Here’s a great spoken word performance regarding testing, education and changing times. That’s all I’m going to say. Pretty sure this will go viral.
Thanks for the share Kim!
Following on from my previous post, my colleagues and I are chugging along the Making Thinking Visible course. We are now entering “Artful Thinking.” It is described as:
The Artful Thinking program takes the image of an artist’s palette as its central metaphor. The artful thinking palette is comprised of 6 thinking dispositions – 6 basic colors, or forms, of intellectual behavior – that have dual power: They are powerful ways of exploring works of art, and powerful ways of exploring subjects across the school curriculum. The Artful Thinking palette comes alive through the use of “thinking routines.” Each thinking disposition has several thinking routines connected to it. Thinking routines are short, easy-to-learn mini-strategies that extend and deepen students’ thinking and become part of the fabric of everyday classroom life. They are used flexibly and repeatedly — with art, and with a wide variety of topics in the curriculum, particularly in language arts and social studies.
I’ve redesigned the booklet and if you are a classroom teacher, you may find the resource of use to use visual art in your curriculum. You can download the pdf via Issuu here, or via Google Docs.
Currently, myself and some colleagues are undertaking the Making Thinking Visible online course offered through the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Adaptable to any subject area, Visible Thinking allows getting started almost at once with ‘thinking routines’ that help students ponder ideas from the subject areas.
I’ve compiled these “routines” into the booklet below for myself as a quick reference. The routines are simple and quick. Have a look if interested. You can download through Issuu here, or via Google Docs here.
The Idea Channel makes a great and entertaining point about game-based learning and more specifically, Minecraft. Currently, my grade 7 Technology classes are using this as a vehicle to learn “How we solve problems depends on the conditions of the environment and group dynamics” with the guiding question of “What does cooperation and collaboration look like?” Watch the video. And yeah, I have still yet to play the game!
Following up from my previous post, I’ve also been trying to set up my units with an overarching task, which guides and pushes students to create their final product and overall guides the course of the unit. However, I and we (meaning the school), view their process work as equally as their finished end product or solution. Investigative and research work are documented and required to show their growth and knowledge. I try to apply it to the real world, but to be honest, I still need to refine and develop some. Here is a taste of a few that I have done so far:
Grade 8 Art Unit on Character Illustration Task: You work for Pixar! Pixar are about to develop an animated feature film based on Typography. You will be assigned a typeface. Pixar requires you to personify your font into a human character. You will need to think both creatively and critically. You will need to research your font, gather resources for inspiration, develop several thumbnails for your character in a variety of styles and then decide on the final one.
Grade 8 Technology unit on MashUps Task: You will create a remix or mashup of your choice. You should recombine elements from published works in a new, thoughtful way. Your mashup may focus only on the visual, video or audio only, or both. Your product should correctly follow fair use policy and not infringe or plagiarise. You should consider where you will find or gather your source material and the technical tools required to complete the task. What technical skills do you think you will need to learn? You should also evaluate the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use on the market for the original. Depending on your creation, your video should be no less than 30 seconds and no longer than is appropriate for its type (if you’re making a movie trailer, they generally run 60 seconds. Music videos tend to be the length of the song.)
Grade 7 Technology unit on Minecraft Task: You are a member of an engineering team in a virtual environment! Your team wishes to create a new development for a theme park. Each team is creating a themed street or area of the theme park. Each individual is responsible for creating a structure in that street/area. Your engineering team must negotiate with the rest of the class as to how to organise and unify all the group work together. You will need to work collaboratively and cooperatively. What roles, jobs, duties and responsibilities will this require? You will also need to investigate the Minecraft environment and record findings on how it works and possibly share your research and investigations onto a wiki (time permitting). Your structure will also require investigation into function, appearance and design. You will document your work and progress weekly in your Design Folder with notes and screenshots. Good luck!
Here’s a Good documentary that stresses a lot I’ve heard before: gaming, collaboration, motivation, self-directed, guiding etc. Published in May and just made its round to me. Thanks Kim.
Students are the future, but what’s the future for students? To arm them with the relevant, timeless skills for our rapidly changing world, we need to revolutionize what it means to learn. Education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, visiting professor at MIT; Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, are redefining how we engage young minds for a creatively and technologically-advanced future. Which of these eduvators holds the key for unlocking the learning potential inside every student?
A short film by Ericsson:
Can ICT redefine the way we learn in the Networked Society? Technology has enabled us to interact, innovate and share in whole new ways. This dynamic shift in mindset is creating profound change throughout our society. The Future of Learning looks at one part of that change, the potential to redefine how we learn and educate. Watch as we talk with world renowned experts and educators about its potential to shift away from traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students’ needs and self expression.
Learn more at http://www.ericsson.com/networkedsociety
I’m sure this Seth Godin talk STOP STEALING DREAMS at TEDxYouth@BFS has made the internet rounds. In it, he asks the question “What is school for?” With the internet now connecting us all, what is the role and function of the school?
Are we asking students to collect the dots or connect them?
He talks about 8 things that can change, depending on how we answer the question.
It’s an interesting watch.
Summer holidays are over. We are starting school this week. This year I will find myself also teaching Grade 7 & 8 Technology alongside Grade 7, 8, 9 & 10 Art. MYP at my school is trickling up this year to include grade 8 as well. In two years time, it will go up to grade 10 to include all Middle School. As part of our meetings held at this time of year, we had an interesting discussion on “What does learning look like for an MYP student? What is different to a student not in an MYP program?”
It’s an interesting question, and one that is taken for granted when teaching the IB for several years. For those that are unfamiliar, these programs are more interactive with students, more self-engaged and heavily process driven. Reflecting how you are as a learner is also an ongoing process. We offer a variety of tasks and products, have consistency across subjects and stress concept over content.
In addition to this, we watched the video above. These are all good reminders for the beginning of a new school year, especially considering the changes Middle School students will be going through.
My coworker passed these videos onto me. Have a look at Vi Hart’s site for a series of videos about doodling in math class. Interesting. You can also see the videos on YouTube.
