So, the fishbowl. I was in the inner circle, so I will comment on that. The inner circle began with the obvious points (not saying simple or bland, just obvious). Those ran out pretty quick. So, somehow we strayed to the topic of class size in schools. How did this happen? I am still a little confused myself. But however it happened, we should probably have stayed on topic a bit more. This could have easily been avoided by simply looking for underlying themes in the text, or outside sources with ideas to compare to it.
As for the amount of talking, it was good and bad. There were not many long, empty periods where nobody spoke. We took advantage of all the time we had. However, I feel the conversation was dominated by four or five people. I am not saying talking a lot is bad, just not so much that others cannot say their ideas (I find this ironic, as one point made was that in a large group more points are made. In this large group, one point overpowered the others, defeating the purpose of having a large group. "That's what you call ironic").
Overall, this fishbowl did not stay on topic as well as others, but still had some in depth discussion. Some still spoke quite a bit, and could have come down a little. But, the others could also have tried to speak out more.
The fishbowl today went very well, mostly. I don’t know how the outer circle did because I was in the inner circle. In the inner circle we talked about the design chapter of A Whole New Mind. About halfway through, we started to go off the topic of design. We did have a great discussion on the way school should be designed to provide every students the best education possible. Everyone in the circle had great ideas and many came for the outside circle to express their opinions. The only problem with this fishbowl was people didn’t take turns speaking. I felt like some people dominated the conversation wall other students had to fight to say something. From the fishbowl I took away some great ideas for what future education would look like with design and self-motivation for students. They were all great ideas that had promise but the only problem is that we are so far in our education we might never have the opportunity to experience these ideas ourselves as students. We will graduate collage in the typical L-directed world, unless we take immediate action in our own education.
In today’s fishbowl about the Design chapter in Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, there was much debate in the inner circle over whether education should be customized more to fit the needs of each student. This meaning that some students thought it would be best to have smaller class sizes in order to learn in a more creative and efficient manner. Other people debated that students should have to deal with larger class sizes because in the real world we cannot change our workplace to fit our specific needs. Many ideas were thrown out in attempt to come up with a better way to design the education system. I personally think that this was one of our best fishbowls ever. Students challenged each other to think of more creative ways to learn and problem solve. I think that the class could have continued on longer with this debate if we had had more time. Many students thought that it was a good idea to give students more freedom in their education. By this they meant that students should be allowed to “design” how they would like to learn and then they will be more motivated to succeed. I completely agree with this statement. However, I know it was partially discussed, but I wanted to ask how it was possible to motivate students who don’t care about their learning into trying harder? I didn’t think that a good solution was found for this question and I was wondering if anyone had thought of any new ideas. Other than that, I think that today’s fishbowl was excellent and that we did a good job of incorporating people from the outer circle into the inner circle!
Today's fishbowl covered the Design chapter in A Whole New Mind. The main debate was over whether education should be changed in order to fit each person's needs. The inner circle was stuck on the topic of class sizes for way to long which detracted from the overall learning in the fishbowl. The quality of discussion, however, was great. Even though most of it was repeating what the person said before them, there were some very good conversations. The main topic of the fishbowl was how design compared to our education. For example, every person is different and we proved that through Mrs. Brock's lecture about personality types. This means that every person learns a different way which makes it difficult for schools to find common ground. I think the class should have gone into more depth about how and why this would improve our society. We also had a few guests that gave some great input into our discussion. I think this really made it more interesting and we incorporated a better use of technology. Motivation was a big topic discussed in the outer circle. The main question that needed to be answered was, does motivation effect our education or detract from achieving our goals? This question really made apparent what side each classmate took. Another small aspect that was introduced in this fishbowl was the blogging poles. They helped spark good conversation and it was interesting to see the results. The results showed that some people thought that schedules and the design of AHS helped their learning while others thought that it detracted from their learning. Overall, the fishbowl was great and I know it will be even better next time!
For today’s fishbowl, I was in the inner circle. I’ll admit it; I was not paying attention at all to the blog. To quote Eric Grant, “i always get lost when trying to pay attention to both.” In the inner circle, we began with discussions about the Design chapter of A Whole New Mind but we quickly moved away and focused on motivation, and our readings from Drive. Then, we began talking about education, and remaking education as we know it. I think that this is where the best ideas came from. We gave the benefits of smaller and larger classes, we talked about how individualized learning works. We each pitched in our ideas on what motivation and education. Then at the end, we talked about how design effects motivation in education. Much of the ideas we gave were not focused on the Design chapter, but I think that that’s the beauty of the discussion. I learned how many ideas students have on changing the education system, and I believe this was just as important as discussing the Design chapter. And honestly, we were all designing our idea of an amazing education system. This helps explain why design doesn’t just make things look good, it improves performance too. Another thing I noticed was how much people were getting into the discussion. There were times when it seemed like everyone in the inner circle tried to speak at the same time. This has to say that we were focused on how to change education. I thought this was an amazing Fishbowl, and an example of what new education should be like. While looking through the replay of the live blog, it seems like Christian and Eric implemented some fun into the fishbowls, which are usually very serious discussions. An example of this is towards the end is when Eric says, “ok everyone, next time around, christian and i are going to have a fight and you all have to choose side.” I thought little things like this livened up the blog. I also noticed something minor, that Eric did not have good capitalization skills. Even though he was blogging in an English class blog, he still doesn’t capitalize his I’s. I guess when you’re not being graded, you can let your skills slip a little (I won’t do this, don’t worry). Those are just some little things I noticed.
I feel as though this fishbowl was centered around the inner circle because the outter circle wasn't as productive as it ususally is. This is not a bad thing of course, but it was unusual considering the fact that Mrs. Smith has had to persuade us to get off of our butts and into the circle during most fishbowls. I am very curious as to why the sudden change because the blog just wasn't the same without large numbers of students making comments and asking a variety of questions.
