Hello, Minnesota. I'm going to move over here. Am I in the right place? Doug, are you back there? Where are you? Okay. Are we okay? I'm going to -- I don't need this, right? I'm going to do voices and hands, hands will be second. Voices will be first this morning.
I want to share with you some of my experience in education and try and give you a little bit of context to start this off. Let's go to the next slide. I have Greta helping me.
First, we need to figure out who's here. We have parents. Who are the parents? We need you. We need you. And that also includes family members, okay. Anybody related with these kids. Somebody said this. That success for kids always depends, number one, on the parents, number two, on the parents, number three, on the parents. And that's true, but there's another part to this.
We have teachers here also. Success always depends on the skills of the teachers. Quality teachers make a huge difference. But that partnership is the key, is the key. Who said these things? Dr. Marschark, are you in here anywhere? He's not here. He split? I'll remember that. Okay.
Let's go to the next. Who else is here? We have audiologists. Speech people. Paras. Am I missing anyone? Administrators. We need those. Very good. I hope I have not missed people that are very important.
We all are a team. We're a team. And no really wonderful teacher can do it all herself. I have been very successful because of the people that I've worked with, and it's a team effort. I've seen some parents come to my school, I call them briefcase moms. They're all ready to fight. And I'm, like, what about? We're a team. Let's sit down, figure out what we both need to do to make this person successful. And then everything changes.
Most of my IEP meetings, I've had the experience of parents walking out, going, that's the first time I didn't cry. What's with that? Something's wrong with our education system if that's what's happening with our parents because you can't really do a lot without ‘em. Okay. Let's go to the next slide.
I've had a wonderful career. I've had opportunity, see all these apples here? I got a sabbatical year. I got all these honors. I work hard. My whole life has been sunk into deaf education.
I became deaf myself very slowly. Well, actually, it wasn't very slow, from age 5 to age 17, I went profound. I wear a hearing aid, I'm sign dependent, I'm a lousy lip reader. This hearing aids pump into my head 130 decibels. That means it's the sound of like a jet plane. And I still hear this--But I get meaning out of that. Okay?
So it's been very interesting in school. I've seen changes in the deaf population coming up. There are more and more students who can hear better than I can. I started teaching back in–back when public law 94142 was first mandated in 1977. I was coming out of Gallaudet. I was all ready to change the world. And I started one of the first total communication programs in the general high school level. And this opportunity for me to go to Walden. How many of you know what Walden U is? It's based in Minneapolis. It's one of the first–Thank you. I'm glad Mary–I can always depend on Mary. Walden University is one of the first online programs. It's international. I interact with students who are in countries all over the world. I go to my residencies in places everywhere. And I have this bird's-eye view of what's going on out there in the world, how education is changing, and I don't like the fact that oftentimes in deaf ed we chase after what's new. Let's make it. We can. So I had to study it first. And that's what I'm going to share with you today. Does that make any sense? Kind of?
Okay. I had somebody come back after she was over 40 years old. Give me a click, Greta. She said, well, I graduated from [inaudible.] She graduated from high school in '85, something like that. She came back, she said, “Well, I had children, I got married. Now I'm divorced and I want to go to work.” And she said, “Do you think I can get a keypunch job?” I thought, “Wow, I must have failed her in some way.” That bothered me. Who has a keypunch job? There aren't anymore. We have to teach our kids to be flexible, be adaptable and be on top of things or the world's going to just blow right past them. So that's a lot of what this is about.
Let's go again. I want you to reflect a little bit on what your education was like. I have kids come in my classroom–by the way, I just retired last May, from the classroom, from a center-based high school. At my retirement, I saw all these apples and I kept thinking, you know, that's all positive, but inside I still had this feeling like I missed something. So, that's why my work with Walden, I'm trying to figure out how to fill in those holes, how to get up out of, I've been in the trees all this time, teaching, working and now having an opportunity to get up above it and try and figure out the bigger picture. That's what I will share with you today.
Now, I've had students come into my classroom–I teach social studies and English, and, you know, coordinate a center-based program. And kids oftentimes they come in, they're just glazed over, they’re like, “What do I have to do to get a ‘C’?” They’re not interested… They’re not interested in learning. They're just there because they have to be there. Oh, I love learning so much. I'm a learning junkie. You can see from all those–these things. I love learning. And I love to share that with students. But when they come in, in my history class, and say, “I hate history.” How many of you did not enjoy your history classes? Why? Because they give you–you know, you have to memorize all these dates and then, how is that going to help you? It doesn't help you. It doesn't.
