The cerebrum -- which is just Latin for "brain" -- is the newest (evolutionarily) and largest part of the brain as a whole. It is here that things like perception, imagination, thought, judgment, and decision occur. I hope you are thoughtful as you leave your comments on this blog.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
The Singapore Vision
Read The Singapore Vision (Chapter 5 from 21st Century Skills) and write about the interrelationship between these "visions" and the Project Based Learning (PBL) task that you are beginning.
“Teach less, learn more” is an idea of project based learning because projects allow the students to learn the material without being specifically taught by the teacher. The teacher guides the students and the students learn the material better because they are engaged in the learning experience. With project based learning students learn different skills and use these skills so that they are able to build a core understanding of the life skills that they need in this world today. The “tight, loose, tight” vision relates to PBL because teachers must create projects that go along with the curriculum but also allow for flexibility of how the students get to the goal of the project. Collaboration in PBL is so important and is a big aspect of it. The easiest way for students to collaborate is for students to work in groups but with PBL students can work with each other as well as experts in the field in which the project is based. Projects allow for real world experiences to be explored. With real world experiences, community members can be involved and the project can be more influential and important to the students. Students will see the big picture and know that they are learning something that is worth something. Content must be learned but teachers can teach the content in a way that allows students to get more out of the learning experience. How?? is a great question that students and teachers must answer when working on projects and this is also a question that is important to the visions of the “teach less, learn more” concept.
First off, I found it hard to read since I do not know how to adjust which way a document is facing on my computer. Some of the pages were sideways and I had to try and read by tilting my head. Second of all, PBL has been a big topic lately. I think we have all grasped the concept that project based learning is great because it helps the students grasp a better understanding of the material by being provided with real life examples. PBL lets students collaborate with each other and dive right into the material exploring every aspect and how each concept relates to each other. Teachers always here well why do I need to learn this? PBL engages the students by letting them explore and answer that question on their own.
I think that this article brought up a very important concern that most educators have about PBL or teach less, learn more. In theory, both sound like remarkable ideas, but they require extra thinking and planning to implement because of standards, school material, and simply because its hard for teachers to adapt to this new 21st century idea of learning. However, that is not to say that it cannot be done. Both PBL and teach less, learn more encompass very similar ideas. They both want the students to be constructive in their own knowledge, as opposed to being lectured at. Additionally, both emphasize intrinsic interest in learning and collaboration. In my PBL assignment, I would like to encompass these same ideals. I think that most schools teaching pedagogy is at the students, and as a result students are not taught to be thinkers. Therefore, I would like my PBL assignment to spark students to take on a constructivist role and become creative thinkers and risk takers. This article brings up another valid point, that schools focus on quantity as opposed to quality. Partially, in the United States, I know that this has a lot to do with standardized tests and accountability. However, we need to get out of that realm that being able to robotically spit out facts is what produces the best students. If you teach a student like a robot, essentially they will be robots the rest of their lives. Through methods such as teach less, learn more and PBL, I hope that we can take boring but necessary curriculum and make it interesting and long term knowledge. Collaboration, constructivism, and life skills are all items I would ideally like to include in my PBL assignment. These will be beneficial to students in both the short and long term.
This article brought up some great points about 21st century learning and the direction that we as teachers need to move in. It is so important for students to learn skills such as collaborating, problem solving, and implementing an idea that they created. In theory this seems great but we as educators need to make sure that this is truly practiced in the schools. The theory teach less learn more is something that we should strive for, however it can be hard to give up the teaching reins so to speak. Something I found interesting was the fact that the author said that the teach less learn more theory wants teachers to teach with passion and foresight. They should intertwine all subjects to create a richer learning experience instead of isolating the subjects. This line stood out to me because teaching is all about quality and what you do to reach every student and make sure that they are learning and thriving. By creating my PBL assignment I want to incorporate different 21st century skills such as collaborating, problem solving and a student centered environment. I want students to be able to have a say in their education. Also, by students working on a PBL it is almost a real life simulation. In the real world our subjects are not segregated. It is important to be able to put all of the skills we learned to use in order to solve bigger problems.
