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Do You Care Enough to Let Them Take Ownership of Their Learning?

Dwayne Harapnuik — June 12, 2017 — Leave a comment

It is very important that you understand the full context of my son’s circumstances to understand the following authentic learning experience that I am about to share. The average home price on the North Shore of Vancouver is around 1.5 million dollars and this is for a very average 1200 square foot house. To put this in context, the 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 3000 square foot house with 10, 12 and 14 foot ceilings, polished concrete floors and an attached 3 car garage on 2 acres of land that we sold for $250,000 when we left Abilene Texas in 2011 would be worth between 4-4.5 million dollars in West Vancouver which is the most prestigious area of the North Shore. As you can imagine rents in this area also extremely high.

When we moved to the North Shore back in 2013 so that my boys could pursue their dreams of becoming professional Down Hill Mountain bike racers we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford to buy a home. While the cost of housing is ridiculous there are other benefits that make living on the North Shore a priority for my boys. In addition to living between 5-15 minutes away from 3 different mountains my boys use for daily training, we are also an hour away from Whistler which has one of the best Down Hill Mountain Bike Parks in the world. Factor in the amazing bike culture that has grown out of the North Shore and Whistler and one could argue that there are few better places in the world where my boys could pursue their dreams.

Unfortunately, Down Hill Mountain Bike racing is a relatively new sport (about 20 years old) and most pro racers do not make much money when compared to other professional athletes. In 2016 Aaron Gwin who is the top racer in the world changed the sport by moving to a new company that was willing to pay him 3 times what his previous company paid him. This massive increase put his annual contract at just under half a million dollars a year. There are only a handful of riders in the world who are making low six-figure salaries so unfortunately, most up and coming pro racers like my boys are lucky to have sponsorships which will help cover the cost of equipment but the cost of travel, racing, training, and living is something that is up to the rider. This explains why my two boys who are 19 and 21 still live at home. Both my boys are extremely independent and even though they live with their parents they have complete freedom and control over all other aspects of their lives. We live in one the most expensive places in North America and they don’t make much money—yet. If we were living anywhere else they would be on their own.

A few months back, neighborhood friends asked if either our boys would be willing to house sit for them and take care of their two full-size dogs when they went to Hawaii for a month. Levi, my older son who was still 20 at the time, jumped at the opportunity to house sit and have his own space for a full month. I managed to control myself and didn’t comment at all on his decision even though I was thinking to myself, I hope Levi realizes just how much work and time walking, exercising and caring for those dogs and that large house is going to take. These people live in a large house at the base of Mount Fromm near the end of a trail that Levi often trains on so I can only image that the proximity to his training was another factor that swayed his decision.

One more bit of context… My boys grew up having choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities (COVA) so I saw this opportunity for Levi to have another wonderful way to learn some valuable life lessons — especially when it comes to taking care of other people’s stuff and their animals. My boys didn’t have pets growing up partially because we traveled a fair amount and our lifestyle didn’t really allow for being tied down by animals. When my boys were much younger we often took care of friends cats, dog, gerbils and birds so while my boys didn’t live with animals for years at a time there were times when they were responsible for animals for months at a time so Levi should have known partially what he was getting into. Back to the house and sitting scenario.

About a week into Levi’s house and dog sitting experience when he stopped by to work on his bike, I simply asked him how it was going and he lamented:

…This is taking way more time than I expected…those dogs just won’t leave me alone… I like them but they take so much work… I walk them in the morning before I train… then I come over here to work on my bike… and then I have to go into work and then after work I have to walk them again…

Once again, I managed to control myself and didn’t comment on anything but I did ask if there was anything I could do to help. Levi simply said,

No Dad…I got this.

I knew before Levi had taken on this responsibility that the small freedom that this great house would offer would come at a significant expense of time which Levi just didn’t have. Our garage is equipped as a bike repair shop so I knew Levi would still come home on a daily basis after his training rides to clean and maintain his bike. As a professional athlete, Levi controls his diet very closely and is a creature of habit so I also knew he would be coming home daily to prepare his meals and eat. I knew he would want to use and have access to the Vitamix, the pantry, the freezer and all the food prep resources he was accustomed to. I also knew that his responsibility as the head mechanic and mountain bike instructor at his sponsor Endless Biking would be increasing that same month because Endless was starting to receive their shipments of new bikes for the upcoming season.

