Blogging
about innovation in education is one thing, putting those ideas into practice with students is another. Since the beginning of the new school year in
September 2013, we have been trying to bring about this transformation in the
classes under my responsibility in Lycée Pierre and Marie Curie in Châteauroux
(France).
The
classes of "Terminale" (12th grade) began their work with
the TED video "Changing Educational Paradigms" by Sir Ken Robinson.
Their first task: brainstorming about the question "How do we learn things
at school?" It comes as no surprise that their list is quite conservative,
except for the last item: "By being self-motivated".
Confronted
with Robinson's arguments, they began digging deeper. After first identifying
his arguments, they quickly moved on to explaining, analyzing and criticizing
them, with the goal of making them their own. Sometimes they run off the rails,
criticizing the very ideas Robinson himself is opposed to while under the
impressing that they are taking Robinson to task. Little by little, however,
they have managed to integrate Robinson's arguments into their own logical
constructions, adding here and there elements of their own.
Continuing
with this theme of innovation, we watched another TED video, WilliamKamkwamba's "How I harnessed the wind." Students were so impressed by
Kamkwamba's accomplishments that they spent the following class hour discussing
how striking his work is. This young Malawian built a windmill with parts from
a scrapyard, with no formal education beyond primary level, no knowledge of
English and just the few bits of information he could glean from physics and
electricity books he read at a local library – written only in English. On the
test two weeks later, I asked them to what extent Kamkwamba was a sort of hero.
Approval was nearly unanimous.
However,
showing videos in class and talking about them together is hardly an innovative
teaching practice in and of itself. But we have begun to cross this bridge.
Students thinking about their own conditions of learning is an important first
step. They have begun looking for answers and ideas beyond teacher-centered
lectures and target-language documents studied in class. The next step is to go
on the web and watch other videos they choose themselves, searching for new
ideas on their own and beginning to build a personal self-motivated learning
process designed to supply answers to their own questions. They will explore
the "Pearl Trees" diagram that we built together and exchange their
ideas with distant partners using Skydrive and the Office Webapps as an
exchange platform. Tools like
Mindmeister, Audacity, MS Photostory, Blogspot, Smart Notebook and Smart Ideas
will also be used. Although this project has only begun, its innovative side
will come to fruition in the work they realize in coming weeks.
Finally,
I should note that this project is also intended to serve as an example of
"best practices" to showcase ways of integrating educational
technology into the classroom, as well
as encouraging students to "think outside the box" and take charge of
their own learning. I hope that the Barcelona Partners in Learning event will
give me more opportunities for networking and finding distance communication
project partners.