I feel as though this wasn't the best fishbowl our class has had, because the inner circle really only discussed one topic (education, and the outter circle was kind of sluggish at times; which I guess isn't a bad thing because the inner circle wasn't taking long pauses.
Today's fishbowl seemed like it went very well to me, except for a few parts. I really liked thi inner circle's discussion (which I was part of) and I think that we did a very good job of getting over some very interesting and important topics. For example, the whoe argument about whether or not schools should be smaller or not was amazing because of all of the new ideas that were presented and how there were two sides. Although I do think that we may of stayed on this topic for too long, it still turned out well.
As for the outer circle, since I was not in it I am not sure how it turned out. But, I heard from many people after class that it was really cool to be able to discuss with other people instead of just our class. It seemed like this really enhanced the experience of everyone. The only thing that I did realize about the outer circle was that there were more people coming into the middle. I still do not think that there were as many as there should have been, but it still made an impression. So, I guess the inner circle's talk was intersting (which I thought it was). Overall, una muy buena fishbowl!
I too like several people who have already posted feel that the inner circle stayed on the class size topic for a little too long. Yet, it all relates back to the design section of A Whole New Mind. In the portfolio he says that once you are aware of design you will find it in your life in both good and bad forms, and that you should try to improve the bad when possible. I think that the design of school has much that can be improved on, especially considering that we need to be learning in new and different ways for the future, which is developing at an accelerated pace, so I do believe the time spent talking about this subject was justified. There was never a pause in the conversation since so many people were strongly opinionated on this topic, and I think it helped produce one of the most effective fishbowls we have had. I also really liked how Smith challenged us to think about how to motivate those who lack the drive to perform certain tasks, the main example being school. I feel intrinsic motivation is forming the world now more than ever, and what should we do with those who lack it? Should we let those who are too young to understand the consequences of their actions fail? I feel that this is a very hard question to answer and I wished that we would have spent more time discussing this in the inner circle. I would love to hear what other students have to say about this topic if anyone is willing to share. I felt like students today challenged each other more than ever to come up with new ideas, thoughts and solutions. I also felt that since there was such difference in opinion today that learning in the classroom was maximized to a new level.
I didn't have a chance to see much of what the outer circle talked about since I was a discusser, and was focused on the inner circle discussion. But I did hear from several other students that it was a great experience to have Eric and Christian involved in the conversation, and that they too helped students to challenge their own minds.
Today during our fishbowl we became stuck on single topics for awhile. The topic we discussed most was how to redesign education. Now that I am not in the heat of the conversation, I have realized that the conversation was very opinionated and not backed up by facts from the articles or A Whole New Mind. Also, our conversation was very off topic and hardly related to the text we were suppose to be discussing, but I did come away with a new understanding of education. Even though I did learn a lot from the circle, next time the group should keep more concentrated on the topic and not branch off so drastically like we did today. In the beginning we used our text more often and to back up our answers/questions. Next time the group should keep a balance of topics and not diverted from the book.
There were a few people who walked into the circle, which helped add outside information. I did not get to blog with the two guests today because I was really intrigued with the inner circle conversation and all the ideas people where bring to circle.
I still feel like education has so much potential and it can become so much more than what it is. Now knowing where motivation comes from, I look differently on how I learn and how the whole education system is structured. Personalization of education is key if the work force is heading to things more like ROWE, as mentioned in Daniel Pink’s TEDtalk. Personalizing education will allow your natural motivation to take place and people will start to do things because they want to and not because they are being rewarded for it.
Education has this potential because of the teachers. Usually teachers decide to go through the extra years of schooling because they have a passion for teaching or because they want to change the education system. This passion is created because they like to teach and they do not need an incentive to do it. If the teachers started teaching because they liked it then students should learn the way the like to. Learning is a drag for most students but that can be changed through using the true potential in the schools across the world and personalizing learning. Daniel Pink defiantly led me to realize the importance of motivations role in education.
During today's fish bowl discussion, it took the outter circle a little bit to get started into a good discussion. With out two guest speakers in it, I think that they added a lot to it. It was very interesting to hear other people's opinions. And it was cool to be able to have some of the same thoughts as people who aren't in high school and hear what they had to say about what we are learning. I think a main topic that we got on today was schools and how they don't fit everyone's learning style. I think this is a major issue in every school today. Out of 30 people in a class room, most of them are going to have different learning styles.
I agree with many other bloggers that the inner circle stayed on one main topic through the whole discussion but I think it was interesting to listen to how deep they got into that one topic.
I think this fishbowl was actually quite interesting. I was surprised by the level of intellectualism and maturity our class displayed, and I believed that we accomplished or came close to our goal of creating an epic fishbowl. When it comes to our guests, they were fantastic, I think their two contrasting opinions lead to an intense, and just flat-out fun discussion about the validity and ideas of Daniel Pink and AWNM.Though I agree with Lauren that the outer circle may have began with a rather slow start, ideas, questions, and discussions were soon permeating an entertaining and intellectual fishbowl. In the Inner Circle, the discussion was good, and did a good job at staying on topic.
I left the fishbowl with a better understanding of AWNM and its topics, and thanks to our 3 guest speakers, many new ideas and views of Daniel Pink and his beliefs.
This fishbowl was a good one for me. I left it feeling more confident about what I had read and how my learning would be implemented in the future. It seemed like the class really lingered over ideas that didn't relate to design but after some prompting and summarization of points we got back on topic. I wasn't following the blog nearly as much as the actual discussion, but that style works for me as I process my sentences as I say them. I know it isn't a great style of talking but it is one that suits my frantic method of thinking.
In the discussion we went over aspects of the book that related to the design of things like education. many people thought that the education system that we currently employ needs many changes to become more useful; however I see it as a system that can create incredible thinkers and often does. It has minor flaws for those who can't adapt their learning to the style of teaching but much of the fault there exists in the children who don't advocate for themselves.
It is very ineffective, cost wise, to create an entire new system when there is a working one in place. If necessary, small improvements could be made to the workings of a school in place that greatly improve its effectiveness.
