Link

Purpose:

I produced this artifact for The Engaged Learning Academy (ELA), a three-day summer staff development program held by McKinney ISD. Forty teachers attended the three hour session. In the first part, I presented the pedagogical underpinnings of concept attainment. During the second half, teachers put theory into action by brainstorming, categorizing, entering information in a database, and querying the database to create new understandings.

Audience:

The ELA was open to teachers K-12 and my sessions had some of each. When we got to the hands-on portion of the training, I had two options they could choose. One was for primary teachers and involved collecting, organizing, and analyzing information about animals. The other was for upper grade teachers and involved collecting, organizing, and analyzing information about U.S. presidents of the twentieth century.

Feedback:

This training received full marks on a post-session survey for content, pacing, and application to the teachers' classroom practice. Even though very few teachers had ever worked with a database or even knew what one was, they quickly learned to enter, sort, and filter information. Even more importantly, attendees were fired up about the concept attainment approach to teaching and learning. As I walked around, many participants were excitedly brainstorming ideas for how they could do this in their classrooms. The supporting web page was appreciated and many remarked that they would use it and the handouts with students.

Reflections:

I got the fish eye from a few of my colleagues when I proposed this session for the ELA. Some thought it might be a little too theoretical and advanced for teachers who were still learning the basics of Internet searching, MS Office, etc. Fresh from Larry's iMET session on Taba and databases, I was determined to give it a go. It seemed to me then and still does today that this is too important to for teachers to miss. It gets to the root of how students make sense of new information and remember it.

At the opening of the ELA, each presenter had to stand up and describe the session he/she was doing. Teachers were allowed to build their own days, attending what best suited their needs. I was a bit fearful that no one would understand what mine was about so I did a big sell job, convincing the group that this wasn't just for high school teachers or computer experts. There might have been a chocolate bribe involved. At any rate, I had full classes and we had big fun. It was one of those times when I was really in the zone as a presenter. I give full credit to Larry, Mike, and Bruce who had recently made concept attainment so clear in my mind.