Let's Teach Mastery

I am already a Sal Khan fan, if you don't know who he is, he set up Khan Academy, an online learning space where kids (and adults) can learn maths for free.

Well, initially it was just math but there are many other subjects up there now too.

The thing I LOVE about Khan academy is that it works on a solid foundation rule, as you progress through the program onto more difficult levels, it is impossible to skip ahead, which, if you did, it would leave holes in your knowledge. It lays a good foundation to build on.

Unfortunately, this isn't what happens at school. Unless you are a student who never misses a day and gets straight 100% in everything then you are going to have holes. Because the school has a curriculum to keep to and standardised tests, one the test is taken and the scores noted, the class moves on. No matter how many holes the kids have in their knowledge.

The system that Sal talks about in this video could very well be a Montessori class, kids learning at their own pace, mastering a task before moving onto the next level, embracing the subjects that they are drawn to and exploring them in as much detail as their heart desires.

I do so wish I had been able to be educated in such a system.

Sal's academy is online HERE and available to anyone with an internet connection. They are funded by sponsorship and donations (I donate every month, it is a cause I truly believe in) and I hope, like Sal that we can change the antiquated Victorian education system that most of the world is using, into a Mastery system instead.

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What Freezes Quicker Milk or Water?

These are the kind of questions I constantly have fired at me! This time, I decided we would figure it out ourselves, well with a little help from our friend google too.

What you need:

• Ice-tray
• Pen and paper
• Different liquids to put in the ice-tray
• Toothpick
• Freezer
• Timer

1. Start off by drawing a replica of your ice-tray, we don't actually have a proper ice tray so we used this tray that is for making chocolate skulls! 

2. Fill up each hole in your ice-tray with different types of liquid and make a note of which liquid is in which hole. 

3. Pop in the freezer and set the timer for 30 minutes. Go and play.

4. When the timer goes off, take out the ice-tray and use the toothpick to see how hard each liquid has frozen (if at all). Make a note of what is happening.

5. Set the time again for another 30 minutes and repeat.

6. After 2 hours, set the timer for 1 hour and after 4 hours set it for 6 then leave over night. Each time, make observations of what is going on.

Once we had a list of what had frozen at what rate, google came in handy to find out why.

7. Write a report on the findings.

Hole In The Wall Project

A while ago I watched a TED talk by Sugata Mitra about child driven education and the Hole In The Wall Project, if you haven't seen it, you can watch it here..

Mitra then went on to win $1,000,000 from TED to put towards the Hole In The Wall project. He has been testing his theories for over 12 years, thousands of kids have benefited from his project and now he is re-defining the way that children should be taught.

After studying about Montessori's theories and ideas that education should be child led, not teacher led I am 100% behind the need for change. Traditionally a class has, let's say 30 kids, with the teacher dictating what will be studied that day. This is no benefit to anyone but the teacher, bright kids are held back because the whole class must move forward at the same speed, slower kids don't get all the help that they need and the average kids are never pushed to try things just out of their reach.

That, combined with the learning cycles, where kids are drawn to different ares of interest at different times makes the traditional classroom totally inefficient as a learning tool. Children don't need more educated teachers, more tests, longer school days, more homework - unless we are trying to crush the love of learning out of them, what they need is to be allowed to learn freely.

Mitra's way rely's heavily on technology and there are no teachers. The children are given an open ended questions and work in groups of 4 to discover the answer. Their conclusions may differ from group to group depending where their research took them. It encourages deep learning, communication and group problem solving. Like Montessori, the ages of the children doesn't matter, they learn from each other, they are keen to show off their new skills and things that they have discovered.

One of Mitra's experiments really interested me, he set up a computer containing information about molecular biology in English for a group of Indian children who didn't speak English. After a couple of months the kids had learned enough to score about 30% on a test, after 150 days they were hitting a score of 50%

Mirtra then introduced a mediator, this woman had no knowledge of molecular biology and so she couldn't teach the kids anything, what she did do was ask probing questions to help the kids dig deeper. Again, their test score got to the point where they only got a few questions wrong. Not bad for a group of 10 years old Indian kids, hey!

I decide to try a little experiment of my own, I got on Facebook and asked some friends how to translate a sentence into their native tongue. This is what I got back...

Кто был Галилео Галилей и почему он важен.

And that is what I gave Ebi-kun, no explanation of what it was or what it meant, just the sentence on the screen. Then I walked away...

By himself he figured out how to use google translate, discovered it was written in Russian and what the question was ("Who was Galileo Galilei and why is he important?"). Then he went on to find out who Galileo was, he came across some words he didn't know, philosopher, astronomer and fundamental, so he looked those up too. He took notes and after 30 minutes (dinner was ready) he came back with this...

He really enjoyed doing it and asked if I can prepare him another BIG question for when he gets home from school. The only worry I have about all this is that he will accidentally come across some dodgy website, I have the safe function on the google searches, but stuff does slip through. Having the computer in the living area helps, at least I can keep an eye on him and what he is looking at.

One thing we lack is the aspect of working in a group, I am hoping that we can get together with friends and do it with the kids in the same room and I have also been thinking that we can do this using google hangout party. I will let you know how it goes!

For us, Ebi-kun will still attend a Japanese school, even though I don't agree with the teaching methods. School isn't just about maths and Japanese, he learns so much about being part of the community and the nuances of Japanese culture, that I can't teach him. We will be using more of this method along with Montessori to encourage the love of learning and keep his English fluent.

If you are interested in learning more, there is a very inspiration piece about a slum school in Mexico and one very bright little girl in Wired Magazine, information on how to get involved HERE and you can also download the free SOLE toolkit. You can also get Mitra's book, Beyond The Hole In The Wall for a couple of dollars on Amazon. 

I would love to know what you think about it all, share in the comments...

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