Hi Wannabes,
1. As emailed, I will post more questions today before your dinner time. To start off our discussion however, I will give you a question to brainstorm our discussion. My first question is that Johnson book showed us an interesting case, where a student was constantly asking tremendous questions so that he/she bothers the lesson objectives. Have you had this type of situation in you classroom (or, in a meeting room for Jacqueline)? Who was he/she? What did he/she do? How did you handle it? Or, have you had any students asking a bit strange question, yet very critical, which makes other classmates silently yell at him/her? If you had no experiences so far, I have some actually, how would you deal with this type of critical, but a bit "bothering" student for the class as a whole in the future?
I'll be back with more questions and tech assignment plan. Thanks! :)
John, I have had those students that ask tons of questions, and many of those are very insightful. It’s wonderful—usually with those kids you put them on a path of inquiry to seek answers through multiple resources and continue to follow up with them. Once he/she finds what they need to know, we discuss it together, and frequently I would have that student present what he/she learned to the class.
ReplyDeleteIn the Johnson chapter, attention is drawn to the importance of students knowing how to ask good questions—an essential component of critical thinking and problem solving. Due to my interest in critical literacy and critical thinking, I’m realizing how important it is to ask questions, to think beyond the status quo…to foster kids into being informed citizens in societies that are packed with information. One of the main ideas of this chapter is acknowledging that the 3 C’s are integral to embed into the classroom. Classrooms that support collaboration, problem posing and problem solving create classrooms for students to become interested and motivated to explore various topics. High interest coupled with purposeful topics can be a winning combination for most kids.
Students need content and topics they can research and discuss, and practice in using critical thinking skills such as, the importance of reasoning, using sound judgment, analyzing information from different perspectives, and evaluating the cause and effect of decisions. Inquiry learning makes this type of learning possible due to the act of asking questions and wondering outside of what we already know.
You may have read my Tweets this weekend. I absolutely loved my readings—especially the article by DeSchryver, “Elements of Web-Mediat3ed Knowledge”. I didn’t know there was a theory for mediating knowledge from the Internet. I can absolutely see how these different areas outlined in the theory are important to teach, model, and practice in the classroom. Students are used to using the Internet to locate answers, and then synthesize for meaning (what is explicitly stated in text). The skill that I think is so important to see in classrooms is generative knowledge synthesis (knowledge that is not explicitly stated). Those are the classrooms that will foster critical thinking, collaboration through discussion, evaluating perspectives, and working to support student abilities to communicate.
DeSchryvr spoke of the possibility of “litbots” in the future. Online links would perform a synthesis of multiple sites on topics or subjects of your choice. Say you wanted a synthesis of “Causes That Led to the Civil War in the United States”. Students would receive a synthesis of multiple sites including different interpretations. The idea is if the fact finding and exploring of all the sites to receive the information was done for you, you could then have the time to critically evaluate the information, and create your own perspective based on your thinking of the subject or problem. What are your thoughts about “litbots”? Do you think the idea of this type of tool can be a student time-saver and beneficial to foster critical thinking skills?
Hi Barbara, thanks for sharing your experience about the tons of question makers in your classroom. I also had that kind of student, who asked not only a lot of questions, but also really creative questions. In fact, her questions led me and other students to think outside of the box. For example, when my class read a book - The Alchemist, the moral of the book could be summarized as in this quote: "seize the moment.” The author metaphorically argues that happiness is not far away but is just where you are. So, everyone seemed be satisfied with the conclusion. However, one student brought up an interesting question saying that the author could be wrong by arguing that happiness could be somewhere else - not always be with you, which depends on every single person's lifestyle. I personally like the student’s opinion because which was critical, but it was very hard to persuade other students to think differently because others silently yelled at her by saying this with their eyes “well, that is not the right answer for the question asking the moral of this book." Others still stay in the box. The creative student already knows that she will get that kind of skeptical responses from others throughout her life experience so far. She gets that kind of feedback whenever she brings up a creative question. Hence, she said that she worries about any possibilities that others may think her a "crazy” thinker, which makes her keep silent and just follow what many others think. I, as a teacher, just advised her to not to lose that creativity, but also I said her that she wants to be a good social member by coping with others' opinions as well. Being creative will get a lot of resistants and challenges.
ReplyDelete(continued)
DeleteAs for the litbot story, I also really like DeSchryver's article because it was quite groundbreaking to me. I looked up the litbot reference; actually he cited McEneaney's idea about the litbot. You can find more details about it at my tweet: https://twitter.com/johnkim_OU/status/651239846942412800.
Btw, have you typed in our # tag at your tweet - #litandtech? I searched your tweet using the # tag, but couldn’t reach yours yet. Anyway, back to DeSchryver, I support the idea of generative synthesis, because traditional "synthesis meaning making process” seems still in a traditional thinking box; DeSchryver suggests us to get out of there, going beyond the Taxonomy by utilizing the Web-mediated knowledge. The tech revolution could make litbots do the job and allow humans to have more time for higher order thinking. I really like the idea; but, this argument reminds me of the Luddite’s protest happened in the UK 300 years ago when people had the textile machine for the first time in human history. People at that time went berserk about the appearance of the machine because they thought that the machine will take their jobs away, which was understandable to some extent. However, the machines eventually have helped humans spend more time on creative works rather than keep thinking about how to print faster. But, still it was hard to reach a consensus at that time because it was a big paradigm shift. Litbot could be another example of this paradigm shifting idea, which concept is a bit scary to be honest, but I take it positively for us as a human being. We can spend more time for more creative works; so that we can make more new things. Humans to some extent intrinsically pursue efficiency on what they do looking back the technological evolutions, e.g., invention of a car, a computer, and a smartphone. So, I support the probability of litbot phenomenon, and I would like to foster more generative synthesis skills in addition to synthesis meaning making skills for my students. What do you think about this? Additionally, when we promote the generative synthesis idea, I think that we will encounter counter-claims not only from my colleagues, but also from our students. For example, if I ask my students to search something in the opposite side of the class topic, e.g., searching Chinese history in a US history class, students might complaint that this teacher is distracting us. How would we handle this type of resistant waves just like the wave the textile workers brought back in 1800s?
* More about Luddites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
I completely love the people who ask too many questions, usually (and I think I've been one more than once). I agree with you both on how sometimes the people who ask the most questions end up creating a completely new and enhanced lesson.
ReplyDeleteI've had a situation in which we had a girl in a grad class (a few classes I was in, actually) who had an unfortunate number of questions. I don't mind the questions if they lead somewhere, but when they are only asked so the person asking the questions can tell a personal story and when that happens over and over (and over...) they become distracting.
I've been doing a lot of research on equity education recently for work, and they encourage critically questioning everything. Much like your experience with The Alchemist, John, a lot of CRP and equity literacy encourages students not to stop at "satisfied with the conclusion," even if the teacher presents it. I think there's a tendency, especially in K-12 due to the social-skills level the kids are all at, to just go along with the herd mentality and agree, especially when the information comes from an authority like a book or teacher; and that kind of mentality can stick.
I think the issue comes with trying to retrain kids to not think of the world as having right and wrong answers. The ones who seem to do well grade-wise ask good questions but are satisfied with the "right" answer without trying to understand all of the right answers. It's just a problem with trying to reconcile the gray answers in most of life vs. the black and white answers of required testing--and I have no real answer to how to solve that issue.
Anyway, it was kind of stream-of-consciousness there, and I don't know what that contributed...lol