I want to go to The Tinkering School. Or at least go home, crack open a few small appliances, and poke around at their insides.
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting in a cafe. Yesterday I made my way home in the rain from our final Elementary Camping Club overnight of the semester. I was wet, tired and very pleased with the way the campout had gone.
Free exploration in wild places.
I’ve felt for a while that having opportunities like camping out are important for young kids. I feel that the time I spent in wild spaces growing up really helped develop elements of myself that I continue to value today. Certainly a lot of the wonder and delight I take from natural environments, and the confidence and connectedness I feel when wandering them, must be traceable to extensive such experiences in childhood. A few years ago my friend Kenny Peavy passed me an article that surveyed something like 50 prominent environmentalists from around the world. The study sought in part to explore what these individuals considered to be the inspiration for their efforts, to what they traced their environmental commitment and ethic. What it found, and what stuck with me, was that without exception, they attributed their passions, at least in part, to extended unstructured time exploring and playing in wild spaces, while growing up. I once read a quotable quote along the lines of “we only protect what we love”. Clearly, this theory is at work here.
Hiking to our campsite on Friday I asked a 9-year old student if she’d ever camped before. “Yes”, she answered, “at my soccer camp…. Except we stayed in cabins and had suitcases.” As far as I understood, her experience of “camping” was staying at a hotel, or a lodge or something. The “Last Child in the Woods: Nature Deficit Disorder” factor, coined by author Richard Louv, seems a very real risk here.
This afternoon, I watched Gever Tulley‘s TED Talk: 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. Gever is the founder of The Tinkering School I mentioned above. It’s an institution that he describes as a place for kids to go and work with tools to build all the things they imagine. In his talk, he speaks a lot about the stringency of child safety limits, and the prolificacy of warnings. He looks at the sterilization of risk in the environments we build for children and asks “where does the elimination of poky bits stop?”, and “what happens when a child raised without experience of poky bits, first encounters them?” His premise is that our enforcement of safety precautions limits opportunities for children to learn to navigate dangers.
It was when he started listing his five dangerous things kids should do in the talk, that the connections to my school camping club started firing.
#1 on his list was: Play With Fire. Tulley argues that playing with fire as a child is our first chance to control this mysterious elemental force, and a pivotal moment that can only be achieved by fooling around on a child’s own terms, which also teaches some basic scientific concepts.
Playing with fire: A difficult time for adults to allow kids to experiment.
Beginning our Camping Club last year was my first experience, since becoming an educator, of watching children play with fire. Sitting around the campfire, I watched the fascination, the intensity of focus and the compulsion for experimentation that overcame students as they poked with logs, crushed embers and lit then extinguished sticks. Again and again I suppressed the adult urge to offer safety precautions. Many times I winced as I watched flames pass close to flammables. I think I did intervene momentarily, once or twice, but it was a real personal struggle to allow most of it to play out unmanaged.
Lighting Matches: Amazing to see how fearful of matches students who'd never lit one before were, and how quickly their confidence and experimentation grew.
This struggle to micromanage kids lives, whether for safety, to “maximize the use of their learning time”, or for whatever other justification is something that I really confront in these kinds of situations. Arriving at the campground, as soon as the kids had pitched their tents, they vanished. Some played in the tents, content in the little spaces of their control and creation. Some ran off and climbed trees. It was several hours before they returned to where we, the supervisors, were sitting chatting, and “supervising”.
Climbing Trees = Balance, strength, confidence and skinned knees.
I’d planned for a range of activities, but in the end all my scavenger hunt papers and survival game materials stayed in my bag. It had been tempting to call the kids over and rally them around an activity. Some of them, no doubt, would have appreciated it, as they struggled more than others to make their own fun amongst the trees. But it would have meant taking away the unstructured, unmanaged time. It would have meant setting external parameters, and softening the intellectual, physical and emotional dangers and risks of climbing, inventing and problem-solving that they encountered when independent in the woods.
I find that in my role as an adult and an educator, my default is to question and compel students, towards some end. It takes a very conscious effort for me to allow them to experience dangers. But I worry that unless I do, they’ll never know learn how to navigate them.
Today, during the Service Learning pre-conference that I’ve been attending at Jakarta International School, we went on a half hour walk around the outer walls of the school compound. It’s worth noting that the sprawling campus of JIS is accessed through a multi-gated, prison-like entry way. Cars are inspected and then drive over hydraulic roadblocks that would stop a tank. The entirety of the school is surrounded by a five meter wall, topped with layers of barbed wire. On the other side, lies a peaceful little residential section of Jakarta’s urban sprawl. This was where we went for a wander.
A neighbourhood sports ground and beyond the fence, JIS sports facilities.
What struck me about the walk was the potential for accessibility of service-learning opportunities so close at hand. I think when developing service-learning programs, the scale of potential opportunities can be daunting. Perhaps scaling it locally might make it less so. It could even create opportunities where the travel time is negligible, and may even fit in a double period, instead of requiring intensive timetable juggling and struggles with priorities of time-use in school.