So as the days progressed Levi kept coming over earlier and earlier in the morning to make his special shake and then head to the gym which is only a block away. Levi would pop in and out throughout the day between training, working, exercising the dogs and then we wouldn’t see him until the next morning. Our friends came back and on the first night Levi was back at home I told Levi I was proud of how well he handled the responsibility and commended him for going above and beyond what was expected in exercising the dogs. When he said—I am glad this is over… I am never going to do that again… I couldn’t contain myself any longer and started the following short exchange. I had learned over the years that the best way to start a learning moment conversation was to provide a brief context and then ask a question. So I simply stated… Levi, when I was young I too house sat and took care of other people’s dogs like you have so I knew before you took on this responsibility just how much work this was going to be. I am sorry for not telling you about this before. Can you tell me how I might have talked to you or warned you about what you were really taking on. Without hesitation Levi stated— Dad, I wouldn’t have listened… I had to learn this myself. Levi then gave me a big strong hug. I am glad I cared enough to let Levi learn everything he learned completely on his own. Fortunately, this type of life lesson can and does happen in a more formal learning setting.

Over the years, for the most part, I have created significant learning environments (CSLE) where I have given my boys and my students choice, ownership and voice through authentic opportunities (COVA). The reason I said “for the most part” is that giving over control is one of the hardest things a parent or teacher can do. We don’t want our kids to get hurt, or to struggle, or fail or get annoyed with us so we have the tendency to shield them in advance from the consequences of their actions and yet this is where the most significant learning can happen. Giving my boys and my students control over their own learning has been one of the biggest challenges of my personal and professional life.

The life lessons learned through taking full ownership of a learning opportunity cannot be matched by any form of direct instruction or teacher controlled experience. If we care enough for our learners we need to let go of the control and be willing to see them struggle, or fail or even get annoyed with us if we expect them to learn the life lessons that come about through taking full ownership of authentic learning opportunities. Both my boys have learned the value of authentic learning and while they do occasionally get annoyed with me it doesn’t happen much anymore because they have grown to appreciate the value in the struggles of taking ownership of their own learning.

Unfortunately, since many of my students are accustomed to a more traditional form of education which includes giving the teacher or professor what they want and regurgitating information in a simulated project, paper or exam, it is not uncommon to have some of my students annoyed or even angry with me because they feel that I may not be doing my job by not telling them what to do and think. I am willing to have them be annoyed with me because I care enough about their learning to know that if they take ownership and learn by working on something that is authentic then their learning will be transformative. I don’t just let my boys or my learners flounder without any guidance, I do give them guidance and direction through the learning environment that I create or that I point them to through authentic opportunities. The following quote from a recent graduate of the Digital Learning and Leading program where I use the COVA+CSLE approach sums up her experience and the value of this type of learning:

The DLL program shows you where to look, but does not tell you what to see – Brandi Collins

When we let our learners take control of their learning the experiences they can embrace, the meaningful connections they create, and the knowledge that they gain will be life changing. Isn’t this really our primary responsibility as parents and educators?

References

Collins, B. (2017). Highlights from Lamar University Masters program in Educational Technology [Blog]. Retrieved from http://madelinebrandicollins.weebly.com/digital-learning–leading.html

Ventura, M. (1993). Letters at 3am: Reports on endarkenment. Spring Pubns.

In Learning 5305, 5320, authentic, authentic learning, COVA, CSLE, DLL

To Get the Real Story You Need to Go to Primary Sources

Dwayne Harapnuik — June 9, 2017 — 1 Comment

The other morning a colleague sent me the tweet from Daniel Pink “The secret to learning is overlearning…” which pointed to Cari Romm’s (2017) New York Magazine post To Truly Learn Something, Study Until You’ve Mastered It — and Then Keep Studying. Since I am a learning theorist and am always searching for “the secret to learning” and since Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is still one of my favorite books on motivation I started down the rabbit trail by reviewing Romm’s article in the Science of Us section of the blog. The reason I used the terms “started down the rabbit trail” and also used “reviewed” rather the “read” is very significant because in order to get to the truth or the actual facts about what these various people were stating I ended up looking at several other magazine/blog posts and then a few journal articles and went back to a couple of books to get the full story and really see what the facts are. While I am referring to this process of going down the rabbit trail what I am really referring to is simply doing the due diligence of analytical thinking and getting to the facts by going back to the primary sources to see what is really being said. Let me explain why this is so important and why we need to encourage everyone to verify what is being said and written.

