Subject: Bored students: Another try at focusing the discussion

Posted by Louis Macovsky on 12/31/2010
In Reply To:Bored students: Another try at focusing the discussion Posted by Jack Harich on 12/30/2010

Message:

My brief two cents:

This is a K-12 forum. From my seat on the edge of K-12 education I believe that a primary focus of this listserv and its participants should be how does one or many working as one convince school districts/administration to give and/or allow teachers the freedom to use systems thinking and modeling tools to educate and teach “understanding.” No lamenting allowed.

Yeah yeah…funding and teaching to the test are problems. What steps do we take to change this? Did you know that there is a Modeling and Simulation Caucus in the US House of Representatives? How do we lobby them to help us?

We have the tools: computational, storytelling, RoadMaps, and texts. We need a concerted effort to get these tools into the classroom and let innovative teachers use them and publish their methods or curriculum, and results even if only anecdotal. Online open-access journal perhaps?

How do we build upon and capitalize what has already been done? CCSustain, Waters Foundation, SymFEST, the work of specific educators in ST/SD hot spots around the country. Find some examples at http://www.clexchange.org/ftp/conference/cle_2000/Program%20conference%202000.pdf

I have beside me an old copy of the NRC National Science Education Standards. How do we get a chapter on ST/SD in it? Got an answer…then maybe with the help of participants here find a way to do it.

How do we get ST/SD clubs or teams in schools like the FIRST Lego Robotics?

With what spare time and energy I have, I am working on my own ideas (funding is always the problem, right?) and I am not ready to report on them but I encourage the participants here as individuals or organized groups to draw up action plans and post them here for discussion and advice.

Perhaps support the Creative Learning Exchange to find funding and organize a conference to create action plans and teams or task forces to follow through on them.