Chaos Theory

Teachers love control.

This isn't even close to a secret.

We believe that if we craft our lessons carefully, our students will "get" exactly what it is that we want them to gain.

So what happens when we open our classrooms up more freely to the world? What happens when we allow our kids access to information, free them to design a learning network for themselves, and work with them on developing a repertoire of forms of information representation which they can consider themselves to be experts in?

Chaos ensues.

That is, if you consider kids working on dozens of different things across various points in time to be chaos.

The kids in my classroom are rarely all together on the same page, blog, or even assignment. They may be working on the same project (The Renaissance), yet one student is designing a Flash presentation, another working on a model, while a third figures out how to work out a storyboard for a video they are going to shoot. They probably have accessed their information from various sources, some of them choosing Technorati watchlists, other videos found at the library, others have searched for people they can contact.

So what grows out of all of this? Unintended consequences of the best kinds. Students gain information and end up designing final representations I could never have dreamed up for them. They get to showcase talents I didn't know they had (one of my students having downloaded a free Flash trial at home is showing excellent talent).

Every time I speak to teachers about forming networks with their kids, many of them cringe at the loss of control and worry what the consequences will be for their classrooms. My experience has found that people who are willing to open the potential for network formation up, will find that students will grow and mature in their information access, organization, and comprehension skills. Certainly unintended consequences will arise, but they will very, very rarely be negative. These consequences are the ones which will allow students to grow and flourish as information prosumers and to become active citizens.

We have a lot to learn still about helping students in their choices and in helping them to understand how to maximize the benefit they get from their networks, but we are making steps in that direction.

technorati tags:networks, classrooms, prosumer, learning, 2.0

Comments

[Joel Rainbow]

Exactly. You accurately characterized the chaos (although I think of it as pure joy) that ensues when students are given the appropriate skills and intentional frameworks to inquire and discover, as they follow their own path. As one who has also experienced this joy (four years with sixth and seventh graders) in the classroom, I decided to pursue a doctorate in this area.

Now in my second year I am getting started writing my dissertation. My problem question pertains to the readiness skills students need for success in this environment. My question for you is, "What have you done to prepare (or remediate when you found students who were not ready) your students? Were there certain games, activities, lessons that you presented prior to becoming deeply involved in this approach?

I don't mean to take away from your intentions in this posting. Please forgive me if I am being too forward in this regard.

[Miss Profe]

Your post was pure kismet. I just posted today on my blog something entitled, "Faith". I am one of the control monkeys about which you speak, and it is one of my informal, unwritten resolutions to allow the learning to get messy, and to encourage some of the unintended consequences about which you speak. While I am not fully technologically wired, I am working on that, too.

However, it's not easy sticking my big toe in there. So, I sincerely appreciate the post.

[Clarence Fisher]

Joel; I appreciate the time and questions. I never mind being questioned about what I do. I advocate a gradual release of responsibility with my kids. We talk a lot about different forms of representation, how they fit some projects and topics but not others. We talk about a studio type space where they need to get used to having a lot of activity, change and difference, yet having an environment that is conducive for everyone to work. We work a lot of blogging and creating personal learning networks, beginning with feeds that I give them, later allowing the kids to branch out and find their own information. Slowly, over several months we ease ourselves into this type of work. It takes time, a lot of discussions and mistakes. At this point in the year, we are deeply involved with this type of work.

[susan funk]

Thanks for the picture of your classroom. I talked about it today. "Clarence Fisher has given me a glimpse of what is possible". I can't get html coding to give me a link consistently today. So I adjusted my url so it will take you to my post. Come on over.

[Bill Kerr]

hi clarence,

I think this is very good teaching but am wondering why you call it chaos theory. Years ago there was a stage theory promoted by Noel Wilson here in South Australia, which described classrooms going through stages of dependence, rebellion, cohesion and autonomy. It seems to me that you have gone through those stages and are now trying for the hard one, autonomy. I suspect that people are jumping on the connectivist bandwagon (which mentions networks and chaos theory) without much analysis. I'm working on a wiki (http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/) which is exporing this. Or it could be that you do have clear ideas about chaos theory which weren't spelt out?

[Kim Cofino]

I love this post! You have articulated so well what I have been trying to explain to teachers for years. It is the excitement, enthusiasm and "a-ha" moments that make learning so much fun. I think that's what we all want for our classrooms. So often my class is "out of control" and the things that they come up with consistently amaze me.

As a technology teacher I have to accept that I will never know everything, and more often than not, the students will know more than me. I think it's that realization that has helped me "let go." I love teaching in chaos - I may never know what's coming next, but I always know it's going to be good, different than what I expected, and most importantly, meaningful for the kids.