So there's another better way to teach. And I'm going to share that with you and I'm going to help you understand why our kids need this newer form, student-centered form of instruction. The old, where the teacher stood in the front of the room, preached to you and you have to sit there in these neat–well, those days are over, they're over. And we need to make sure that our deaf/hard of hearing kids know how to work with people in teams, do project-based learning because that's the real world today. Let’s go again.
Renaissance my sign is this. I have to show you my sign for Renaissance. Renaissance, I love that. I made it up. I’m not supposed to do that. Why I celebrate Renaissance? Well, it's rebirth. Do you remember back–well, you probably weren't there–you probably remember from your boring history class that in the Middle Ages, people stayed in their castles, there was feudalism, it was dangerous to go outside, people were getting raped, murdered, robbed and people were dirty, they didn't take baths, and they had rats and fleas and they had all these different problems. Well,--then when--then when, that's the whole history in a nutshell right there.
Maybe you will come to my history class! So, anyway, when the Renaissance hit, there was a climate change. It was warmer and they figured out ways to be safe out on the roads and people started studying the human body, people started getting interested in art and how light works and we had people who were scientists who were figuring out, oh, the earth might not be the center of the universe after all. And they were doing all this wonderful rebirth of learning. Well, you know what? We're in the middle of another Renaissance right now. Let's get on the ride with our kids. Let's go, next. All right.
When I got that award, as Teacher of the Year, somebody said, “You've been nominated for this award. And you need to fill out this stuff.” And there were all these pages. I thought, “You've got to be kidding, you didn't even tell me who nominated me!” I don’t want to spend my whole summer writing all this stuff. And then I saw some of the questions, and went, “Wow!” I got so interested in, wow, this is going to help me understand what I've been doing all these years in the classroom. So I got excited. And I did it.
But one of the things that happened was that there was some guy named Karl, who was a teacher up the street. Karl Fisch. And his principal asked him to make a kickoff presentation for the faculty at the beginning of the year. He was an I.T. guy into computers. So Karl–this short video that just caught the world like fire. He made it in 2008. And by 2010, I believe, it had been around and around the world umpteen million times. He became a sensation overnight because he helped people realize–you know, Americans tend to have their heads stuck in the sand. Because we've been number one for so long, for so many years. But do you know that the British Empire was number one for a long time? And you can lose that position in world power, you know. It's important that you realize that we've got to stay on top of it. We have to keep seeing what's going on globally.
But Karl helped me understand some things about how the internet has impacted the world as we know it and how we learn. Hit it, Greta. There's Karl. There's Karl. This is one thing I got from his video that really made me go, “Oh!” What this says is we are preparing young people to solve problems we don't know are problems yet. And they're going to solve those problems using technology that hasn't even been invented yet. And I thought, “Whoa, what does that mean for me?”
When I step in the classroom, And I have this book, and I'm going to teach all these things and prepare kids for the real world? It's obsolete. It's already obsolete. Do you know that all the knowledge in the world is doubling every 18 months? So what does that mean for education? What does that mean for how we help our kids be successful in this world?
Now, how many of you have seen this video that Karl made? It's called “Did You Know?” Okay. And did you see it in 2012? Because he did a remake. Would you guys be willing, so we'll all be on the same page, or at least you'll understand where I'm coming from and I can hopefully make sense, you’re up for it. Thank you, I like that. She said, “Yes.” This is the sign for yes. I appreciate that.
Here comes Karl Fisch's movie, "Did You Know." About four minutes. Wow! Our world, we're in exponential times, and I bet some of you are sweating, “Oh, wait a minute, why can't my kid just learn his colors?” You know, fear not, because I have had the wonderful opportunity to just set them free. You can let them learn. Deaf and hard of hearing kids can learn just as much as hearing kids. But you can't dumb ‘em down. And we'll talk about that, okay. I'm not saying that you parents are dumbing them down or that the professionals are, but what I'm saying is, we have to keep those expectations high and I'm sure you've heard that before. This guy, Yong Zhao, I love it. He's from China, he said that where he's from, if you can't drive the water buffalo, you are not a valued person.
That's why he moved to America, because he's good at reading and writing. And we like that. He's written this book, he said that the creative class is at the top of the chain, and a very highly valued group of people. Now, you just saw that China, India, they have more A.P. level, high–what do they say you know, the brightest and the smartest, they have more of those than we have kids altogether here. So, that means that our kids are growing up and they're competing with these many many many many many people on the other side of the earth. So they have to become very skilled at dealing with other cultures, at using technology as a learning tool and interacting with people. I'll show you how we can do that. Our kids are great at it. They really are. They have this natural knack just to engage with it.