There are many similarities between Singapore's vision: Teach Less, Learn More and Project Based Learning. They both build "life skills" for students, such as "thinking, creating, problem solving, and collaboration". Both PBL and Singapore's vision allow the teacher guide or help students, rather than teaching them directly. These "visions" and PBL also stress how important collaboration is. Students working together to solve a problem is such an important part of the learning process. They get to work on projects together, ask questions, create ideas, and solve problems. Many teachers find it hard to "teach less". It's hard to let students explore on their own and it's a hard concept for teachers to understand. I found it interesting when the question of "how" can we teach less, came up. Allowing students to be interactive, hands on, and collaborating can help the students learn more, and teachers teach less. The students are engaged in learning and become critical thinkers. I liked when the article says that teachers begin to look past the subject area and create more meaningful lessons that intertwine the curriculum and 21st century skills.
This article brought up many good points about 21st century classes. Student directed classes allow for the students to be in control and go through multiple disciplines without even noticing. Also, the visions in this article are closely related to the standards that we see arising. Making school related to students everyday lives has to deal with nation, and collaboration is dealing with partners and working together. These are things that we know we need to include into the classes, but we are not doing effectively or in a timely manor. This are ideas that need to be considered when we go about or PBL project. To be able to include this concept of teaching less, because we know that if we do it correctly, students will know more in the end, and they will be the ones discovering it, we will not be telling them what we want them to know. This teaches students to actually learn the material instead of just memorizing for the test.
After reading this article I can see that there are similarities between PBL and Singapore's vision. They both promote teaching less and learning more, and that schools today should be teaching more for the students life skills as well as their education. These two methods of teaching are invaluable life learning tools. I think the only problem that can get in the way of teaching these methods is the teacher. It is up to the teacher to figure out a way to teach less so the students can learn more. This is a struggle for teachers at first, but the more they practice and collaborate on the topic the easier it will become. PBL is a way for students to work on projects together and have more of a hands on experience. After reading "The Singapore Vision" I learned that this method is not too far from the same idea as PBL. They both are about their students creating more, thinking more, and doing more problem solving. They want their students to work collaboratively and be persistent. This kind of teaching is a good way for students to learn without being lectured by the teacher. The students teach themselves and learn from each other.
It was interesting to see how that in this article, Singapore has four main visions when preparing for the 21st century. The first vision states how they wish to build a set of life skills, attitudes, and dispositions. When we look deeper into these goals, we see how it is very similar to the goals of PBL (collaboration, critical thinking, creativity etc.) The second vision deals with more student led instruction where the teachers teach less and students learn more- another concept of PBL. The third and forth concept are interesting, as they give a basis for implementing these ideas in school and collaborating between professional learning communities. After reading this article, you can see that these 'visions' are completely related to what PBL is. Seeing these different visions in Singapore allows one to see just how popular the idea of PBL is becoming. It is important to read articles like these, because it deepens your knowledge on PBL and provides more information on how it is put into practice by giving elementary and secondary school examples. It was also interesting to see that the article clearing states that "all is not perfect in this imperfect process of change." This quote tells the reader that the whole process isn't exactly where it should be, as people are still trying to figure out ways to have high test scores and engage students in more active learning.
