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We have met twice now and done some great work. I invite you to comment below. use the form as a place to shape ideas, try out new thoughts.

Sample of a Video Reflection

Just talking.

Introductory Reading

Collaborative Work

Theorists point to Piaget as one of the first to correlate social development with learning. Critics of Piaget point out that his sample sizes were too small for his vast generalizations. But he does contribute one enduring idea: children learn best through interaction and that they are cognitively different from adults, not cognitively inferior.

Vygotsky is an interesting person if for no other reason than ideas did not come into the western world until he had been dead for 40 years. He suggests that Piaget is off base: he thinks that learning can occur before development.

Piaget thought a child could not perform some cognitive Task until his/her brain had developed adequately. Vygotsky thought a child reached a Zone of Proximal Development in which he/she could perform the task by mimicking either a teacher or a more developed peer.

Both men can be called constructivists, though, because they think that learning depends upon the child’s ability to construct knowledge out of past experience.

In America these ideas and other constructivist ideas influence the “Harkness method” which is the method taught at virtually all of the best boarding schools in America.

Although impractical for classes larger than maybe 16, elements of the Harkness method may be brought to bear on classes in the 20-30 range (like here at BC).

Broken into its simplest parts, collaborative instruction means:

• Students are responsible for “keeping the class going.” The instructor provides direction, some content, a few comments. But students have to actively participate in order to learn.
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• Students have to learn to depend upon one another as peers in order to accomplish goals.
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• The course knowledge is not “in the teacher’s mind” or “in the book.” It does not even exist until it broaches the student’s consciousness…the student constructs it.
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• The idea of creative play is very important across the board here.
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• The role of the teacher changes. Firstly, the teacher lights the fires, breathes life in it…inspires. Next, the teacher manages the flow of the course content to the conversations and projects. Finally the teacher explains points that students still miss, even after doing the reading and the projects. And in an overall sense, the teaher makes sure that course stays within the framework of the national standards. 

Prepping for Session II

Well, tomorrow is day 2 of the experiment with the BC teachers and the LCC, and as usual, I am in panic mode.

I woke up and nearly decided to start all over or maybe call in sick, but a few minutes of prayerful meditation, a cup of Guatemalan coffee and a cookie have refocused me.


Plato says that to teach is to start a fire. That is, it is not about the transfer of information. I think sometimes we forget that Prof Dev in schools should also be an act of fire starting, not just an unloading of research and studies and quotes.

So tomorrow I want each BC teacher to set up a blog, set up a Google Drive account and do some collaborative writing in small groups, set up a wikispaces page, and then establish some important links at the blog: edutopia, The New York Times Learning blog, etc.

But lastly and most critically, I want to get everyone in the meeting to commit to some specific aspect of the LCC that they HAVE NEVER tried before. Over the next ten weeks, we'll check in and see what they can produce.

October 14th Session

BC faulty met on October 14th to develop and practice skills related to The Learning Centered Classroom.

Learning Centered classrooms:

place more responsibility on students for active learning,

emphasize the importance of supervised small group work,

engage students in practical learning,

encourage habitual reflection on the part of both students and faulty, and

enrich classrooms beyond just "PowerPoint and lecture."

The session itself modeled the LCC as faulty members wrote short reflections, communicated instant feedback through digital polls, worked in small groups, and actively pursued information about the topic in order to make connections with their own classrooms.