Using facebook groups to engage students

Hi Guys,

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I really need to get moving in building this site as a resource.

Have you ever found that your students engagement dwindles between meetings?

Well we can't really blame them can we, sometimes without any homework or project to do they forget even the subject of last lesson. What can we do then other than assigning projects and homework to do outside class time (which if we did it too often we'd probably have a mutiny on our hands ^_^)?

How about making a facebook group especially for one class or perhaps for all your classes to socialize together on? Have you tried it before? I have a friend who whenever he gets a new class the first thing he does is sets up a facebook group for them. He gets them to think of a name for the group, a mascot/logo and maybe even a slogan. Through the group it's a great way to get the students to practice their English together at their own pace as well as engage them with upcoming, ongoing or past themes to your lessons.

You can also assign discussion tasks, post up motivational material or maybe just build rapport with your students by posting jokes or getting to know them better.

So what have you got to loose?

Just some quick tips in starting a group for your students:

-Make sure to moderate it or assign one of your more responsible students as a moderator to ensure the students speak English, don't use foul language and don't engage in bullying in the group

-Make it a closed group so that unwanted visitors can not wreck the environment or gather students private information

-Finally don't forget to have fun with it. Even if your students aren't learning anything through the group or are making a bunch of mistakes in their posts. The main thing is that they have fun with it, are more excited about English classes and of course are closer and happier with their cool and techno-savvy teacher ^_^

Alright guys let me know what you think of this idea, share your experience using it on our CLT FB Group and let's Change Some Lives! ^_^


-Hugh

The Origin and Current State of Active Learning

Hi Guys,
Today I decided to write up a little about Active Learning. My great claim here is that 'Active Learning' is probably the most overused and misused phrase amongst teachers here in Indonesia. It sounds shocking I know, which is my intention. Now that I've got your attention let's look a little further into this 'modern' concept of 'Active Learning', or is it?

Active Learning is often explained to parents here wanting to put their children into 'elite' schools as 'learning by doing' (unfortunately many teachers with degrees in a Subject rather than Education know AL only as that) this is fantastic, to 'learn by doing' instead of just being a passive recipient to information; but it is only a scrape off the surface of the Active Learning concept, a concept which I hope we can explore in a little more detail in this article.

Brain Based Learning:

Last century and especially in the last 25 years (thanks to modern scanning technology) we have learned a great deal about how the brain works. Around the middle of last century notions that learning was an active process where the learner had to be involved to succeed started flourishing in the west. These studies were not to be acted on at large until a few decades later,( now the norm in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe). Many developing countries are only starting to catch on to these movements now.

Where and when did it begin in the West exactly? Well, after the work of Jean Piaget who in 1936 explained 'how a child's thinking develops and matures in stages, as a result of natural curiosity to explore the environment.' in his book 'Origins of Intelligence in the Child' and the 1920s work of Lev Vygotsky was translated into English where he presented his theory that a child learns through experience. Nothing much happened in the classroom. This is of course with the exception of Dr. Maria Montessori who in 1906 had already begun to apply the 'learning by doing' aspect Active Learning without the need for intensive studies or theories on the matter because she knew it worked.

Why and how did she know it worked? Because she noticed that by giving disabled children more autonomy in how they learned they succeeded beyond expectations. She thought it only logical after studying Philosophy (much of which was what we call Psychology today) that the same should work for regular children. Maybe through her studies she got a taste of the knowledge of our forefathers and their 'learning by doing'. Yes! Our forefathers already knew about this, they just didn't formalize this knowledge as it was probably considered common sense.

Most of our forefathers lived in small village communities. Much of their life consisted not of theoretical activities but of practical applications. Thus the best way to learn how to milk a cow was to watch it get done, do it under supervision, then do it by themselves. This brings us to the next parts of active learning. Stepping away from 'Learning by Doing' there are three other aspects to Active Learning:

1. The Mind as a Processor

2. Meaningful Input

3. The Spiral Curriculum


Let's have a look at these three aspects in the context of our forefathers activities in their small communities and also my own learning experience in school.

The Mind as a Processor:

learning can be rephrased as the processing information because essentially to learn something and to commit it to long-term memory the information must go through a lengthy process in our brains it looks a little like this:

1. Information gets presented ---> 2. We choose to focus on it or not ----> 3. if we choose to focus on it our brains will then choose to store it as something real or forget it as something of no use ------>4. the information will then be criticized by our sub-conscious and our perception of the world around us-------> 5. The meaningfulness of the experience will determine whether it is to be remembered in long term or short term memory-----> 6. Long term memory puts information into groups and builds connections, the stronger the connection the stronger the memory.

I'm probably off by a couple of points but so far the research that I've seen shows a similar if not more complex process.