The Singapore Vision connects to our PBL task in many ways. The idea that we need to "teach less and learn more" is found throughout PBL to begin with. Our projects will be able guiding our students to learn, to develop, to conjecture, and to try on their own. Instead of giving them the answers, we want them to become so invested in the material that they want to find the answers on their own. They will take it a step further and ask more questions, ask why how and what. The teachers in Singapore had concerns about whether or not students were going to learn the standards or if they were going to just skim the surface. We must be concerned about our projects being like this as well. If we make the material relevant to their lives and make it important instead of copying ideas and rewording them, then students will want to learn more. They will be surprised by some of the things they learn and they will want to do more research, want to know exactly why things happen. The next thing we know, they will have met all the standards because of their interest and curiosity (as the one teacher thought and said). Students do not like lecture, all the time, and will learn more by doing more. Another idea that is strongly linked to our project is "tight loose tight". We have to maintain some design elements for our projects and we have to have a rubric/checklist stating exactly what must be included. These things are not flexible (although they can be decided upon as a class). The flexible things are the resources, accommodations, modifications, and tools. Our students will be able to learn which resources and tools are best by doing these projects. Collaboration is also key to the success of students, which is why the Singapore Vision and our PBL projects will incorporate this. Competition, although found in the "real world", is usually not found between individuals. Once you are in a job, team work, communication, and collaboration are integral parts of success of the company and the individual. Students are not given enough time to work together, develop ideas together, and to be interdependent. The Singapore Vision seeks to force collaboration; to help the students see how resourceful it is to work together to solve a problem. Our projects will hopefully demonstrate the importance of independent and group work, how the two go hand in hand. The individual is responsible for his/her piece, but altogether the group must debate, edit, conjecture, and finalize their projects. These Visions are really life skills that students need to learn.
One quote that stood out to me in this article was “remembering why we teach, reflecting on what we teach and reconsidering how we teach.” These are three r’s that I feel are extremely necessary for teachers to keep in mind when they come into this profession. I always believed that you are always a learner first then a teacher and this quote really explains that. As teachers, we should always be open to new ideas, which reminds that we are teaching for the benefit of our students to gain the best learning experience they can. In order to keep our minds open to new ideas, we must reflect on our teaching and then change the way we teach in order to help our students the best way possible. This article discusses teaching less and learning more. A good argument that was made in this article was the idea of how can teachers be expected to teach less while in the world, new information is being constantly added that needs to be taught. Teaching less does not mean to take omit certain topics from the lesson or teach less essential material from the curriculum. It’s about creating a classroom in which the teacher doesn’t just pour in all the information into the students. It’s about PBL learning methods that we have discussed before. The article even mentions how students already come into the class with so much of their own information. Why not allow them to use this information and let them play a greater role in their own education. Of course bringing this change into the classroom isn’t an easy task but if a teacher really wants the best learning experience for their students, they will want to struggle and work for it.
There are so many similarities between PBL and Singapore’s visions for their schools. I think that the “teach less, learn more” vision is especially relevant when discussing project based learning. The whole idea of “teach less, learn more” is to reduce the amount of pure lecture time and increase the amount of time spent on hand on projects where the students learn for themselves as opposed to just being told the facts. Project based learning is virtually the exact same thing. PBL is the use of projects that are meant to open a child’s mind to their own creativity and ingenuity so they truly learn and retain the material, not just taking notes and studying for the test- after which the information will most likely be forgotten. The PBL tasks that we are creating are centered around this very concept of “teach less, learn more,” where we, as teachers, have to present our students with a driving question that will fuel their curiosity and propel them into a learning scenario where they are teaching themselves the material as well as problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking skills. It is this “letting go” that I think most teachers have difficulty doing but it is also the framework around the “teach less, learn more” vision as well as the concept behind PBL. Once teachers are ready to teach less and accept that by doing so, their students can actually learn more, we will see more PBL and “teach less, learn more” type visions in American classrooms.
The Singapore vision is a transformation in Singapore’s education system like PBL is to us in the American school system. Singapore Vision and PBL are very similar to one another replacing traditional ways of learning to new. Singapore has four components; “Thinking Schools, Learning nation,” “Teach less, Learn more,” “Tight, Loose, Tight,” and “Professional Learning Communities.” The first vision involves life skills (thinking creating, and problem solving) which a goal in PBL contains for children to learn. The second vision has the same idea as PBL because its student centered where teachers guide NOT teach the whole lesson. Third vision has to do with setting goals which is the same in PBL because it allows kids to set them. Last vision involves collaboration; this is what PBL mainly contains.
