Luck, You?

How lucky are you?

I'd hate to think there's a logical explanation for everything, but I do buy into the concept that we make our own luck.

The idea that there are different kinds (or levels) of luck makes a lot of sense to me, too. I like how Gross sums it up (page 292): "1) be there, 2) be active, 3) be prepared, 4) be yourself, and 5) be intuitive."

Social Pressures on Creativity

This one is kind of scary. Does society pressure us to be less creative? (see pages 156-157).

I was quite impressed with Dr. Schank's "maxims":

1. Look for anomalies. Anomalies are where the action is, creatively speaking.

2. Listen. You can't find anomalies if you weren't paying attention to what was going on in the first place.

3. Find data. Before you make a theory, look to the world around you, ask yourself what is happening. The more you know the more you can create.

4. Classify, and invent new classifications. Their real value is the generalization they capture.

5. Make rash generalizations. The idea behind making rash generalizations is not to be right, but to be thinking.

6. Explain. When we learn something, it's because we have invented an explanation for it. We have explained it to ourselves.

7. Refuse to learn the rules. You must pick your spots for rebellion, be sure that you have reason on your side, and be prepared to take the consequences.

8. Reject old explanations. Ask why. [Authorities tell us to simple explanations to complex issues] . . . it is important to learn to distrust these explanations, not because someone is trying to fool you, but because the standard wisdom might be wrong.

9. Let your mind wander. . . . the process of letting your mind go where it wants can be useful if where it wants turns out to be an interesting place to go.... If you don't give your mind a little freedom every now and a again, it may stop wandering.

10. Fail early and fail often. Failure is a good thing. We learn from failure. Take a chance. Have an idea and allow the possibility that it might be a bad idea.

11. Reject all the above maxims. Who says I know what I'm talking about. Can we really enhance our creativity? That's a good question.

Hidden Credentials

What are the hidden credentials of your students?

I liked the Peter Smith quote (page 147): "Educators and employers tend to ignore the immense amount of learning that almost everyone does outside of school and college. This is often a personal tragedy, and it prevents our society from benefitting from the 'hidden credentials' which Americans could be contrinuting to business and social life. We are blighting lives and hobbling our progress by failing to find ways to discern, harness, and reward these 'hidden credentials.'"

Do you agree? And if so, what do we do about it?

Learning Techniques: Before, During, and After

I liked chapter 6 quite a bit.

Gross discusses two pre-learning techniques: pro-active reading and the vee-heuristic technique.

1. Pro-active reading is probably taught in Reading and Critical Thinking Skills classes, but most of our students do not take such classes. Do we ever mention the idea of pro-active reading to the majority of our students?

The point of the technique is to encourage readers to be "active, self-directed, and creative." And the way to do that is to approach the book with a specific goal in mind.

I know I'm old fashioned. I like to read the entire book, but Gross's point about developing focus questions and then just reading the specific sections of the book that deal with those questions makes a lot of sense.

2. Vee-heuristic helps you focus on what you already know, and then helps you transfer than knowledge into what you're interested in learning: http://telematics.ex.ac.uk/cocoa_demo/content/tools/improved_vee_heuristic.htm

The objective of this technique is the same as above -- take the time to think about what you want to learn from your experiences, your research, your reading. In other words, develop a plan, a focus question, and some key specifics.

The Romance of Learning

Is learning "romantic"? That's a pretty novel idea.

How many students in college classes act as if learning is more like a marriage gone bad after 12 years?

Every class should be an opportunity to connect romance to the subject. It's sad to see students in classes with the sole desire to "pass," not learn.

And, perhaps the classroom isn't the ideal learning environment for all students. That's why we must seize upon ways to connect students to the material through alternative methods.

A Moment of Clarity

On page 52, Gross mentions the three zones of learning: The Groan Zone, The Drone Zone, and the Flow Zone. What a neat way to put it.

The idea, of course, is to avoid the Drone and Groan zones, and I think this section of the book does a pretty good job explaining how to do just that. And for faculty, I think this is a key section to keep in mind as we help our students.

The quote by Roger Von Oech stuck out to me, too: "The ancient Greeks knew that learning comes from playing. Their concept for education (paideia) is almost identical to their concept for play (paidia)."

Peak-Learning=Professional Success?

“Thank God I never was sent to school/To be flogd into following the Style of a Fool”--Wm. Blake

I have just begun Gross's book and, as Bret points out, the six major fears of learning--stemming from various sources in different individuals--are compelling and necessary to consider as a teacher and fellow-learner. It is not even mid-semester and I have heard each of the six fears expressed by my students (fear of not knowing how to learn, learning is boring, difficult, passive, lonely, unrelated to one's real interest, and, in the current state of affairs, institutional learning is ungodly expensive--which intensifies student fear and anger greatly).