In addition to the notion of acting locally while thinking globally, these sorts of services may have the effect of building legitimate connections with local community, as well as deeper embedding the relationships and community involvement of the school, and its community and culture, with the local culture. I wonder how long it may take before a deeper relationship like this might become more reciprocal as well. Where and how does the community get to make its contribution to the school? Where and how is their mark made? How can that clearly financially imbalanced relationship become a bit more democratized and evened.
For all of your inflatable needs.
What strikes me about always heading far away from our schools for service actions is that we promote the notion of an otherness being at a distance, and a feeling that to make a change, we need to make a monstrous effort. Additionally, it’s concerning that the attraction to service projects be affected by the appeal of the travel involved. Do we want authentic service-mindedness, or service tourism?
It’s similar to how I feel about the self-importance or marketability that can be generated by the way my school, and many others, use student travel. Groups from my school regularly go overseas to compete athletically, and less so but also for events in other disciplines. They often do these things in a manner where the destination has even less bearing on what they’re going to do than it would in a service learning context. In what way is playing tennis against a team in Seoul more valuable to their athletic growth than against another Yokohama, Tokyo or more local competitor? The question of value is even more acute if we imagine how many local experiences we would potentially be able to resource at a similar budget to a couple of overseas/distance excursions.
Scrap metals piling up at the local recycling depot.
Card and boxes stacking up at the local recycling depot.
I think we really need to bear in mind that these students are not necessarily international sports competitors, nor employees of global NGOs. They are mostly just wealthy kids whose schools promote themselves through the use of these arguably misdirected focuses of resources. There may well be some students who will go on to be serious competitors. But for every one of those who may eventually go deeper into the sport, there will be scores of others who could barely be bothered to make it to every practice, yet went to compete abroad.
The same arguments could well be made for my attendance at this conference and others like it. I value these experiences, I enjoy them and benefit from them, I even, hopefully, take away valuable ideas to bring back home. But I wonder whether it is the most appropriate use of resources. What other ways could I work towards similar personal and professional growth?
Chicken coops pile up next to nearly every home.
Walking around the school for me re-cemented the potential for a local approach to service-learning, and further, really caused me to reflect on the local/global use of resources in the setting of wealthy schools, attended by wealthy communities, such as Jakarta IS, and my own.
I just read an article from the New York Times that had been tweeted about a fair bit. The headline pulled me in… A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute, by Matt Richtel.
The article focuses on a Waldorf School in Silicon Valley that keeps its classrooms screen-free, and touches on the apparent irony of so many tech industry professionals sending their children to learn in such an environment. Through conversations with parents, students, educators and references to various studies, Richtel uses the school to frame a discussion around the opposing perspectives and practices of schools that immerse kids in technology, to those like this one, that keep the power switched off.
Some rights reserved by Sammy0716, via Flickr.com
In supporting their choice of the Waldorf school, and condemning alternatives, many of the parents interviewed make claims regarding how they see no need for technology in classrooms, no value added in the use of these tools, and that the ability to use tech tools is something that their children will have plenty of time to pick up later in life.
As an alternative, the author lists a range of multiple intelligence style learning engagements that see students eating their way through fractions, or zapping at times tables like human lightning bolts. At one point, Richtel writes that:
“Advocates for equipping schools with technology say computers can hold students’ attention and, in fact, that young people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them.”
I would be quite curious to see further study on this latter point. I’ve had some experiences that affirm the statement, with some digitally-weaned students hesitant to engage in research using printed texts. Conversely, I’ve witnessed students tiring very quickly of reading enhanced books off the iPad, and preferring to return to printed text for pleasure.
My students share an "enhanced book" on the iPad.
What I react to strongest here is the absolutist approach of both sides in the way this debate is being framed. I feel it really misses the point as to where the most value is added with tech integration in education, or the use of any tools for that matter. I have no doubt that tech tools can be poorly, and overly used in a classroom setting. And, I certainly don’t deny that the approach taken in the Waldorf lessons described above is a good one – teaching to multiple intelligences is just a part of good teaching.
My students, deeply involved in reading for pleasure.
My contention is that anyone who presumes that throwing a bunch of technology at schools makes for quality education is missing the point as much as anyone who forbids its use. The best uses of tech tools, as with any tools, are those that use the tool to accomplish a task that would have been impossible, or much less efficient, without it. If you play with a hammer long enough you’ll probably find that it’s pretty good for hitting things, and you’ll likely reach for it the next time something needs some hitting. If you play with Photoshop long enough you’ll probably find that it’s pretty good for editing, altering and re-imagining images. I bet you’ll know when to reach for it too. The fallacy of the all or nothing approach is apparent in the parent’s argument that: “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.” If what you’re using an iPad to do is limited to supporting reading and arithmetic, you’re still looking at it as a replacement for previous tools, instead of an opportunity to create meaning and learning in new and different ways.
