Purpose and Evidence of Learning

I have been trying really hard to get more involved with social media. Hence the effort that I have put into breathing a little life into this blog as well as other less obvious efforts. I have also been making an effort to get my head wrapped around the Twitter phenomenon. Now I am not a person who enjoys (or is even interested in) stalking celebrities or moving my mouth simply to feel like I've been heard and noticed. But I have been trying my very best to find folks with similar interests and are at similar places in their careers. I have been checking the Twitter Stream (sometimes fanatically it seems) and when I find something that interests me, I mark it as a favourite to be followed up in my "spare" time. I must admit that it is eating up a lot more of my time than it should but it has also been paying some dividends. I have been reading a lot of other blogs which have been shouted out via twitter and I have found some fantastic resources.

One instance of synchronicity is the personal crisis of conviction that I have been plagued with over motivation in the last several months. I am a strong proponent of intrinsic motivation yet I have no idea about the best ways to engender it so I end up following the lead of my knowledgeable others and let the carrot and stick maintain status quo. But throughout this year I have been hearing this name over and over again. Daniel Pink. Right brain thinking. Motivation. Innovation. Now believe it or not, I still have not had a chance to read his books yet but they are on my summer reading list. I'm starting to think that if I wait long enough, I will be able to glean all of the salient knowledge that he has to offer from the plethora of people that are bearing his torch these days. Don't worry, I'll read it for myself sooner or later.

As I have been linking about motivation and trying to get on the Twitter train, I found this wonderful video about Daniel Pink and the principles behind his book Drive. Thanks to @TeachaKidd for this gem.



Now I'm thinking "Holy crackers! This guy has got it right on the mark. But what can I do in my classroom that will allow for Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy? What would this look like in my room next year?" So, as with many things in life, an answer that leads to more questions. Wonderful. Now I know that there is a road.

So I let it stew for a few days and I am still trying to be twitterific and along comes this link suggestion for a talk that Helen Barrett gave. I'm so sorry to my tweep that sent me this one but I didn't keep track of this one.



Helen takes her extensive knowledge of e-portfolios (they call her the grandmother of e-portfolios I believe) and applies Daniel's three driving principles behind Drive: Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy. I was like "Yeah!!! Those two things totally go together like peas and carrots. Uh oh. What does an e-portfolio look like? What should be included? Where do we starts?" Again, an answer which leads to more questions but now I'm standing on the road. Which way do I go?

A few more days go by and I am twittering away, much to my wife's chagrin, and I find this little beauty via @ShellTerrell. It is a wonderfully annotated and descriptive road map for everything e-portfolio by a guy named Mike Fisher. His site that he has created for the boon of all of us is Evidence of Learning 2.0. Of course I still have a ton of questions but I have wonderful resources to help me find more answers. One of the things that I am having the most trouble deciding on is which platform, out the dozens that are available, that should I proceed with. I want something that will be under our control rather than some provider. Something that we can decide who we want to share it with. Something that will still be accessible well into the foreseeable future. Something that is not going to cost us anything extra. I like Notebook a lot but I don't know that many people have it downloaded onto their home computers. It might have to be PowerPoint even though I am not a fan of its limited capacity. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions if you happen to come across this tangent.

Daniel Pink on Motivation

I've been thinking a lot about motivation recently. What is motivation? If motivation were a currency, how could you acquire it? Does it come in different denominations like bills? Does it have different values based on where it comes from like dollars and euros? Are some people born rich with motivation while others have to earn it and other may have it given to them? I just don't know. But I have recently watched Dan Pink talk about the gap between what science knows about motivation and what business (and schools for that matter) does to motivate people.

 http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

In the past we have relied heavily on rewards and punishments to help us motivate people to do the things that we want and need them to do. Pink argues that this simplistic model only works when the behavior or action that we are trying to elicit is equally simplistic and mundane. Let me tell you, there are very few of these sorts of things that we need done at schools. Our biggest struggle is to get our kids to move past this simplest model and start to stretch themselves to be creative and independent (two things that rewards inhibit covertly). Pink suggests in his talk at TED that people need Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose in order to become truly activated and intrinsically motivated. I am totally down with all of that because in my hear I can sense the ring of truth in that. Now all I have to do is have figure out how we can shift our paradigms in schools to match up with this new model and set up the environment where these three guiding principals can be cultivated and then harvested. Now the search will begin to find out if there is anybody out there who can point me down the right path now that I know that there is a path.