"Learning is so easy, and such fun, when it occurs naturally."
Sandra Dodd
http://www.swissarmywife.net/2009/04/minimally-invasive-education.html
On that blog post I was directed to this article:
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200901/minimally-invasive-education-lessons-india
Minimally Invasive Education: Lessons from India
It's an article by Pater Gray on Psychology Today's site. I don't
know if it's also in the magazine.
At first it's about the study in India ten years ago of what kids
would do if a computer were left out where they could get to it.
What they did was learn like crazy.
The article is interesting, and here's a portion of it.
**************
Why don't school lessons spread in the same wildfire way that Mitra
observed in his experiments on minimally invasive education? It is not
hard to think of many answers to this question. Here are a few that
pop to mind:
• Children in school are not free to pursue their own, self-chosen
interests, and this mutes their enthusiasm.
• Children in school are constantly evaluated. The concern for
evaluation and pleasing the teacher--or, for some children, a
rebellious reaction against such evaluation--overrides and subverts
the possibility of developing genuine interest in the assigned tasks.
• Children in school are often shown one and only one way to solve a
problem and are told that other ways are incorrect, so the excitement
of discovering new ways is prevented.
• Segregation of children by age in schools prevents the age mixing
and diversity that seem to be key to children's natural ways of
learning. Mitra observed that the mix of abilities and interests in
the age-mixed groups that gathered around the outdoor computers
ensured that different functions of the computer were tried out and
played with by different children and that a wide variety of
discoveries were made, which could then spread from child to child.
Learning is so easy, and such fun, when it occurs naturally. ...
***************
Anyone with a closed-minded relative might want to send that on.
If your closed-minded relative doesn't have the internet, tell them
street kids in India can learn to use a computer, and they should get
with the times. :-)
Sandra
On that blog post I was directed to this article:
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200901/minimally-invasive-education-lessons-india
Minimally Invasive Education: Lessons from India
It's an article by Pater Gray on Psychology Today's site. I don't
know if it's also in the magazine.
At first it's about the study in India ten years ago of what kids
would do if a computer were left out where they could get to it.
What they did was learn like crazy.
The article is interesting, and here's a portion of it.
**************
Why don't school lessons spread in the same wildfire way that Mitra
observed in his experiments on minimally invasive education? It is not
hard to think of many answers to this question. Here are a few that
pop to mind:
• Children in school are not free to pursue their own, self-chosen
interests, and this mutes their enthusiasm.
• Children in school are constantly evaluated. The concern for
evaluation and pleasing the teacher--or, for some children, a
rebellious reaction against such evaluation--overrides and subverts
the possibility of developing genuine interest in the assigned tasks.
• Children in school are often shown one and only one way to solve a
problem and are told that other ways are incorrect, so the excitement
of discovering new ways is prevented.
• Segregation of children by age in schools prevents the age mixing
and diversity that seem to be key to children's natural ways of
learning. Mitra observed that the mix of abilities and interests in
the age-mixed groups that gathered around the outdoor computers
ensured that different functions of the computer were tried out and
played with by different children and that a wide variety of
discoveries were made, which could then spread from child to child.
Learning is so easy, and such fun, when it occurs naturally. ...
***************
Anyone with a closed-minded relative might want to send that on.
If your closed-minded relative doesn't have the internet, tell them
street kids in India can learn to use a computer, and they should get
with the times. :-)
Sandra
cindyjsowers
--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
Cindy
>I almost posted this same article about an hour ago. Funny coincidence. Unschooling parents seem to be more involved, for the most part, than adults in this article, but maybe the public schools would get better results if they would start laying things out for exploration and letting the staff head to the lunch room for the day with their own projects :) The bit in the article describing how they just left a computer out, gave me a really funny visual that made me think of something I saw once with chimpanzees and how smart they are and how they will go about investigating new things, poking them with sticks, trying this and that, or whatever :) People who are "well-schooled" and who over time have experienced countless occurrences of being given a set of instructions about how you are to go about learning something first, before you dive in, would have a much harder time in this scenario, I would think. I'm thinking of myself, of course, and maybe not everyone is like that, but I am mindful of how my children can start a new video game, just diving in and exploring, whereas I sit at my Zelda game begging to them, "what do I do next?!!" Luckily they are happy to help me, but I am aware of how far ahead (thankfully) of me they are in this regard.
>> http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200901/minimally-invasive-education-lessons-india
>
> Minimally Invasive Education: Lessons from India
Cindy
Sandra Dodd
-=-I am mindful of how my children can start a new video game, just
diving in and exploring, whereas I sit at my Zelda game begging to
them, "what do I do next?!!"-=-
Yesterday I was at the computer while Holly was playing Harvest Moon.
I was looking up, for her, how to get fertilized eggs. I found the
wrong game, though, and it's one she doesn't have, but also for N64.
I asked her if she wanted one. It's called "Another Wonderful Life,"
and you play as a girl instead of a boy. She asked how much, and I
said used, about $10. So I'm reading through the condition of the
various offered-for-sale games. One for about $4 more had the box and
the booklet. $12 had a box, no booklet. $10 had just the disk.
She said just the disk was fine. <g>
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
diving in and exploring, whereas I sit at my Zelda game begging to
them, "what do I do next?!!"-=-
Yesterday I was at the computer while Holly was playing Harvest Moon.