Getting back to Romm’s post about the secret to learning, the headline alone would suggest that the article is about learning. Romm’s opening statement also points to and questions deliberate practice and elite performance:

…On its own, deliberate practice isn’t enough to turn you into an elite performer, whether you’re talking about boosting your athletic prowess or learning to play the violin.

Since I have been studying Anders Ericsson’s research into deliberate practice for many years I was intrigued by this opening statement and immediately reviewed the short post and followed the link to the post that Romm had pointed to in her opening. Before I deal with this second stop on the rabbit trail I need to explain that Romm’s generalization did not line up with the findings of the article Overlearning hyperstabilizes a skill by rapidly making neurochemical processing inhibitory-dominant in Nature Neuroscience (2017) she referred to and while she used the term learning what the article was referring to was actually training and memorization. This is where we get into a problem that can be resolved with clearly defining terms. How is the term “learning” really being used?

The learning that the authors of the Nature article referred to was in the context of a learned response to a stimulus. They also referred to training and memorization and their primary conclusion was that after a training event or session the learned stimulus-response needs to be stabilized or reinforced in order to prevent it from being disrupted by a new learned response. To prevent this loss you need to spend a minimum of 20 more minutes after you have reached the training plateau to reinforce the effect of training – which they referred to as overlearning. The authors of the Nature article (2017) were researching how people responded to a visual-recognition task by asking the participants to identify patterns in images and then measured the concentrations of excitatory and inhibitory neuro-transmitter levels in the visual areas of the brain. In a nutshell these researchers have identified the biological reaction in the brain that reinforces a conditioned response by increasing the excitatory neuro-transmitters and they have generalized that overlearning rapidly and strongly hyperstabilizes this biological reaction (Shibata et al., 2017). While they have also gone as far as to generalize that overlearning will help you retain your training or memorization they do qualify that their work has only gone as far as exploring this within the visual context.

While there are elements of data to support Romm’s headline the generalization – to truly learn something you need to study until you master it and then keep on studying is not correct. A more accurate claim would be – to truly memorize something you need to study until you master it and then keep on studying. There is a big difference between memorizing something and learning something. Learning is making meaningful connections by connecting new information or ideas with existing information or ideas to come to know something new. While memorization plays a role in the learning process it is only part of the process and all too often is used by people to simply regurgitate information. Richard Feynman (2014) reminds us that there is a difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

I firmly believe that Romm has no malicious intent in or intentionally wanted to mislead people but this where it is our responsibility to analyze and assess the author’s argument for validity. While there are elements of truth in her generalization of benefits of studying the assertions of the opening statement “deliberate practice isn’t enough” are actually misleading and unfortunately false.

This leads us further down the rabbit trail. Rather than look at primary sources and Anders Ericsson’s actual research into deliberate practice Romm points and links to another Science of Us blog post 10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice Aren’t Going to Get You Olympic Gold by Drake Baer (2017). Unfortunately for Romm, Baer isn’t much better at research and doesn’t bother by going to the primary sources either to really find out the what he is referring to as deliberate practice or the 10,000-hour rule. Baer mistakenly points to Galdwell’s book Outliers and suggests that deliberate practice is simply a matter of putting in 10,000 of hard work and links to his own 2013 FastCompany article that confirms that you just need to put in the time. To be fair to Baer he does suggest in that you need to work on the hard parts to get better but only refers to a BrainPickings article (Popova, 2013) rather than a primary source. To add an appeal to authority Baer also points to the Karl Smith’s (2016) Scientific America blog post No One Wins Gold for Practicing the Most which also gets it wrong. While Smith does point to Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald’s (2014) research article Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis in Psychological Science to support his argument I am relatively certain he hasn’t read the full article or even looked at Ericsson’s original research or most recent work because he incorrectly defines deliberate practice and overemphasizes the 10,000 hour aspect.

