Connected Concepts

Last Saturday I was watching a movie with my children.  Crashed on the couch, popcorn in hand, good guys fighting the bad guys.  We were watching Aragon, a movie about a dragon rider that needed to man up to his destiny.  Toward the end of the film there was a scene where the good guys were getting ready and psyched up for the final battle.  The scene kept switching between their preparations and the bad guys coming to meet their doom.

Every time it watched between the good guys and the bad guys my 3-year old would ask, "Dad, are those the good/bad guys?"  My response was either yes or no (depending on who the camera panned on).  Finally, after the umpteenth camera switch, she poignantly said, "Dad, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad ones."  Wow!  Wisdom beyond her years.

The angle with which I want to use this analogy may seem strange at first but I hope it pulls together in the end.

Dr. Clark N. Quinn wrote and article (titled "Seven Steps to Better E-Learning" http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=35-1) in which one of those steps is "Connected Concepts".  He stated that, " acquiring a specific skill doesn't work without reactivating the context in which that skill is used."  He went on to say that placing material in its intended context is important to the success of the learner.  In addition, giving our students a perfect model with which to base their problematic solutions on helps to effectuate their success as a student.  Without that model, they may end up missing a step in the process or completely stuck as to how to solve the problem.  As with my little girl, she did not know how to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys because she did not identify a pattern that would help her succeed at the task.

As teachers, it is so vital to the success of our students to give them a workable problem with some helps that they can connect with (i.e. previous knowledge) and use in order to understand the new knowledge or complex skill.