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!

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!

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

Here are some possible useful things I have found recently on the web:

Piktochart allows you to create infographics using templates. Ranges from free to paid version.(video link)

Need a portfolio? Check out Pathbrite. Pathbrite helps individuals collect, track, and share a lifetime of achievements.(Instructional video below)Thanks to wanderingnoah on Twitter for the find.

Going to teach some doodling or Zentangles? Here’s an online workshop for Zendoodles.

Finally, the Art of Education blog has a post of “How to use Google Forms in the Art Room.” If you are new to this, you may find the post useful. I’ve added the video below.

Popcornmaker! I’m looking forward to this. Check out the demo below.

Popcorn Maker is a creative tool that makes authoring interactive media pages as easy as point and click.

Popcorn Maker 1.0 will empower you to make cool web-based media, whether you’re a beginner or pro. With over 20 plugins—ranging from Twitter to Google Maps to video processing—you’ll be able to stitch up a stylish video that’s woven into the web. And, of course, it’s 100% free and open source.

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.

• Homework during the day (ask questions/explore with the teacher) and watch world class lectures at night.
• Open book/open note all the time (no point in memorising facts now).
• Access to any course, any where in the world, any time (don’t have to do things in chronological order that is limited to geography).
• Precise focused education, instead of mass batched stuff.
• No more multiple choice exams: measure experience instead of test scores.
• Teach cooperation instead of isolation.
• The teacher’s role transforms to a coach.
• Lifelong learning with work happening earlier and finally the death of the famous college.

It’s an interesting watch.

Another great video from the OffBook series!

Color is one of the fundamental elements of our existence, and defines our world in such deep ways that its effects are nearly imperceptible. It intersects the worlds of art, psychology, culture, and more, creating meaning and influencing behavior every step of the way. Most fascinating are the choices we make, both subconsciously and consciously, to use color to impact each other and reflect our internal states. Whether in the micro-sense with the choice of an article of clothing, or the macro-sense where cultures on the whole embrace color trends at the scale of decades, color is a signifier of our motives and deepest feelings.

It’s been a whirlwind 2 weeks for me. I’ve just returned from a 5 day trip with about 50 grade 7 students from the Kamikochi area (Flickr set) near Nagano. Prior to that, I attended the Learning 2.012 conference in Beijing. Overall, the conference was great and I’ll make another post about that in the near future. Whilst there, I gave a presentation entitled “Deconstructing to Construct: Visual Literacy through Image and Media Analysis.” Daily we are bombarded by visual and media messages with students and teachers increasingly becoming creators of content on the web. Basically, everyone is now a designer.

My presentation focused on the theory of how to analyse media, which in turn can strengthen your own content or message, be it for design or manipulative purposes. The outcomes of my presentation were to:

• Explore criteria to analyse images and media.
• Identify strategies for how this can be introduced to students.
• Identify techniques for planning and implementing this practice in lessons.

The Value of Visualization from Column Five on Vimeo.

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.

Here’s some interesting stuff I’ve found/gathered over the summer whilst surfing the web. You will have to forgive me here, as hardly any of the content is connected. Simply a smorgasbord of good stuff.

1. Have several images to host on your site? Hongkiat ‘have put together a showcase of the best 10 galleries, slideshows and sliders they know of. They are all available for free, making them the perfect addition to position your website well for optimized browser and mobile viewing.’

2. If you do any portrait/life drawing, check out the examples on Carla Sonheim’s blog for drawing with a graphite stick.

3. If you love old ad imagery, have a look at “The Bart&Co. Historic Clip Art Collection” on Flickr.

4. Comic or graphic novel artist? Download the beta version of MotionArtist until January 2013.

5. Love the old sound of a typewriter? Download Noisy Typer for your Mac here.

Noisy Typer – a typewriter for your laptop. from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

6. Finally, if you haven’t checked out PBS’ webseries OffBook yet, you have been missing a great show. Their most recent episode is embedded below, but also check out their last one on the art of logo design.