If you look at Ericsson’s research or his latest book Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise (2016) which summarizes all his work on deliberate practice you will find that the 10,000-hour rule that Gladwell popularized is actually false. Ericsson (2016) actually stated that depending on the discipline and various other factors a rudimentary level of expertise could be reached after one put in 7500 – 15,000 hours. This is a big range and Gladwell generalized this idea by simply picking the 10,000 point because it would be easier to remember. Ericsson (2016) also points out that this is just the starting point of expertise and many world-class performers have put in more than 20,000 more hours to be the best. The 10,000-hour rule is not a rule but a popular myth and authors like Romm and Baer mistakenly refer to this myth.

But there is an even bigger problem with the arguments of bloggers Romm, Baer, Smith and the researchers Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald. They all define deliberate practice incorrectly. Deliberate practice is not just putting in the time or working harder or pushing oneself further, nor is it just using structured practice. Ericsson (2016) is quite clear when he states that just practicing countless hour after hour, in the same way, will not help one improve and in many instances this repetitive practice, even if it has some form of structure, can potentially degrade performance. It is not the total hours or the fact that there is a structure that matters it is how one practices in those hours and what that structure is that matters.
According to Ericsson (2016) deliberate practice involves the following four components:

Goals – you have to have a clear vision of what you are working toward or hope to accomplish. Watching or visualizing the activity performed perfectly either in a video of yourself or another expert will help you get to your goals.
Focus – you have to break down the activity into smaller chunks and slow down the process to get a higher degree of control and precision. Paradoxically you have to slow down to get smooth enough before you can get faster and better.
Feedback – you have to analyze your performance and look for ways to improve. Most experts have learned to continually error correct and look at and analyze what they are doing with an eye to continuous improvement. This is where coaches, good teachers and even video recordings of your performance come into play. Most novices will require a coach to provide the necessary feedback because they often don’t even know what they need to improve. A cycle of feedback and continuous error correction is the key to deliberate practice
Exit your comfort zone – you have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone order to make improvements. The key is to push just enough to be slightly uncomfortable but not so much that you will fail immediately. Experts have learned what that 3-4 % improvement feels like and to know when they are going to far out of their comfort zone to reach new levels of performance.

Ericsson also points out that experts have a deep set of mental representations of their discipline that make it easy for them to do things that look magical to the average person. Experts have done the mental reps that give them the highest levels of mental representation that enable them to operate at the highest level. This is a combination of mental and physical training at the highest level and is much more than working or practicing hard for 10,000 hours. So at this point in the rabbit trail, I hope one can see that these first few authors really shouldn’t be trusted. It appears that the bloggers Romm and Baer may be more interested in building their following with catchy headlines to promote their writing then they are with the facts. If we can’t trust these authors then who can we trust—the academics? Smith is a Ph.D. candidate who published in the Scientific America blog and the researchers Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald are publishing in peer-reviewed journals but can we trust their findings just based their credentials and a perceived higher quality of the publication. Unfortunately, not. Smith didn’t bother looking at the primary sources to get a clear definition of deliberate practice and was too willing to simply run with the notion that deliberate practice involves harder work. If you compare the notion of harder work with the 4 components of deliberate practice listed above it is clear that deliberate practice is much more than hard work.

When you review the work of Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald (2014) you will find that they have gone to the primary sources but unfortunately, you will also see that they define deliberate practice as

engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. (p. 1608)

which is not an accurate definition to use in their meta-analysis. Such a vague definition of deliberate practice not only cast doubts on the authors’ findings that deliberate practice only explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports it calls into question their entire research. The key to deliberate practice is the details of the purposeful goals, focus, feedback while pushing the limits. This is much more than just structure. While Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald do confirm that deliberate practice is still important they posit that it is not as important Ericsson argues.

This is where one has to be careful in examining the data, the research methods and exactly what the researchers are looking for. While I have stated earlier that I am calling their findings into question I will also state that it appears that their research is accurate. Let me explain, if you use a very loose definition of deliberate practice and simply point to structured activity then you will get the results that they point to. This is what they found in their meta-analysis. However, if you use the authentic definition of deliberate practice from the primary sources I would argue that there would be a very different result. Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald did a very thorough job on some aspects of their research like their methods, their analysis, and coding of the information but their research question was based on an inaccurate or overly broad definition of deliberate practice (Ericsson, 2016b).