During today's fishbowl, I thought the inner circle brought up some excellent points. I have to admit, since I was in the inner circle I didn't pay any attention to the blog at all, because it distracts me. So, back to the inner circle, I thought we made a lot of progress in discussing the ideas in A Whole New Mind. We discussed the differences between design and quality, and how they complement each other. Which is more important, design or quality? There were many different opinions on this topic, some believing that design has nothing do to with quality, others saying that design can improve the way we look at objects. After design was discussed, we got a little bit off topic. We got stuck discussing education. Some people thought design would not affect a child's education, while others thought that design would make school more interesting. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink discusses a design school, CHAD, which has a higher attendance and academics level than most other schools. The inner circle debated on personalizing smaller classes, which allow teachers to know the students better, or a larger class, which will incorporate new ideas. Overall, the inner circle did well, but there was definitely too much interrupting and fighting for talking time. As usual, there were a few people who dominated the conversation. I don't think it is too much to ask for those people to back off a little, and let other people have more say. But other than that, it was great!
Today, I was sick and therefore used the cover it live system entirely. The fishbowl today was different because Christian Long and Eric Grant joined us today. They had valued input and discussed issues with most of the outer circle on cover it live. Christian made me see that design is inspired by the limits and constraints that society puts in different situations.
A whole other subject that I didn't get to fully discuss with Mr. Grant due to the time was the question whether grades fully reflects a students ability or otherwise. We decided no it didn't, but we never got to the question whether colleges should decide differently upon their acceptances because of this point of view. It would be incredibly difficult to decide who to accept without grades, but besides that it is an interesting thought. What would happen if colleges realized that? Would it change the face of education? Would design and creativity be the basis of acceptance? Who knows, but it is quite captivating to think about!
Overall, the fishbowl was quite successful from my perspective!
I thought that our Fishbowl went fairly well. The inner circle discussed a wide range of topics and how they all connect to each other. Preparing for this perticular fishbowl really helped my learning and ability to discuss in the outer circle blog.
I wasn't really tuning into the inner circle, but when I did, I heard very good connections to the outside world and what Dan Pink has said in his book. This is when I had to get a piece of that action and so I walked up to the inner circle and shared my connection about socialism and intrinsic motivators.
In the future, I am going to have good fishbowl questions planned so that there isn't those awkward couple of minutes where no one is disscussing anything in the outer circle. But in general, I thought that the talking was very solid and we didn't get off topic.
I was in the inner circle for the Design fishbowl. Although we discussed several key points about the application of design, I feel like we took too long to uncover our main point and spent too long on one topic. Our discussion spent very little time talking about the actual concept of design and how it would apply to the world. Instead, we spent almost the entire time looking at how design could apply to education. While this is a valid idea to look at, we ended up repeating each other’s points several times. In fact, our arguments were relatively unrelated to design until Ms. Smith found the connection for us: we were re-designing the education system. I also feel like I did not get the opportunity to speak as many times as I usually like to during Fishbowls. We ran out of time before I could ask many of the questions I wanted to ask, and we missed the opportunity to discuss several other topics, such as the, “Democracy of Design.”
Despite these setbacks, we still managed to do many things well in this Fishbowl. For one, several people from the outer circle came in and joined our inner circle discussion. We also came up with many strong ideas for how to reconstruct the school system. The main points we came up with were that making schools smaller, more personal, and more tailored to each individual’s learning style, interests, and motivations would help kids succeed more with their educations. This discussion about education greatly helped us discover what we liked about and what we disagreed with regarding the school system.
Overall, our Fishbowl was valuable because we managed to discuss the current school system with depth. However, it would have been nice to incorporate a few more topics into our discussion.
For the fisbowl, I was in the outer circle, so that is what I paid the most attention to. In the outer circle. The Fishbowl began dilligently with a brief discussion over a subject we read in Drive and watched Daniel Pink talk about, which was the fact that sometimes having a reward can pressure us into doing even worse rather than if we had no reward. What stood out to me the most were the polls that were thrown out during the discussion.I think that this may have to do with the fact that I never knew you could put polls on the Fishbowls. Some of the polls consisted of "Is the design of AHS distracting?" or "Does the schedule of AHS add or distract your learning?". Contrary to the popular belief, I chose distract for both polls. Whenever I zone out in classes, I usually stare at the posters and try and read what they have to say or what band they promote. As for the schedule, it can be a bit of a distraction. Even though I vow to do homework on my off hours, it does not always get accomplished due to having my friends around who tend to talk a lot. However, sometimes I can make my off hours productive like right now for example. Most of the time I find my off hours to be a bit of a distraction though. Another point that stood out to me was when Christian said that nobody would push themselves farther than they wanted to. This is a very true statement. If you do not want to run five miles for anything, then chances are you will not do it unless you are forced by somebody. However, if you were to run, it would not be out of desire or want. I think that the outer circle went very well. I liked how we did not stay on the same subject for the entire time and we seemed to be making progress as a class as a whole.
The fishbowl yesterday really influenced my life on how I could think of design. It really opened doors in my mind and changed perspective on design. The fishbowl was really intellectual in its debate and was more influenced by the guest speakers Christian Long and Eric Grant. They provided good examples like if you were more creative with constraints or without constraints. One thing that really suprised me were the poles, they enhanced the fishbowl experience with us having to think if schedules did or did not distract us from learning. The inner circle had a great discussion on motivation too, with further evidence by Smith. Like Lauren and Sean above me, I too think that the inner circle started off slow. Overall it was a great discussion full of great ideas.
The fishbowl yesterday was particularly bland and repetitive. I think that the inner circle spent too much time on each topic before moving on. The blogging on the outside circle I felt moved along a little better. The inner circle did teach me how the physical look of education might affect peoples ability to learn and their learning style. We talked about how a 20% like system in the school. This brought up a debate which I am still thinking about: what would be the success rate be for this compared to the existing system. Would all kids learn better in this more creative environment? But in all I think the blogging on the outside was very quality.