14 comments:
“Teach less, learn more” is an idea of project based learning because projects allow the students to learn the material without being specifically taught by the teacher. The teacher guides the students and the students learn the material better because they are engaged in the learning experience. With project based learning students learn different skills and use these skills so that they are able to build a core understanding of the life skills that they need in this world today. The “tight, loose, tight” vision relates to PBL because teachers must create projects that go along with the curriculum but also allow for flexibility of how the students get to the goal of the project. Collaboration in PBL is so important and is a big aspect of it. The easiest way for students to collaborate is for students to work in groups but with PBL students can work with each other as well as experts in the field in which the project is based. Projects allow for real world experiences to be explored. With real world experiences, community members can be involved and the project can be more influential and important to the students. Students will see the big picture and know that they are learning something that is worth something.
Content must be learned but teachers can teach the content in a way that allows students to get more out of the learning experience. How?? is a great question that students and teachers must answer when working on projects and this is also a question that is important to the visions of the “teach less, learn more” concept.
First off, I found it hard to read since I do not know how to adjust which way a document is facing on my computer. Some of the pages were sideways and I had to try and read by tilting my head. Second of all, PBL has been a big topic lately. I think we have all grasped the concept that project based learning is great because it helps the students grasp a better understanding of the material by being provided with real life examples. PBL lets students collaborate with each other and dive right into the material exploring every aspect and how each concept relates to each other. Teachers always here well why do I need to learn this? PBL engages the students by letting them explore and answer that question on their own.
I think that this article brought up a very important concern that most educators have about PBL or teach less, learn more. In theory, both sound like remarkable ideas, but they require extra thinking and planning to implement because of standards, school material, and simply because its hard for teachers to adapt to this new 21st century idea of learning. However, that is not to say that it cannot be done. Both PBL and teach less, learn more encompass very similar ideas. They both want the students to be constructive in their own knowledge, as opposed to being lectured at. Additionally, both emphasize intrinsic interest in learning and collaboration. In my PBL assignment, I would like to encompass these same ideals. I think that most schools teaching pedagogy is at the students, and as a result students are not taught to be thinkers. Therefore, I would like my PBL assignment to spark students to take on a constructivist role and become creative thinkers and risk takers.
This article brings up another valid point, that schools focus on quantity as opposed to quality. Partially, in the United States, I know that this has a lot to do with standardized tests and accountability. However, we need to get out of that realm that being able to robotically spit out facts is what produces the best students. If you teach a student like a robot, essentially they will be robots the rest of their lives. Through methods such as teach less, learn more and PBL, I hope that we can take boring but necessary curriculum and make it interesting and long term knowledge. Collaboration, constructivism, and life skills are all items I would ideally like to include in my PBL assignment. These will be beneficial to students in both the short and long term.
This article brought up some great points about 21st century learning and the direction that we as teachers need to move in. It is so important for students to learn skills such as collaborating, problem solving, and implementing an idea that they created. In theory this seems great but we as educators need to make sure that this is truly practiced in the schools. The theory teach less learn more is something that we should strive for, however it can be hard to give up the teaching reins so to speak. Something I found interesting was the fact that the author said that the teach less learn more theory wants teachers to teach with passion and foresight. They should intertwine all subjects to create a richer learning experience instead of isolating the subjects. This line stood out to me because teaching is all about quality and what you do to reach every student and make sure that they are learning and thriving.
By creating my PBL assignment I want to incorporate different 21st century skills such as collaborating, problem solving and a student centered environment. I want students to be able to have a say in their education. Also, by students working on a PBL it is almost a real life simulation. In the real world our subjects are not segregated. It is important to be able to put all of the skills we learned to use in order to solve bigger problems.
