Testing Hypotheses

The fundamental idea behind the fantastic book Made to Stick  is how we make our ideas sticky.  In other words, why do we remember some silly radio jingle but not the capital of Vermont?  One seems to be inherently more important, but the other just stays with us.  One strategy that the authors give to make ideas stick is to make them mysterious.

I thought that this was relevant as I read through this week's material.  After reading Made to Stick in November, I started trying to frame my lectures as more of an investigation.  For example, as Tiger Woods was being shamed we were also talking about the Harding Administration in American History.  Rather than title the lecture "The Harding Administration," I wrote "How did Nan Britton ruin Tiger Woods' life?" on the board.  The students were as engaged as I have ever had them in a lecture, and given the content we were discussing, I never would have expected them to be hooked.  But they listened all hour, either curious to hear the outcome or curious to see if I could actually pull off the connection (Nan Britton wrote the first "tell all" book, about her alleged affair with the President, thus opening the door for all of Tiger's lady friends to get rich off of their text messages).

I didn't find too much in this week's text that I myself could apply in the classroom.  Hypotheses don't really lend themselves to history, at least not at this stage, when students are trying to retain information as opposed to exploring in-depth research.  That said, I think that the idea behind using a hypothesis in the classroom is a good one, especially after I tried using mysteries to make the lessons stick.

I do think that it would be fun to have students develop their own hypotheses and explore them in historical research, but that would require extensive direction on my part.  I plan on doing several mini-assignments using sources online to see how this could work, such as the American Memory at the Library of Congress website, which offers a massive primary source collection.

I believe that the key in using hypotheses in the classroom lies in getting the students excited about exploring something new on their own.  The best way to do this is to relate it to experiences they have had or events they are familiar with.  My hope is that through those, hypothesizing can become more useful in my classroom.

Cognitivism

I found several strategies this week in the reading that would support cognitive learning in the classroom.  As I read through the resources, I found that many of these strategies would be effective in my classroom.  I've always liked this approach to teaching because I myself get bored with teaching in one particular way. To me, cognitivism is all about delivering information and obtaining information in a variety of ways.  Some of the organizational techniques, such as concept mapping, or the organizational software, such as Inspiration, would be good to share with students who struggle to understand the big picture.  I always found when I was a student that having visuals helped me learn and retain new information.

I find that multimedia breaks the monotony of a school day for students and most at least claim to remember more when I show them films or clips.  I've made use of many of websites found in Chapter 4 of the textbook.  Using images or film clips helps plant an image in a student's mind rather than attempting to deal with a concept abstractly.

I was pleased to see that blogs were mentioned in Chapter 6 as a method of reciprocal teaching.  I think blogs are a great cognitive tool because they can allow the student to wear many different "hats" as a learner, especially if they have access to each other's blogs and take advantage of the commenting sections.

Behaviorism in Practice

I found two strategies that I felt could work very well in my classroom from the reading and correlate with the principles of behaviorist learning.

The first comes from the chapter on reinforcing effort.  The suggestion is that students keep an effort spreadsheet to track their own effort.  In the beginning of the chapter, it was suggested that effort was the one step to success that is most often overlooked.  Based on my personal experience, I tend to agree with this.  I think back to the times I struggled with math and simply found it easier to give up.  This is unfortunate because effort seems to be the one key to success that can trump all of the others.  An effort spreadsheet would be an effective use of technology because it would let students keep track of their effort and give them visualizations of how they are perceiving their effort.  I feel that the graphs are the key to this strategy, as they allow students to visualize their effort instead of attempting to interpret numbers.  I feel that the survey suggestion from this chapter could be utilized in the same manner.  Though this strategy would be effective, I lack the necessary technology in the classroom to visit this daily.

The second strategy is one I definitely plan on using in my classroom.  In chapter 10, the suggestion for using communication software like Google Docs and Writeboard was made.  I feel that this would be an effective use of behaviorist theory and technology because it would allow students to positively (or negatively) reinforce one another.  A program that would make this even better is the new Google Wave, which allows for real-time document editing.  A great assignment would be a collaborative essay in which students went through the writing process together, sharing ideas and suggestions throughout.