I felt that there was not enough participation in the inner circle for the fishbowl yesterday. It’s great that we have these amazing dudes name Eric Grant and Christian Long who came in to talk with us, but we still need talk to each other. We just need to tell ourselves, “I’m going in to the inner circle to talk NOW”, and then talk when you find an opening, and takes 5 minutes, and you can catch up on the blog. It’s a lot more awkward to insert a comment into a conversation after the fact in real life than in a blog. Next, I felt that the outer circle did really well on expanding into things that we hadn’t thought about before with Eric, Christian, and the other guests. I was able to talk with Eric and it was nice to talk to someone outside the class for a change. We should invite people again, as long as it doesn’t stop us from moving into the inner circle. Overall, the fishbowl was great. AWNM is making more and more sense to me as we discuss it in the fishbowls, and I get to hear everyone elses’ opinion on the subject, rather than staying naïve.
I started the fishbowl on the outer circle, then migrated to the inner circle when talk of education perked my ears. I believe the fishbowl went well: The conversation was deep and meaningful, I made some good points, had some points overturned (I only rarely admit defeat, and I ended up doing so in this). The only problem? It wasn't about DESIGN. Great points, only they mostly pertained to education throughout the whole argument both on the inside and the outside of the circle. I, too, am guilty of this: I mostly just talked about reforming schools and the world's changes effect on religion. After that I moved into the inner circle, encountered with very much the same thing: School reform. A fascinating, brilliant conversation not about design. However, too many people wanted to talk, delaying some relevant, good argument. People had to get a point in (in some ways, a good things, in other ways, bad). Some of this also became one-sided.
The fishbowl yesterday was interesting. The inner circle, even though they were a little off-topic talking about education and what they should change instead of talking about design, had a very deep and intense debate. The outer circle had what I would call "a perfect debate". Everyone was talking, people had different viewpoints, even the outside sources argued with each other. I think that the topic helped the fishbowl become more intense because it affects all of us and we all have our own ideas on what design is. The amount of different perspectives that this conversation brought out astounded me. It was an enjoyable, intense fishbowl.
In the fishbowl for design there were many ideas discussed that were very interesting while others were irrelevant. I think that the inner circle started with very good topics to talk about but then I felt that the conversation turned into a jumble of opinions. The presenters didn’t bring the group back to design until Mrs. Smith told us that we had to relate back to the book. I also felt that there were way too many people on the inner circle. It was great that so many opinions were expressed and facts presented but it was hard to try and give your opinion or present your facts. It was great that everyone wanted to speak and be involved but I think there were too many people. In the outer circle the conversation was slow and there weren’t many questions to the class. Usually conversations would be very isolated between a couple of people and therefore there wasn’t a lot of other conversation. I also thought the presence of the guests, Eric and Christian, made the conversation see another perspective. They really added a lot to the blogging experience and I learned a lot from them. I thought this fishbowl was not as good as some of the ones in the past but it was okay.
This is probably one of my favorite fishbowls we've had all year. There was a lot more participation in the inner circle than usual, and it seemed like everyone had their own opinion they wanted to voice. Although I participated a bit in the inner circle, the live blogging kept me thinking. Our guests Eric Grant and Christian Long offered very insightful topics, and caused an actual debate throughout the live blog. I liked having guests in the blog because they provide a different point of view to our classroom about what the outside world thinks of certain topics like education or Dan Pink's theory. They challenged our ideas, and helped us to open our minds and think more deeply about a topic than we had before. AWNM is also a great topic because it is such a controversial book, therefore there are many different opinions, which we could add to our own learning and understanding of the book. All in all, this was a great, insightful fishbowl, and I hope we have much more like it.
The fishbowl yesterday had very in-depth conversations, mainly revolving around education and how it can change for the future. However, I had several problems with the inner circle. Firstly, I felt that through the entire discussion was off-topic. From the beginning, our conversation barely connected with design. It also disconnected from the text even more so. I felt like no one really stepped up to the plate to connect back to A Whole New Mind. Our discussion was supposed to be about design, but it was more about motivation and education, some of which was discussed in the beginning of A Whole New Mind. I feel like the outer circle discussion, with the opposing views and guest speakers. I feel like this brought a rich depth that the inner circle just didn't seem to grasp. All we really had to do was to pull our ideas about education back into the realm of design. This discussion was beneficial, but it did not provide a better understanding of the text. In the future, I will push individually towards keeping the conversation grounded.
In my opinion the ‘Design fishbowl’ was very successful. I think the outside guests gave us an important glance into the views of ‘real world’ people. They helped us to understand ideas that normal high school students may never had thought of. To me it is very beneficial, if not crucial to our understanding. Also, I think the inner circle did really well discussing lots of different ideas and important details of design. The inner circle really hit a lot of important designs we face every day in society such as school and working economics. Yet, I feel as a whole we were way too stuck on the fact that we don’t like the current setup of the schooling system. It was good that we got to share our opinions on the topic, but, it was just not relating back to the book at all and that was a huge operator error. Overall, we are continuing on very strong and I can’t wait to hear about ‘Story’.
Well the fishbowl was amazing. Those who weren't here are really missing out. The inner circle had an amazing talk about education and what the best way to go about it in a perfect world. We also had the talk on how to make this applicable to the real world. I didn't really monitor my laptop and the outer circle, but I did know we had guests come that didn't..... agree on some of the topics. I got to see some of their points of veiw on the over head and really enjoyed seeing the class either take sides or through a curveball and come with a totally diffrent point of veiw. I really appreciate what they did for the class and I hope they can come back for the other fishbowls. Thank you Mrs. Smith for getting them to come to our fishbowl.
