PZC: Day 4

Wow! I can't believe the institute is almost over! Today I attended my last mini course entitled: Turning Experience into Expertise: Collaborative Inquiry as Professional Development by Tina Blythe.  This session answered a lot of my questions about how to share and implement the different strategies, protocols and thinking routines to my colleagues.  I experienced first hand how to go through protocols in a collaborative inquiry group.  I am beginning to appreciate the importance and significance of being able to choose and refine questions to help improve my practice and in turn impact student learning.

Asking Dr. Gardner a question

I spent my lunch time listening to a Q & A with Dr. Howard Gardner.  I asked him about his take on how new technologies may influence the development of the intelligences in this postmodern, digital era.  To summarize his response, he said that with a child who may be exposed to a lot of digital media, he/she may tend to be very visual, which if combined with inactivity may not develop his/her kinesthetic skills, so he suggested to try to strike a balance and provide children with opportunities to engage in a variety of activities. :)

Day 2: Didi

with Dr. Howard Gardner

Today was a very fruitful day.  For the plenary session, Howard Gardner talked about his upcoming book "The Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good: Reflections in a Postmodern, Digital Era."  He gave us the 'reframed' version: a book in an hour.  He defined the old notions and new conceptualizations of truth, beauty and goodness.  It was very thought-provoking and raised a lot of questions about shifts in thinking about perceived facts or truths in this day and age.

Ricci and I with Dr. David Perkins

For my mini course, I attended "Assessment that Further Learning" presented by Rhonda Bondie and Sande Dawes.  The session was very interactive and incorporated a lot of strategies and techniques to teach for understanding.  As I hoped, I had an AHA moment during the session.  I am very much familiar with assessment driving instruction.  In my mind, assessment is a tool to help teachers know where their students are so their planning and instruction can be better informed.  So it was a complete and welcome surprise when Rhonda pointed out how much more important it is that assessments help students to know "their" strengths and how they best learn since at the end of the day, these students are left with themselves so having that self-knowledge is extremely powerful.

Later that afternoon, we had a study group session on 'Questioning Protocols.'  We were given an opportunity to get acquainted with it in small groups.  I think this protocol will help a lot when we get back and try to establish a learning community within the school to practice and share what we've learned from this institute.

Ricci with Steve Seidel

This evening, we had a reception at the Harvard Museum of Natural History where we were able to chat and mingle with the Project Zero faculty and staff.  Today was definitely a great day! :)

Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed (Ricci)

Dr. Howard Gardner and myself

Day 2 of the Project Zero Classrooms (PZC) started off with the Plenary Session with Dr. Howard Gardner. I was wondering what the “Truth, Beauty and Goodness” has to do with student learning. As he explained it, education in the post modern, digital era has posed many challenges in terms of giving students a sense of their culture’s view of what is true or false. So much information coming from television, online resources (ex. Wikipedia) and other digital forms has changed, mashed and merged information students use regardless of it being true, false or continuously changing or evolving. This pose a big challenge to many educators who teach students to make judgments on the amount and quality of input they encounter on a daily basis. As we enter the postmodern world, a paradigm shift of how we define what is true, good and beautiful is necessary to achieve authentic learning and understanding. How do we go about this –wait for Dr. Howard Gardner’s new book “Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed."

Day 1

Fund for Teachers 2010 Fellows: Ricci Mercado and Didi Dolandolan
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Day 1 of the Project Zero Classroom was everything we expected and more. We started the day early with registration and getting acquainted with the program materials. The first formal session was a 'Plenary Session' at the American Repertory Theater (ART).  To welcome us all was Steve Seidel, Director of Project Zero (2000-08), who talked about how Project Zero started and also introduced us to how the program is going to run with the study groups and mini courses.

Next was Howard Gardner, proponent of the Multiple Intelligences Theory, who talked about his "Reflections on Project Zero: In the Past, the Present, and the Future."  Tomorrow he will talk about the challenges for education in the post modern, digital era.

Finally, David Perkins, who was also one of the founding members of Project Zero talked about Teaching for Understanding in the 21st Century.  He made an analogy about education in terms of "How to tame the wild?" and "How to wild the tame?" with regards to educational topics and contents.  He pointed out the importance of making content 'operative' for the students.  

One thing that really stuck to us is how he defined understanding.  He said that "understanding is performative... How we think with what we know."  Now when we think of activities for our students, we will keep David Perkins' 'wild-o-meter' in mind, by gauging how 'wild' or 'tame' our activity is and using wilding and taming tactics to enrich them :)

John Harvard statue, Harvard Yard