There are many similarities between Singapore's vision: Teach Less, Learn More and Project Based Learning. They both build "life skills" for students, such as "thinking, creating, problem solving, and collaboration". Both PBL and Singapore's vision allow the teacher guide or help students, rather than teaching them directly. These "visions" and PBL also stress how important collaboration is. Students working together to solve a problem is such an important part of the learning process. They get to work on projects together, ask questions, create ideas, and solve problems. Many teachers find it hard to "teach less". It's hard to let students explore on their own and it's a hard concept for teachers to understand. I found it interesting when the question of "how" can we teach less, came up. Allowing students to be interactive, hands on, and collaborating can help the students learn more, and teachers teach less. The students are engaged in learning and become critical thinkers. I liked when the article says that teachers begin to look past the subject area and create more meaningful lessons that intertwine the curriculum and 21st century skills.
This article brought up many good points about 21st century classes. Student directed classes allow for the students to be in control and go through multiple disciplines without even noticing. Also, the visions in this article are closely related to the standards that we see arising. Making school related to students everyday lives has to deal with nation, and collaboration is dealing with partners and working together. These are things that we know we need to include into the classes, but we are not doing effectively or in a timely manor. This are ideas that need to be considered when we go about or PBL project. To be able to include this concept of teaching less, because we know that if we do it correctly, students will know more in the end, and they will be the ones discovering it, we will not be telling them what we want them to know. This teaches students to actually learn the material instead of just memorizing for the test.
After reading this article I can see that there are similarities between PBL and Singapore's vision. They both promote teaching less and learning more, and that schools today should be teaching more for the students life skills as well as their education. These two methods of teaching are invaluable life learning tools. I think the only problem that can get in the way of teaching these methods is the teacher. It is up to the teacher to figure out a way to teach less so the students can learn more. This is a struggle for teachers at first, but the more they practice and collaborate on the topic the easier it will become.
PBL is a way for students to work on projects together and have more of a hands on experience. After reading "The Singapore Vision" I learned that this method is not too far from the same idea as PBL. They both are about their students creating more, thinking more, and doing more problem solving. They want their students to work collaboratively and be persistent. This kind of teaching is a good way for students to learn without being lectured by the teacher. The students teach themselves and learn from each other.
It was interesting to see how that in this article, Singapore has four main visions when preparing for the 21st century. The first vision states how they wish to build a set of life skills, attitudes, and dispositions. When we look deeper into these goals, we see how it is very similar to the goals of PBL (collaboration, critical thinking, creativity etc.) The second vision deals with more student led instruction where the teachers teach less and students learn more- another concept of PBL. The third and forth concept are interesting, as they give a basis for implementing these ideas in school and collaborating between professional learning communities. After reading this article, you can see that these 'visions' are completely related to what PBL is. Seeing these different visions in Singapore allows one to see just how popular the idea of PBL is becoming. It is important to read articles like these, because it deepens your knowledge on PBL and provides more information on how it is put into practice by giving elementary and secondary school examples. It was also interesting to see that the article clearing states that "all is not perfect in this imperfect process of change." This quote tells the reader that the whole process isn't exactly where it should be, as people are still trying to figure out ways to have high test scores and engage students in more active learning.