Now, one of the things that Yong Zhao says, and I've got a pair of 24-year-olds that I'm extremely proud of, and when he said this, it made me realize, “Wow, I'm one lucky parent.” He said, “The goal of education is to get your children out of your basement.” Yea, that's what we want to do. That's why we're here. So, we have professionals and we have parents together. You guys are professional parents. You are. And without you, we can't do this. So, anyway. His point about the innovation, we have an economy now that's knowledge-based. Remember way back, we had the Industrial Age where we prepared people for factory work, and then we had, oh, the Information Age, with Web 1.0. We don't have 1.0 anymore, we have Web 2.0, we're on the verge of going to Web 3.0. And in this presentation, you'll understand the difference. It's an important one. It's an important one for how we teach our kids.
An example of this innovative spirit, this guy down here, Tony, I don't know how to say his name, Fado, I don't know, he had a team, most people on the job today work in teams. Have you noticed that? How many of you work on a team? You have to communicate with people on your team? You have to listen to each other? You have to figure out who's the one, the idea person, who's the one who likes to be the wordsmith, who's the one who likes to go out and find other resources, who's the one who–who's the one that comes out with all these ideas and who's the one that's able to start nailing them down so you have a plan? Who's the one who's organized? There's all these different personalities on your team, on successful teams. Tony had one. He was working for a company that was 500 million dollars in the hole. And had this little project on the side, it was an experiment. You know what it was? An iPod. And he showed it to Steve Jobs. And he said, “We'll go for it.” It changed everything. You realize how much it changed? An iPod digitalizing music like that. Whoo!
And there are many other things that grew from that. Let's go to the next slide. Okay. This guy, who wrote this book, his name's Tony Wagner, he's neat, he's really neat. We need innovators. We need innovators. And this is a description of what that means. An innovator will produce a contextually appropriate product, process or approach. Now that word innovation, we get that thrown–you hear innovative all the time and nobody can really define it. This is how I define it, as a Waldenite, as a Minnesota Waldenite. Okay. It can be something old that's used in a new way. What was the iPod? Hum. It wasn't something old. Something new used in a new way. Not quite. Not the iPod. Something new used in an old way. I think maybe C, what do you say? Yes? No?
Okay. I'm going to give you an example of the first: chalkboard. There was this guy, he was–what was he? He was an assistant professor of math, and he was teaching algebra in the 1800s. He was in Minnesota–or in Maine–one of those M states. Maine–I can't say the word, B-O-W-I-N, Bowdoin College. And he realized one day, that it was really hard to talk algebra if the students couldn't see it. It was just really hard. You know, they huddled around fire thing, and, you know, to stay warm, while they were learning. So he thought, “Hum, I'm going to go to the quarry and I'm going to bring a slate,” and he hauled it by horse to the–what do you call that fire thing–a pot-belly stove. The fire thing. Yeah. You know, the fire thing. So, he set up a slate, a stone, and he was writing algebra on it. And students who had already graduated, who already passed the class, came back because, oh, math became visual. Isn't that cool? So, all right, this is an A, and this is a B, and this is a C. So, what do you think the first chalkboard was? A? You’re all shy. You don't want to be wrong, Right? Okay. Well, I'm not sure I know either. I'm going to say that the first chalkboard was something that's old because it's a stone. Yeah. I agree with you–you are really on it. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad you're here. Maybe we can switch places. Oh, she's good. She's good. You ought to meet that one. So, it's something that's old used in a new way. And it doesn't hurt our kids.
Can everybody hear me okay? This sounds all right?
Okay, good. So, these are the kinds of things–I play games with things like this in school to force my students to be doing that critical thinking–you were doing critical thinking. Hum, you were analyzing, you were synthesizing, you were trying to figure it out, right. I feel like I'm on a TED talk or something like–I have very big ears. And, so, this is making my Dumbo ears go like that. Okay. So, let's go to the next one. Highly valued workers. If you go to Fortune 500, if you go to, I see this all the time in my reading, that these–the four Cs, to communicate, to collaborate, to be creative and innovative, and to think critically are highly valued in today's world.
So if you can learn how to work with a team and make those things come together, you can be highly valued. Let's go to the next one.
In my classroom, I had the cube, the four Cs cube. Kids would analyze their own--when did I do something that was especially good? I want a picture of it, I want it on the cube hanging from the ceiling. When we have class, and somebody comes up with an idea or something, we go, “Which of the four Cs is that?” and keep it right at the front, And you can do that with little ones, too. You can. Let's go on. I teach my students what teamwork is. What it means. And this is not the appropriate place for me to go through this. This is more workshop stuff. But I teach my students how to play different roles on teams. You can be the facilitator, you can be a collaborator, you can be the recorder, there's an art to all of that. I teach them the five Ps. Now people say, “Oh, but deaf kids need communication skills.” That's what that is. Teach them how to listen, teach them how to add on to what somebody said.
