People do their best when they’re doing something they love. In other words we all thrive most when we are in our “Element”. That’s the main idea behind Sir Ken Robinson’s book of the same name. He believes that most peoples real talents are usually deeply hidden & don’t reveal themselves on a regular basis - especially in the typical K-12 school environment. I hope you can take 20 minutes today to watch his video interview (below) with British reporter Riz Khan.
You can make anything interesting if you use creativity in your teaching!
Kevin Jarrett turned me on to this video that David Warlick recently used at the NJElite Conference in Wildwood, NJ. You might recognize some of the speakers, including Daniel Pink, a former EdTechConnect webinar guest speaker.
Basic message: We need to stop “teaching” our students with tools of the past. We EXPECT the latest and best technologies to be used to manufacture the products in our lives (our cars, clothes, etc.), so why don’t we demand they be used in education as well? What old habits are we willing to let go of? What are we willing to change so that our students (and we) can truly learn?
Do you have a favorite education video? After watching this one, leave a comment with a link to a video you think people should see. I’ll compile them in a future post.
Background info: Earlier this month, on Youth Twitter, a student in South Korea, Soojin wrote, “just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete.”
Hannah, a student in Philadelphia, answered her on Youth Twitter, “I think Alan’s survey is a good example of how not to be ’schooly’. Students should ask questions of each other and interact.”
Teachers Teaching Teachers invited Soojin, Hannah, Alan, a student from Queens, NY, Lindsea, a student from Honolulu, and Ben, a student from NYC to talk about the possibilities and problems with YouthTwitter on a live webcast (here’s the archive). They also invited some of the students’ teachers who shared tremendous insight.
What a great a conversation about Youth Twitter, and blogging, and social networking and blogging-beyond-school!
Have you read Karl Fisch’s blog lately? The Think Pink Project he describes is the kind of stuff I’d like to start seeing more of,as I think it’s VERY DOABLE. I plan on talking to the English & History teachers in my district to see if I can get any brave souls to take a leap of faith-
There are so many variations & complexity levels on this type of project, I just liked this one in particular because I really enjoyed the book (and the EdTechConnect webinar with Dan Pink!)-
Right now we really only have a VERY SMALL number of educators (percentage wise) using collaborative web tools- they are just tiny islands amidst a vast ocean of status quo. We need to work towards an edtech Pangea! (ok, there’s a little bit of my science nerd peeking out!)
Posted on January 14, 2008 in Forward Thinking by Heather Sullivan
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