At some point in their experience, strong, negative, anxiety-provoking feelings have been associated with learning thus activating and processing memory and emotion in the "reptillian" (fight or flight) portion of the brain. The good news is that the brain is not as "hardwired" as once thought; that feelings, so important in learning (starting the process, continuing the process, and remembering and building upon the process), can be changed thoroughout one's life. As I listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall, I find this encouraging.

No doubt exorcising the "learning fears" bolsters one's confidence which can lead to success. And, in the best of cases, vocation combines with avocation in a kind of "flow" or "zone." Yet, one reservation I do have is with Gross' subtitle: How to Create Your Own Lifelong Education Program for Personal Enligtenment and Professional Success. I may do Gross disservice at this point, but I am leery of the notion of education as a "product" leading to professional or worldly success. Education ('paideia") and "enlightenment," especially of the highest Socratic sort (as Socrates' life attests), is not necessarily a fast-track up the corporate ladder. At this point, the notion of what it is education and what is an educated human being, or whether such a question is relevant, might be considered.

Clearly, Gross is right about this: we learn best that which is suited to us individually, suits our natural talents and their development, and sparks our passions ("eros"). We each travel our own unique journey, a journey that needs be self-directed. And the path and/or direction of that journey may change--very likely given the nature of our global economy.

But what of teachers? Socrates, in Plato's Theaetatus, likens his role as a teacher to that of a midwife. It is a pregnant metaphor (sorry). Students, self-directed, can certainly give birth to knowledge or truth without the midwifery of teachers; teachers often are superfluous. Moreover, teachers, but midwives, cannot impregnate students with knowledge. Many students, in fact, discover "admirable truths" within and bring them forth unaided. Other students will benefit from a midwife, yet do not realize it and as a result truth is aborted at birth or is birthed and brought up badly. Others, says Socrates, have minds that can never "conceive" though he can still find a place for them. Finally, there are those students whose "minds are in labor" and realize the comfort they may receive from the ministrations of someone like Socrates.

For Gross, teachers are a last resort: on tap, but never on top. After all, he says, "it's your learning, not theirs." (49) Fellow educators: what do you think?

(Un)Learning Fear

Gross hits this idea hard. You simply cannot learn until you remove fear.

Fears are feelings, and feelings are deeply ingrained. The author suggests that we might not even know why we have these feelings, but we must discover the underlying reasons of our fears, or else we'll never be able to learn.

How many of the following fears have you witnessed in your own students:

1. Fear of change

2. Fear of responsibility

3. Fear of forgetting

4. Fear of shame

5. Fear of being ineffective

6. Fear of having too much to learn

These fears are real. Often we hear students say, "I'll be happy just to pass this class." What causes them to "aim low"? One of our primary jobs as teachers, whether we like it or not, is to defuse the fear timebomb. Only then we'll we have what we really want: students ready and eager to learn.

The Emotional Brain

I'm sorry, but I really don't remember anyone ever teaching me this stuff when I was an undergraduate. For example, Gross says "our ability to remember information for future use may depend more on our feelings at the time than we had realized" (page 24). In other words, we tend to remember things better when we have an emtional attachment. That totally makes sense, and certainly explains why people remember where they were at 9-11, when the Challenger blew up, when Reagan was shot, etc.

How many times do we hear our students claim that something is "boring"? Maybe it's math, maybe it's English, or maybe it's education in general. The point is: the bored student cannot learn. Frankly, I know a lot of us have trouble understanding bored students. "How can they think this stuff is boring?" we wonder. And yet we know that they do.

This link might help:

http://www.virtualsalt.com/motivate.htm

The Mind is a Turkish Bazaar

I liked the image Gross uses of the mind as a Turkish bazaar (page 27). After all, our minds are always taking things in, and just because we are studying psychology, for example, that doesn't mean that we're not making a million other connections.

I'm afraid that we don't always encourage our students to do anything with those connections, though. Sometimes we probably fear that these connections take our students (or our classes) off topic; but if the topic itself is "learning," and if the brain is about making connections, is anything really "off topic"?

Brain Workouts

The brain is a muscle, but how do we teach our students that they need to do mental workouts? The classroom could be the brain's "gym," but how many of our students are encouraged to do mental workouts before class? And I'm not talking about homework and reading assignments. Students need to stretch their minds right before class. Do we encourage them to do that?

Any thoughts on how we can encourage students to do brain workouts before class?

Modern Learning Techniques: Are We Modern at RCTC?

Reviewing the chart on page 35, I wonder how well we're doing at following Modern Learning techniques. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do Interdisciplinary learning? For some reason, "interdisciplinary" tends to be a taboo term at RCTC.

We do much better with "technology as an integral tool," but how are we doing with "community partnerships"?

Below is a thorough and lengthly link explaining how to develop interdisciplinary courses. It would be well-worth the time and trouble to read.

http://www.interdisciplinary.duke.edu/news/resources/Haynes_Handout.pdf