Five Ps are what? Pausing, probing, paraphrasing, putting ideas on the table, and paying attention. Paying attention to body language or reading of somebody's –you know, then you need to change what you're doing. But active listening skills in group work. Now, it's not always easy in deaf ed because of the structures we have right now. But I'm telling you when I had groups of deaf and hard of hearing kids, I had some with multiple disabilities. I had some that were A.P. level. You teach them to love each other and to get this stuff down and to do it well. And they soar. They absolutely soar. A group of students learned how to manage the different personalities around the table and they made a little movie for you to see. I taught them, you know, some of the things that people might say that are negative personalities in a group meeting and they need to listen to the words, read the words that they say, analyze the words. See, this is communication, isn't it? It's real communication. It's meaningful communication. It's not, “Today we're going to learn the word of photosynthesis.” It's different. It's meaningful for them. And that's how our kids deserve to learn, just as much as the hearing ones. So, want to see the little movie? Let’s go. The hands note coming up. Oh, well. The heck with the movie. It's not--well, Jim–we'll live without the movie. Come to a Fireside chat and I'll show it to you.
It's very cool, very very cool. Let's go to the next one. Critical thinking skills, this is what my dissertation's going to be on. I'm not seeing in deaf ed how we're helping our kids think critically. I'm not seeing it. They can and they do. So, we need to get them in position to be in the spotlight. So, critical thinking skills, asking the right question is the top thing. When I have a problem with my team at school, we'd sit down and I'd say, “What's the question?” What's the question? If you can figure out what the question is, that's the first step to finding the answer. But so often people will jump in trying to fix things without asking the right question. Now, it's just like, what’s his face there?
Pink Panther. How many of you know the Pink Panther? Okay. Inspector Clouseau. Inspector Clouseau, this is an example of asking the right question, okay. Inspector comes into this hotel. And he sees this man. He's going up to the desk, and he sees this man there, and there's a dog there. So, he's standing there and he says, “Excuse me, sir. Does your dog bite?” And the man said, “Well, no.” So, he starts to go down to pet. And the dog--and he's got--And he says, “Sir, you told me that your dog does not bite.” “That's not my dog.” So, asking the right question is a very important skill. Let's go on.
This is--this is Bloom’s taxonomy. It's as old as the hills but it’s new now. Back in the old days, we used to use nouns, the bottom of this taxonomy, the lowest level thinking is remembering and just memorizing knowledge. That's what those teachers who are preaching, putting all this, the facts, that kids can easily lookup on Google. You don't need to memorize that fact. Do you really feel they should memorize all that stuff? The brain can only hold so much. And every 18 months all the knowledge in the world doubles. Come on. So, kids who show that they're understanding, that's the next step here. There are technology tools they can use to show that. Next is applying what they learned that’s kind of a mediocre critical-thinking skill. And then up at the top here, you notice we have creating and evaluating and analyzing and now what we want is our kids to know how to access information. And then take what they found and make something with it. Be creative with it. That's how they remember. They don't remember by just memorizing. So, let's go on. I want to say that those skills, how often do you see those verbs that are on that taxonomy included in your IEP goals? A lot of times those IEP goals are written to that bottom level of thinking, and our kids are much more capable than that. Does that make sense to you?
I'm see some faces going--Okay, well, don't shoot me. We have a paradigm shift that's taking place. Now, I ask myself what's a paradigm, anyway? Everybody talks about the paradigm shift. Paradigm shift, what's that mean? So I looked it up and there's this really smart guy who's another mathematician and scientist named Kuhn, K-U-H-N. That's how you say his name. And he's the one who made this very popular, the whole concept of people socially believe this thing, and the way it changes is through things like this. Through government, through grants, through conferences, through professional writing. So you can change the way people believe something and have a shift. Okay. But he said, “You cannot see the old way and the new way at the same time.” And sometimes the new way is really the old way dressed up. So we're going to play with that idea. Let's go.
This is the old way. You remember the story Rip Van Winkle? Rip Van Winkle. He went to sleep. He woke up. And the world, he didn't know there had been a Revolutionary War. He went to sleep because his wife tried to get him to work and he was one of those lazy guys. Ah! But, so, anyway, people told me for a long time, you know, education's the same, it's like 100 years ago. You saw that picture of that guy teaching on the Renaissance page earlier. That same structure is in many many classrooms right now. Should not be, but it is. You see how these kids were in these neat rows, they're being trained to work on assembly lines, they don't want them to talk to each other because they would be wasting their time, right? That's called the teacher-centered transmission, that I take knowledge, I transmit it to you, and you become very smart. This is what I grew up with.
