Disequilibrium: Learning Theory and Personal Practice

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015 Teacher Learns to Code learning theory, programming, teacher education, ways to learn accomodation, assimilation, Chihuly, coding, discovery, disequilibrium, Education, learning theory, Piaget, programming, schemas, yoga

Notable Swiss child development theorist, Jean Piaget, explained learning as a continual process of achieving equilibrium, or balance, in our state of “knowing”…Then that balance is challenged when we encounter new stimuli, resulting in disequilibrium. When this happens, we try to apply our existing schemas (knowledge or ways of knowing) to the new stimuli (assimilation). We also seek and adopt entirely new schemas (accommodation). We tinker with all of this until we achieve that state of balance, or equilibrium once again. (Until the next time we encounter new stimuli…)

Disequilibrium, also known as cognitive dissonance, is not a very comfortable state to be in. It can feel frustrating, and challenging. It can cause fear, anxiety, and even panic. It is, however, necessary for true learning to take place. If we never encounter anything that challenges our current ways of thinking or knowing, then we never move forward. We never get smarter, more adept, more diverse, more eclectic, and that seems like such a dull place to be!

Since I started learning how to code, I’ve been thinking a lot about disequilibrium. Continue reading →

Embracing My Beginners Mindset: Avoiding Overthinking

November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code programming, resources, ruby, ways to learn beginner mindset, coding, computers, discovery, disequilibrium, edtech, Education, education trends, languages, learning theory, learning to code, overthinking

Hello. My name is Lauren and I’m an over-thinker…I’ve been learning to program for 29 days.

I commented this week that it seems like the Ruby tutorials I’ve been working through are getting harder and it’s taking me longer to figure out write the code that’s prompted. I have recently realized that half of the time I’m completely overthinking, which just makes me laugh at myself.

For example, I spent 25 minutes trying to solve one particular prompt, trying all angles of writing the code only to result in error message after error message. I stuck with it, miserable yet determined, and eventually realized that I had simply read the prompt wrong. The prompt was to add some code before the print command, and I was adding the code after. It turned out that I had correctly written the code the first time. Rather than going back and re-reading the instructions, I just spiraled down the rabbit hole…my code getting more and more complex with each try.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. I’ve noticed that the fewer angles I examine, the faster I’m able to complete the prompts. This is interesting to me, because it does not feel natural at all! Continue reading →

A Disequilibrium Reprieve and a History Lesson: Logo

November 4, 2014November 4, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code early childhood education, languages, learning theory, Logo, programming, teacher education, ways to learn coding, computers, discovery, early childhood education, edtech, Education, education trends, infants and toddlers, Logo, math, Mathematics, Piaget, programming

I have been focusing pretty singularly on learning Ruby, but have noticed that the tutorials are getting harder for me to work through. Of course this is expected, but I find that when my brain gets overloaded, it’s helpful to take breaks. I try to keep my breaks productive by and working on something easier, totally different, but still coding: Logo.

I’ve worked through the Logo lessons on Turtle Academy, and think it’s fun to go back to the Logo play ground and draw pictures. This gives me a chance to give my memory a workout, do something I love (draw), and feel successful.

A friend who knows I’ve been playing with Logo lent me a great book called Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, by Seymour Papert, one of the inventors of the Logo programming language. I started reading it today, and was blown away by the relevance of the ideas, even though the book was written in 1980. Continue reading →

“Hello World”, and What the Heck is a Text Editor?

October 29, 2014November 7, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code experiments, programming, ruby, ways to learn codecademy, discovery, Hello world!, learning to code, learning to program, limericks, programming, ruby, sublime text, text editor

Screen Shot 2014-10-28 at 11.19.16 PM — Codecademy environment, Ruby Tutorial…Left is instructions, center is where you type the code, and right is where you see the program run.

As I’ve been making my way through tutorials, something was starting to bother me. Tutorials let you practice in nice little environments that provide three fields: One for the tutorial’s instructions, a second for you to write code, and a third to show the results of your programs.

The problem is…This all happens on a webpage, and I couldn’t figure out how that translates to writing actual code and having it do something on my real computer. If I don’t know this, I would bet that others as green as me don’t really know either. Thus, I decided to figure it out (with help of course), and spell it out in this post. Maybe this will be helpful to other novices out there, and I know it will be helpful to me in the future if I need a reminder.

