Talking Gibberish — from Nonsense to Meaning in Learning.
When I was a teacher (I’ve moved on to educational apps development now) not so many moons ago, and then a teacher trainer, rule No.1 (following Keller’s ARCS model) was always grabbing the learner’s attention. No attention, no learning. Simple.
Source: https://never2late4edu.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/addie-the-fundamental-model-in-isd-part-4-of-4/
So applying the same principle, here goes. What’s the difference between the Teletubbies and Jack Bauer? They both talk gibberish but Jack does it 24/7.
You can stifle those howls of laughter at the back of the class now — I’ve got some serious talking about the psychology of learning to do..
But let’s clear up the cultural ‘mash-up’ in the joke first — the Teletubbies and Jack Bauer?! Yep, I’ll admit, it is a bit of a random association. But you can blame digital learning guru, Steve Wheeler, for that. It was his idea to challenge his Twitter followers to a ‘twisted pairs’ exercise.
It started with Julie Andrews and The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ (‘I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter..’) in connection with Critical Thinking and this spawned a host of other unlikely combinations designed to spark the neurons of the global brain on key questions of teaching and learning.
But much as I’d like to, I’d rather not wander off piste. Assuming I’ve got your attention, I intend to keep it. Suffice to say I’m always up for a bit of creative, lateral thinking.
In fact creativity was probably my main strength as a teacher (I specialised in Media/Cultural Studies and taught practical film-making skills as well as theory). I was always experimenting with new approaches, particularly if it involved technology. And I loved deepening and enriching my understanding of the learning process/the craft of teaching through reflective practice — the piles of theory books on my desk routinely tempting me away from the humdrum reality of marking and administration.
But despite all my best efforts to make difficult concepts like ‘semiotics’ and ‘narrative’ accessible, I was often left at the end of a lesson with that nagging voice in my head — ‘I might as well have been talking gibberish!’ Sounds familiar? Sure, we’ve all been there. Try not to take it personally eh?
And we all know what it’s like on the receiving end too. At some point in our learning journey (no doubt there were several right?) we were sat rigid with boredom yet nodding politely whilst some figure at the front transformed into tortuous slow-motion, eyes rolling and voice garbling like a diving instructor gasping for air. Oh the pain, the pain. Get me out of here..
The dictionary definition of gibberish is ‘Unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense.’ If you’ve ever sat with your kids and watched the Teletubbies you’ll know exactly what I mean. Gurgle, burble, squeak.. But when you think about it the same could be said of Jack Bauer in ‘24’. ‘We’ve got some intel from CTU about the hostiles..’ Que? It’s called ‘counter-espionage’. But the principle isn’t hard to grasp — if you don’t speak the coded lingo your brain won’t compute. Mission aborted.
So the question for teachers naturally, indeed perennially, arises: How do we know we’re not talking Jabberwockian gibberish? How can we tell if the words aren’t flying over their heads and we’ve actually made a meaningful connection with learners? Indeed how can we know what’s really going on in their brains? Because fundamentally that’s what learning is of course — building new neural pathways.
Of course there are variety of techniques (reading body language, using questioning etc.) we can employ directly in the learning environment. And in theory at least (neatly avoiding the practicalities and politics of the issue) ongoing formative, in combination with final/summative, assessment can give us a reasonably reliable picture.
But as a teacher I always wanted to go a step further; I wanted to understand the mechanics of cognition and I yearned for a mechanism that somehow opened up the brain of the learner so I could literally see what kind of sense they were making of the subject.
Which is what drew me to mind mapping. And from there to researching (for my higher degree) its more sophisticated sister, concept mapping. Concepts are the nuts and bolts of learning; they enable us to build the scaffold. So it makes perfect sense to visualise the process. But concept maps needn’t be restricted to cognitive mapping per se — my research focused on using them as an assessment tool with ‘gapped’ sections.
Interestingly though one of my key findings was that mind and concept maps tend to divide learners — some love ‘em some hate ‘em. Some like the branching and the pictures, others prefer a more linear, textual approach.
But even those that liked them tended to struggle with ‘empty bubbles’ (the gapped assessment approach I took in the research). Which forced me to rethink my approach to the problem and it’s this that I’ve been working on since I moved from teaching into apps development. Maybe we can harness the power of technology and build a better kind of mind/concept map — one that works for all learners, enabling them to map their learning journey and build meaningful knowledge at the same time?
If you’ve picked up on the ‘building’ metaphors here you won’t be suprised to learn that I’ve been greatly influenced in both my professional development as a teacher and the apps research and development process by Constructivist (and Constructionist/Connectivist) theory. The ideas of Vygotsky in particular have shaped my thinking. As Steve Wheeler explains:
Vygotsky held some strong opinions about .. the connections between language and intelligence.. When children discover the relationship between signs and their meaning, something significant happens — higher order processes occur.
This puts an emphasis on social learning (we don’t learn language and concepts in a vacuum) and building on prior learning — if I can’t relate what you’re talking about to what I already know you might as well be talking a different language.
Talking about talking, Steve is a wonderful exponent — and proponent — of blogging, as well as digital learning in general. Which is why I’m a regular reader of his posts and tweets. And its apparent from his next paragraph that I’m very much on the the same wavelength as far as the potential of technology to transform learning goes too:
Teachers need to consider reinforcing memory and recall by encouraging students to develop richer language around their learning. They might use a mix of symbolic multimedia content that incorporates text, images and speech to create and represent ideas and concepts, to promote reflection. This is one reason why I believe blogging is such an important tool to support thinking and learning. Blogging and other creative forms of writing have a rich language capability that can support better memory and recall, particularly if the technology is used as a mind tool to extend language.
‘Symbolic multimedia content..’ ‘Mind tools.’ Yep, you’re talking my language.
For me what’s really interesting about blogs (like websites in general) is that they force learners to structure content hierarchically — to map out, connect and build topics into a logically ordered and meaningful ‘matrix’. Potentially this can go beyond stand-alone essays/assignments to offer a powerful insight into learning progress.
But as a developer, I want to take these principles and develop an integrated and universally accessible mobile learning system that builds on the strengths of blogs and mind/concept maps to facilitate the tracking and learning of key concepts. Having worked hard to produce this I’m now at a ‘sensitive’ stage so I’d prefer not to go into too much detail here. But I’m happy, appropriately, to share the essence of the idea in mind map form:
I’m also looking for (commercial and educational) partners to take the project forward so if you’re genuinely interested, or just want to respond to the article, please do get in touch here or @memneon.
Finally, whatever your interest or background, I hope you’ve found what I’ve said here both stimulating and meaningful. And from a learning perspective, that I haven’t been talking gibberish..