So, the fishbowl. I was in the inner circle, so I will comment on that. The inner circle began with the obvious points (not saying simple or bland, just obvious). Those ran out pretty quick. So, somehow we strayed to the topic of class size in schools. How did this happen? I am still a little confused myself. But however it happened, we should probably have stayed on topic a bit more. This could have easily been avoided by simply looking for underlying themes in the text, or outside sources with ideas to compare to it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the amount of talking, it was good and bad. There were not many long, empty periods where nobody spoke. We took advantage of all the time we had. However, I feel the conversation was dominated by four or five people. I am not saying talking a lot is bad, just not so much that others cannot say their ideas (I find this ironic, as one point made was that in a large group more points are made. In this large group, one point overpowered the others, defeating the purpose of having a large group. "That's what you call ironic").
Overall, this fishbowl did not stay on topic as well as others, but still had some in depth discussion. Some still spoke quite a bit, and could have come down a little. But, the others could also have tried to speak out more.
The fishbowl today went very well, mostly. I don’t know how the outer circle did because I was in the inner circle. In the inner circle we talked about the design chapter of A Whole New Mind. About halfway through, we started to go off the topic of design. We did have a great discussion on the way school should be designed to provide every students the best education possible. Everyone in the circle had great ideas and many came for the outside circle to express their opinions. The only problem with this fishbowl was people didn’t take turns speaking. I felt like some people dominated the conversation wall other students had to fight to say something.
ReplyDeleteFrom the fishbowl I took away some great ideas for what future education would look like with design and self-motivation for students. They were all great ideas that had promise but the only problem is that we are so far in our education we might never have the opportunity to experience these ideas ourselves as students. We will graduate collage in the typical L-directed world, unless we take immediate action in our own education.
In today’s fishbowl about the Design chapter in Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, there was much debate in the inner circle over whether education should be customized more to fit the needs of each student. This meaning that some students thought it would be best to have smaller class sizes in order to learn in a more creative and efficient manner. Other people debated that students should have to deal with larger class sizes because in the real world we cannot change our workplace to fit our specific needs. Many ideas were thrown out in attempt to come up with a better way to design the education system. I personally think that this was one of our best fishbowls ever. Students challenged each other to think of more creative ways to learn and problem solve. I think that the class could have continued on longer with this debate if we had had more time. Many students thought that it was a good idea to give students more freedom in their education. By this they meant that students should be allowed to “design” how they would like to learn and then they will be more motivated to succeed. I completely agree with this statement. However, I know it was partially discussed, but I wanted to ask how it was possible to motivate students who don’t care about their learning into trying harder? I didn’t think that a good solution was found for this question and I was wondering if anyone had thought of any new ideas. Other than that, I think that today’s fishbowl was excellent and that we did a good job of incorporating people from the outer circle into the inner circle!
ReplyDeleteToday's fishbowl covered the Design chapter in A Whole New Mind. The main debate was over whether education should be changed in order to fit each person's needs. The inner circle was stuck on the topic of class sizes for way to long which detracted from the overall learning in the fishbowl. The quality of discussion, however, was great. Even though most of it was repeating what the person said before them, there were some very good conversations. The main topic of the fishbowl was how design compared to our education. For example, every person is different and we proved that through Mrs. Brock's lecture about personality types. This means that every person learns a different way which makes it difficult for schools to find common ground. I think the class should have gone into more depth about how and why this would improve our society. We also had a few guests that gave some great input into our discussion. I think this really made it more interesting and we incorporated a better use of technology. Motivation was a big topic discussed in the outer circle. The main question that needed to be answered was, does motivation effect our education or detract from achieving our goals? This question really made apparent what side each classmate took. Another small aspect that was introduced in this fishbowl was the blogging poles. They helped spark good conversation and it was interesting to see the results. The results showed that some people thought that schedules and the design of AHS helped their learning while others thought that it detracted from their learning. Overall, the fishbowl was great and I know it will be even better next time!
ReplyDeleteFor today’s fishbowl, I was in the inner circle. I’ll admit it; I was not paying attention at all to the blog. To quote Eric Grant, “i always get lost when trying to pay attention to both.” In the inner circle, we began with discussions about the Design chapter of A Whole New Mind but we quickly moved away and focused on motivation, and our readings from Drive. Then, we began talking about education, and remaking education as we know it. I think that this is where the best ideas came from. We gave the benefits of smaller and larger classes, we talked about how individualized learning works. We each pitched in our ideas on what motivation and education. Then at the end, we talked about how design effects motivation in education. Much of the ideas we gave were not focused on the Design chapter, but I think that that’s the beauty of the discussion. I learned how many ideas students have on changing the education system, and I believe this was just as important as discussing the Design chapter. And honestly, we were all designing our idea of an amazing education system. This helps explain why design doesn’t just make things look good, it improves performance too. Another thing I noticed was how much people were getting into the discussion. There were times when it seemed like everyone in the inner circle tried to speak at the same time. This has to say that we were focused on how to change education. I thought this was an amazing Fishbowl, and an example of what new education should be like.
ReplyDeleteWhile looking through the replay of the live blog, it seems like Christian and Eric implemented some fun into the fishbowls, which are usually very serious discussions. An example of this is towards the end is when Eric says, “ok everyone, next time around, christian and i are going to have a fight and you all have to choose side.” I thought little things like this livened up the blog. I also noticed something minor, that Eric did not have good capitalization skills. Even though he was blogging in an English class blog, he still doesn’t capitalize his I’s. I guess when you’re not being graded, you can let your skills slip a little (I won’t do this, don’t worry). Those are just some little things I noticed.
I feel as though this fishbowl was centered around the inner circle because the outter circle wasn't as productive as it ususally is. This is not a bad thing of course, but it was unusual considering the fact that Mrs. Smith has had to persuade us to get off of our butts and into the circle during most fishbowls. I am very curious as to why the sudden change because the blog just wasn't the same without large numbers of students making comments and asking a variety of questions.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though this wasn't the best fishbowl our class has had, because the inner circle really only discussed one topic (education, and the outter circle was kind of sluggish at times; which I guess isn't a bad thing because the inner circle wasn't taking long pauses.
