C4Ta#3

The Fischbowl

   For my C4Ta#3 I was assigned Mr. Karl Fisch's blog "The Fischbowl".

   The first post that I read by Fisch was his blog post Idea #3: Think Differently About Time. This is part of a series of ideas that he believes can better his school. This post is his thoughts on how we should look at the school day schedule differently. The statement that stood out to me and that summarizes his idea within this post is this: "I think there's a huge problem with this view, and it all stems from a simple matter of perspective: we're viewing time from the perspective of the school, of the system, and not from the perspective of the learner." He makes a very good point with this statement. By viewing time like this, we engrave an idea that learning only occurs for students within the school day hours. He goes on to talk about how with this mindset it is not only when the learning takes place, but what subject takes place at which time. We make it seem like a certain subject can only be learned between a certain time frame of the day, which is also not true. This does not motivate the learner to go out and learn on their own. My comment I made on this post was, "I think this is a great thought. Within my own time in the high school classroom, I often thought that learning my subjects only needed to occur during the assigned class time when really learning does occur at any time and in any place."

   The second post I read by Fisch was his blog post Idea #4: Think Differently About Classes. This is also part of the series of ideas he is blogging on that he believes would benefit the learning environment. This entire idea is focused on the idea of the "class". "Class", in this sense, is being used a block of a hierarchy, much like you would consider an atom, as he states. He suggests we pull the focus off the "class" and the system of learning that we are accustomed to, and focus on just the learner. My comment to this post was, "This was very interesting. I see how the "completing a class" can differ from actually learning the material in that class. Students can do everything to "complete the class" and can never really learn what they needed to learn. I am sure these ideas are going to be discussed extensively when you present them."