I was looking up, for her, how to get fertilized eggs. I found the
wrong game, though, and it's one she doesn't have, but also for N64.
I asked her if she wanted one. It's called "Another Wonderful Life,"
and you play as a girl instead of a boy. She asked how much, and I
said used, about $10. So I'm reading through the condition of the
various offered-for-sale games. One for about $4 more had the box and
the booklet. $12 had a box, no booklet. $10 had just the disk.
She said just the disk was fine. <g>
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[email protected]
If there aren't any instructions on the screen, Karl will dive in and
try things out. I've noticed he gets nervous when instructions come up
on the screen. If the instructions are too long, Karl very grabs the
controls and quits listening. And he's onto the game.
~Katherine
try things out. I've noticed he gets nervous when instructions come up
on the screen. If the instructions are too long, Karl very grabs the
controls and quits listening. And he's onto the game.
~Katherine
On Apr 19, 2009, at 5:33 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
> -=-I am mindful of how my children can start a new video game, just
> diving in and exploring, whereas I sit at my Zelda game begging to
> them, "what do I do next?!!"-=-
>
> Yesterday I was at the computer while Holly was playing Harvest Moon.
> I was looking up, for her, how to get fertilized eggs. I found the
> wrong game, though, and it's one she doesn't have, but also for N64.
> I asked her if she wanted one. It's called "Another Wonderful Life,"
> and you play as a girl instead of a boy. She asked how much, and I
> said used, about $10. So I'm reading through the condition of the
> various offered-for-sale games. One for about $4 more had the box and
> the booklet. $12 had a box, no booklet. $10 had just the disk.
>
> She said just the disk was fine. <g>
>
> Sandra
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
cindyjsowers
--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
Cindy
>> She said just the disk was fine. <g>I LOVE that, because I so need the booklet (or my kids to help me). I mean, I am so reading dependent it isn't funny. I would hang onto the booklet as a crutch, because otherwise I would have the expectation of a high level of frustration for myself. I don't want to be completely pessimistic, but I don't seem to be able to go that other way and just dive in like that without a ton of frustration, and don't know if with technical things I ever will be able to. I can do it with some things that I seem to have an innate confidence in, like anything artistic or cooking or gardening, which are hands-on, but to my mind, require such a lower level of technical aptitude (for me anyway -- I don't want to be insulting people who are geniuses in these fields). I wonder if it is because those fields were never "taught" to me and that's why I don't have a block. I truly don't know. CONFIDENCE seems to be the key, though. My children (and it sounds like yours certainly) are very confident that they will be able to figure out whatever they will need to in those realms. It's lovely. And apparently it saves money in your case :)
Cindy
Verna
> >> She said just the disk was fine. <g>When playing with my kids I will often get kind of annoyed because they flipped throught the text too fast for me to read it. I want to know the story and hints etc... they just want to play.
>
Everyonce in a while they will realize a need to have something read in order to complete a task and they will ask, but otherwise they just flip through them.
jenbgosh
Just to chime in here...
Harvest Moon Magical Melody is probably my favorite game ever. It's for Game Cube and you can play as a girl.
Jennie
Harvest Moon Magical Melody is probably my favorite game ever. It's for Game Cube and you can play as a girl.
Jennie
--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-I am mindful of how my children can start a new video game, just
> diving in and exploring, whereas I sit at my Zelda game begging to
> them, "what do I do next?!!"-=-
>
> Yesterday I was at the computer while Holly was playing Harvest Moon.
> I was looking up, for her, how to get fertilized eggs. I found the
> wrong game, though, and it's one she doesn't have, but also for N64.
> I asked her if she wanted one. It's called "Another Wonderful Life,"
> and you play as a girl instead of a boy. She asked how much, and I
> said used, about $10. So I'm reading through the condition of the
> various offered-for-sale games. One for about $4 more had the box and
> the booklet. $12 had a box, no booklet. $10 had just the disk.
>
> She said just the disk was fine. <g>
>
> Sandra
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
Sandra Dodd
-=-Harvest Moon Magical Melody is probably my favorite game ever. It's
for Game Cube and you can play as a girl. -=-
I'll check out getting this. THANKS!
Even though Holly plays such games at 17, she's also been given the
keys to a floral shop on the air force base where she's only been
once. I was there when the owner and a co-worker explained to her how
to open the metal gate, and what to do if she needed the bathroom and
such. She's going Saturday to open up for the first time there. She
has the keys to two shops now, and hasn't worked there over two months.
How many high school kids would be trustworthy with the keys to two
businesses? Granted, they're not banks. But speaking of that, I
asked her if there was going to be cash there for change, and she said
yes, there was always cash for the mornings, and as she wasn't closing
she didn't need to know how or where they kept the money.
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
for Game Cube and you can play as a girl. -=-
I'll check out getting this. THANKS!
Even though Holly plays such games at 17, she's also been given the
keys to a floral shop on the air force base where she's only been
once. I was there when the owner and a co-worker explained to her how
to open the metal gate, and what to do if she needed the bathroom and
such. She's going Saturday to open up for the first time there. She
has the keys to two shops now, and hasn't worked there over two months.
How many high school kids would be trustworthy with the keys to two
businesses? Granted, they're not banks. But speaking of that, I
asked her if there was going to be cash there for change, and she said
yes, there was always cash for the mornings, and as she wasn't closing
she didn't need to know how or where they kept the money.
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]