Today's fishbowl seemed like it went very well to me, except for a few parts. I really liked thi inner circle's discussion (which I was part of) and I think that we did a very good job of getting over some very interesting and important topics. For example, the whoe argument about whether or not schools should be smaller or not was amazing because of all of the new ideas that were presented and how there were two sides. Although I do think that we may of stayed on this topic for too long, it still turned out well.
ReplyDeleteAs for the outer circle, since I was not in it I am not sure how it turned out. But, I heard from many people after class that it was really cool to be able to discuss with other people instead of just our class. It seemed like this really enhanced the experience of everyone. The only thing that I did realize about the outer circle was that there were more people coming into the middle. I still do not think that there were as many as there should have been, but it still made an impression. So, I guess the inner circle's talk was intersting (which I thought it was). Overall, una muy buena fishbowl!
I too like several people who have already posted feel that the inner circle stayed on the class size topic for a little too long. Yet, it all relates back to the design section of A Whole New Mind. In the portfolio he says that once you are aware of design you will find it in your life in both good and bad forms, and that you should try to improve the bad when possible. I think that the design of school has much that can be improved on, especially considering that we need to be learning in new and different ways for the future, which is developing at an accelerated pace, so I do believe the time spent talking about this subject was justified. There was never a pause in the conversation since so many people were strongly opinionated on this topic, and I think it helped produce one of the most effective fishbowls we have had. I also really liked how Smith challenged us to think about how to motivate those who lack the drive to perform certain tasks, the main example being school. I feel intrinsic motivation is forming the world now more than ever, and what should we do with those who lack it? Should we let those who are too young to understand the consequences of their actions fail? I feel that this is a very hard question to answer and I wished that we would have spent more time discussing this in the inner circle. I would love to hear what other students have to say about this topic if anyone is willing to share. I felt like students today challenged each other more than ever to come up with new ideas, thoughts and solutions. I also felt that since there was such difference in opinion today that learning in the classroom was maximized to a new level.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a chance to see much of what the outer circle talked about since I was a discusser, and was focused on the inner circle discussion. But I did hear from several other students that it was a great experience to have Eric and Christian involved in the conversation, and that they too helped students to challenge their own minds.
Today during our fishbowl we became stuck on single topics for awhile. The topic we discussed most was how to redesign education. Now that I am not in the heat of the conversation, I have realized that the conversation was very opinionated and not backed up by facts from the articles or A Whole New Mind. Also, our conversation was very off topic and hardly related to the text we were suppose to be discussing, but I did come away with a new understanding of education. Even though I did learn a lot from the circle, next time the group should keep more concentrated on the topic and not branch off so drastically like we did today. In the beginning we used our text more often and to back up our answers/questions. Next time the group should keep a balance of topics and not diverted from the book.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few people who walked into the circle, which helped add outside information. I did not get to blog with the two guests today because I was really intrigued with the inner circle conversation and all the ideas people where bring to circle.
I still feel like education has so much potential and it can become so much more than what it is. Now knowing where motivation comes from, I look differently on how I learn and how the whole education system is structured. Personalization of education is key if the work force is heading to things more like ROWE, as mentioned in Daniel Pink’s TEDtalk. Personalizing education will allow your natural motivation to take place and people will start to do things because they want to and not because they are being rewarded for it.
Education has this potential because of the teachers. Usually teachers decide to go through the extra years of schooling because they have a passion for teaching or because they want to change the education system. This passion is created because they like to teach and they do not need an incentive to do it. If the teachers started teaching because they liked it then students should learn the way the like to. Learning is a drag for most students but that can be changed through using the true potential in the schools across the world and personalizing learning. Daniel Pink defiantly led me to realize the importance of motivations role in education.
During today's fish bowl discussion, it took the outter circle a little bit to get started into a good discussion. With out two guest speakers in it, I think that they added a lot to it. It was very interesting to hear other people's opinions. And it was cool to be able to have some of the same thoughts as people who aren't in high school and hear what they had to say about what we are learning. I think a main topic that we got on today was schools and how they don't fit everyone's learning style. I think this is a major issue in every school today. Out of 30 people in a class room, most of them are going to have different learning styles.
ReplyDeleteI agree with many other bloggers that the inner circle stayed on one main topic through the whole discussion but I think it was interesting to listen to how deep they got into that one topic.
I think this fishbowl was actually quite interesting. I was surprised by the level of intellectualism and maturity our class displayed, and I believed that we accomplished or came close to our goal of creating an epic fishbowl. When it comes to our guests, they were fantastic, I think their two contrasting opinions lead to an intense, and just flat-out fun discussion about the validity and ideas of Daniel Pink and AWNM.Though I agree with Lauren that the outer circle may have began with a rather slow start, ideas, questions, and discussions were soon permeating an entertaining and intellectual fishbowl. In the Inner Circle, the discussion was good, and did a good job at staying on topic.
ReplyDeleteI left the fishbowl with a better understanding of AWNM and its topics, and thanks to our 3 guest speakers, many new ideas and views of Daniel Pink and his beliefs.
This fishbowl was a good one for me. I left it feeling more confident about what I had read and how my learning would be implemented in the future. It seemed like the class really lingered over ideas that didn't relate to design but after some prompting and summarization of points we got back on topic. I wasn't following the blog nearly as much as the actual discussion, but that style works for me as I process my sentences as I say them. I know it isn't a great style of talking but it is one that suits my frantic method of thinking.
ReplyDeleteIn the discussion we went over aspects of the book that related to the design of things like education. many people thought that the education system that we currently employ needs many changes to become more useful; however I see it as a system that can create incredible thinkers and often does. It has minor flaws for those who can't adapt their learning to the style of teaching but much of the fault there exists in the children who don't advocate for themselves.
It is very ineffective, cost wise, to create an entire new system when there is a working one in place. If necessary, small improvements could be made to the workings of a school in place that greatly improve its effectiveness.
