Category: Week 2 – Networked Learning

The TEDxKC video “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning” by Michael Wesch really made me reevaluate my undergrad career. So many of the things he and his students brought forward are so true of the collegiate system today. I think the notion of “getting by” in school is very prevalent. As an undergrad I definitely had this mentality today. You just need to get the minimum amount of work done just to get a desired grade in the class. It wasn’t even really about the learning it was just about hitting the required marks to pass the class. I will say this with a caveat, that most of the courses I applied this to I was not passionate about.  So my question to you out there is who is responsible for correcting this notion? Should I be required to take these courses? Could it be supplemented for something instead? Could the courses possibly be catered to individual students so we actually get something meaningful out of the class?

I think Michael Wesch did a good job of addressing these issues with his student that was constantly sleeping in his class. He pulled that student aside had lunch with him and figured out what was going on with this student. After learning what was going on in his life, he put him in a more applicable course where he was able to peruse what he was passionate about. This is kind of an ideal scenario and I question is it realistic to think we could do this for every student? I also think there are just some courses you have to pay your dues with. Especially for engineering there are some really dry courses that are just requirements and there is no way around it. What do you guys think about some of these points?

My experience of pedagogy from school to college to even some part of grad school has been same. I had always thought that the conventional way i.e. a single person talks to a group of people sitting in a hall trying to explain them what he/she knows or what the book says, the group of people try to grasp as much as they can and make notes, work on homeworks/ assignments and finally give an exam and the grade is a marker of how much they actually learned, was the tried and tested way of teaching and learning.

But last semester when I took the Communicating Science course, my thinking completely changed. That course was all about communication with the fellow classmates, communicating your research to them, getting their feedback, getting their appreciation, writing news articles about each other’s research etc. What was happening was that I was presenting my work number of times to different people with varied research backgrounds and in the process I was building a network, which helped me learn and understand my research in a different and better way. What this course helped me realize was that networked learning is really important and effective.

Coming back to the method 1, is the conventional method which is still the most prevalent one around the world, really effective? Because many grades on my transcript( and of most people’s) are the result of studying restlessly a day or two before the exams and not real learning. However, the method 2 which encourages the “learners” to engage in discussion, debate, dialogue and learn a lot more in the process is really effective. A great example of this would be the discussion we had in the first class of Contemporary Pedagogy. I really wasn’t aware of the discussed aspects of the Learning management systems and just listening to people talk about their perspective on the topic helped me learn a lot and actually encouraged me to go back and research more about it.

I think there is a need to change our understanding of “learning” and the pedagogy will play a crucial part in it. Courses like Contemporary Pedagogy or Communicating science need to be introduced to a wider audience and young teachers and future professors like us should inculcate these new approaches while teaching.

Looking forward to a lot more ‘networked learning’ throughout the semester and fellow learners, feel free to pitch in your ideas/comments/views on this topic.

From this week readings and videos, my favorite one is the TedTalk "What Baby George Taught Me About Learning" by Dr. Wesch who is an anthropologist and professor that received the “US Professor of the Year” Award from the Carnegie Foundation. In this talk, Dr. Wesch share his perspective about education built from his experience in the classroom.

According to him, there is a sense of disconnection among students. They do not feel like they know their teachers. In fact, Dr. Wesch argues that digital technology on the global society don’t automatically foster significant learning or establish genuine empathy or meaningful bonds between professors and students. From his experience, he argues that only genuine connections may restore the sense of joy and curiosity that we hope to instill in his students.

From my experience in the classroom, we are defined by our grades. Professors don't connect or understand what are our personal trials that might be preventing us to perform as desired in the classroom. Basically, we just do stuff to "get it done". But, are we really learning something? This grading system is basically working as a sorting machine, in which "As" and "Fs" are defined. In this system, As" and "Bs" start to feel complacent and stop trying and "Fs" are just out. What if, professors start giving a "not yet" and feedback to students? In the same way that babies need to fall so that they learn how to walk, students have to feel that failing is part of the learning system, and that there is someone that cares about them in the learning process.

