Week 5 - Stop Motion and Growth Mindset

Before I get into the session, I promised I would report back on my kids using the new maths weebly. They had their first play this week, and I can happily say it was a great success! They enjoyed working in their wee group and were pretty chuffed to have something they could do independently. I had the great outcome of them working away while I spent time with another group, however the real measure of success was the feedback I received... "better than pie and donuts!" If that's not a career high I don't know what is!

Anyhow, back to the Mind Lab. The practical component of tonight's session was having a go at making a short stop motion film. I have a background in animation so was thoroughly looking forward to this, and it didn't disappoint! We used a simple webcam set up with a programme called Monkey Jam - sadly not available on Mac but there are many alternative apps for computers and devices. Our goal was to represent the key elements of a learning theory we pulled out of a hat.

Our theory was Distributed Cognition. We decided to represent this by showing a series of tradies all contributing their separate skills to come together and create one fabulous house. We had a star-studded line up of action figures, cowboys and crazy-eyed dolls. Thanks to Paul for the great costume work on our plumber!

Making the film was great fun and I found it a really useful way of learning - I got my head around the learning theory much more easily than just reading a definition. We needed a clear understanding so that we could portray the key ideas.

Sadly the downside of working with technology is it doesn't always work as planned!! We hit a technical glitch at the last minute and couldn't save and export our amazing production :( This was a shame and disappointing, but it is the reality of things sometimes and we still took part in some awesome learning. 

Our discussion in the second half of the session centred around the concept of Growth Mindset. This is a pretty hot topic at the moment and it sparked some interesting comments. Basically the term comes from Carol Dweck's work that compares a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset. Fixed is the view that intelligence can be measured by an IQ test, and no matter how much you learn or how hard you work, it stays the same. Growth is the view that the brain is malleable - like a muscle that can get stronger and work better as you learn and stretch yourself. Ultimately, over time you can get smarter. 

People tend to have a mixture of the two mindsets across different areas. I have a fairly good growth mindset towards the learning of kids in my classroom, but I find it difficult to believe I'd ever be capable of doing higher level maths, and tend to default to those phrases like "I'm just not a maths person" or "it's just not my thing". We need to remember that kids will have a mix as well, and may be fixed on their ideas about some things but not in others.

The big things to remember from this for me were around how we praise kids. Being really careful to praise effort, process and perseverance rather than intelligence. It is so easy to let "you're so clever!" slip out! I also liked the idea of using wall displays to document the learning process, rather than always just the finished product.

It was, however, pointed out that we do have an innate contradiction in our system currently, with a push towards formative assessment and praising progress, while at the same time having to report against the National Standards.

For a bit of fun to finish, have a watch of this clip called The Backwards Bicycle. It is a fascinating look at how our brains work!

Due to a school commitment I have to attend the Saturday session this week. I'll miss my Thursday crew (will be thinking of you guys!) but it will be good to make some further connections.