And a lot of teachers teach the way they were taught. So, if you see this kind of thing going on, you need to say, “You know, I think that we can do something that's more socially constructed for these kids.” Now, compare this scenario with the next slide. Is this what we're seeing in classrooms now? You see this now? Well, this is social constructivism, kids are involved in projects, in doing that four C stuff, really good. It's shifting to student-centered learning and connectivism is like social constructivism where they construct stuff, only for a digital age. So connectivism has to do with technology. But, so, we have this going on. Let's go to the next. Do you remember I talked a little bit about the paradigm shift? This way what do you see this way? Yeah. It's a duck. But what do you see that way? See a rabbit. Can any of you see both of them at the same time? Does your brain go--Ch-ch-chc-chuh?
Kuhn says it's going--Ch-ch-chc-chuh-- but I say that sometimes that, the new way, is dressed up, it's a dressed-up version of the old way. Now, I'm going to help you see what I'm talking about because we need to analyze the classrooms that our kids are in, if they're in general ed, or residential schools or that Metro School. Where's Eric? You, oh, I was so impressed with what's going on there, I just really enjoyed that presentation. Okay. Anyway, let's go to the next slide. Yay, I get to take this off? Is it okay if I sign now? Okay. Thank you. Can you see what this says? Can the interpreters see me okay? Can everyone see me okay? I'm sorry, I cannot move this podium. I appreciate you moving so you can see.
So, classrooms, when I go into them, I’m a mentor, so I travel around the state and I go in to work with different teams. And I observe what's happening there. What I'm seeing is a lot of ducks dressed up like rabbits. Now stay with me. Deaf adults are going to a general ed classrooms, they can see the problems coming up. More and more than before. When we had a teacher standing there just delivering a message to the class, it was easier to access what they were saying. But now with all of this interaction that's happening in the classroom, with all the kids working on different projects, the kids are required to work in teams. Well, who's teaching them how to work in those teams? Parents and teachers, and professionals, need to work together to help to make sure our kids know how to do that. You can't just slap people together and say, “There, go ahead. Do some group work.” It doesn't work.
How many of you play volleyball? Okay. Well, Eric, I knew it. Okay. You’re playing volleyball, you know, there's the ball, you bump it up, somebody sets it, you spike it, whatever. But if somebody comes and bumps you out of the way to steal your shot, it's frustrating. That person doesn't know how to work as a team. And you can't succeed if that's how your team is playing. So that person needs to be taught how to play the game. And that's the same thing that I'm talking about in classrooms. I just saw Bobbi Beth Scoggins, and she's now working in Texas. And she has an army of deaf people trained to go into different educational environments and try and figure out positive ways, positive ways, on how to make the learning more effective for deaf/hard of hearing kids. And it's so great. I want to do that.
Do you know who that guy is in the picture? That is Kenny Walker. He was my student in one of my classrooms. A seventh grader. He had really big Later he became a Denver Bronco. But he was my seventh grader. So now he works as a para, he worked as a para in a school where I was working before. But he sees things, he shares things with the team. And really works on how to improve things. Let me give you an example of this. Come in to Mrs. X’s classroom. Oh, boy. We're running out of time. Okay. So there's a boy, Jack, in that class, and he's sitting in the front, kind of behind the teacher at a round table. Because the round table means teamwork, right? Well, not so much. The teacher is an English teacher. And every student has a book and they're all sitting around the table with a book and Jack is like this. You know, head on his hand. Not having good behavior. Acting like his head weighs 200 pounds. He has–He has a cochlear implant. He’s just not really quite there. And what is the teacher doing? The teacher is walking around the classroom. So Jack was seeing the back of her head. Because the teacher was doing the 21st century stroll, walking around the classroom, but it's very difficult for a deaf student then to see the teacher. So, the teacher asked a question. A student raises her hand. Jack can't see, see the student. Can’t see the kid to stand and say their idea. The kid stands up to say their idea, and Jack doesn't even know the question. He's just sitting there. Head on his hand. He's the only one in the room acting that way. So realize, is that really a collaborative environment for that student? I don't think so. What is that? That’s a duck dressed up like a rabbit. Just because those kids are sitting around the teacher, the teacher–sitting around a table and teacher's walking around, doesn't really change the situation. It's really just the same as it was before. Do you know what I mean? Are you with me?
So, deaf adults walk into a classroom like that, so the director and the team are talking about, “What's the problem with this boy’s experience?” I walked in and I said, “Why do you let Jack just sit there with his head in his hand like that, number one? And number two, this is really not a collaborative environment. Jack is not enabled to participate in that environment.”
But they’re saying, “He has a cochlear implant, he can hear, can't he? He can understand what's going on.” And I explained to them, and then they made some changes.
