Symphony


 

Digital tools that allow students and teachers to synthesize concepts, compare strands of ideas and to create new elements of thought.


Symphony – this is about seeing the big picture. About pulling the pieces together. In order to develop symphony into a lesson, teachers have to be using the same score or set the same expectations through authentic assessments. Is everybody in your classroom playing the same tune, or understanding concepts at the correct level of complexity and difficulty? Do they even know the score, what is expected?

 

Symphony. Focus, specialization, and analysis have been important in the "information age," but in the "conceptual age" synthesis and the ability to take seemingly unrelated pieces and form and articulate the big picture before us is crucial, even a differentiator. Pink calls this aptitude Symphony: "Symphony...is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair."


Using EyePlorer as a Graphic Organizer

eyePlorer.com is a beta graphical search engine that provides an easy to use interface for exploring and interacting with a database of structured knowledge.  The search engine provides immediate access to facts and how these facts are related to similar content.  When used in education as a search engine it becomes a powerful graphic organizer that has the potential to help students make connections between ideas. As a teacher you can use the site to help learners put ideas into context to support a more defined point of view.  Semantic mapping is a useful tool for activating and engaging for both pre and post assessment of learning. A major strength in semantic learning is that it helps students to construct a model for organizing and integrating information that they are learning. Teacher's may want to try using the eyeplorer search engine as an introductory to a new concept and experience how the search engine systematically ties concepts together while expanding knowledge. There is  also a “notebook” on the side of the page where registered users can place the information found for review or e-mail . 

 

The word "semantics" itself denotes a range of ideas, from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language to denote a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. 

 

EyePlorer from digitalsandbox on Vimeo.