32. The seventh big idea: do unto ourselves what we
do unto our students.
Be seen to make mistakes and take risks
yourself.
33.
34.
35. The sixth big idea: you can’t get it right without
getting it wrong
Allow opportunities for failures and mistakes to
deepen learning.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42. Invent to Learn: Martinez and Stager,
Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, 2013
I love my World: Chris Holland,
Wholeland press, 2012
The Art of Tinkering: Karen Wilkinson, Mike Petrich,
Weldon Owen, 2014
Make it Wild: Fiona Danks, Jo Schofield,
Frances Lincoln, 2010
Editor's Notes
I spoke the other day about the freedom to fail, and someone came up to me afterwards and said,
“isn’t using the word failure a bit negative.”
It did stop me in my tracks for a moment.
Failure is indeed associated with negative attitudes
Failing an exam - bad
Failing a driving test - bad
Being described as failure in life is the worst thing you can be.
But failure means – not getting it right - right
Not getting it right is ok – right?
Failure is a part of the creative process, and is inextricably linked with progress
It helps us move up the taxonomy of knowing to understanding.
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We want our next generation to be:
BUT the ability to fail and adapt is a prime condition for these attributes to thrive.
Unless we realign our perception of failure and how we present this to young people, we are in danger of failing the young people themselves by turning out a future generation that is:
I am reclaiming the word failure in our house.
“if you are not failing, you are not growing”
Rather than simply asking what my own children what they have succeed at today, I also ask…
What have you failed at today?
I share my failures, my points of learning.
We analyse these moments, if you could do it again, what would you change. Why was it not successful
We make small failures moments of growth and reflection.
Not getting it right is OK
The fetish of failure
Lots of sloganeering around failure, mostly originating from silicon valley
We do not need to falsely manufacture failure as a check box experience.
It is simply a natural part of the process of making
We know misconceptions are pivotal in understanding science
Take the amazing concept cartoons by Naylor and Keogh
Created by Brenda Keogh and Stuart Naylor in 1991
Feature cartoon-style drawings showing different characters arguing about an everyday situation
Are designed to intrigue, to provoke discussion and to stimulate thinking
May not have a single "right answer"
By giving permission to align with someone getting it wrong, it allows us to re-align ourselves with the right concept.
Getting it wrong leads us towards getting it right.
Examples of where getting it wrong deepens understanding
Constructivism
A theory of learning:
Progressive, child centered, open ended, project based, inquiry based.
Learner as the center of attention
Less us more them.
Piaget suggests that it is not the role of the teacher to correct a child form the outside, but to create conditions in which the student corrects themselves.
The act of handing power over to the students results in growing self reliance.
Construction ism
Is a theory of teaching, and a perfect way to activate constructivist learning.
Learning results form experience, and that the understanding is constructed inside the head of the student.
Constructionist experiences look for ways for students to use their knowledge to create “Eureka” moments.
Ah, the led is in the wrong way round!
Ah, the sound becomes louder when I press down on the exciter!
This is not to dismiss “instruction”, but believe it should be kept to a bare minimum.
Being shown how to use a tool correctly is important
Understanding what a component’s function is in easy to understand terms is key.
Dr. Seymour Papert (MIT) inventor of logo.
The patron saint of constructionist learning
“You cant teach people everything they need to know, but the best you can do is to position them to find what they need to know when they need to know it.”
We all learn better when learning is part of something interesting, especially when we use what we learn to make something we really want.
If you use technology to make things, you can make more interesting things, and learn a lot in the process
We learn best if we enjoy what we are doing, but fun doesn't’t have to mean easy. The best fun is hard fun…
Dispel the myth that the only way to learn is to be taught. This leads to chronic failure in school and in life.
No one can teach you everything you need to know.
Take charge of your own learning.
Allow students to learn to manage their own time. School systems often provide so much support time wise, with schedules and timetables, that their leaves little room to develop this skill. This is a hard lesson, but very important.
Nothing important works first time.
Look at what went wrong, analyse and re work.
Teachers call this reflective practice, and we know it is great, why not trickle this down to our students.
We are all learning all the time.
The best lesson we can give our students is to let them see us struggle.
Be seen to be learning, failing and learning ourselves.
Learning to use computers is essential to our students futures, BUT let the use them NOW to learn about everything else.
1970’s pre National Curriculum
Pre national curriculum, it was much easier for schools to provided space to regularly have self directed exploration:
• crafting and making (pottery, crochet)
• creative expression( whole afternoon drama explorations, country dancing)
We were regularly given rudimentary instructions, ( how to crochet) and then set free to make whatever we wanted, over the course of a whole term. By the end of 6 weeks, everyone would have achieved some granny square coasters, more swift adopters would have progressed onto tank tops. There were no teaching assistants checking everyone was right, just Mrs. Lockwood sitting at her desk helping the critically stuck. We learnt to solve the problem ourselves and consolidated our learning by helping those next to us.
play and experimentation
I still have a large collection of egg cups made on the potters wheel.
film and photography degree
team work and culture of scientific and conceptual
experimentation. Getting it wrong was sometimes completely getting it right. The lens flare. The end frame of a roll of film
Media industry
A world of CD-ROMs and the newly available internet, full of experimentation, and more importantly PLAYING with the medium in the truest sense of the word
Ludic (homo ludens as opposed to homo sapiens)
Man that plays as opposed to man that thinks
Play and experimentation were understood to be core values
Parenthood
By becoming a parent, I was forced to discover play, and research into the benefits of open ended
Play is how we make sense of the word and ourselves.