Meaningful input:

By understanding this process we can then realise not only that we should involve our students in the information delivery through experience (learning by doing) but we should also make sure it's meaningful, something which has been a little forgotten as teachers try to make all information meaningful, where clearly all information is not meaningful to everybody. An example of this is mathematics, I found out after year 7 or 8 that the maths I was being taught was not of any real use to me and my dreams and goals in life. No matter how much work the teacher put into making the subject fun and trying to link it with real life activities (trying to attach meaningfulness) my brain knew through my subconscious that it was all a waste of time. The mathematics I learned after year 7 and 8 was all forgotten as a consequence. Which is not a bad thing, it's just a proof that our brain is built to learn, and unless teachers (and more importantly education departments and schools) understand about that build they will continue to try and make things meaningful for everybody. Thus setting themselves and their students up for failure, wasted time and perhaps a loss for the natural love of learning and inquiry, inbuilt in every child.

The Spiral Curriculum:

Ahh I made a promise that I would use the example of our forefathers in their small communities, didn't I? Well in their small communities there was huge importance (thus meaning) to them in all the practical information they were learning. This is because it was all connected in relation to their lives and the lives of their family, friends and neighbors in there community. If the cow was milked they all had milk to enjoy, if they had milk to enjoy they could be strong to plow the fields well, then they had bread, bread gave them the power to build structures and fix roads, this made their life better. They saw the result of their labours in front of them and how everything was connected. This didn't need to be written about of theorised about as it simply was the way of life that they had been dealt by God.

The Spiral Curriculum developed by Jerome Bruner (one of the fathers of Active Learning) and published in 1960 in his book 'The Process of Education' consisted of three stages going outwards in a spike spiral:

Stage one: Ideas are presented in a simple and intuitive way (we could do this through learning by doing experiences)

Stage two: They are continuously revisited and reconstructed in and increasingly formal way.

Stage three: They are finally connected to other knowledge for comprehensive mastery of the subject.

So we see above that to be active in learning it is first and foremost a process and a process which requires meaning. It is not only about students being active in the delivery of new ideas/information but also about them being active in the review/reconstruction of those ideas/information and the connecting of other ideas/information to concrete meaning and give them a 'big picture' instead of a specialized scope which is probably to be forgotten (much can be done through Spider Webs/Mind Maps and an Integrated curriculum but these methods still have much room for improvement).

It is the room for improvement now that I'd like us to question ourselves about. Despite the knowledge and education of Active Learning in it's completeness across the globe it has still failed to actualize in it's complete form in millions of schools (despite it being on the tongues of teachers in those very schools). I think that may be because there are many other aspects and concepts that are now available to us that can inject meaningfulness into the process. Many of which have not been taught to teachers and by 'not been taught' I mean teachers have not been actively involved in the process of learning about them and if they have been then there often hasn't been enough follow up and then connections to other areas of knowledge to make Master Teachers.

This article cannot possibly achieve any of that but what I hope it does do is excite a desire to expand your quest for better ways to teach. Expand it outside the realm of Ambil Tiru Modifikasi (modeling, copying and modifying) with the teaching habits of Western schools. As we can see clearly above that in the West the knowledge of better ways to teach and it's widespread application in schools is often decades apart. If we are to be decades apart from the widespread application in the West, that puts us at close to half a century behind what we could be (theoretically speaking).

Jump then my friends on the Revolutionary Education bandwagon and try to apply things for your self in your classroom with your fellow teachers and push the envelope with new ideas in your school. Don't wait for it to be ordained by the Education Department or by the School's Management because they aren't on the ground, and until you see the need for change, they won't.

Don't let your students be 'half a century behind' in the way they learn. The internet is at your disposal and there are plenty of schools and teachers already taking the revolutionary path that you can take examples from.

I hope this article can promote some discussion and although I haven't got many followers and haven't promoted this site yet please don't hesitate to spread it around if you like what's being talked about here.

Until next time guys, keep thinking outside the box and let's change some lives!

-Hugh

P.S. Sorry i haven't included any pics today, I will try and update this article with some pics later.

Questioning Our Preconceptions on Education

Dear Friends,

I once read a story about a few men sitting together on a plane. They were traveling on a light aircraft to a small town in Alaska. One was a local, another was an American from down south and another was an international traveler from Asia (Korea or China I forget). Anyway over the loud speaker came the voice of the pilot explaining how much longer it would be till they landed, where they were now, the usual stuff.

When the pilots voice came over the speaker the passengers could immediately tell the pilot was a woman. The American (from down south) said "that's unusual, we have a female pilot today, the Alaskan man replied "Oh no, quiet normal here, in this neck of the woods there are more pilot licenses than drivers licenses. Quite normal to have a female pilot!" the Korean man then chimed in and said "Wow, so strange!".

You see here we have three different preconceptions 1. It's normal 2. it's interesting and 3. it's strange. All on a fairly simple subject on the sex of a pilot.