Overall the discussion of design was successful.
During today's fishbowl, I thought the inner circle brought up some excellent points. I have to admit, since I was in the inner circle I didn't pay any attention to the blog at all, because it distracts me. So, back to the inner circle, I thought we made a lot of progress in discussing the ideas in A Whole New Mind. We discussed the differences between design and quality, and how they complement each other. Which is more important, design or quality? There were many different opinions on this topic, some believing that design has nothing do to with quality, others saying that design can improve the way we look at objects. After design was discussed, we got a little bit off topic. We got stuck discussing education. Some people thought design would not affect a child's education, while others thought that design would make school more interesting. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink discusses a design school, CHAD, which has a higher attendance and academics level than most other schools. The inner circle debated on personalizing smaller classes, which allow teachers to know the students better, or a larger class, which will incorporate new ideas. Overall, the inner circle did well, but there was definitely too much interrupting and fighting for talking time. As usual, there were a few people who dominated the conversation. I don't think it is too much to ask for those people to back off a little, and let other people have more say. But other than that, it was great!
ReplyDeleteToday, I was sick and therefore used the cover it live system entirely. The fishbowl today was different because Christian Long and Eric Grant joined us today. They had valued input and discussed issues with most of the outer circle on cover it live. Christian made me see that design is inspired by the limits and constraints that society puts in different situations.
ReplyDeleteA whole other subject that I didn't get to fully discuss with Mr. Grant due to the time was the question whether grades fully reflects a students ability or otherwise. We decided no it didn't, but we never got to the question whether colleges should decide differently upon their acceptances because of this point of view. It would be incredibly difficult to decide who to accept without grades, but besides that it is an interesting thought. What would happen if colleges realized that? Would it change the face of education? Would design and creativity be the basis of acceptance? Who knows, but it is quite captivating to think about!
Overall, the fishbowl was quite successful from my perspective!
I thought that our Fishbowl went fairly well. The inner circle discussed a wide range of topics and how they all connect to each other. Preparing for this perticular fishbowl really helped my learning and ability to discuss in the outer circle blog.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really tuning into the inner circle, but when I did, I heard very good connections to the outside world and what Dan Pink has said in his book. This is when I had to get a piece of that action and so I walked up to the inner circle and shared my connection about socialism and intrinsic motivators.
In the future, I am going to have good fishbowl questions planned so that there isn't those awkward couple of minutes where no one is disscussing anything in the outer circle. But in general, I thought that the talking was very solid and we didn't get off topic.
I was in the inner circle for the Design fishbowl. Although we discussed several key points about the application of design, I feel like we took too long to uncover our main point and spent too long on one topic. Our discussion spent very little time talking about the actual concept of design and how it would apply to the world. Instead, we spent almost the entire time looking at how design could apply to education. While this is a valid idea to look at, we ended up repeating each other’s points several times. In fact, our arguments were relatively unrelated to design until Ms. Smith found the connection for us: we were re-designing the education system. I also feel like I did not get the opportunity to speak as many times as I usually like to during Fishbowls. We ran out of time before I could ask many of the questions I wanted to ask, and we missed the opportunity to discuss several other topics, such as the, “Democracy of Design.”
ReplyDeleteDespite these setbacks, we still managed to do many things well in this Fishbowl. For one, several people from the outer circle came in and joined our inner circle discussion. We also came up with many strong ideas for how to reconstruct the school system. The main points we came up with were that making schools smaller, more personal, and more tailored to each individual’s learning style, interests, and motivations would help kids succeed more with their educations. This discussion about education greatly helped us discover what we liked about and what we disagreed with regarding the school system.
Overall, our Fishbowl was valuable because we managed to discuss the current school system with depth. However, it would have been nice to incorporate a few more topics into our discussion.
For the fisbowl, I was in the outer circle, so that is what I paid the most attention to. In the outer circle. The Fishbowl began dilligently with a brief discussion over a subject we read in Drive and watched Daniel Pink talk about, which was the fact that sometimes having a reward can pressure us into doing even worse rather than if we had no reward. What stood out to me the most were the polls that were thrown out during the discussion.I think that this may have to do with the fact that I never knew you could put polls on the Fishbowls. Some of the polls consisted of "Is the design of AHS distracting?" or "Does the schedule of AHS add or distract your learning?". Contrary to the popular belief, I chose distract for both polls. Whenever I zone out in classes, I usually stare at the posters and try and read what they have to say or what band they promote. As for the schedule, it can be a bit of a distraction. Even though I vow to do homework on my off hours, it does not always get accomplished due to having my friends around who tend to talk a lot. However, sometimes I can make my off hours productive like right now for example. Most of the time I find my off hours to be a bit of a distraction though.
ReplyDeleteAnother point that stood out to me was when Christian said that nobody would push themselves farther than they wanted to. This is a very true statement. If you do not want to run five miles for anything, then chances are you will not do it unless you are forced by somebody. However, if you were to run, it would not be out of desire or want.
I think that the outer circle went very well. I liked how we did not stay on the same subject for the entire time and we seemed to be making progress as a class as a whole.
The fishbowl yesterday really influenced my life on how I could think of design. It really opened doors in my mind and changed perspective on design. The fishbowl was really intellectual in its debate and was more influenced by the guest speakers Christian Long and Eric Grant. They provided good examples like if you were more creative with constraints or without constraints. One thing that really suprised me were the poles, they enhanced the fishbowl experience with us having to think if schedules did or did not distract us from learning. The inner circle had a great discussion on motivation too, with further evidence by Smith. Like Lauren and Sean above me, I too think that the inner circle started off slow. Overall it was a great discussion full of great ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe fishbowl yesterday was particularly bland and repetitive. I think that the inner circle spent too much time on each topic before moving on. The blogging on the outside circle I felt moved along a little better. The inner circle did teach me how the physical look of education might affect peoples ability to learn and their learning style. We talked about how a 20% like system in the school. This brought up a debate which I am still thinking about: what would be the success rate be for this compared to the existing system. Would all kids learn better in this more creative environment? But in all I think the blogging on the outside was very quality.
