I officially opened my iLearn Technology eStore this week where you can find lesson plans, ebooks, and Promethean Flipcharts. Right now there are two price points $.99 and free (I’m publishing my content iTunes style).
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, thanks for all of the comments, tweets, and support this week!
Over the past few months I have been working with Shelly Terrell, Jason Bedell, and Chris Rogers on a secret project. 🙂 I am happy to say that I don’t have to keep the secret any longer but can share the project with all of you! In two weeks (July 31st and August 1st, 2010), we will be holding a worldwide virtual e-conference for free! The conference is called Reform Symposium and it is a conference for teachers, administrators, students, and parents. This year the conference is focused on innovative practices in education and what role these practices can play in educational reform.
We have an incredible lineup of presenters and keynote speakers that you can see here. We hope that no matter where you are in the world, you will join us for parts or all of the conference on these days.
What you can do:
Mark your calendars for July 31st and August 1st 2010
Tweet about the conference using the #rscon10 hashtag so we can follow everyone’s tweets.
Invite your friends, both those you know online and off.
Blog about the conference and then tell us about your blog post on Twitter using the #rscon10 hash tag.
Join the conversations and fun on the Reform Symposium website. You can add friends, start conversations, and chat about the sessions.
Add me as your friend on the website.
Add the Reform Symposium badge to your blog or website to let others know you will be attending.
This conference is for you! We hope that you will join us for fun, learning, collaboration, and maybe even a few prizes. See you there!
What it is: We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For is an inspiring documentary film that explores education in the UK and challenges us to dream of something more. Big names (Sir Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler, Bill Bryson, and Sir Ken Robinson) share their experiences with education and offer new ideas for how education can be done. If you are in the UK, take advantage of the free DVD offer and get the full documentary to share with your students. Those of us not in the UK can enjoy clips of the film on the We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For website. There are several clips from the documentary and each of them will leave you inspired and thinking about how education can be transformed. The site also features some excellent games for students to play. The first game is called “The Test You Can’t Fail”. This little quiz asks students a variety of questions and gives them creative career paths to consider based on their interests. Many of these your students may not have considered and will give them insight into the places they shine. The second game is called “Future Me”, it is a Bebo App that lets students predict their friends future.
How to integrate We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For into the classroom: If you can get the documentary for your classroom, do so. Be inspired by the documentary as a teacher, but also share it with your students. They need some inspiration for their education and future. This film is sure to offer plenty. If you aren’t in the UK, share the webisite clips with your students. Challenge them to think differently about education. At first, they may struggle with this task (the way my students did), they expect that there is one right answer. This is a sad statement about what education has been up to this point, we have primed them to believe that there is only one right answer with a myraid of tests and worksheets that have told them it is so. Have your students take “The Test You Can’t Fail” quiz, it leads them through a variety of questions and activities. Students tell what their favorite subject is, swat or save a fly, order grocery items in order of price, connect a video game to the Internet and TV, choose what to do when they get lost, design a t-shirt, memorize a phone number, and arrange a computer desktop. When students are finished they are given a list of things they are good at, some surprises (things students may not know about themselves), and thoughts about possible career paths. It seems to work well, my results were education, computers and IT. 🙂 So I guess I am on the right track! Talk with students about their results. Do they agree/disagree? Were their items on their list that they hadn’t considered? It is good to dream with students, it gives them aspirations and goals for the future and lets them know that they aren’t the only ones dreaming.
Tips: In the “About the Film” Section, students can watch videos and read bios of the students that star in the documentary.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using the We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For in your classroom.
Last week, I instituted Webspiration Wednesday at CHC. To find out what exactly Webspiration Wednesday is, check out my original post here.
Today we gathered over a TED Talk by Tim Brown on Creativity and Play.
Tim reminded me of something very important, there comes a point in schooling where we begin discouraging play. We ask students to sit in their seats, to fill in the circles completely with a number two pencil, and to stay on task. There is very little time in schools for play. I think that by making schools void of play, we harm our students. There is a lot of important learning that happens during play and discovery.
In the video, Tim shows some pictures inside some major design firms (Pixar and Google). At the beginning of the year, I asked students to describe what their dream school would look like. I was very sad to learn that most of them couldn’t conceive of a school that looked different. In our first brainstorming session, most of them talked about having more recess or a longer lunch and that was the extent of their wishes. I really tried to impress on them that their school could look and be structured any way they wanted. I was met with blank stares and confused looks. The problem in the first brainstorming session was that students were doing what they do all day long in school. They were trying to guess what I was thinking. They wanted to give me the right answer. But in this instance, there wasn’t a right answer, every answer was right. I showed my students pictures of Googleplex and Pixar and explained that there was a lot of work and creativity that came out of both companies. What they saw was a playland. Nearly all of my students declared that they would work at Google or Pixar when they got out of school. One of my students asked if I would help her write a resume so that Google would have it on file when she was ready to work there (she is 9). We brainstormed a dream school again. This time the students understood that there wasn’t a right answer, that the sky was the limit. Few of them included desks in their dream school, nearly all of them included animals of some kind, and most of them wanted slides and piano stairs to get from one floor to another. We collaborated on Wallwisher and dreamed together. At the beginning of the project, I told the kids the school could look like, and operate, any way that they wanted, but there were two restrictions: 1. it had to be a place of learning, and 2. they had to justify why they included everything in their school. Most of them cited an increase in creativity and innovation (we learned that word as we looked at pictures of Googleplex). One of my students wanted a huge cylinder tropical fish tank in the lobby with clear pipes branching out and winding around the school and through the classroom. She thought the fish would be interesting to study and an inspiration for learning. Another student wished for swing chairs hanging from the ceiling so that they could move while they learned. Several kids wanted dogs in the school that they could read to because, “dogs won’t make fun of you when you make a mistake reading out loud.” Once the students felt comfortable with not having one right answer, they let their imaginations run wild and came up with excellent ideas and suggestions.
We need to help kids understand that there usually isn’t only one right answer. They have been so primed to believe that every problem has one correct answer because we overload them with tests and worksheets that tell them that it is so. We squash creativity. Pretty soon they become adults who don’t know how to play and as a result, aren’t creative. How do you encourage creativity and outside the box thinking in your classroom?
I have a dream that one day education will look completely different, that passions would be realized and our obsession would be learning. I started a new blog to record my Dreams of Education. Join me, won’t you?
