3 Same Letters Start Curate & Curious Engaging Screenagers
3 Same Letters Start Curate & Curious Engaging Screenagers
I remember one day when my daughter was about 4 years old and she started asking questions about everything when I invited her to help me bake a cake.
Asking questions wasn’t unusual for her, but when I was trying to focus on baking, things got complicated.
Interestingly, when she was about 6 years old, my daughter learned to curate on YouTube to find baking videos on her own. (optimal engagement)
When I got home most every day that year, my daughter and my son were sitting in my office chair watching bakingvideos she had curated on YouTube. (optimal engagement)
My daughter was curious, she was engaged, and she was learning. (optimal engagement)
My daughter is now 12 and she’s a highly competent baker, but she doesn’t care much many of her classes school because, as she says, “What we are learning isn’t real.”
She means she’s learning a great deal of non tangible facts and figures. (junk engagement)
What happens to curiosity of kids when they go from 4 to 12?
Isn’t as if they just don’t care? (junk engagement)
When do they lose their curiosity and when did they stop caring?
What can we do?
As a trainer and university lecturer in the USA, I had great success in my training and classrooms by engaging my learners in ways I had learned from my Dale Carnegie Instructor Training.
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After earning my Doctoral Degree researching engaging instruction in adult education and training and development, I started a training business in Hong Kong.
But something was wrong, I was struggling in this new culture (I’m a cattle rancher’s son from Colorado, USA) to find ways to inspire and motivate my students in Hong Kong.
In the classroom, I preferred having students engage in learning activities instead of lecturing.
One of the learning activities I liked was to ask learners to go out of the classroom and find supporting materials for their speeches.
Guess what happened to those students?
Yes, most all of them came back with excitement as they were sharing their findings.
The problem was travel time going to the library, etc. to curate examples, and therefore we could only engage this exercise 1 or 2 times a semester.
When the smart phone with the ability to search the internet came along, I could see my students were curating (searching, finding, collecting, commenting, changing, and sharing.)
I thought, “Why not do that for learning?”, so I started asking them to go find supporting material for their speeches using their mobile devices.
This was much more efficient as students were able to go beyond the classroom walls and curate new and different supporting material for their assignments.
But some students did not find material and I wanted to know what was happening as maybe I could guide them like my graduate advisors had guided me in graduate school.
Again, I struggled through trying several paper worksheets and workbooks to guide students, but I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. (junk engagement)
I began to search for alternatives and I struggled testing new apps, etc., until I found eWorkbooks, and after testing, began to use them full time in class.
Then we used eWorkbooks (Google Forms with the training slides as well as interactive questions, curating links and tasks, example images and videos, etc. which students [Engaging Screenagers] completed using their mobile devices) for interactive learning.
Students used eWorkbooks to answer questions, interact, etc. while I lead the discussion, and after they submitted their answers, they would get their responses sent to their inbox so they could review their learning Moments of Growth. (optimal engagement)
Because the students’ responses from eWorkbooks go right into a spreadsheet in real-time, as the teacher I can monitor what students are doing to give them guidance in the moment, as well as track their learning develop over time.
When you see the words curate and curiosity, you can see they start with the 3 same letters in the prefix of cūrā which means, to ‘care.’ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
By now, you can probably guess my favorite way is to let them go curate (using eWorkbooks with their mobile devices) something and bring it back into the classroom and explain it to others. (optimal engagement)
Most all of my students bring back their curations with excitement as they share their findings with their classmates as they were reflecting on their Moments of Growth experiences of curating. (optimal engagement)
After they curated their examples they explained, to their group mates/the class/me, how their curation met, could be adapted or synthesized to fit the criteria, or solved the challenges outlined in the exercise. (optimal engagement)
How can you get your students to care, to be curious, to curate?
Wouldn’t it be great to keep Engaging Screenagers everywhere curious?
Don’t we want our learners to care and be curious, and won’t we help them by encouraging them to curate?
Aren’t we penalizing their future by just pushing students learn facts for exams that are at least partially obsolete before the exams are even marked?
Curate: to be curious, to care.
Remember, come join tomorrow to see more Improving Your Engagement with Screenagers and others inspirational experiences and ideas for Optimal Engagement in the ScreenAge.
Remember to engage tomorrow.
Following with you.
Keep it simple.
All the Best, Warren
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