What Happens When You Give Students the Control?

Recently I had the privilege of sitting in on a workshop conducted by Ewan McIntosh (http://www.notosh.com) who took us through a process where he helped us (the students) become better “problem finders.”  He then challenged us to go out and help our students become better “problem finders.”  Giving up control is often hard, especially for educators, but I realized I wanted to move this way.   Thus, I thought of a group of forth graders I was going to work with the following week.

These forth graders come to see me twice a week for enrichment and I decided to see what would happen.  So on our first visit, I copied Ewan and took these ten year olds through an exercise to help them learn whatever they wanted to learn about.  The only stipulation I gave them was that they had to choose a science related topic, since this was my field of expertise.  After two thirty-minute sessions with these students they came up with two very good problems to be solved. 

They fell into two distinct groups and they came up with two VERY different questions:  The first group wanted to figure out how to solve the problem of groundwater pollution.  Once they settled on their topic, they realized they didn’t really know very much about groundwater pollution.  In fact, their understanding of what groundwater pollution is was incorrect.  I allowed this misconception to persist and encouraged them to learn all that they could about groundwater pollution.  Once they understood what groundwater was, they realized that the best way to “solve” the problem of groundwater pollution was to prevent it.  As of this post, these students have decided to make a 2-3 min video where they are going to educate people about the dangers of groundwater pollution.  They hope to put it on youtube and educate the world.

The other group came up with the question:  What is it about the human brain that causes it to make the decisions that it makes?  This question was truly advanced for a bunch of forth graders.  As they began their research they had a daunting task.  After about four sessions, they turned to me and said that this answer is not out their on google.  They knew some things, but they needed help.  One young man told me we needed to ask a “super smart scientist.”  So I told him we should do that.  He then replied, “Who would want to talk to a group of ten year olds?”  And I told him you might be surprised. 

So I encouraged them to reach out on the web and look for some neuroscientists to skype in and help them.  And you can probably predict what happened.  They are now looking forward to skypeing in with a professor of cognitive neurology from MIT this coming Monday. 

My take-away’s from these two events is that we do need to give up the control of the learning to our students.  They will pursue things with passion if we only give them the chance. 

Bringing the World into Your Classroom-Connecting through twitter

With the advent of free video conferencing software (Skype) it is amazing how easy it is to get experts into your classroom. One of my goals this year was to bring experts in who can discuss what they do. Today I had the privilege of having Lillie Croft, a volcanologist skype into my freshmen classes. She shared with us a powerpoint about why volcanoes are important to the health of the world. She talked about how volcanoes are both destructive and constructive. It was a great experience for my students to hear from a “real” scientist who did research on the things that we have been learning about.


So how do you get world-class speakers “into” your classroom. For me I have begun to use twitter to connect with people all over the world. If you are unfamiliar with twitter, it is a micro blogging site that allows people to post small (limit 140 characters) micro-blogs. You might wonder how anything important can be shared in 140 characters. Usually what people post is a small teaser and then have a link to a website that gets you more information.

The other thing you can do is use what are called hashtags. Hashtags were developed as a means to create "groupings" on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. Essentially you put the “#” symbol in front of a string of text, do a search for that hashtag and then even people who don’t “follow” you, but who are interested in the same types of things you are will see your post. They then may respond to your post. Several hashtags that I use are: #edchat, #scichat, #scido. When you search these people will talk about education, science, or how to do science in the classroom.

So how did I connect with Dr. Croft? I simply put out on my twitter feed that I was looking for a volcanologist to skype into my classroom. I put it out on the #scichat search list and voila, I got a response from somebody who knew her. I then emailed her and she graciously agreed to talk to my kids.

Truly in today’s connected world, we have the opportunity, and dare I say responsibility, to bring the world into our classroom. So get with it and connect to people who can connect to our kids.