Subject: Role of a Teacher

Posted by Steve Kipp on 12/6/2004
In Reply To:Role of a Teacher Posted by Henry Cole on 12/5/2004

Message:

Henry- I just got back from training a school in India at the request (and funding) of an Indian businessman. While I was there he and I did some PR work in the evenings with local businesspeople, the press, and a graduate school of business. We usually had about 30 minutes per presentation, and generated a lot of positive interest by kicking it off with a 1-minute “selective attention” video made by VisCog Productions that John Sterman shared at the Creative Learning Exchange conference this summer. Have you seen this video?



Participants are asked to count the number of bounce passes completed by a team of three students wearing white shirts, and when people focus on this task, some amazing things happen that powerfully demonstrate how limited human perceptions (hence mental models) can be, in part because of the reductionism that has characterized Western scientific thought for the past 300+ years (for those of you who have seen it, we have had to be very careful to call it “the Basketball Video”). After the video we would just ask “What does this tell us about our thinking?”, and we usually had to cut off the ensuing animated discussion for the sake of time. Then we would say something like “It’s time to think the world back together again: to see the forest AND the trees, and how the forest and the trees are continuously changing over time; ST is a powerful set of concepts and tools that can help us to do this.” Then we’d demo a simple computer model-based lesson (LCD projected) and take questions. This presentation worked better than anything I have tried to date, my Indian friend is now very busy following up on all the interest we generated with this simple approach.



Steve

Follow Ups:

Role of a Teacher - sharada 12/7/2004 
Role of a Teacher - John Heinbokel 12/8/2004
Role of a Teacher - Steve Kipp 12/8/2004
Role of a Teacher - Henry Cole 12/6/2004