ReplyDeleteI felt that there was not enough participation in the inner circle for the fishbowl yesterday. It’s great that we have these amazing dudes name Eric Grant and Christian Long who came in to talk with us, but we still need talk to each other. We just need to tell ourselves, “I’m going in to the inner circle to talk NOW”, and then talk when you find an opening, and takes 5 minutes, and you can catch up on the blog. It’s a lot more awkward to insert a comment into a conversation after the fact in real life than in a blog. Next, I felt that the outer circle did really well on expanding into things that we hadn’t thought about before with Eric, Christian, and the other guests. I was able to talk with Eric and it was nice to talk to someone outside the class for a change. We should invite people again, as long as it doesn’t stop us from moving into the inner circle. Overall, the fishbowl was great. AWNM is making more and more sense to me as we discuss it in the fishbowls, and I get to hear everyone elses’ opinion on the subject, rather than staying naïve.
ReplyDeleteI started the fishbowl on the outer circle, then migrated to the inner circle when talk of education perked my ears. I believe the fishbowl went well: The conversation was deep and meaningful, I made some good points, had some points overturned (I only rarely admit defeat, and I ended up doing so in this). The only problem? It wasn't about DESIGN. Great points, only they mostly pertained to education throughout the whole argument both on the inside and the outside of the circle. I, too, am guilty of this: I mostly just talked about reforming schools and the world's changes effect on religion. After that I moved into the inner circle, encountered with very much the same thing: School reform. A fascinating, brilliant conversation not about design. However, too many people wanted to talk, delaying some relevant, good argument. People had to get a point in (in some ways, a good things, in other ways, bad). Some of this also became one-sided.
ReplyDeleteThe fishbowl yesterday was interesting. The inner circle, even though they were a little off-topic talking about education and what they should change instead of talking about design, had a very deep and intense debate. The outer circle had what I would call "a perfect debate". Everyone was talking, people had different viewpoints, even the outside sources argued with each other. I think that the topic helped the fishbowl become more intense because it affects all of us and we all have our own ideas on what design is. The amount of different perspectives that this conversation brought out astounded me. It was an enjoyable, intense fishbowl.
ReplyDeleteIn the fishbowl for design there were many ideas discussed that were very interesting while others were irrelevant. I think that the inner circle started with very good topics to talk about but then I felt that the conversation turned into a jumble of opinions. The presenters didn’t bring the group back to design until Mrs. Smith told us that we had to relate back to the book. I also felt that there were way too many people on the inner circle. It was great that so many opinions were expressed and facts presented but it was hard to try and give your opinion or present your facts. It was great that everyone wanted to speak and be involved but I think there were too many people. In the outer circle the conversation was slow and there weren’t many questions to the class. Usually conversations would be very isolated between a couple of people and therefore there wasn’t a lot of other conversation. I also thought the presence of the guests, Eric and Christian, made the conversation see another perspective. They really added a lot to the blogging experience and I learned a lot from them. I thought this fishbowl was not as good as some of the ones in the past but it was okay.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably one of my favorite fishbowls we've had all year. There was a lot more participation in the inner circle than usual, and it seemed like everyone had their own opinion they wanted to voice. Although I participated a bit in the inner circle, the live blogging kept me thinking. Our guests Eric Grant and Christian Long offered very insightful topics, and caused an actual debate throughout the live blog. I liked having guests in the blog because they provide a different point of view to our classroom about what the outside world thinks of certain topics like education or Dan Pink's theory. They challenged our ideas, and helped us to open our minds and think more deeply about a topic than we had before. AWNM is also a great topic because it is such a controversial book, therefore there are many different opinions, which we could add to our own learning and understanding of the book. All in all, this was a great, insightful fishbowl, and I hope we have much more like it.
ReplyDeleteThe fishbowl yesterday had very in-depth conversations, mainly revolving around education and how it can change for the future. However, I had several problems with the inner circle. Firstly, I felt that through the entire discussion was off-topic. From the beginning, our conversation barely connected with design. It also disconnected from the text even more so. I felt like no one really stepped up to the plate to connect back to A Whole New Mind. Our discussion was supposed to be about design, but it was more about motivation and education, some of which was discussed in the beginning of A Whole New Mind. I feel like the outer circle discussion, with the opposing views and guest speakers. I feel like this brought a rich depth that the inner circle just didn't seem to grasp. All we really had to do was to pull our ideas about education back into the realm of design. This discussion was beneficial, but it did not provide a better understanding of the text. In the future, I will push individually towards keeping the conversation grounded.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the ‘Design fishbowl’ was very successful. I think the outside guests gave us an important glance into the views of ‘real world’ people. They helped us to understand ideas that normal high school students may never had thought of. To me it is very beneficial, if not crucial to our understanding. Also, I think the inner circle did really well discussing lots of different ideas and important details of design. The inner circle really hit a lot of important designs we face every day in society such as school and working economics. Yet, I feel as a whole we were way too stuck on the fact that we don’t like the current setup of the schooling system. It was good that we got to share our opinions on the topic, but, it was just not relating back to the book at all and that was a huge operator error. Overall, we are continuing on very strong and I can’t wait to hear about ‘Story’.
ReplyDeleteWell the fishbowl was amazing. Those who weren't here are really missing out. The inner circle had an amazing talk about education and what the best way to go about it in a perfect world. We also had the talk on how to make this applicable to the real world. I didn't really monitor my laptop and the outer circle, but I did know we had guests come that didn't..... agree on some of the topics. I got to see some of their points of veiw on the over head and really enjoyed seeing the class either take sides or through a curveball and come with a totally diffrent point of veiw. I really appreciate what they did for the class and I hope they can come back for the other fishbowls. Thank you Mrs. Smith for getting them to come to our fishbowl.
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