So at this point of the rabbit trail, we find out that many of the claims made by numerous authors are simply wrong because they did not go to the original sources and kept referring to other authors who also failed to go to the original sources. And when we finally found some authors who did go to the original sources their claims could not be trusted either because these authors did not use the same definitions that the original authors used.

Who can you trust? Trust yourself. We have the responsibility to verify what we read by reading critically and thinking analytically while looking at the evidence. While I referred to this process of going down the rabbit trail it really is just a matter of seeing if an author has supported what they are saying and can corroborate their statements with external sources. Ideally, the external source should be primary sources. There will always be differences of opinions and biases but if you are objective enough and can look at the facts you should be able to discern what is accurate regardless of your bias. Admitting your bias is also is a good way of assuring your reader that you are attempting to be objective—we all have biases.

In summary, the tweet the other morning led to the above explanation and the examination of the following sources, and the following conclusions. Contrary to the errant claims of several authors who demonstrated very poor research skills the actual facts show:

deliberate practice will help you become an elite performer,
overlearning is great for memorization but memorization itself shouldn’t be mistaken for learning,
the 10,000-hour rule isn’t a rule but a pop culture myth and an interesting rap song.
accurate definition of terms is crucial to valid and reliable research.

This whole process took much more time than I had hoped or expected but if you really want to know then you have to do the due diligence and look at all the facts. There is no a quick fix. The most efficient way is to go back to the primary sources and see what is really being claimed. In the information age, there is an abundance or overload of available information so the need to do this is greater than ever before. Anyone can put anything up on the Internet so we have to be even more diligent than ever before. Unfortunately, the notion of trusted sources is something that we cannot rely on upon anymore, at least not completely. I will go as far as to suggest that there are some sources that I may be more inclined to initially trust but I would still verify. Stating what those sources are is a whole other argument and post. There are just far too many examples of faulty research being exposed and if you consider my example above, all it takes is a definition of terms to be ignored and the results of the research will be inaccurate. Furthermore, we need to be willing to heed the warnings of Chuck Klosterman (2016) who asks the question What If We’re Wrong? If we look how our understanding of science and the world around has progressed in the last several centuries then we should be willing to admit that there may be some things that we hold to be true today that may be false 10, 20, 50 or more years into the future.

We do live in the most amazing time to be a learner. All the world’s information is available to us in the palms of our hands. Because so much information is available we must not only be prepared but be willing to take the time that it takes to critically and analytically assess all the information we are taking in.

References

Baer, D. (2013, October 29). Why “Deliberate Practice” is the only way to keep getting better [Magazine]. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3020758/leadership-now/why-deliberate-practice-is-the-only-way-to-keep-getting-better

Baer, D. (2016, August 8). 10,000 hours of deliberate practice aren’t going to get you Olympic gold [Blog]. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/08/deliberate-practice-isnt-going-to-get-you-olympic-gold.html

Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. New York, NY: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Ericsson, K. A. (2016). Summing up hours of any type of practice versus identifying optimal practice activities: Commentary on Macnamara, Moreau, & Hambrick (2016). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(3), 351–354.

Klosterman, C. (2016). But what if we’re wrong?: Thinking about the present as if it were the past. New York, NY: Blue Rider Press.

Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions a meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1608–1618.

Popova, M. (2013, October 17). The psychology of getting unstuck: How to overcome the “OK Plateau” of performance & personal growth. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/17/ok-plateau/

Richard Feynman : Knowing the Name of Something. (2014). [Video file] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/lFIYKmos3-s

Romm, C. (2017, January 31). To truly learn something, study until you’ve mastered It — and then keep going [Blog]. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/to-truly-learn-something-study-way-more-than-you-need-to.html

Shibata, K., Sasaki, Y., Bang, J. W., Walsh, E. G., Machizawa, M. G., Tamaki, M., … Watanabe, T. (2017). Overlearning hyperstabilizes a skill by rapidly making neurochemical processing inhibitory-dominant. Nature Neuroscience, 20(3), 470–475.

Smith, K., J. (2016, August 5). No one wins gold for practicing the most. Retrieved June 9, 2017, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-wins-gold-for-practicing-the-most/

In EDLD 5305, Learning 5305, deliberate practice, EDLD 5305, primary sources, Research, sources

What are you learning today?

