I read a wonderful book a few years back by Osguthorp. The Education of the Heart It basically said that we learn what we are interested in and when the questions that inspire the learning come from our own experiences and needs our learning is much more profound.
Finding application for this amazing "no, duh" idea has been more difficult and I would love any and all experiences you have had that may shed light on how you do it.
I have had a few moments when it has worked and I'd like to tell you about Two. She is my charming ten year old who REALLY loves stuffed animals and loves to go through life unseen. Most of her assignments are met with mild interest and a desire to just get through them so she can get back to playing with her stuffed animals. I said that was fine if that is her passion but we need to find a way to make it academic. She is now, slowly, writing the biographies of all these stuffed animals. This has inspired her to FINALLY learn to type and she is starting to question her writing. As she reads her writing to me, she asks herself now, "wait a minute, how did they get there?" I am starting to see and editorial eye develop.
I am sure you would all love me to develop such an editorial eye--I always find mistakes after I publish. Arrgh
ReplyDeletePut a set of encyclopedias in a high-traffic area. We kept ours in the hall. I know a family who kept them in the kitchen. Every time a question comes up, pull out an encyclopedia. Use them for everything. Pretty soon you get to know the encyclopedias, they become friends, and they are the default solution to boredom. The same principle is true for a dictionary.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia works the same way, but I prefer tangible books as they are easier to grab when a simple question comes up over the dinner table and they are a safer option with younger children. Can't afford a set of encyclopedias? Look for a used set online, at garage sales, or when libraries and schools are updating their collections. They don't need to be current because the idea is just to pique interest. The set I had as a kid was from the seventies.
Also available online is a site called StumbleUpon. Select general areas of interest, click a button, and a web page pops up. Keep clicking until you get one that looks interesting. I chose space exploration once and found all sorts of things from a recent article about UV spec analysis of moon dust to a video of astronauts testing classical Galilean/Newtonian physics by dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon. At some point, one sees something and wonders, "What is that?" or "Why did that happen?" or "How does that work?" or "What else could we do with this?"
Once areas of interest develop, curb aimless wandering through information and create a plan for focused study. The whole process is kind of like writing a paper in that Wikipedia is a good jumping off point to get a feel for the topic and some background information, but it is not an appropriate resource for your works cited page. To write the paper, you have to get into scholarly articles, primary sources, and first person experimentation. Things like encyclopedias provide an overview of possibilities. From there our experiences and needs dictate the direction we go in our explorations of the universe.
Thanks Izzy, I will definitely look up stumbleupon
ReplyDeleteI like all those ideas. These are things I've never even though about, so reading about them immediately makes me even more curious about how they WILL work for me.
ReplyDelete