But if a deaf person had not come into the classroom and let the team know what they were observing, I don't think people would understand what was happening there. I looked at that student and if I were in that environment, I couldn't. My point is that it's important to get--It's important to get–my point is–what was my point? My point is that it's important to bring a deaf person into the classroom to work with the team. That's my point. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Okay. Here's another situation. Mr. Z’s class. Now, Mr. Z, he thought he was a student-centered teacher, very clever, he picked a videotape with captioning that was kind of so-so. I couldn't understand the captions, they were awful. And, uh, his videotape, he thought was so clever because it had captioning, but I saw something where they were talking about the planets and it was about how to write a paragraph and the kids already know the–the accordion paragraph idea, the meal planning, the hamburger paragraph, but now they're introducing “Fred.” So the deaf kid is going, “Who is Fred?” The captions were really messed up. The interpreter is trying to explain it and the kid was lost. And there was a word “orbits,” about the planets orbiting around the sun, and the captions said “Orbitz” like when you're buying an airline ticket with a “z” on the end. There were 22 or 23 mistakes, in every sentence and it made it impossible for the student to follow. And he is left thinking, “Who is Fred? “Who is Fred?” And I’ve seen these things happen everywhere.
The teachers, their intentions are good, they want wonderful things to happen, but it just doesn't. I don't know. So, let's talk about technology a bit. I have done a lot of research, a lot of research about this. And most of the articles are about this. Using technology in deaf education to access the sound. Access auditorily, yes, it is important. However, technology is a learning tool. Two Ls on that, two Os, one L, it's a learning tool. Anyway, I'm emphasizing that. So deaf kids are good with technology. They pick it up very quickly. How many parents help their kids with what terms they're using for research? You know, some support, some tools to find the information they need, right? Web 2.0--first we had Web 1.0, and that was just information passes back and forth, you go in and you get information, right? And then you post, you could do e-mails, but now Web 2.0 means that there's actual social constructs with it. Eric–I'm going to pick on you, Eric. Google Docs, you should have gone, or go to the school and see what is happening with those kids. They're writing blogs, they're helping each other write articles. And the teachers jump in, and the parents can jump in and see what's going on, too. But they’re social–they're building–the social part is built-in, it's not just sending things back and forth it’s actually building social constructs with the web. Does that make sense? I’m lucky I’m signing now because I can't say that word. Web 2.0 is pervasive, it is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Everywhere.
There are three kinds of learning that I want you all to be aware of the difference. Over here there's formal education, and I mean formal education where you have a teacher standing in front--who’s certified to give credits. Right? But learning now happens everywhere, everywhere. And parents support the teachers, encourage the teachers, and that happens all the time, that kind of education happens all the time. The other day I took a break from my computer and I walked out and I saw the news on TV. Did you know there's one month out of the year that most men have surgery? It's March. They have vasectomies, so they need to stay home. And watch March Madness. I saw that. I actually saw it. I’m learning things all the time, I'm always learning things. But that kind of learning was informal. I didn’t have a teacher. I wasn't getting credit, but I learned something. Now, this boy, he's looking at--Sybil in psychology class. The teacher asked the class, “How many personalities did Sybil have?” Do you remember, she had multiple personalities? You all know Sybil? Sally Field played her in that movie. She did a beautiful job. But, anyway, that boy said, “Sybil, hmm, I'm curious.” So he's at home, sitting in his room, on the computer learning. Self-driven learning. Nobody is making him look up Sybil, but he's curious. He's curious. That’s informal, meaning-making a connection. It’s maybe connected to formal learning by a question but then curiosity led him to informal learning. And maybe he’ll decide he wants to become a psychologist. Informal learning is another one. Or non-formal learning is another one.
You're standing in line at the store, waiting in line at the store, just standing there. Thinking I think I want to have a party. I need decorations for my party. So looking at origami. Oh, look at that. You can do origami to make decorations. So she's learning about origami. And it's right there. These little tiny computers. They have the world in their hands. Teachers in schools and people really need to help kids use their technology. Don't make them leave it at home. But teach them how to use it wisely. Because just to not allow them to use their technology at school doesn't make sense, if you'll let them use it, then they’re up all night using it, so let them use it in school and have it be a value to their education. I like this. You have to read my joke. Read my joke. Okay. Anyway, on to the next one. A brain break. This is a brain break. Teachers need to do this every day, too. I noticed something interesting. Do you know what the Americas look like if you turn them on their side? Let's see. Wow, what do you see? A duck. Right away, wow, you got it right away, a duck. It will never look the same to you again. Anyway. Okay. Really? He just said that if you turn it the other way, maybe it will look like a rabbit. Are you deaf? You’re hearing, wow? You have some good visual–good spatial–good spatial awareness. And rotational skills. I wish we had three days together so I could show you all this strength the deaf people have with visual things. So, anyway, so maybe you’re kind of deaf on the inside. We'll talk about that later.
