Can You See What I'm Thinking?
We read alot of good articles for ECI 517 this week. Many of them were very helpful; explaining concepts such as scaffolding and fading and how to use multimedia as a medium to train apprentices in an authentic learning environment. Very impressive stuff! And I appreciated the useful extra activities provided in the Darling-Hammond article. My favorite by far was this same article entitled "Watch It, Do It, Know It: Cognitive Apprenticeship."
Not only was I impressed by the content; I also appreciated the clean, easy to read format and presentation. What I enjoyed most was the discussion about making thinking visible - referring to not only the instructor's thinking process, but also an individual student's thinking process. I have always been a visual oriented person and have often found ways to help myself process new material by either making a tangible article or by associating the material to a visual image. I really like the idea of spelling out steps as they are taken or having someone articulate what is happening in their head as they are working through an idea or problem.
As for the overall concept of Situated Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeships, the methods seem very natural to me. I have already experienced modeling, scaffolding, coaching and apprentice types of teaching/learning experiences as both a teacher and a student. Being an arts and crafts fan, many of these methods come very naturally when you are learning how and/or teaching someone to make something. Using multimedia as a medium to convey knowledge and skill seems like a natural step to take. I can not tell you how many times I have referred someone to a video tutorial to see how to knit a particular stitch or complete a project.
I have had plenty of one-on-one and tutorial teaching experiences as well, so a Cognitive Apprenticeship doesn't seem like a far reach either. Showing a student how to do something, watching them complete steps, guiding, correcting, holding back when they are able to work independently is something I am quite comfortable doing. And, now I think I might even be able to see what my students are thinking!
Categories: ECI 517
Tags: Advanced Multimedia ECI 517 Cognitive Apprenticeships Situated Learning
Cindy, I'm glad you brought up arts & crafts. It is one of the purest examples of apprenticeship learning. If we can base all our curriculum on this example, we'd have a great start.
Reply to this
Hi Cindy,
Interesting you mentioned arts and crafts. It hadn't dawned on me until now that during my experience in elementary and middle school, art class really was a perfect example of situated learning. There may not have always been group work, but many similar concepts. Hmmm... no wonder art class was a favorite class among most of my classmates. It wasn't just what we were learning, it was the way we were learning it.
Mary Ellen
Reply to this
Thanks Mary Ellen and Jen, Maybe what you two are saying is what makes sharing arts and crafts with others so comforting and enjoyable! I could watch students make art all day!
Reply to this
Great post, Cindy! I have this theory... Teaching as storytelling. It's one of the things I realized as a math teacher. If I was able to personalize (or add a dash of personification) some of the math problems I used as examples, they seemed to "stick" much better. As a function of that theory, I used to always - out of habit - talk out loud as I was solving a problem. Who knew there was cognitive apprenticeship happening?! A pretty cool realization for me. Sound like this hit home with art.
Reply to this
Matthew!
Don't you just love it when research findings point out how brilliant you were (just being yourself) all these years!
Reply to this
"Watch It, Do It, Know It" was a great article, and I appreciated the situated learning examples used throughout the text. One of my favorites early on was the journalism class instructor who shared outlines and samples of 'great' articles that the students could use for modeling. The fact that the instructor explained the structure of the entire article and went through it's great and not so great parts is good for the students to learn about the best ways to right.
This type of learning could easily be implemented by using various types of multimedia including "how to" audio or video, interviews, and web resources.
Reply to this
Cindy,
Have you checked out Art Snacks? Check it out at: http://www.essdackartsnacks.org/ If you haven't seen it yet, you're going to LOVE it! He even figured out a way around the firewalls the schools have set up (because it started out as a blog and blogs are blocked in most districts) I've used it with my kids at school and they love it! They like the "personal" lesson feeling they get working along with the online tutorial and are usually more willing to take chances with their art when they are using it.
Reply to this
Hey Jill & Angela,
Thanks for your comments! I liked the journalism example too. And, I will definitely have to check out Art Bits!
Reply to this
When you mentioned multimedia and apprenticeship, you reminded me of a computer-based instruction class I took at Georgia using the program Authorware. My instructor there always had good examples of different interactions we could implement, and then we spent the day practicing creating those in the lab as he rotated and troubleshot our problems. It was very much an apprenticeship-like situation for multimedia development. Probably one of my favorite classes.
Reply to this
Dr. Oliver - that does sound like a great class!
Reply to this