Creating Significant Learning Environments
Wall Street veteran Whitney Johnson takes us down the timeline of her career’s rise from office administration to high-finance analytics, and shares with us the disruptive secrets to her success.
The following stacked s-curve diagram from Johnson’s article Throw Your Life a Curve demonstrates the growth cycle of disruptive learning.
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For those of us who have been watching this space what Bill Sams is suggesting is not new or surprising.
Jonathan Wai, a research scientist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program, argues that our schools ignore our most creative thinkers because:
Wai’s argument is based on his research into spacial intelligence. People with high spacial intelligence are the mechanical types, who can take apart and put back together just about anything. These types of people have little interest in words and numbers and because they are often less vocal and social their needs and amazing abilities are overlooked.
In his Psychology Today article Finding the Next Einstein: Why smart is relative, Wai points out that we habitually overlook some of the best and the brightest because of our reliance on standardized testing and intelligence testing which do not take into account spacial intelligence. Wai offers the following historical example of just how poorly intelligence testing identifies intelligence:
Over 90 years ago, Lewis Terman attempted to identify the brightest kids in California. There were two young boys who took Terman’s test but who did not make the cutoff to be included in this study for geniuses. These boys were William Shockley and Luis Alvarez, who both went on to study physics, earn PhDs, and win the Nobel Prize.
We have been overlooking or missing some of the brightest and best minds for a very long time, but we can’t afford to keep on ignoring these highly talented but different people any longer. These spacial thinkers are some of the best suited people to help us adapt to the disruptive change that is all around out us. What can we do to change our system and our schools to recognize and support these types of learners?
Wai suggests that we design educational interventions that are tailored to the spatial strengths. Hands on activities that encourage spatially talented students to work their hands is only the start. Perhaps first we need to be their voice. We all know people that are spatially talented and because they are often quiet and different they get overlooked or even ostracized and their talents and abilities are never fully realized. These are the people who not only can see different future they are the ones that can help us build it.
Who in your sphere of influence is a spacial thinker? What have you done to help them to maximize or even realize their potential?
MIT’s New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program’s Leader Says – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education-Wired Campus blogger Jeffery Young, Rafael Reif, MIT’s provost stated:
My point is that for a while I view this as augmenting the education you get on a residential model. And yes, it may threaten, and if it does the residential model has to get better. Our objective is to actually use MITx to even increase further what we do on campus, to make it stronger and to be able to resist and survive and do very well in this potential disruptive situation.
To those who are stuck in the delivery mode of educational content MITx and all other forms of online learning or mobile will be a threat. To those who view online and mobile learning technologies as tools that can be used enhance learning this will be an opportunity to learn from the best and radically improve the academy. Well positioned and implemented mobile and online technologies can shift the delivery of content to outside of class (where it belongs) allowing the instructors and students to use valuable class time to go deeper and explore the application and integration of that content in meaningful ways.
Helping students to assess high volumes of information that are available through many digital means and also helping them make the meaningful connections which are essential to learning are a fundamental part of the roles instructors must play in 21st century learning environments.