Now, how much time do I have left? Oh, geez. Time. Are you kidding? But I started late. Oh, I’m going to shoot my assistant. She insisted–no, I won't really, I really won't. But I started late. It's really not fair. All right. Okay.
This is my dissertation. I don't want to bore you, but this is a very important–this is very important stuff. So stay with me. I gave you the brain break. So now I expect you to be rolling up your sleeves and paying attention. Okay? Promise? Okay. Behavioristic, old-fashioned teacher-centered education, some people call that real school. I don't think so. But then it moves across over to the other side, The P-B-L project-based learning. The P-B-L inquiry-based learning. Teamwork, collaboration, where you’re building things, you're using critical thinking, okay. So there's a continuum, old-fashioned teaching, to student-centered education. What do you think about that? Yeah. For example, now, in the behaviorist model, the teacher lectures, the kids memorize. That's old school. Not real school, but old school. In the newer model, the teacher becomes a guide, it’s a different role. And this doesn't necessarily require technology, it doesn't require technology. If you look at this with technology, if the teacher gives the student a C.D. or whatever and then says, go put that in the computer and practice your multiplication tables, and just drill their multiplication tables it's using technology, sure, they're learning but is that really good use of school time? I don't think so. B-Y-O-D. It means “Bring Your Own Device.” It could be an iPad, it could be whatever you use to access information. This is important stuff.
I’ve really been noticing that parents and their–the kids bring these home, you're thinking, what's the goal here? To support them. It's not to help them memorize things, no. But it's to support them in their engaged learning. These are the things that I see missing in deaf-ed and some research that I want to share with you. I’m not saying it always happens. Because I saw what's going on in Eric's school. I saw that. The Four Cs. I don't see them in IEPs. I just don't see them. Does that make sense? Our kids need that to be successful in the work world. Do you get that? Some people are saying, “Yes.” What is happening to the four Cs? They're not there, right? Training to develop those skills. This is the wrong place to teach that. But I have structures my kids use in the classroom for learning these skills. Virtual learning, internet learning. I’m not seeing it. It's a wonderful opportunity for kids to work with each other, to have kids from one school communicate, maybe blogging with other kids, teaching them how to give good feedback, and that's just “Cool,” that's kind of low on the rubric, but teaching how to evaluate each other's comments, teaching them, your comments should recognize something of value and use more careful language if is going to be constructive criticism, make suggestions and build on it. That's what we want. That's what's needed in the workplace. So why not do it at school? Think about that.
Now I went to a conference in Indiana. It was focused on transition. And I asked them, the teachers had--blended, I don’t know what sign. I’m a lousy signer. But I am trying. How do you sign “blended?” Blended? Okay, thank you. I was close. Blended learning. And that's where some of it is virtual, communication with other people. And they need to know how to use the Blackboard for discussions in classes–or the bulletin board, sorry, the bulletin boards. They should know how to do that when they graduate from high school because they will need it when they go to college. At that conference, I asked them, you know, how many schools were providing that opportunity? Do we have the opportunity here, Eric? You give them opportunities, right, to communicate virtually. So, if you want to learn more about that, there’s your man. Talk to Eric. Technology is a learning tool. So that's clear enough, right? On to the next. I have teachers asking me all the time, I need this. A good curriculum for teaching vocabulary. You learn vocabulary from real meaningful experience, not from just a list of words that one needs to memorize. So my suggestion is this, get rid of the cookbook. Get rid of the cookbook. And be creative. There's two ways to see that guy, too, huh? Look at that picture. Did you notice that already?
There's two ways to look at that guy, the picture of that guy. I don't really have time to show this to you but there are different ways to immerse kids in learning. Oh, the interpreter got that. She told me to fingerspell like that. And honestly, I can't read–I have to–I have to see each letter but I’m practicing. I have to practice more, but I’ll work more on it when I’m finished with my beautiful dissertation. But, um, Disney–There's a lot of things about predicting in Disney. My students are learning the literary elements of video, I wish you could see these boys, standing up using sign language. And he cheated a little on the spelling, but it's very–it's very cool, I wish I could show you this video. We don't have time. But using a Disney story. As an antagonist. To learn about the antagonist. I guess I’ll show you. The videos on. Let’s go to the next one. Next one. There's two videos. Oh, well, whatever, it's okay. You get the idea. The kids are providing–oh, there it is. It came up. There it is on that screen. Okay. That's enough. I think that gives the idea. So they made their own way to show literary elements and to apply them in their reading. Let's talk about reading for a minute. Hold it, hold it. Should a teacher of the deaf, should they really be working on vocabulary without reading the book? Should it be a cookbook approach where they’re just teaching them words? There are many parts of this, like, you're using a Disney movie or something, there's so many parts of the plot that you can teach them using a tool like that.