The Singapore Vision connects to our PBL task in many ways. The idea that we need to "teach less and learn more" is found throughout PBL to begin with. Our projects will be able guiding our students to learn, to develop, to conjecture, and to try on their own. Instead of giving them the answers, we want them to become so invested in the material that they want to find the answers on their own. They will take it a step further and ask more questions, ask why how and what. The teachers in Singapore had concerns about whether or not students were going to learn the standards or if they were going to just skim the surface. We must be concerned about our projects being like this as well. If we make the material relevant to their lives and make it important instead of copying ideas and rewording them, then students will want to learn more. They will be surprised by some of the things they learn and they will want to do more research, want to know exactly why things happen. The next thing we know, they will have met all the standards because of their interest and curiosity (as the one teacher thought and said). Students do not like lecture, all the time, and will learn more by doing more. Another idea that is strongly linked to our project is "tight loose tight". We have to maintain some design elements for our projects and we have to have a rubric/checklist stating exactly what must be included. These things are not flexible (although they can be decided upon as a class). The flexible things are the resources, accommodations, modifications, and tools. Our students will be able to learn which resources and tools are best by doing these projects. Collaboration is also key to the success of students, which is why the Singapore Vision and our PBL projects will incorporate this. Competition, although found in the "real world", is usually not found between individuals. Once you are in a job, team work, communication, and collaboration are integral parts of success of the company and the individual. Students are not given enough time to work together, develop ideas together, and to be interdependent. The Singapore Vision seeks to force collaboration; to help the students see how resourceful it is to work together to solve a problem. Our projects will hopefully demonstrate the importance of independent and group work, how the two go hand in hand. The individual is responsible for his/her piece, but altogether the group must debate, edit, conjecture, and finalize their projects. These Visions are really life skills that students need to learn.
One quote that stood out to me in this article was “remembering why we teach, reflecting on what we teach and reconsidering how we teach.” These are three r’s that I feel are extremely necessary for teachers to keep in mind when they come into this profession. I always believed that you are always a learner first then a teacher and this quote really explains that. As teachers, we should always be open to new ideas, which reminds that we are teaching for the benefit of our students to gain the best learning experience they can. In order to keep our minds open to new ideas, we must reflect on our teaching and then change the way we teach in order to help our students the best way possible. This article discusses teaching less and learning more. A good argument that was made in this article was the idea of how can teachers be expected to teach less while in the world, new information is being constantly added that needs to be taught. Teaching less does not mean to take omit certain topics from the lesson or teach less essential material from the curriculum. It’s about creating a classroom in which the teacher doesn’t just pour in all the information into the students. It’s about PBL learning methods that we have discussed before. The article even mentions how students already come into the class with so much of their own information. Why not allow them to use this information and let them play a greater role in their own education. Of course bringing this change into the classroom isn’t an easy task but if a teacher really wants the best learning experience for their students, they will want to struggle and work for it.
There are so many similarities between PBL and Singapore’s visions for their schools. I think that the “teach less, learn more” vision is especially relevant when discussing project based learning. The whole idea of “teach less, learn more” is to reduce the amount of pure lecture time and increase the amount of time spent on hand on projects where the students learn for themselves as opposed to just being told the facts. Project based learning is virtually the exact same thing. PBL is the use of projects that are meant to open a child’s mind to their own creativity and ingenuity so they truly learn and retain the material, not just taking notes and studying for the test- after which the information will most likely be forgotten. The PBL tasks that we are creating are centered around this very concept of “teach less, learn more,” where we, as teachers, have to present our students with a driving question that will fuel their curiosity and propel them into a learning scenario where they are teaching themselves the material as well as problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking skills. It is this “letting go” that I think most teachers have difficulty doing but it is also the framework around the “teach less, learn more” vision as well as the concept behind PBL. Once teachers are ready to teach less and accept that by doing so, their students can actually learn more, we will see more PBL and “teach less, learn more” type visions in American classrooms.
The Singapore vision is a transformation in Singapore’s education system like PBL is to us in the American school system. Singapore Vision and PBL are very similar to one another replacing traditional ways of learning to new. Singapore has four components; “Thinking Schools, Learning nation,” “Teach less, Learn more,” “Tight, Loose, Tight,” and “Professional Learning Communities.” The first vision involves life skills (thinking creating, and problem solving) which a goal in PBL contains for children to learn. The second vision has the same idea as PBL because its student centered where teachers guide NOT teach the whole lesson. Third vision has to do with setting goals which is the same in PBL because it allows kids to set them. Last vision involves collaboration; this is what PBL mainly contains.
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