Dwayne Harapnuik — March 2, 2017 — Leave a comment

I have always been a reader. In grade school I read hundreds of books on every imaginable subject. I grew up in a rural setting and as a young boy I the read through the World Book Encyclopedia and then used the school library and any other repositories of book as resources to solve many practical day to day problems I faced living on a farm in Northern Alberta. These books became a lifeline to a much bigger and brighter world that I was also inspired to explore. I didn’t know it then, but these books also started me down the path of authentic learning which I define as making meaningful connections with new ideas and using that new knowledge to shape and change my attitudes, skills, and behaviors.

So, anything that would help me to learn was extremely valuable. This was many decades before the birth of the Internet so books magazines, films, records, recordings, stories and insights from experienced people and almost anything that contained or was able to share information contributed to my learning. Unfortunately, this cognitivist focused learning I found so natural was not a priority in any of the behaviourist focused schools that I attended as a child and teen in the 1960s and 1970s. I am not alone in viewing learning as an amazing and natural part of the human experience and have always been frustrated with the fact that learning happens so naturally everywhere but in schools (Thomas & Brown, 2011). Fortunately, I didn’t listen to all those teachers and administrators who said I wasn’t “suited” for school. I had always known that there was much more to learning than just being able to repeat meaningless facts and figures on quizzes and tests.

While I wasn’t “suited” for school, I was suited for learning, and as a result, I focused on learning how to learn more effectively (Harapnuik, 2011). Furthermore, my use of technology to create things, to solve problems, and to enhance my learning was something that I also was prevented from using in school. Therefore, most of my experiences in a wide assortment of educational systems and at all levels confirmed that for the most part the 20th century model of information delivery followed by confirmation via some form of summative assessment was really the priority of school.

As an adult in higher education, I also had to deal with the troubling reality that my passion for learning, which I now refer to as the making of meaningful connections, or connecting the dots, was not as important to my teachers as the processes of schooling, which I also refer to as collecting and regurgitating the dots (Harapnuik, 2015a).

While collecting and regurgitating the dots, or the information delivery model of instruction, is well suited to the industrial age, it is not so well suited for the information age. Unfortunately, throughout my entire childhood educational career and up to the present time, I have been forced to deal with teachers, educators, and many colleagues who still operate in the industrial age of information delivery. Because these people are so trapped by the existing systems of schooling and the behaviourist methods that still dominate our assessment strategies, they mistakenly believe that they can simply take technology and strap it onto existing modes of delivery. As we have learned from Papert (1993), this is no more effective than strapping a jet engine onto a horse cart.

This response by traditional educators is unfortunate because technology has profoundly changed the world in which we live. That change has the potential to improve education in the way in which our students use digital resources to acquire and apply knowledge and more importantly, create new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Despite the availability of these digital tools and resources, most educators continue to struggle to effectively implement them. There are small number of teachers who are early adopters of technology who are making a difference and who are using technology to enhance the learning environment. They are willing to give the learner choice, ownership and voice through authentic learning opportunities. These people are using technology to help create the significant learning environments that promotes growth and enable learners to address what is one of the most important fundamental questions we need to continually ask – what are you learning today? This question leads to the next most important question – What do you want to learn next? And this is the topic for future posts….

References

Harapnuik, D. (2011, September 4). Not suited for school but suited for learning
[Youtube]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/clv2yr_UhDU

Harapnuik, D. (2015, August 15). Connecting the dots vs collecting the dots. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/85XpexQy68g

Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York, NY: Basic books.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the
imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.

In Learning 5305, authentic, COVA, CSLE

Why Good Ideas Too Often Go Bad

Dwayne Harapnuik — September 6, 2016 — Leave a comment

My boys are competitive Down Hill Mountain bike racers and they recently raced in several events at Whistler Crankworx. This meant that they had several practices, qualifiers, and final races that ran very close together and had to incorporate protein and energy bars into their nutritional plans to get them through their hectic schedule over the week of racing. High quality protein and complex carbohydrates packed into a portable bar are not just a convenience for my sons, they are a necessity if they wish to stay fully fuelled and competitive. Slipping a couple of these small energy packed bars into a jersey or shorts pocket means my boys can quickly and easily maintain their nutritional needs for the hectic training and/or racing session.