The Hammer: A pretty good tool for hitting things. Photo by: Markus Wichmann, some rights reserved. Via flickr.com.
Tech tools are often complex and extendable, and ways to creatively expand their range of uses are what eventually makes them compelling. That’s where artistry and expertise comes into the use of many tools, both analogue and digital.
The articles talks about how there’s plenty of time to learn to search with Google later in life, but I would contend that any curriculum that focuses largely on how to conduct Google searches is a pretty shallow one. One that uses finely tuned Google searches as a way to efficiently and precisely locate, navigate and facilitate the critique of a wide range of media, as a way to build literacy and critical evaluative skills is one that’s taking advantage of the scope of the tools. Learning engagements like this don’t come from just having computers in school, nor do they come from banning their use. It’s frustrating when debates such as this one are framed in such black and white, with-us-or-against-us extremes. Anything that claims to always be true, is always incorrect. Or… Almost always.
I spent this weekend in Nagoya, at Nagoya International School, attending a workshop led by Kathy Short exploring learning through inquiry. Towards the end of the second day she introduced a model of balanced literacy that explored the ways in which personal inquiry, collaborative inquiry and guided inquiry mutually support student problem-solving, research, and meaning-making. Though the example focused on literacy, she contended, and I believe, that the balance could equally be applied across disciplines, inclusive of aspects of learning with technology.
My hunch is that technology differs from traditional literacies (including language and mathematical), by being more a discipline made up of a set of tools, than a vehicle for conceptual exploration. However, there’s certainly a comparison to be drawn between traditional and digital literacies. Information literacy is undoubtedly a particular field of literacy whose scope, rules and patterns differ significantly from its more linear predecessors. With that in mind, I’ve been asking myself how the model of balanced literacy proposed would translate to the digital realm, and my teaching practice.
I’ve adapted the balanced literacy model to the realm of learning to use digital technologies. I’m not really sure what to think of my model, but I do believe that the notion of balancing the three spheres of inquiry should hold true. When I consider my classroom practice in this light, I’m quite aware that I facilitate regular guided inquiry, and expect regular collaborative inquiry, but likely make insufficient space for personal inquiry. As in other elements of the curriculum, I can imagine how this imbalance and lack of time for personal exploration could have detrimental effects on student ability to be as successful in guided and collaborative efforts. In fact, I’m well aware that many of my students who are more readily successful in guided and collaborative inquiries are those who spend considerable time involved in personal tech inquiry out of class.
As discussed at length in an earlier Messing Around post, I believe fully in the need for this sort of experimental period across the curriculum. So why, I wonder, have I let it slip so much when learning digital tools? What changes can I make in my practice to allow for more personal inquiry with technology?
I just got back from a long weekend camping at the base of Fuji. Within a day, my phone died and with it went my access to anything online, and any pressing sense of responsibility to be on top of anything beyond what was in front of me. I don’t say this to lead into some great sigh of melodramatic relief at a temporary reprieve from the pressures of digital connectedness, but I think it’s sort of compounded what I’ve been wrestling with consistently over the past while.
With my commitments to my course of study, along with my increasing use of technology with and for my students, my efforts to maintain contact with people far and wide, and everything everything everything else that has me doing this hands on keyboard routine… my non-contact time with digital information in all its forms is diminishing ever more rapidly. And not just personally, also professionally. Or vice versa. Whatever sounds more dramatic.
It’s one thing for me to wrestle with this in my personal life (Elif showed the somewhat trite, but also poignant video below to this effect during our workshop last week), and totally another to consider how it’s playing out in my classroom.
All the time that is being poured into conceiving, researching, resourcing and executing digital-based projects in class is time that is inevitably not being put into other varieties of learning. As someone who believes so profoundly and thoroughly in the value and necessity of cooperative and experiential forms of education (from outdoor ed. to service learning, to role plays and on), I’m concerned about this shift that’s occurring in the way my teaching and learning time is being spent.
Just last week I spent considerable time and effort putting together a dentistry role play learning experience in my class, in support of our ongoing inquiry into health and balanced lifestyles. The quality and degree of cooperative learning and focused interaction it brought out in my class has given me further pause for thought. My students commitment was total and their reflection was among the strongest its been this year. I could have spent equal time developing some sort of digitally supported experience, but this time I didn’t, and I can’t think of any such activity which I imagine would have been as successful.
After the event, I spent considerable time compiling video and images into a short film above to share the experience with the community, and received more active commentary on the post than any previous item this year, from parents, to administration and back to students again. While creating the video below facilitated this dialogue, was fun for me and certainly loved by my students, I can’t help but wonder if the time could have been better spent developing further authentic and experiential learning experiences for my class. Doing one kind of project certainly doesn’t exclude doing another, but time and energy are finite, and the search for balance is ongoing.
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