Entering a new situation or idea:

We all enter a situation or look at a new idea with our own preconceptions about what is normal, effective, okay or strange. It doesn't matter whether our preconceptions are the best way of thinking or not, we have them none the less.

Having them is normal and part of who we are but refusing to look outside our preconceptions limits us as human beings. Limitations to thinking can be disastrous!

Edward De Bono put it as thinking without values is pointless, values without thinking leads to human rights violations (Hitler was quoted to of said:

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”)

. I think that sums it up pretty well. Or at least, values or preconceptions without questioning will to a metal block, or a shallow view of things. Also Edward De Bono has explained in detail how we can expand our thinking process, he talks about a reliance on critical/judgmental thinking and how this itself although effective in many situations can be poor when looking at preconceptions or new ideas. Read more at http://www.edwdebono.com/

The need to think better and question our status quo is I think blatently obvious considering the above.

Preconceptions in education:

The above issue is as rife as ever in the education industry, especially in developing countries like Indonesia but not at all limited to them.

There are huge reform movements in education happening in the UK at the moment and a lot of talk about the irreverence of learning about King George the 5th and his many wives to today's generation. You can find more about one reform movement in the UK by visiting http://www.born-to-learn.org.

In Indonesia however and many other developing countries, the trend and norm seems to be to model their education on what education in Europe or the USA is like, not on what it could or should be like. This is the trend but thankfully not the only path being taken. There are many other schools who are taking a revolutionary step away from the norm, not only the norm of Indonesian education but the norm of Global education and the norm of Global mistakes in education.

If a surgeon from 18th century walked into a hospital today do you think he would be able to function normally? Forget the 18th Century just imagine a surgeon from the 60s my wife is a Dentist and for her thesis she did it on the differences in implant techniques and technology. The techniques and material they were using in the 60s looks like something out of a horror film, no wonder people are scared of going to the dentist nowadays, it's probably ingrained in there selective memory from generations past.

Can the same be said for schools though? The answer is probably not! If a teacher from the 18th century walked into a school today we could probably pick up a book and teaching from the board almost as well if not better than many teachers today. This is a result of us not willing to rethink education. A huge amount of development has been done in the way the brain works in the last 25 years (which I would love to expand on in another article some time) which has not been taken heed of in the way we teach now. Sure the term "Active Learning" is well known now in Indonesia and many other countries but how "Active" can the learning be if the basis of examination is still balanced on paper based assessment, an essentially "passive" method of examining knowledge?

Exceptions are leading the way but for a limited clientele:

Like I said though there are schools that are taking the renegade path like the "School Of Universe" in Parung, Bogor or many of the Montessori schools scattered around JABOTABEK (Jakarta and Surrounding Suburbs) now. But these schools are reserved for the wealthy elite and upper middle-class than can afford paying well over a hundred dollars a month per child (well over the average Indonesian's monthly salary).

So there is now a call to arms, a call to change and a call to questioning our preconceptions on thinking, learning and education. The Indonesian teacher is not in an easy situation. When they where in School they got taught in a stagnant paper based way that has been in use for centuries, when they went to University although they were perhaps taught about "Active Learning" but they were taught "Active Learning" in a passive way from their lecturers. After they finished University and started working, although they may have begun to understand the concepts of Active Learning (ironically through passive instruction from their lecturer) there workmates failed to show a practical example of AL in use so the memory of a slightly better way of teaching soon fades and they begin the process all over again with a new generation. I know, Indonesian teachers don't want it to be this way, I know many Indonesian teachers who are fighting against this vicious cycle and doing something about it, promoting Active Learning in their underfunded schools in remote areas of Indonesia and making a difference. Changing lives! Not only with active learning but with many other concepts and techniques that are less well known not only in the Developing World but in seemingly well Developed Nations as well. They need help though, they need support and they need a place to discuss the revolutionary movement as it unfolds.

Our Part To Play:

I hope this blog and the facebook group under the same name Change Lives Together! can be one of the many accessible forums for like minded teachers to share and change lives together!

I will finish with a little story from Robin S. Sharma of a boy who is bugging his Papa (who was trying to read the paper). The father decided to distract his son with a map of the world he found in his newspaper by tearing it up into hundreds of peices and giving it to his son. The father thinks he'll have at least a few moments of peace and quiet but after only a little while his son comes back with the completed map. "Wow, how did you put it together so quickly, you are quite the little genius!" said the father, "No Papa, it was easy really, on the back of the map there was a picture of a person, once I put the person together, the world was okay!".

So perhaps, if we can change lives, even just the life of a of a fellow teacher in the way that they teach. We can play our part in changing the world. The world is after all, made up of many individuals who are waiting for change, waiting for something to happen and change begets change just as hope begets hope and love begets love. Let's stand up and begin then, let the education revolution begin with us - today!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead


Until next time I hope this has been inspiring for you and shines a little light and hope on your day.

Kindest Regards,

-Hugh