Monday, May 11, 2015

Consuming Greatly

If you thought the title was about eating, I commend you. I like BBQ also. I'm talking about a different consuming.

After you read William and John's thoughts on this ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I'm waiting for you to read theirs ....................................................................................................................................................................

Ok. Now that you've had enough time to read theirs, I'll tell you how I came to the same conclusion.

It was odd. I read John's post the same day that I was grading a bunch of assignments. This was the assignment. I wasn't really reading anything that was knocking my socks off. Honestly, I was a little bored reading their responses.

Then, I read one that knocked my socks off, figuratively speaking, of course. After I was done assessing it, I went to her the next day and asked her about it. I just asked her questions about her learning process. Where did you get your ideas? Where did you get your information? What were you thinking? Comparing to?

She said that she checked out all my links. She took individual notes over the videos. She looked up more websites on her own.  She watched more YouTube videos than what I had given her. She took some time to plan her responses. Finally, she put it all together.

It showed great thought.

This huge lightbulb went off above me. It's not that I didn't already know that the more you consume, the better your creation will be. It's that my students didn't know. Well, except this one girl.

So the next day, I printed off John's post and read it to my classes. I used her as an example for other students. I told them of the difference between what she did, and what others did and how much higher quality her end piece was because she took the time to invest in her consuming and garnering of information on the topic.

They just didn't know that to create something great, one must greatly consume first. 

The examples in John's post really made sense to the other students, especially the music one.

In William's post, he mentions that we, educators, are putting too much emphasis on the maker/creation part. I agree. Any time that I have done something where the students will end up creating something (Here's an example) I try to put the emphasis on the consuming aspect. Do I always do a good job of it? Probably not.

I'm a "focus on the process" coach on the basketball court. I'm big on taking care of the little things first. Once those are taken care of, then the game takes care of itself.

For the next assignment, I added more content to the assignment sheet.

Consuming is a little thing, but without it, your creation can't be big. Place your focus on consuming and the creation will take care of itself. 
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2 comments:

  1. I think it is easy for us to miss how little content knowledge our students have because we (I for sure) tend to think those around me have the same knowledge and experiences.

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    1. William,
      I do that a lot. Not only in my personal life, but with my students as well. I forget to see how those small steps influence large bounds later. Thanks for the comment and the inspiration!

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