C111 (Book Club): Learning from Experts Near & Far (Part 1: Pages 29-58)

​Welcome to the second episode exploring the book, The Expert Effect by Grayson McKinney and Zach Rondot.  It has been an absolute pleasure to read this book and learn how to set the conditions for engaging with experts.  Now that we have started with our WHY, we can move forward with engaging with experts. 

Here are some ideas from our book club group

• Parent community:  we use our parents to shape the learning within our units of inquiry
• Teacher community:  we collaborate with our fellow teachers to learn from their experiences
• Peer community: we connect with our peers to discuss ideas and expand our thinking about various issues. 
• Virtual/physical field trips
• Experts within the community

As an educator, I would use all of these resources to enrich the learning experiences of each of my units of inquiry.  Something that can bring about excitement is using your parents, fellow educators, and peers as part of a human library.  One possible idea is to post the topics that you will be exploring in the year by unit of inquiry.  Ask care-givers to sign up for topics of interest or areas of expertise.  This will greatly enrich learning experiences, because learners will have a human interaction about topics they are exploring, which is more experiential than reading about it on a page. 

Warm-Up Activity

​One quote that resonated with me in this section was this one posed on page 31.  What do you think? 

​Our group discussed that our roles as teachers have changed from being a teacher to a facilitator of information.  We no longer are the fountain of ideas, but rather a guide to process and analyze the information.  

It’s also about transformation.  We are going away from controlling the power of the learning experience. We are transitioning towards co-creating learning with our learners, because the person who wields the power is the one who learns.

There is also an increased focus on the learning engagement design.  We are no longer looking for information recall, but rather a vehicle to bring about critical and creative thinking. 

We referred back to this EXPERT model, but this time looking at it as a success criteria for choosing experts that will resonate with your learners. This new lens helped to deepen my approach to using a variety of experts, because sometimes a person may be brilliant, but they struggle to relay it in a kid-friendly way.  

For our play with ideas section, we went into break out rooms to complete his prompt: Make a list of strategies that will bring about more local and global connections

Some ways to connect

• Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (@cilcorg):  provides programming to better understand different cultures and heritages through museums around the world. 

 

• Skype a Scientist (@SkypeScientist): a database of thousands of scientists from around the world who show the benefit of going through the inquiry process. You can find scientists that reflect your local community based on gender, ethnicity, faith, and so on. 

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• The Pulitzer Center (@pulitzercenter):  through in-person and skype visits, the Pulitzer Center inspires global issues and the journalists that explore them through their unique voice. 

These are a sampling of ideas found in The Expert Effect.  What are your ideas that you’ve used?  How do you bring about more local and global connections into your practice?  Be sure to post on Twitter @thinkchat2020 and LinkedIn @lugerlach.

To close out the experience, we used the PZ visible thinking routine, Unveiling Stories.  This is an interesting routine to get your learners to peel back the layers of what are the untold stories.  

Our book club applied our understanding as seekers of knowledge and how we take on different roles as book whisperers.

What’s the story:  becoming a book whisperer by engaging in this book club intellectually and emotionally 

What is the human story:  embracing our own love of reading and learning, so we can inspire our learners

What is the world story:  acknowledging that everyone in the world has the capacity to become a book whisperer, irregardless of ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, disability, and language acquisition

What is the new story: connecting to inquiry and concept-based learning.  Our reading and understanding of text increases drastically when applied to an inquiry model and viewed through a conceptual lens.

What is the untold story: sharing our stories helps us to own our truth.  For some of us, we are lonely, sad, disconnected, and frustrated by our condition.  Becoming a book whisperer can help us to overcome our obstacles and see beyond our present circumstance.  

How are you setting the conditions, so your learners can unveil their stories?