Situated Cognition - My Office 365 experiment

One of the ideas from the article this past week on Situated Cognition really stuck out to me was “like any method that tries to teach abstract concepts independently of authentic situations, overlooks the way understanding is developed through continued, situated use.”  I have tried on several occasions to learn how to use Excel.  But in years past I was not using Excel for really anything in my life and while I went through the motions, I really was not proficient in the program except to add some text and some numbers.  Fast forward about 10 years or so -  I am now using Excel for several purposes and I have viewed many YouTube videos to help me get to my proficiency of using Excel today.  Until I really had a purpose for Excel I really could not wrap my head around it.  I also needed to be hands-on with a purpose.  I think that is a major theme in the article. 

I am working closely with a 5^th grade teacher these past few weeks.  She at times seems nervous about technology but really want to use the laptops to make her students more future ready and doing more with our Office 365 online tools.  While I am not completely proficient with all that Office 365 has to offer, I met with her to discuss what she wanted her students to do and what was the end result.  As the librarian and on the side ITC, I do many things with students, media and technology.  I love to have students use online tools to improve their learning and make it more engaging – I think most of us are like that.  Our goal was to create an Excel document that would be emailed to each student.  The students would then download it to their computer, upload it to their OneDrive then link it to their OneNote that this teacher was creating and using for the first time.  There was a LOT of steps and some new vocabulary that the students would need to learn about this process.  Some students were more familiar than others depending on how much they use their Office 365 out of school hours. 

I spent many hours pondering the best way.  From past experience I knew that modeling on the board they would be lost in about 2 steps and many hands would go up.  I also knew from the past that even typing out a checklist does not do the job either, still too many would need help.  I designed, created and modeled a How-to video – it was a risk as we have never had them do a type of flipped classroom before.  I was knee deep in trying to read our article 3 times but used one entire evening making my video and was ready the next day to risk it and hoping for success.  I had been thinking the students were very situated in this authentic activity.  We used terms from their background knowledge as well as introduced new terms and experiences they had not done before in this program.  It was a HUGE success!  The teacher is beyond thrilled.  The class will now track their scores in Excel online and they all have an online data notebook.  I then spent Friday day after school helping the rest of her team create their notebooks and getting them ready for them to use my video and do the same things with their students.  They want to go even further by using the notebook even more by going more online and more paperless.  I feel that both the teachers and the students had a situated learning experience. 

As the teacher and I reflected on what needed to be changed we both were so impressed on how the students really owned their learning, using the video gave them so much more independence and then those that finished early were the mentors to help the others in their class.  It was a new feeling for both of us to be “less needed”.  I could see both a situated learning experience and PICKLE in this process.  Students of all learning levels and styles were successful.  I had explained again to the teachers and the students that there may be many ways to reach the goal they wanted but with what I knew and what they wanted to do this is what we were going to try.  The rest of the 5^th grade team feels all set up and they are going to proceed without me!  I guess that means I am in “fading” mode and I really hope they too are successful this week.