticing to learn the history, or whether knowing the history behind the art was a motivation to practice calligraphy, but the two reinforced each other.
The best learning experience I had in my life is not one I was aware of while I was learning it, but happened upon years later to discover how deeply connected it was to my interests. The games helped shape my pre-existing knowledge and cognitive processes in a way that I realize now helped me conceptualize the basic concepts of computer science.
As a child, my Grandma bought me two games at local thrift store. Both games consisted plastic boxes with small colored balls inside. Through a set of controls, you could route the balls to various locations. In one game, you used “on/off” levers to control the direction of the ball down a branching path. At the end of each path was a color and you had to set the levers in such a way to get the colored ball to the appropriate spot. In the second, you used push buttons to shoot colored balls into columns. The balls would stack into columns and by routing the balls in the right order, you would create pictures.
I played with these games almost obsessively as a child and would spend hours lining up the colored balls in pictures. Years later, after studying computer science, I found the games at my Grandma’s house. I was shocked to see that the first game was a representation of the traversal of a binary tree. The on/off levers were the 0’s and 1’s that dictated the paths of individual leaves. The numbers of the slots showed how the four digit binary number was represented by an integer and the colors showed how the patterns of the bits repeat themselves as you increase. The second game was essentially a two dimensional array representing an image with each ball representing an individual pixel.
These games are a perfect example of how, “Children begin in preschool years to develop sophisticated understandings … of the phenomena around them. Those initial understanding can [and did!] have a powerful effect on the integration of new concepts and information” While I can’t say conclusively that the games helped me succeed in computer science, I believe that they helped me see the subject as more than computation and a way to create art through the organization of a finite set of materials and processes. As an active form of learning, they helped me reason through the problems, created ways for me to test and tinker until I got the desired outcome. I am also pleased to find that the games are still being produced, and that the company’s intent is to create game play systems that shape early childhood development.
http://www.quercettistore.com/en/prodotto/150
http://www.quercettistore.com/en/prodotto/151
On the first day of my 9th grade Global Issues class, our teacher Mr. Yearout gave us a relatively simple assignment: write three reasons why it is important to study history. He also told us not to use ‘those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it’ as one of our answers. I thought of this particular assignment from fifteen years ago before I began the readings, and I wanted to understand why I still remember the task, much more than what I actually wrote. I only vaguely remember one of my answers as describing how history helps us understand why we believe what we believe, so I think Mr. Yearout’s question resonated with me in how it made me think (and how he responded to my thought process) more than what I actually wrote because of it.
All three of the readings provided separate insights as to why this was a memorable learning experience. The ‘How People Learn’ reading emphasized the importance of the students’ context, and Mr. Yearout addressed our expectation of finding the ‘right’ answer by cutting the most common answer off. We also hadn’t covered any material in class yet, so all of the context that would support our answers would have to come from the experiences we brought with us into the classroom. Mr. Yearout’s assignment forced us to build from and build on what Duckworth calls our ‘repertoire,’ and he did this providing the destination (why history is important) without a roadmap of how to get there. We would need to connect our previous experiences, thoughts, and feelings to construct our answer. And ultimately, we were developing a knowledge ‘tool,’ as Brown, Collins, and Duguid described, in the form of critical thinking and contextual understanding. The building of this tool, in the space where there was no ‘right’ answer, was the true objective, and likely the reason that the assignment has stayed with me long after what I wrote has faded.