Deborah Morrison (@debkmorrison) and Glenn Griffin (@wgriffin)
They describe a nimble thinker as one that is reactive, adapts quickly, is optimistic, curious, and has permission to fail. This is exactly what I want each of my students to reach to be.
They make the point that as walls between subjects come down, our educational system needs radical interdisciplinary collaboration. Both are advertising professors at different universities but speak on collaboration between hubs, across specialties majors, job descriptions, and disciplines.
Thinking fast has a place in our classrooms. It is harder to control and harder to grade, but it gives students a creative advantage.
One of my favorite things that Griffin said was "The most powerful moment is not the finding of the solution. The most powerful moments are in the failures, interruptions, and distractions during the problem solving process". As a math teacher, too often I focus on finding the right answer and not enough time on the process or celebrating the failures.
5 opportunities to grow more nimble thinkers:
1. Leverage Interaction- Social media, drop box, whiteboards, post it notes and sharpies, skype, evernote, trello, google+, Adobe collage - "Make time to try many outlets and critically choose 3 at a time to focus on- this is not a must eat all buffet"
2. Bump and Provoke - bring groups together and allow creative thinking to happen
3. Venn Venn Venn - find multiple skills or interests and find how they fit/overlap
4. Fail harder - ideas > ego
5. Teach curiosity - Have students stop writing answers, and start asking questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment