When was the last time you had students speak up? Not the type of speak up where you can’t hear a student, but speak up about a challenge, a success, a problem, a solution? We stand in front of students each day, yet who does most of the talking? What created that culture? As I…
Author: andrewtk10
Driving Interests and Passions
How do we drive our own learning? What’s the reason for finding out new knowledge? Is it because of someone telling us we have to learn it or is it because we want to learn? When someone tells us that we have to learn something, the chances of that knowledge staying in our brains is…
Sandbox for All: Creative Play
This past Christmas Break I finally concluded that Minecraft might possibly be the biggest change to education since Lego was introduced. Think about all the ways you can construct, deconstruct, manipulate, and enhance your learning. With the newest update to Minecraft Pocket Edition came the introduction of redstone capability and that is a game changer….
Culture of Creativity or Constraints?
During some time this past week I was looking through my twitter feed when I came across this tweet from Laura Fleming: Goal for a teacher is to create the conditions for students to explore their creativity and to be innovative…freely. What does freely really mean in the context of education today? So many times…
Dress Pants or Sweat Pants?
What kind of pants do you like to wear? Your comfort depends on those pants. Some really enjoy sweat pants, some enjoy dress pants. What happens when those type of pants are taken away and you have to wear something new? Do you choose to wear that new style, even if it is uncomfortable, and…
Would you buy a ticket to your lesson?
You see many people posting about starting the year off on the right foot. Many talk about fitness or eating right. Some even talk about how they are going to do less with their time, relax a bit more, or spend time with family. As a learner/facilitator we need to think about how we can…
Want to start a conversation? Take a picture!
We are in a time where learning is so visual. Youtube videos, Photo Slideshows, Minecraft tutorials. These are just a few ways that we learn on our own time. How can we capture what our students are doing each day? Is it important to capture what they learn each day? I remember when our school…
“I’m just not good with technology.” Really??
Remember when twitter was something that people thumbed their noses at when it came up that it could be used as a learning tool? How about the time that you saw something new and pushed it to the side? We all have been at a place in our lives where something new has cropped up…
Using Design Thinking: Design Challenges
Why do we always go the “easy” route and give worksheets to help understand a concept? Why can’t we do it another way? There is no reason that we should still be seeing a worksheet as the main source of “learning”, if you can call it learning. Sure worksheets are good for some things, but…
Mazes and Critical Thinking, Getting a Conversation Started.
I am always thinking of different ways to keep the learning happening until that last minute of school and the students are looking forward to that learning. Even though they are relishing in the thought of leaving the walls of the classroom behind, I want to instill into our students that learning is happening all…
Time to Make
After reading a post concerning the newest book by George Couros and AJ Julian’s post on making something new each day, I took the plunge and will hopefully be reflecting once a week to share some wonderings that I have about learning. Each post will be centered around learning in some way and will show a bit…
Curiosity, Exploration, Wonder 