For full disclosure, this blog was created as a required part of my enrollment in GRAD 5114 – Contemporary Pedagogy for the Spring 2019 semester at Virginia Tech.  I would like to go into post-secondary education in order to teach future Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers and administrators at the university level.  Taking this course isn’t part of my program of study, but I believe it is an important part of the process I’m going through to prepare for that future.

All that is to say, if and when you visit this blog you will find that the majority of the posts are required for the GRAD 5114 course, but my hope is that not all of them will be.  My broader goal with this blog is to explore pedagogical thoughts directly related to the course assignments and also some of those that are not directly related to course assignments.  That goal is why I’ve named this blog Finding Praxis.

The term praxis refers to the point where theory meets practice.  I see this as the way my understanding of how something should work influences what I actually do.  In my day job, I’m a high school teacher.  I’ve worked in K12 education for 14 years.  I’ve had a lot of opportunities to adjust both my theory and my practice and continue to do so in some way every year.  I’m still trying to find that ideal intersection of what I would like to see happen and what is actually happening.  My hope is to refine and improve my praxis in both my current and future teaching roles and that’s what this blog is intended to help me do.

Networked learning is a strange concept. It isn’t something that should be special, because it is so much of how we process the world. We connect with the things around us to remember people, places, smells, sounds, and general sensations. But we waste so much time learning in a static and stuffy manner that suddenly the way we naturally process the world became a new and creative concept.

I earned an undergraduate and a masters degree with nothing but class time and some lab hours. The amount of information I’ve retained from those degrees is minuscule despite the years invested. Meanwhile, since I’ve been at VT I’ve had to present my work multiple times, I’ve had to interact with people outside my degree, and I’ve actually started building a network. This reinforces my own knowledge while connecting me with people I can talk to when I reach a topic outside of my comfort zone.

Interacting with the “real world” forces students and people, in general, to reevaluate what they are doing and saying in a way that enhances understanding and retention. At the best of times, people fact check and correct your mistakes making learning that much better. Sometimes they’ll do this in hurtful ways, but that is yet another learning experience. Getting a B on a paper and no other marks hardly teaches me to learn from my mistakes. Meanwhile, @blogjerk496 (I hope no one actually has this handle) telling me I’m an idiot and should have researched x, y, and z before talking about the origin of the alphabet gives me a chance to correct myself and learn some new information.

What I think we really need to teach in classrooms is how to connect to, build, and utilize our networks. Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter are a start, but how do we actually grow those communities beyond close friends, classmates, and maybe our parents? How do I invite amazing speakers to talk to my student group? Heck, how do I get people into my student group and to care as much as I do about the group? Once the network starts to build I imagine you can facilitate discussions to learn from their experiences. Actually having those discussions can be difficult for some, but for me, I’m not even that far yet. I’ve got some distant peers that I hope to run into at another conference, but that’s about it. Should I track those people down and follow them on Twitter? Facebook stalk them or remind them that they have a LinkedIn? Even if I do connect, how what do I discuss? I can hold my own in a room fairly well but over the internet in 140 characters or whatever? That’s so far outside my comfort zone right now.

What do my classmates think? How have you developed your networks? Do you wish you could add something to it (like international collaborators or diversity)?

My post today will be centered on the Ted Talk What Baby George Taught Me About Learning (2016) by Michael Wesch. If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure that you do. It is well worth the 17 minutes. If 17 minutes is too long, then play it at 1.5 or 2.0 times normal speed.

The primary takeaway for me was to care, really care, about teaching. To do this I must care, really care, about the students. I need to care about them enough to acknowledge my own professional weaknesses and resolve to overcome them. While I was watching the Ted Talk I thought back on a teacher in college that embodied caring at the level I aspire to. I recall that on the fist day of class he came to class having already memorized the names of each student in the class. This small act of caring made me feel worthwhile. It was memorable.

I liked how Michael Wesch discussed programming failure into the learning path. A good teacher knows that many students will struggle and wont hold it against them. Purism is a toxic expectation. Just like Michael’s son George, who failed stepping down off the step for months, wasn’t a failure, neither are students who fall short, but continue striving to succeed. Failure is a product of quitting, not of consistently trying yet still coming up short.