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Posts Tagged ‘buzzkill

Yesterday I reflected on how teachers might dumb down a complex tool like project work by not embracing complexity.

Today I examine the other side of the same coin: Using too complex a tool for a simple task.

If you had to remove a bottle cap, you could just use a bottle opener. That is what the tool is for. Or you could do the extreme and use a helicopter.

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Some teachers might say that project work is just a different way of measuring the understanding of content. But why go through all that time and expense to do something relatively simple?

The helicopter approach is like requiring students to do a stage production just to find out if students understand a Shakespearean play. Or asking them to plan and execute a journey overseas just to determine their understanding of geography, mathematics, or report writing.

It is an overkill approach because project work is meant to do more and it requires more.

Here are other overkill examples. One is flipping your classroom to be a better content practice coach. Another is acquiring or co-opting a school LMS to create “social” spaces. You can coach without flipping and you can leverage on the usage and popularity of existing social media tools.

I might sound like a buzzkill. I am merely warning teachers not to use the wrong tool for the job, like using a helicopter to remove a bottle cap. You can do that, but it will be messy and require disproportionate effort and cost for marginal returns.

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