What can schools learn from the MythBuster?

Last weekend saw the last weekend of the MythBuster's 'Behind the Myths Tour' with two shows at Auckland's Vector Arena. Our family have been MythBusters fans for many year, and when my 11y old told me he had seen their show advertised, we booked tickets the next day. If you have not heard about them before, please check out the Wikipedia article on them here. 

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are special effects experts, not trained scientists. They test 'myths' from movies and the internet, or common beliefs, using scientific methods. There are plenty of 'things that go boom' but there is much more to their success than merely blowing stuff up.

Masters 9 and 11 before the show;
do you see in the background
"Failure is always an option"???

What makes the show so special in my eyes is that the MythBusters are inherently curious. They are wondering about the myths, wondering how they can prove these are 'confirmed', 'plausible' or 'busted, and if the latter, they wonder how they can achieve a similar result to the myth with different means. As Adam Savage said, rather than looking for 'Eureka", they are always looking for results that make them say 'Huh! That's funny!' (in the sense of unusual). At the same time, they are not afraid of failure, in fact there are plenty of failed attempts in every episode, sometimes even a whole myth revisited in another episode. Throw in scientific explanations and you get a show that has my hermit-apprentice 14y old get up well before 9am on a Saturday morning to spend 4h (one way) in the car to get to this show.

Jamie Hyneman answering questions

During the show both Jamie and Adam answered questions about their favourite myths. Both stated that their favourites were not myths involving 'blowing stuff up', they were episodes where they had to think hard and very creatively to solve a problem, e.g. "Lead Balloon" and "Penny Drop".

Amongst jokes and fun there were a number of profound statements; Adam Savage explained at the beginning that:

and towards the end he answered his own question about superpowers:

Vector Arena looked full to me (but I wouldn't call me an expert on such things), lots of young and older adults and parents with children. At $280 for the five of us in the less expensive section it wasn't cheap. Inherently it was all about science, not the biggest drawcard for some people. So what made it so attractive? What can schools learn from the MythBusters?

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• The MythBusters are engaging and have fun doing what they are doing.
• They present the topic in a way that makes us wonder with them - cultivating their and our curiosity.
• Their myths are 'real life' or from movies - which makes them almost real for many people. Rather than explaining the scientific method, they recreate myths and let us take part in it - which very much reminds me of Dan Meyer's approach to real life maths.

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Ask yourself:

• Do I have fun doing what I am doing, and do I show this?
• Do I cultivate my own and my learner's curiosity?
• Does the content have a real life connection, and do I and my learners take actively part in the resolving of the problem?

I can honestly answer yes and yes to the first two questions for me for pretty much all I do (ask me again on a different day when I have spent all day completing forms lol). I think I can work more on the real-life connection and the actively resolving of problems, I'll give this some serious thought how I can make this happen - do you have any suggestions for me? And what about you?

Note: I would like to acknowledge the three other long serving MythBusters, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tori Belleci, it has been announced in August that they are leaving the show. 

Moving beyond the $500 pencil

A lot of the schools I work with have heard me talk about $500 pencils; what is the point in spending $500 (or more) on a digital device if we are just using it as a pencil? (One of my friends has called her son's iPad Mini the most expensive dictionary she ever purchased!)

Far from just learning how to use 'the tool', schools nowadays need to look at how they are using digital technologies to support learning and teaching. I keep on coming back to the Golden Circle: 

To implement the school vision, teachers apply effective pedagogy. With new research on learning and the needs of our students, our ideas of effective pedagogy keep on morphing (I can thoroughly recommend reading Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching, also available as NZC Update 26, which identifies 6 themes: Personalising learning, Rethinking learners' and teachers' roles, A culture of continuous learning for teachers and educational leaders, New views of equity and diversity, A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity, and New kinds of partnerships and relationships.)

While all these ideas are very important, many teachers are looking for hands-on examples of what this means in the classroom. How do I make sure that I provide opportunities in my classroom for students to use their digital devices beyond a pencil?

For some time I have been using the SAMR model to explain to teachers how they can augment, modify and redefine learning in their classroom with digital devices:

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Lately I have moved to a different model, introduced to our team by our lovely colleague +Esther Casey :

How have you or will you move beyond using digital devices as $500 pencil in your learning and teaching?

#TTTC14 Roadshow - Day 3 in Kaikohe (Storify)

#TTTC14 Roadshow - Day 4 in Mangonui (Storify)

#TTTC14 Roadshow - Day 2 in Whangarei (Storify)

#TTTC14 Roadshow - Day 1 in Dargaville (Storify)

Create, Share & Collaborate?

For those that have seen my GTA video or participated in some of my recent sessions and workshops, you might have noted that Create, Share & Collaborate is a phrase I use frequently. With this I want to describe the 21C process of creating new knowledge, not keeping it to yourself but sharing it with others, and working on it together (from Latin 'com' (with, together) and 'laborare' (work) - 8y Latin were not in vain!).

This applies to children at school as well as to adults. With young children the notion to Create is not hard to instill, in my experience young children are inherently creative. When they start school patient teachers help them to direct their creativity. Sharing, as all parents and educators of young children know, is a skill that needs to be learnt, and it comes easier to some than to others. The key competencies of Managing Self and Relating to Others from our NZC are supporting young people to learn how to Share and to Collaborate.

The older we get, the more issues seem to come up with Sharing and Collaboration; questions are being asked, e.g. how do we assess the contribution an individual has made towards an project counting for NCEA? Could someone get away with doing nothing and let others do all the work? Shouldn't we better stick with everyone for themselves so we can get correct results?

My thinking is that maybe we are rolling this up from the wrong end; do we believe that Sharing and Collaboration are vital for successfully participating in society in 21C? If so, what opportunities does our current education system provide to acknowledge and support Sharing and Collaboration? Where there are not enough opportunities, what changes can we make to provide these?

When we extend this thinking beyond school, there are is a lot of Create, Share & Collaborate evident in the interactions of Tweeps or Tweachers (how I sometimes like to call them). They freely share resources with each other, give advice, there is a productive mixture of consuming and creating going on (another phrase I have come to love since the lovely +Catriona Pene  brought it to my attention). This strongly reminds me of my time as music teacher back in the late 90s when under the guidance of our then Music Advisor Margaret Williams we regularly met as cluster and shared and collaborated.

Still, not everyone understands this concept and / or is willing to create as well as consume. Every now and then I hear of people who have taken someone else's work and used it as if it was their own, either by accident, forgetting to attribute, by ignorance, not realising they need to attribute, or on purpose, not wanting to attribute.

Intellectual Property Right is a complex issue, and I would like to advise everyone to start researching it. I would not claim that I know the ins and outs of it, but to give you and example, if you work at a NZ school, unless your school has a Creative Commons Licence, everything you produce as teacher is property of the BoT. As far as I understand this extends to your right of sharing resources with other teachers, or taking units you have created with you when you leave the school. If you work in private business, there might yet be other IP issues to be considered.

How does this fit with Create, Share & Collaborate being vital for successful participating in 21C society? Will we have to wait for a change only when our current primary age children, having grown up in a system of Create, Share & Collaborate to become adult members of our society? What can you and I do today? Looking forward to your thoughts!

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Since I first published this post this morning, I had a little twitter conversation with +Sonya Van Schaijik who reminded me that before Collaboration, a Connection has to happen. A very valid point, and as as she will be co-presenting on this together at Ulearn14 I will book in for that session, especially as connecting and relationships are absolutely vital for learning.