There are roughly 1028 H2O molecules in a 300 liter bathtub. Pull the plug, and a little drama takes place. They all try to move down the drain at once. Gravity acts on each molecule. We witness entropy; it is easier for the molecules to go down than it is to stay where they are.…

This post is about teacher bias. It’s also about foxes, dogs and Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs). Teacher bias is a huge, and hugely unpleasant topic. At its worst, we see it manifested as classroom racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, nationalism, ageism, etc. Those extremes are comparatively rare, thankfully, but in their absence we become complacent,…

Today is April 19, 2020. The universities where I teach responded to the Coronavirus crisis 2 weeks ago. Like most universities in Japan, all courses will go 100% online, starting late April to early May. It’s a muddled, panicky situation. By the time it was clear that students could not take on-campus lessons as planned,…

The image above shows a group of Meijo University freshmen on July 16, 2016, the first time I used Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) as a supplemental activity in a university English class. At the time I had little confidence that it would work, but it turned out to be a hugely successful experiment for…

Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs), and institutionally organized learning environments (schools) can teach the same things. They can both teach math, history, sciences, philosophy, and so on. While SOLEs are generally less directed than schools, both can be used to tackle specific lessons. For example, when I was a university undergrad back in the 1980s,…

Some of the most popular and successful modern learning theories are listed above in the HoTEL (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning) diagram. These are the theories that are effecting new approaches to education, and many of them shed light on how Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) work. I won’t bore you by going through…

A few weeks ago a new student came to SOLE Japan’s weekly high school session for a trial. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a bit, mostly in English. I explained the SOLE method to her: A Big Question (BQ) is presented to the students. The students work in groups researching answers to the question…

For my purposes, Big Questions here are for inquiry based and self organized learning. First I’ll put down some notes on what I think a BQ should be. Then I’ll look at some other definitions I cherry-picked off the web. In my experience, a good BQ:- is for practical purposes open ended. Students should not be…

A teacher’s challenge in a modern well-run classroom is to encourage situations where the students participate and communicate with each other and interact with the course materials. However there are problems in course design; what works for some students might not work for others. Consider some of the reasons: lingusitic differences. In many western universities,…

There is an excellent education application called Classdojo which could, but perhaps should not, be used in your classroom. According to the ClassDojo website (2018), “ClassDojo is a communication app for the classroom. It connects teachers, parents, and students who use it to share photos, videos, and messages through the school day. They use ClassDojo…