Our kids come to school kind of like this. “Oh, God. Here we go again.” I have an analogy. How do you sign “analogy?” Anyway, whatever. I don't know. Okay. These are kids sitting at a pool. Jay, how do you sign “analogy?” Focus on analogy. I don't know. Something like that. There you go. Analogy, oh, several different ways to sign it--okay, interesting. Somebody who says, “I don't know.” The sign for that is analogy. No, I don't think so. So, anyway, my analogy is this. There are kids who are sitting on the side of the pool, the teacher is trying to teach them how to swim. Showing them how to swim while they're sitting on the side of the pool. But who’s going to become a better swimmer? The ones who are learning sitting on the side of the pool or the one who’s in the pool? You have to get them in the pool. That means that they need to read a variety of different things to be immersed in it. You talk about literacy, Jay was talking about Jim Cummins, and BICS and CALP. Anyway, there's some new things, multiple literacies, multiple literacies, did I spell that right?
Which means that I'm using a lot of visuals here to try to secretly guide people. I don't know if you've noticed that. If you understand exactly why I put all these visuals here, but I put them all there for a reason. And deaf kids are really good at picking up several visual cues. And, so, they need to read for pleasure. Talk to Greta about how to match kids with the right reading level. And give them this that they enjoy reading so they can be immersed in reading. They have to get in the pool. Okay. I only have five minutes left. Okay. This is self-explanatory. It is, isn't it? Okay. I love seeing that look on their faces. If you're not seeing that look on their faces, you're doing something wrong. And some parents say, “Oh, my kids, they don't want to work in teams. And you can lead the horse to water, you know. But my job is to make them thirsty. If you make them thirsty, you don't have to fight about doing the work. Now quickly, this is about behavior issues. Kids need these three things, to be capable, connected and contributing. And they will behave. I ask myself, what am I doing wrong when the kids are misbehaving? Kids need to feel capable, connected and contributing, all of those things, and if they're doing that, they're not acting out. Who said that? Do you know who said that? I said that. Okay. On to the next one. This, this. A mom found a crumpled-up piece of paper in their child's bedroom. It was a little 7-year-old. And the mom picked this up, the girl said, “I'm working on my IEP.” She was engaged in her IEP plan at age 7. At age 7. She was wanting to be involved in her IEP. That is important stuff. So that the adults are just making all the decisions for the kid, and then you wonder why isn't the kid working hard? Well, the kid wasn't involved. The adults are doing everything for them. Why should the kid even think they have a chance to contribute? Why would they? This is powerful. To involve kids in their IEPs, that's a powerful thing. And this is a model of teamwork. Where the kid's responsibility increases. Like raising your hand to go to the bathroom. You say, okay, raise your hand and ask the teacher. That's elementary school.
So, young kids, the adults have a lot of responsibility. But the idea is the team should be training kids to be taking on more and more responsibility. And that is a team effort. A very important thing. And on to the next thing. So, by the time they're in high school, they're taking on more and more responsibility, preparing for college. And mindset--and I don't really have time to talk about this. But mindset, I hope that you can see what that means. Learn as much as possible about mindset. And how important that is. And take responsibility for the process. That example I had of Jack, with his head in his hand, he was not involved in the process. And this is very cool to learn about a guaranteeing effort. There's a lot of things that can be done in the classroom to make learning live. I think we've already pretty much covered this one. And the web–the Web Olympics, have you tried that? Where a question comes up, and you have to find the answer. Who can find the answer the fastest? And then everybody goes to whatever device they're using and they try to find the answer. You can do that. This is projected-based learning, the kind of structure, and that's all written down there. And why project-based learning is good. These are all positives that come. And this is kind of cool. My kids, some of them, have some lower cognitive skills, they’ve been identified that way, but they figured out the answer to this question. How did Romans flood the Coliseum for water battles? So that they could have a water battle at the coliseum. How would they do that? How would they keep the water in there? Where would the water come from? The kids figured it out. They studied the architecture of Romans. It's pretty cool. Use questions. Use questions to make them thirsty. Like these. This one. Who was the worst Roman emperor of all time? How did castle architecture provide protection? How did Truman change our, the thinking about the election process? How did the NAACP change Earl Warren’s–you know, and in world history, we were studying chivalry, chivalry and where that came from. He really won that girl giving her his jacket and carrying her shoes, that's chivalry. So, anyway, I think I'm out of time. But we did start late, right? Anyway, I have to tell you I have really enjoyed being here in Minnesota. I'm really sorry about the time issue. But if you’d like to see some more videos or anything like that, come see me and I will show you. They are really fun. Okay? Thank you so much. Thank you.
