The School as a Home for the Meta-Mind

Essential Questions:

• How can we use our understanding of social networking and technology effectively, meaningfully and reflectively?

• How will these understandings foster greater awareness of how we think about our thinking: becoming aware of, taking charge of and using more effectively our executive processes?

GOALS

• Envision a school based on reflective thinking (meta-mind).

• Become aware of social networking as a dimension of 21st Century Learning using available resources.

• Create a safe environment for taking risks by stretching thinking in new ways using different tools.

THE PLAN• Opening/Frame/get Acquainted/ Overview• Groups get acquainted• What is meant by meta-mind?

The Reflective Staircase• Knowledge Cartography/Visual Tools• Teams work: Constraints (stimulate creativity)• Explore the potentials of different forms of communication• Creating a Mandala• Sustain thinking beyond our time together• Reflection and next steps•

"This moment deserves your full attention, for

it will not pass your way again."Dan Millman

“MIND THE STEP”We go through most of life on “auto pilot”. Students tell us they use the HOM but don’t really think about them—they say the Habits have become spontaneous, internalized and “ingrained.”

“MINDFULNESS IS:…the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment: Being aware of what is happening as it is happening.

LIVING ON AUTOMATIC…

…places us at risk of mindlessly reacting to situations without reflecting on various options.

The result can often be knee-jerk reactions that in turn create similar mindless reflexes to others.

Daniel Siegal (2007) The Mindful Brain

WHEN YOU BECOME MINDFUL…

…..your mind wakes up from automatic—you become aware of the flow of energy, the information, the process and the stimulus that evokes it. Thus we learn to appreciate our mind’s contents and power and we can better regulate its functions and flow.

Daniel Siegal (2007) The Mindful Brain

HOW WE FOCUS OUR ATTENTION…

….helps shape our mind. When we develop a certain form of attention of our here and now experience and on then nature of our mind itself, we create a special form of awareness called mindfulness.

Daniel Siegal (2007) The Mindful Brain

When students say the HOM are on automatic, ingrained…

…. it may mean they have become “mindless” about them.

Being mindful about the HOM means paying attention to their use, their benefits, the sequence of their use; evaluating their effectiveness, applying them elsewhere, and making a conscious commitment to their improvement.

THE METACOGNITIVE STAIRCASE

USUALLY……

Thinking

Attention

What You Are Thinking

About

A

MINDFULNESS

Thinking

Attention

What You Are Thinking

About

B

REFLECTION: A STRATEGY FOR

GROWING MINDFULNESS

Questioning Using the FrameWhere did you get this information (workshops, books, people,etc.) to support your view?What prior knowledge and experiences influence your view?What are the cultural influences on your perspective (age, gender, ethnic, religious, political, geographic, class, etc.)?What are the belief systems which may influence how you/others define terms, issues, and/or ideas?What would be the influences, values and beliefs shaping another person's ideas?

Any Thinking Map —————

Frame ——————

Knowledge CartographyandConnective Knowing

“Learners construct knowledge as they build cognitive maps for organizing and interpreting information. Effective teachers help students make such maps by drawing connections among different concepts ... and learners’ prior knowledge.”

Linda Darling Hammond The Right to Learn 1997, p.74

Defining in Context

Describing Attributes

Comparing & Contrasting

Classification

Whole / Part Spatial Reasoning

Sequencing

Cause and Effect

Analogies

MENTAL OPERATIONS

Thinking Maps