Art is great way to explore getting things wrong, and working out small steps to get it better
Primary Teacher Training
Transformed gut feelings into hard concepts grounded in research
Consolidated pedagogy on play experimentation
Ignited my latent interest in play and experimentation as a way of learning.
It struck a chord with me.
Forest School
Focusing on re connecting young people with the environment.
Free play
Hands on learning
Reconnecting a generation of young people with the world around them.
Technology Will Save Us
Kindred spirits in the enabling of hands on learning through play and experimentation.
Reconnecting a young generation of technology consumers with how it actually works.
Risk assessment essential, but well worth the excitement
We all learn better when learning to make something that we really want.
Show speaker kit
The kit comes as a box of components.
A box full of promise
What is great about this project is that young people are passionate about music, they use it to define themselves, and giving them a project to work on that has a resonance with them immediately raises engagement.
The process of constructing a speaker allows lots of natural areas for error. By helping only when needed, and being a drifting support, the students own the learning process and therefore the knowledge they construct
Teach basic soldering and safety.
Step 1 - make speaker ( lots of mistakes, lots of learning) working as pairs with a soldering iron between to enables them to check each others work. Spot the mistake in a positive way.
Step 2 - explore sound
Step 3 – design housing
Step 4 – make housing
Spot the mistake, like a puzzle to be solved, a challenge.
How were you to know to plan a hole for the on off switch, and knuckle space to turn the knob.
Need to make the mistake to understand the principles
Getting it wrong leads to the Eureka moment.
“I get it now”
(making a blind story)
Who was to know that the thickness and size of a piece of wood made so much difference to the sound : Rework
Who was to know that you needed to paint the inside of the box before you attached the speaker; Order of work, planning strategies
(air fix model story)
Public Speaking and Presentation
After weeks of making and exploring, presented their projects to their peers and families in an open hall market place style presentation.
The pride in having overcome difficulties, getting it wrong before finally getting it right, is audible in their presentations.
Many were keen to share their trials and tribulations with soldering.
Even those who struggled at the time, recounted the experience of hard earned success positively.
Ability to reach and create opportunities for success with students who have failed to thrive in other areas of the curriculum
Be seen to make mistakes and take risks yourself.
Wow we are going to melt metal
AT the woodcraft folk I volunteer at, we do a lot of Forest schooling, which is a program to reconnect mostly young people with their environment. We devised a program to encourage teenagers to remain outside and active during the cold winter months.
Fire lighting in itself is a test of stamina and determination.
Several variables to control
Getting it right first time we would give them a match, but the pride from a series of small failures ( which they expect) and then the final success is enormous.
Pewter Casting with cuttlefish shells
We were all learning on the job here, modeling that it is ok to have an idea, and if it fails we will try again at summer camp.
“I don’t know if this will work, but lets give it a go”
Bruner – cyclical learning
Step 1 – clay object – we deliberately did not over emphasise the principle of a 1 sided mold ( inability to hold inverse curves) as this will be discovered as part of the casting process.
Step 2 – fire clay,
Step 3 – make mold with cuttlefish ( we live by the sea)
Step 4 – melt and cast pewter
Step 5 – plan to revisit activity in summer, do it again, do it better.
Start Arduino.
a selection of buttons, lights and motors and a small palm sized microcontroller called an Arduino ( similar to raspberry Pi) that is programmed to process inputs and outputs with a computer language based on c, so is perfect for first experiments into physical programming.
Follow instructions - get it rights. The only learning we can guarantee is that the user can follow instructions carefully.
Being allowed to play and experiment with the kit, (Tinkering), and the benefits increase immensely.
Code saboteur
Simple projects can be quickly thought up and made quickly, but there is intrinsically in the nature of the project, lots of areas for error. Hardware/Software or Logic.
This requires a systematic bug testing approach, checking of code, using pseudo code to walk through what you have instructed.
If the button is pressed, then move the servo arm to 90 degrees, else turn the servo arm to 10 degree
Is the servo connected correctly on the breadboard, Is it connected to the same pin on the Arduino than we have stipulated in the code.
You can even take it one further and play code saboteur
All build a basic circuit, with a coded Arduino and hardware
Swap circuits and sabotage the hardware with one simple change
Swap back and find the mistake.
Picking apart problems in this way starts of the path of analytics, why is it wrong, how can it be fixed.
DIY Gamer
Another use of combining hardware, software, design
Working with hardware and software
Den building
The Zen challenge of getting it wrong to get it right.
Every branch has it own peculiarities
Where you want it to go, it often will not
As well as loads of covert maths (estimating weight and length, and angles)
Physics ( levers, pushes and pulls, breaking points,)
Plant identification ( ok to use invasive plants)
It teaches persistence, trial and error, problem solving and team work
Experimental
Imaginative
Curious
Intrinsic Interest
These are the skills that the future ( work or otherwise) will be looking for
and has the best end result ever
Your very own den
If you are interested in igniting a passion for hi and lo tech learning, buy or borrow these two books.