I asked my most trusted advisor, the husband, how to program something for real, and he explained the steps you need to go through. The “Hello, world!” program seems to be an initiation ritual of sorts, so I decided to use my little “programming for real” lesson to make my computer say “Hello, world!”

Here’s what I learned: Continue reading →

Inspiration: Learning By Doing

October 22, 2014November 7, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code Insipration, resources, teacher education, ways to learn 21st century skills, discovery, discovery learning, education trends, learning styles, teacher education, teaching

The article, American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist, by David Edwards, provides some incredibly important perspectives for educators to consider: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing/

Describing current educational trends, the article states: “We ‘learn,’ and after this we ‘do.’ We go to school and then we go to work. This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover.”

The authors go on to describe some important movements bubbling up through the cracks of our institutions: “Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more. Educators, artists, designers, museum curators, scientists, engineers, entertainment designers and others are creatively responding to this new reality, and, together, they are redefining what it means to learn in America.”

Part of the reason I’m learning to code and writing this blog is because I believe that In order for students to adopt and maintain attitudes of discovery, teachers need to be discoverers too. We must play, design, experiment, and find joy in the process in order to be effective in our jobs and nurture the natural creative genius in our students. I’m not yet sure if I believe that every teacher will need to learn to code, but I do believe that every teacher needs to find and nurture their own creative passions and seek new creative challenges to tackle.

What will it take for our schools to provide professional development that fosters teacher discovery?

What will it take for teacher education programs to nurture discovery mindsets in new generations of teachers?

My First Meetup

October 8, 2014November 6, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code Denver, Meetup, ways to learn beginner mindset, codecademy, coding, coding resources, constructivist, discovery, Education, education trends, idealab, learning to code, learning to program, teaching

Ok, so last night I put on my big girl pants and went to a Meetup at the Denver Library called “Learn to Code”. The description was this: Open house/study group focused on learning code at varying skill levels. All are welcome to come with or without experience, a computer, or an RSVP. I thought this sounded perfect! I have no experience, I do have a computer, and I did RSVP. I met all the criteria!

Over the past several years, I have become a pretty solid professional networker, so I’m comfortable with the thought of something like this…but man! It was still hard to walk through that door! Being a good networker in education circles does not really prepare you to cast yourself into a room with a bunch of people who you know nothing about, and who you are pretty sure have no interest in discussing education (and they shouldn’t! They want to learn how to code!) It was intimidating and daunting, and perfect, because part of the reason I wanted to do this was to meet people who are different from me. I want to meet people with completely different skill sets and learn from and with them. Sure, it’s easy to walk into a room of teachers and start a conversation about the importance of nature-based education, or why we don’t get the respect we deserve. Walking into a room with a whole different purpose was scary, but exciting!

What did I learn? A LOT!

Continue reading →

Why Coding? Why Now?

October 6, 2014November 6, 2014 Teacher Learns to Code background, why coding beginner mindset, coding, computational thinking, creativity, David Hawkins, discovery, early childhood education, edtech, Education, education innovation, education trends, Frances Hawkins, interest-based learning, learning to code, linear calendar, pre-coding, preschool

Every person and every teacher must answer these questions for him or herself. To add to my full disclosure, I’ll just tell you a little bit about why I am a teacher learning to code. Maybe you will relate, maybe not. There are basically 4 reasons:

Reason #1: My husband (I know…it sounds like a silly reason, but just read on!)

That brain is always going...what does it DO? — That brain is always going…what does it DO?

My husband is a programmer, and I can honestly say that I never even knew what programming WAS until I met him 4 years ago. I still don’t, but I know a little bit more more now than I did when we met. Sometimes I watch him work and it looks like madness to me…I watch him scroll back and forth between 3 or 4 different screens on his laptop, each with several open windows containing colors, letters, numbers, symbols, flashing, etc…I don’t understand any of it. It looks nuts! I am way less intimidated by the notion of learning to speak Korean!

Since I have this close relationship with a programmer, I’ve been able to learn a great deal about him in all areas of life, and our brains definitely work differently. He’s a logical thinker. He likes neat, clean solutions to things and yes/no answers. I can’t stand being asked a yes/no question…I’m an educator whose primary goal is to provoke people to think for themselves. I think that “wrong answers” exist in some situations, but I don’t really believe in definitive “right answers”… I believe in opinions and experiments and actions and consequences, and LEARNING. I believe learning is messy…and programming LOOKS messy…but I suspect it’s a lot more neat and clean than it looks. (…but maybe not!)

Continue reading →