There are inventions and inventions. Clearly useful ones (like the vegetable peeler), somewhat useful ones (like most of them) and pretty useless ones (like Elon Musk's anti-zombies flamethrower). In front of me is a wooden box with the inscription "CLASSROOMCUBES". Inside is a set of colored wooden blocks, a few colored clips, two dice and a booklet. My verdict after more than forty years of teaching: Absolutely useful! I've been waiting for this the whole time!
It began in 1971 with "conditionally useful". At that time, the social psychologist Elliot Aronson, who worked very closely with schools, invented the "Jigsaw Method" in Austin, Texas . The idea was and is compelling: independent and cooperative learning in very heterogeneous classes, carefully prepared by the teacher . And in such a way that all (!) students, without exception, acquire a high level of subject-specific competence in the respective topics or for the respective learning goal, at the same time consolidating their skills as learners and teachers and developing skills in knowledge acquisition and cooperation/communication. Incidentally, this corresponds entirely to the aims of our curriculum 21.
The catch: The formation of groups and then the arrangement of two or three rounds with changing composition was somewhat complicated, required a lot of planning in preparation and complex visualizations in the form of progress graphs and colored slips of paper for the class to carry out. And appropriate control and evaluation documents in each case. Despite the convincing idea, this prevented me from using the method too often. With a bad conscience, because although the effectiveness seemed guaranteed, the economy (efficiency) was counteracted by the prevailing material and time pressure.
That was my situation when Brendan Schuhmacher and Cindy Schenk showed me a preliminary version of CLASSROOMCUBES some time ago . I thought that nothing could knock my socks off as an old didactician; after all, I had already chosen the history of teaching and learning materials as a focus for my doctorate in education and in the decades that followed I had worked on a dozen innovative teaching aids, from Cuisenaire rods to LÜK control tools to various group formation card sets and computer-assisted programs. But CLASSROOMCUBES immediately electrified me. Because all the concerns that had grown over decades in connection with group work are irrelevant here. I have thought very critically about all (?) possible applications and cases and have come to the conclusion that CLASSROOMCUBES has turned out to be an unreservedly useful tool. I wish all teachers of all levels successful and deeply satisfying work with it. The learners themselves will experience it this way anyway.