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10 Valuable Hindsights by Guy Kawasaki

on July 06, 2013

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Climbing Bloom’s Ladder of Learning

A Google search on “Bloom’s taxonomy” recently returned an impressive 1.63 million results! Apparently the literature available on the internet is replete with resources about the famous Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. I don’t intend to repeat what Bloom taxonomy is about and how it evolves because I believe you can find wealth of information on various aspects on the topic among the 1.63 million results in the internet. I have selected a few articles (link at the end of this article) for those interested to know more about the various domains (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) in the original and the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. What I’m interested to talk about in this article is the issue of implementing and infusing the various domains in the curriculum. I’m aware that certain facets of Bloom’s taxonomy have been challenged (for example the hierarchical cognitive domain) but to me this is more of intellectual academic arguments that do not reduce the overall value of the concept. ...

From Teaching to Learning Paradigm

" I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think " – Socrates " I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn " – A. Einstein In the quest to explore and probe how teaching-learning practice is best approached, I read with great interest the long (14 pages) article written by Barr & Tagg, “ From Teaching to Learning – A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Teaching ” which was published about 15 years ago. I was interested to get hold of the original article because it is often cited in many discussions (article/book) on student-centered learning vs teacher-centered practice. Basically in the article they compared the traditional “Instruction Paradigm” and the emerging “Learning Paradigm”. The terms are equivalent to “teacher-centered” and “student/learner-centered” that are more prevalent in the contemporary literatures. Barr & Tagg argued that the purpose of teaching institution (schools, colleges, ...

Learning – from cradle to grave

" Knowledge does not narrow, knowledge only adds...and without knowledge many experiences in life remain very narrow and very shallow ..." - Professor Walter Lewin, Professor of Physics, MIT . While browsing the internet recently, I came across a picture of the giant mainframe computer of the early '80s. While staring at the picture, I was reminiscing the time back in 1988 during my time as a master's student at the University of Reading, England. For the first time in my life, I had to use a computer to prepare a linear regression plot using a software called Lotus 123. That was still the early days of computer and it marks the beginning of my exploration into the wonderful creation of modern time – computer. It was indeed an exciting and thrilling experience for me to be able to plot a graph and derive the equation so easily. I remember using a software called 'Chi-Square' (if I'm not mistaken) as word processor as well as for drawing a simple flow ...

Do you over teach your students?

I always share my enthusiasm with my colleagues about my teaching approaches and very often one of the issues raised during our discussion is “spoon-feeding” or “over teaching”. “Don’t you think you are spoon-feeding your students by putting your hand-outs, notes, PowerPoints slides, etc. for them to freely download?” “Don’t you think we over teach our students?” – These are the questions commonly asked by my colleagues and also when I give a presentation related to teaching-learning issues. Hmm....actually these are difficult questions to answer because to me there is no fine line or clear demarcation as to what constitutes spoon-feeding or over teaching and what is not. Well, this is what the dictionary says about spoon feeding in the context of teaching-learning: " If you spoon-feed someone, you do everything for them or tell them everything that they need to know, thus preventing them from having to think or act for themselves. There is a tendency to spoon-feed your pupils...

Flipped Classroom, Mobile Learning, WhatsApp, and Learning Nuggets

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enrol in my FREE COURSE 'FLIPPED CLASSROOM' on Openlearning to learn more -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember the droning lecture in Ferris Bueller's Day Off ("Anyone? … Anyone?") ? The scene maybe exaggerated but I think quite typical in most classroom. The sage on stage scenario is, by and large, still prevalent. Lectures are not necessarily bad ; in fact in some cases lectures are appropriate and relevant. However, in the traditional classroom, class periods are too short (typically 50 minutes) and usually the focus or the tendency is giving content to the students. There is not enough time for questioning and reflecting, interaction and discussion, and less opportunity for active learning. Would it more meaningful if the constructivist...

Teacher Makes a Difference

Being an educator is a big responsibility. I believe that a good and responsible educator can make an impact to one’s life in a positive way. It is important to have empathy and reaching out to our students, try to understand and help them with their problems. I believe that building close rapport with students is important because it allows the students and teacher to relate to each other. Establishing close rapport with students enable me to engage them in reciprocal conversation about their activities and interests. Talking about making a difference as a teacher, I was touched and inspired when I watched a movie “ Making a Difference ” on the internet. The movie was created from a fictional story written by Elizabeth Silance Ballard published in 1974 by Home Life Magazine as “Three Letters from Teddy”. Here’s the quote from the last scene in the movie: “ You can never tell what type of impact you may have on another’s life by your action’s…or lack of action. Please consider this ...

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Here I'm just sharing Carmine Gallo's presentation he posted on the Slideshare. Carmine Gallo is the author of two international best-seller books, " The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience " and " The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs ", which reveals the principles that have driven Steve Jobs’ success and that can help readers achieve incredible breakthroughs. I have not read the books but looking at the points presented in the slides, I'm sure the books contain wealth of good tips and strategies for speakers/presenters. For those who's doing a presentation is your bread and butter, then I would highly recommend you to spare a few minutes of your precious time to view the slides. If you can't make it, below I have extracted some important quotes and points from the whole presentation (verbatim). " A person can have the greatest idea in the world. But if that person can't convince e...

Lighting the Spark of Learning

" There are places on Earth, in every country where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go. And those places, as it turns out, is often where trouble comes from " – Sugata Mitra . The title of this posting is taken from the “Hole-in-the-Wall” website . Hole-in-the-Wall is a famous experiment conducted in 1999 by Professor Sugata Mitra and his research in a slum area in New Dehli, India to prove that kids (in this case deprived kids) could teach themselves and learn on their own without any formal training. In this experiment, a computer was embedded in a wall and connected to high speed internet and left it there. True enough, curious children were immediately crowded around the computer and “playing” with it. Within hours and without instruction, children began browsing the Web. "I repeated the experiment across India and noticed that children will learn to do what they want to learn to do", said Mitra. ...

How does students' prior knowledge affect their learning

This presentation is a summary of important points from the first chapter of the book " How Learning Works - 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching " by Ambrose and others. In Chapter 1 ( How Does Students' Prior Knowledge Affect Their Learning ) the authors discuss the importance of teachers to recognize that students bring with them prior knowledge acquired naturally through daily life activities or in prior courses they have studied. Some of the prior knowledge are relevant but some are not directly relevant. Sometimes students have misconception or inaccurate understanding of certain key principles or concepts. The authors emphasized the importance of connecting the prior knowledge with the new knowledge in order for effective learning to take place. This connection can be achieved by activating the prior knowledge at appropriate time during the learning process. I have summarized part of Chapter 1 in the presentation below (in two parts). Each part of the ...

Understanding How Learning Works

“ When it comes to teaching, most of us are still learning. Teaching is a complex activity, and yet most of us have not received formal training in pedagogy. Furthermore, teaching is a highly contextualized activity because it is shaped by the students we have, advancements in our respective fields, changes in technology, and so on. Therefore, our teaching must constantly adapt to changing parameters ” -- Ambrose et al., 2010, How Learning Works . Constructivism, behaviorism, pedagody, andragogy, Bloom Taxonomy, student-centered learning...?? I must humbly admit that, after more than 16 years teaching, I didn’t know much about the various learning theories and pedagogical aspects of teaching-learning. I’m not trained as a teacher – I’m a food technologist. My only experience in teaching was teaching my friends and a short stint teaching in a private school (secondary level). Soon after I completed my Ph.D. in Food Technology, I came back and joined the university as a lecturer – and...

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10 Valuable Hindsights by Guy Kawasaki

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