For this post I decided to showcase mindomo to present the information of Data-Driven Education by Khurram Virani. The reason I chose to present through Mindomo is because it is a program supported for mindmapping by both the Public AND the Catholic Board here in Windsor (you can trust me, I did the training!). Thus I thought it would be fun to showcase something teachers can use with their students no matter where their placements will be.
The program is fairly intuitive allowing for keyboard shortcuts to add new content bubbles as well as on screen buttons. It also allows for the direct linking of media from youtube or google image search, making customization easy. The app even has an iPad version :O!
The only problem I have with mindomo is that it can be a bit jarring for students who are used to working with mindmaps in the round, as mindomo works in either a linear or tiered model. Linear having farther removed ideas being farther from the center in a line (as shown on the mindmap created below), and tiered making it look something like a tournament bracket rather than an actual mindmap.
You can click here to see the full range of ideas discussed in the video but I believe the biggest take away from this video is that education does not take enough risks. It likes to stay within tried and true methods (much like this blogpost) rather than reaching out and risking failure. I would argue that just as last weeks blog post encouraged students not to fear failure we should also be teaching our teachers the same thing, as failure is how we adapt and innovate. If education fails to do this I fear it will always be just a few steps behind of where the world is today, let alone where it is headed tomorrow.
What ideas/beliefs make you react the way you do
These ideas come from the philosophy that failure is a learning opportunity, not necessarily just a result. It is the way we as humans learn what doesn’t work and, in doing so, continue striving for a better answer.
What were your ideas before
My ideas before related to data driven education were skeptical at first. I had seen many times algorithms fail and send me ads for things I did not care about. Relating it to education, I worried it would be much the same, striking many false positives and derailing a students education with misrepresented ques.
What pieces of new information did you find?
What I found was it is less about collecting all the data available, but selecting which data points are important for education. This would be like if the ad search looked at my open shopping carts on websites for information on what to advertise rather than the one off conversation I had with a friend. What also resonated with me was the ideas that schools still cannot properly teach their students for the world ahead, let alone what is coming, due to the need to test and retest and confirm before they are willing to push any boundaries.