A quality protein and energy bar has little or no sugar, uses natural ingredients, and has a balance of protein and complex carbohydrate to help an athlete maintain their energy when they are unable to access whole foods. Bars that are nutritionally high quality often don’t taste the greatest because the manufacturers stay true to the purpose of helping to fuel a competitive athlete. Unfortunately, as protein and energy bars get more and more popular quality bars are getting harder and harder to find because too many manufacturers are willing to move away from the fundamental purpose of the bars and focus primarily on the taste of the bars at the expense of the nutritional quality.

When you focus on the taste and not the nutritional needs of an athlete you end up with something that sounds like it would be a good thing, but when you look at the details you find it’s not the case. The list of ingredients on the following popular protein and energy bar reveals that taste and not nutrition is their priority:

Evaporated cane juice syrup and corn maltodextrin are the first and third listed ingredients which also indicates their quantities. While neither of these ingredients are listed as sugar they are essentially the same as sugar hiding behind a more natural name. The more diligent athlete who is aware of the sugar synonyms won’t be tricked by the manufacturer and will look for a better bar, but for the average person who isn’t as informed this fake protein and energy bar is really not much better then a typical candy bar. At least in the candy bar the manufacturers don’t try to hide the actual ingredients behind more natural sounding names:

What makes this really serious is that the majority of protein and energy bars are really not much better or different then candy bars when you look at the first three ingredients:

Protein bar – Evaporated cane juice syrup oat bran, corn maltodextrin and soy protein isolate
Candy bar – Sugar, peanuts, and corn syrup

Yes the protein bar does have a few better ingredients, it does have soy isolate protein powder, but for the most part it is just a candy bar with added protein. This is very alarming and in the display pictured below there are a couple of dozen different types of bars and there were only two that were actually healthy enough to be used by a competitive athlete:

How does such a good idea, a portable highly nutritious bar that a competitive athlete can use to stay energized, go from good to bad. Simply shift the primary purpose from a portable highly nutritious bar used by competitive athletes for fuel to a good tasting convenience snack used by anyone. Most competitive athletes are willing to deal with the lack of flavour and even a chalky texture in their bars because they know that it isn’t about the taste it is about the fuel that they need to stay competitive.

This shift in purpose from fuel to taste has as a dramatic effect on an individuals results as a shift from a focus on learning to technology has on the learner.

We can run into a similar problem in education when we shift our focus from the learning to the technology. In his post How to Fake a 21st Century Classroom Terry Heick satirically posits how to:

“fake 21st century thinking and learning environment to make the right kind of impression with the right people, and give the appearance of forward-thinking.”

Useful ideas like Project-Based learning, 1 to 1, and blended learning can all too easily loose their benefit when we shift the focus from learning and just do projects, just focus on the devices, and just focus on the content delivery part of the blended learning. Heick points to ten good learning ideas that can easily go bad for the learner if we shift our focus from the learning to the technology or to what appears to be a trendy 21st Century activity. His post How to Fake a 21st Century Classroom Terry Heick is worth the read but I must caution you that you may be bothered or convicted by a few convenient or fake activities that you may have fallen into. I know I am taking a hard look at several of my activities as a result of reading his post.

As educators, our responsibility is to know better, to know that you can’t fake Project-Based learning by doing make work or fake projects. You have to give the learner the control, ownership and voice over an authentic project that will make some sort of difference in the learner’s personal life or community. You can’t just fake 1 to 1 by making students do digital worksheets on their iPads. You have to give the learner the opportunity to use their devices for creation, collaboration and communication and enable them to learn all the time and everywhere with everyone. You can’t just fake blended learning by focusing on the content. The emphasis on creation, collaboration and communication in your blended learning environment will also enable your learners to go much deeper then they would if you were to focus on the delivery of content.

As educators we should know better but just like the average person who is swayed by the appearance, convenience and taste of the fake protein bars we too often can be swayed by wanting to give the right kind of impression and the appearance of forward-thinking.

We can also be swayed by the fact that we may be faking it until we make it; meaning that we may move toward our learning goals by implementing changes incrementally and may use that worksheet on the iPad as a transition activity until we can focus on more genuine activities. This is understandable and as long as the transition happens this will be fine. But just like the fake protein bars that will work when you don’t have anything else available, temporary or transition use of technology can also work, but also like the fake protein bars long term use would not be heathy for the athlete or the learner.