InnovativeLearningConference

A Future of Visualization in Education

David Bolinsky

• TedTalk on the inner life of the cell--David Bolinski

  • "Innovation is ancient." DB

  • Ancient humans invented visualization long before the advent of civilization.

  • Cave painters showed Rhino horn in motion. World's first known animatic.

  • They had to invent contour lines, sketching skills, etc.

• Students see in one day on the internet what the Victorians saw in a lifetime.

• It is difficult to see whether or not what you do has any effect in the classroom. Visualized concepts have a significant effect on learning and understanding.

• The replacement of the textbook with digital content, cloud-based connections are Inevitable, desirable.

• Education reform needs:

  • Collaborations across all levels (check)

  • Foundational structures never go away. They need hooks to new knowledge.

  • Discover new connections between subjects (integration, not silos) the borders between silos is the new frontier.

  • We have compound exponential growth and we need to know it's out there but you can't know it all ever again.

  • Cloud-based, device independent is the future! Students can explore the cloud and memorize, download, bookmark, etc for their own utility.

  • "Don't dumb it down for the naive student. Make it accessible...tagged to the imagination and desire of the student."

  • Change the relationship between teachers and Learners.

The Role of Imaginative Immersion in Concept Learning

Marco Lacobani

• Mirror neurons fire whether an organism is making the motion or just watching it happen.

• Automatic imitation and empathy, watching behavior causes us to sync up with others. People who can does this well have more empathy

• Emotional connection and empathy are essential to understanding

• Imagining is seeing, imagination as simulation. Our imagination allows us to simulate possibilities infer... Cortex. Specific cells fire for specific objects. When patients imagine a shape, that region still fires without sight.

• Embodied pedagogy... Kleinrock invented the concept. Packet switching . Info gets chopped up into packets to deliver

• Metaphors of the body to understand how things work. "If I were a virus, why would I attack cells?"

• Participant viewpoint

• The narrative aspect of our brain is essential for understanding

• Play is a way of learning hard wired in our genes

• UCLA is doing a study on all of this

• Gesturing is a way to understanding that mirrors play

• Embodied Learners either did better or worse than the control. High scoring subjects have a well developed gesturing congruence across all settings. Spatial congruence.

• The mysterious default midline regions

• Embodied high scorers reactivate multiple areas when thinking back on the activity.

• Mirroring People by Marco Lacoboni

• The mind represents an external reality, like Plato's Cave

• Our psych studies are almost always based on American college students. We need way more people in our studies to get the cultural differences teased out. Gesticulating cultures may have differences. Western cultures are also verbal dominant.

• Brains are shaped by culture and then learning is shaped by how the brain works

• Our children are growing up without much play and their playfulness of kids is essential to agility

• Everything in the brain is interconnected. This is the problem with Howard Gardner's MI. Brains are not siloed and there is little evidence to support MI.

Assessment: The Silent Killer of Educational Innovation

Eric Mazur

TedTalk Link

• Studying with flash cards results in only 35% on info remembered one week later. Two weeks later, almost immeasurable retention

• Flash cards are designed to pass a test and forget, not remember and learn.

Assessments drive student study behavior

• If memorization is all that matters in education, the 5 minute university by Father Guido Sarduchi is the best method.

• Lectures are focused on the transfer of information

• Most assessments are focused on regurgitation and cookbook procedures

• Classifying and ranking is the current purpose of assessment

Purposes of assessment today

• Rate students and rank, sorting and grading

• Rate professor and course

• Motivate students to complete work

• Provide feedback to Learners

• Feedback to instructors

• Instructional accountability

• Improve teaching and learning

Is stress and punishment really the best way to teach? Is this what teachers went into teaching to do?

• Alan November "Who owns the learning?" We need to create an environment where the learner drives learning

• Formative (feedback on learning to the student)

• Celebration of learning

• Measure compliance (CSET) grit and persistence

• Generates

Sub title of this talk: How you can pass tests and still fail in the world

The problems with assessment today is it is inauthentic:

Re-imagining Pathways to Learner Success - Khan Academy

Paulette Altmaier

Salman Khan TedTalk

Khan Academy is used by 100 million users and in 35,000 classrooms around the world. We work closely with our pilot schools and also seek feedback directly from our users to understand how to improve our product, as well as to gain deep insights on how our site is used to support learning, what works well and what doesn’t. This session will share our learnings over the past 3 years, as well as some of our focus areas going forward, as we seek to fulfill our mission of providing a free, high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

Based on Three Principles

• Mastery-based

• Personalized

• Interactive and exploratory

MetaMath: Strategies for implementing the Standards of Math Practice

Jessica Manzone

The Common Core State Standards in mathematics exemplify the overlap between factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge. Metacognitive knowledge encompasses the fourth knowledge domain and is often least represented in discussions of mathematics curriculum and instruction. This session will introduce a series of MetaMath (M²) prompts designed specifically to target the fourth knowledge domain. The MetaMath (M²) prompts function as a bridge between what is to be taught (CCSS-M content and dispositions) and the instructional strategies necessary to develop mathematically proficient scholars. Connections between MetaMath (M²) and the prompts of Depth and Complexity will be highlighted.

