Research: Smaller tasks, more often

Brain research shows that permanent learning only takes place when research activities are assigned frequently enough that students can exercise and develop the essential skills of critical reading, writing, higher-order thinking, and presenting ideas and opinions with a purpose.

Brain research also shows that these activities must be related to student interests about their world and provide the opportunity for them to develop their own “reasoned opinions” based on researched facts and expert opinions. This desired learning is impossible to do for all students when schools depend on the “term paper” as their only research strategy.

A recent study of Social Studies teachers indicates that the age of the term paper is rapidly disappearing and being replaced by shorter and more frequent types of mini-research. Education Week – November 20, 2002.

We too often think of information problem-solving in the context of huge projects or term papers, when most of us in both our work and personal lives use information problem-solving skills everyday. How can we give our student’s everyday practice with information literacy skills? Some suggestions are below.

1. Use the Internet to check the weather forecast and make a recommendation about dress for the next day.
2. Search and report an interesting fact about the author of the next story being read by the class.
3. Email students in another class to ask their opinions on a discussion topic.
4. Recommend a movie or television show to watch the coming weekend.
5. Find two science articles that relate to the current science unit. Evaluate the credibility of the sources of information.
6. Locate a place from a current news headline on an online map resource like <www.mapquest.com>.
7. Recommend a book to a classmate based on other books that classmate has read using the school’s library catalog or an Internet source.
8. Update the class webpage with interesting facts from units studied and links to related information on the web.
9. Estimate the number of calories and fat grams in the meal served in the cafeteria that day.
10. Find a “quote of the day” on a specific topic and use a graphics program to illustrate and print it out. (from Everyday Problem-Solving, Sept 2002)

My sense is that most teachers could easily create a "information task of the day" type activitity - or the librarian could supply one to the entire school for the daily bulletin. We don't rely on big "reading" projects or "math" projects or "writing" projects to teach these essential skills. Why do we rely on big "research" projects to teach those essential skills?

Think small. Think more often. Think real life questions.

Are they really "21st century" skills?

In the Bridging Differences blog, Diane Ravitch writes:

... the movement for “21st Century skills” sounds similar—if not identical—to earlier movements over the past century. Its calls to teach critical thinking skills, creativity, problem-solving, and cooperative group skills are not at all “21st Century.” Certainly for the past generation, these goals have been virtual mantras in our schools of education. If there is anything that teachers have been taught over the years, it is the importance of pursuing these goals, which are certainly laudable in themselves.

Earlier manifestations of the movement to teach outcomes directly was referred to as “life adjustment education,” or “outcome-based education,” or most recently in the 1990s, “SCANS skills.” In every manifestation, the movement says that we should teach students how to think and teach them real-life skills but downplay academic subjects because students can always look up “bits of information.”

and adds...

Is it [the 21st Century Skills movement] an effort on the part of the technology companies to sell more high-tech hardware and software to schools? Is it an effort to throw a wrench into the effort to develop meaningful and reasonable academic standards by replacing them with vague and pleasing-sounding goals?

Read Ravich's column for a reality check. The blogosphere has rightly been called an echo-chamber of like-minded commentators who reinforce each other's beliefs with few other voices offering divergent opinions. (Tribes?)

So why, if "21st century skills" have been promoted for the past 30 years have they not risen to level of importance of the basic 3rs? Why is NCLB not demanding that schools unable to demonstrate that they are teaching critical thinking be placed on AYP?

I have always been skeptical that society or schools actually want students who are capable of critical thinking. Who are information literate. Who are genuinely creative. These scary people threaten the status quo and may lead a better class of legislators, CEOs, and school administrators. See "Why Robots Make the Best Students" and "The Illusion of Change."

I am also beginning to think that both ISTE, AASL, and other organizations who promote "21st Century skills" have done a disservice to students by their very ambition attempts to incorporate all the skills today's kids need in their documents. Rather than a modest list of well-defined and achievable skills written in a language the general education community and public can understand, we are now working with "vague and pleasing-sounding goals."

OK, call me a geezer, but I still like "research skills" and "computer skills." I suspect teachers who encourage creativity, expect higher-level thinking skills, collaboration, and all these fuzzy  "dispositions" will do so even if they aren't spelled out in standards - or continue to ignore them if they are is so inclined.

"He plays a game"

What [Warcraft] does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things. - Kevin Werbach, President-elect Obama's co-chair his FCC transition team.

A few days ago I asked readers if anyone had heard of people using their World of Warcraft experience on a resume, as a recent conference speaker had claimed. Not patient enough to wait for a reply, I contacted my Wisconsin friend (and first blogger I ever read) John Pederson who is a WoW expert. His reply, posted here with permission, is fascinating:

Last Friday, Obama appointed two folks to serve on the transition team to oversee dealings with the FCC (read: make the Internet awesome). One of them spent a little time playing in the WoW guild <http://gigaom.com/2008/11/18/obamas-fcc-transition-team-co-chair-a-wow-player/%0A> I'm in, though he plays a bit more with a guild that includes many of the Games, Learning, and Society "academic gaming" crew here at UW Madison.

The "put it on your resume" isn't "Snopes", but admittedly is a bit of hand waving on the part of us addicts to justify this habit with our wives and co-workers. I play in a guild made up of about 75 people, "headed" up by Joi Ito, now the leader of Creative Commons. Over time it's been a wickedly interesting lesson in leadership, management, and online community building for me. Joi also uses the guild to learn about leadership and management of online communities.

The day in, day out details of how this works are difficult to describe. Perhaps the best way to think about it is this scenario. One of the big "guild accomplishments" we had was clearing a dungeon called Molten Core about 2 years ago. This involved getting 40 appropriately experienced people (it takes about 400 hours of play to reach this level) coordinated to participate on Friday and Saturday evenings from 7p - 12p across time zones that literally reach around the world. Repeat this task each week for about 6 months. This mix of 40 (which is about 70 when you factor in alternates) includes everybody from construction workers in Australia to high profile software executives in California. Get them to volunteer hundreds of weekend hours with the end goal of smacking around pixels.

Now imagine what sorts of leadership and management qualities it takes to pull this off. Sustain this over a period of three years with people coming and going. It makes what happens at small local community organizations look easy. We are admittedly beating down pixels instead of saving the world...but it's amazing nonetheless. While what I describe above seems a bit hard core, our guild is very much a "social" guild. There are others with specific missions and styles much more intense than what we do.

Top that off with two other numbers. 11 million people playing a game that's just over 3 years old. We are still very much in the infancy of what participating in online worlds (WoW, SL, etc) will be about in the next 10 years. That's the Kool-Aid speaking though.

If somebody can explain that in 3 bullets on a resume, more power to them. The hard part is the other 98% of people read it as "He plays a game."

One of my favorite science fiction books is Card's Ender's Game in which the protagonist is trained as a military leader through a series of real and virtual games. And while this generation of HR managers may well read, "He plays a game" to the kind of experiences John and Ender have undertaken, I'm betting the next generation will look at things quite differently.

And we're banning games in our schools and libraries???

On a personal gaming note, my poor Spore "Bob" is hoping for divine intervention from an Intelligent Design source. He must be pretty frustrated with me.