Questions Worth Asking

1. Week 1 Questions Worth Asking

2. ?

3. Target learnings for today • A feel for the course spirit • A passion for asking questions about creating learning in the curious Pandora spirit • An awareness of good questions to ask toward creating learning • An awareness of the Pandora Questions as useful top-level questions toward creating learning

4. Preview • Introductions and basic information • Course spirit • A world of questions • The mysteries of a device • Quick design • Rapid review and looking ahead

5. Introductions and basic information

6. Some • Teaching Fellow • introductions

7. Basic information • Meeting time, 4:10 – 6:00, Mondays • Class size, 100ish • Course description handout, online too • Schedule and assignments handout, online too • Website: http://my.gse.harvard.edu/course/gse-t540/2006/fall • Text for first weeks: Smart Schools, available after class, $11 • Reading pack, being finalized • Section meetings, voluntary, occasional, to be arranged

8. Course Spirit

9. The deliciously meddlesome curiosity of Pandora

10. Creating learning • Understanding the shape of good learning experiences • and crafting good learning as teachers and designers • using principles from cognitive science • along with personal knowledge and experience • applied to personal goals and projects

11. More rule-like The taming trap • More routine The easiest way to create the illusion of learning is to make the task simpler. • More piecemeal • More memory oriented Teach to the test

12. How to tame the wild? How to wild the tame? Ask…

13. A world of questions Goal: To surface good questions we already know about creating learning and add some others

14. Forms of government • Very different big questions you might ask yourself toward creating good learning

15. The ‘Pandora questions’ • What’s worth learning? • What’s hard about learning that? • So how is it best learned? • How is the learning going?

16. The mysteries of a device Goal: Expand our sense of good questions by looking at someone else’s effort to create learning

17. How sewing machines work

18. How sewing machines work

19. Back to Pandora • What’s worth learning? • What’s hard about learning that? • So how is it best learned? • The source’s share • The learner’s share • How is the learning going?

20. Quick design Goal: Create the idea for a learning experience quickly from whatever questions and ideas are around

21. 1. What’s worth learning? 2. What’s hard about learning that? 3. So how is it best learned? • The source’s share • The learner’s share 4. How is the learning going?

22. Rapid review and looking ahead Goal: Consolidation and mental preparation

23. Target learnings • A feel for the course spirit, the tame and the wild • A passion for asking questions about creating learning in the curious Pandora spirit • An awareness of good questions to ask toward creating learning • An awareness of the Pandora Questions as useful top-level questions toward creating learning

24. As you encounter various learning opportunities— at GSE, on TV, wherever, ask the Pandora questionsAs you read toward next week, ask how the ideas speak to the Pandora questions Tame Wild