Four Knowledge Domains

• Factual Knowledge

• Procedural Knowledge

• Metacognitive Knowledge

• Conceptual Knowledge

• Character of Dispositions (described below)

Character Dispositions

1. “Do you know HOW to do this?”

-represent concept in multiple ways: pictures, symbols, numbers

-know what tools are needed to help complete the task

-reason abstractly and quantitatively

What knowledge domains target the HOW?

2. “Do you know WHY to do this?”

-understand the value of math concepts

-see applications beyond lesson of the classrooms

-provide rationale for the solution

-generate a rule or principle

-construct arguments and make meaning of problems

What knowledge domains target the WHY?

3. “Do you know WHERE to do this?”

-find connections to patterns and larger relationships

-we use math to interpret our world

-explain not only the content of the problem but the context in life where the application is needed

What knowledge domains target the WHERE?

4. “Do you know WHEN to do this?”

-when to use the concept in a logical progression of thought

-coherency - relationship of a concept to others in the discipline

-make use of structure and know how to generalize it to other problems

What knowledge domains target the WHEN?

MetaMath Prompts

Google's Approach to Computational Thinking

Maggie Johnson

Computational thinking is a way of solving problems that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science, such as thinking in terms of abstractions, algorithms, patterns, generalization, and specific approaches to problem solving such as decomposition, iteration and recursion. Programming makes these techniques real and explicit in a powerful way. This talk will present Google's approach to teaching computational thinking and why it is so important today

Handout

The Building Blocks of Creative Thinking: Elizabeth Rieke

http://www.centerforchildhoodcreativity.org/

The Center for Childhood Creativity extends the Bay Area Discovery Museum's early childhood expertise into research and training tools for

parents and educators. A simple mission, "to ignite and advance creative thinking for all children," aims to break down the components of

creativity — beyond the arts — at the most fundamental level: What are the cognitive and emotional tools required to be a creative thinker

and how can educators and parents provide the scaffolding to support that development? Educators and parents will gain insight into the

exploding body of research in neuroscience and cognitive development that demonstrates the brain's proclivity to think creatively.

Unfortunately, many current systems at school and at home are working against this natural developmental potential. Attendees will walk

away with a simple framework and several immediately applicable, fun strategies to promote creative thinking in children. The focus will

primarily be on K–8 learning environments.

C3REATE

Child driven

· Intrinsically motivated = learning more engagement, increased interest

· Example - Fort building, here is a pile of materials, here are the tools, what do you want to do?

Curousity-Centered

· Make curriculum for open ended, inquiry based learning, explore things that peak interest

Connective

· Left and right hemisphere connectivity

· Right hemispheres - creative

· Left hemisphere - more organized, patterns

· Language is on both sides- Words without emotional value on one side, words without context vs. on text, jokes, humor

· Need both hemispheres, all function together

· Brain break - Infinity with right hand, follow with eyes, infinity sign with left hand, now both, studies shows it improves tracking in reading

· Connect left and right hemispheres

· Connect brain and body

· Connect the classrooms to issues in the world Connect students peer to peer

Risk Friendly

· Growth mindset, using the right language, lifelong learning, Carol Dweck, facial gestures can put off or encourage learners, essential for thriving, safe to make mistakes, "decatastrifize failure"

· Have to allow kids to resolve their own conflicts

· Best game ever invented, tag (balance, movement...)

Experiential

· Scaffolded experiential learning - some learning does have to be constructed, get their hands in the dirt, use all senses to activate brain (Dewey)

Active

· Importance of movement, healthy body

· Cerebellum is in charge of balance and active and also working memory and insight

· What if math involved beach balls? Practice skills while catching a ball numbered to practice any concept, whole body involvement

· Balance board, tomato can stilts

Time Flexible

· "Flow", optimal experience, moment where you lose sense of time, challenge and engaged with Where can you rethink time?

· Stay in state of flow, neuronal activity flowing and keep them engaged, carving out time, play time, more states of flow

Evolving

· More robust, more creative learning

· Evolving practices, continuing to change with time to best meet needs