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Release the Kraken

Rather than typing out a reflection for part 3 of the book, I thought I'd take the author's advice and use technology to create. So, I decided to use Google Draw to create an image that reflects my big takeaways from Part 3: Unleashing Talent. I actually loved this process. I look forward to playing more with Google Drawings when all of my students will be 1:1 with Chromebooks in the fall. It won't be a mandate, but I'll demonstrate it as an option for expression.

Create a Culture of Innovation: Book Study Part 2

In part 2 of The Innovator’s Mindset George Couros eloquently lays out of what we need in our schools to allow for the innovator’s mindset to be nurtured. But none of these needs are physical things. They are not new furniture, devices, or costly remodels of physical learning spaces. These are alterations to the cultural spaces of our schools. They represent a change from a culture of schooling to a culture of learning. Where schooling is something we as educators do to students and learning is something that students have the freedom to do for themselves. The innovator’s mindset encourages our students not to get schooled but to get their learn on. Yes I just time traveled from the 90’s As schools, we need to start with trust as a given. George argues that if learners are forced to earn our trust, they already start in a place without the freedom to take ownership of their learning. I will always remember being told that I sho...

What Is an Innovator's Mindset: Book Study Part 1

As a part of a summer book study, I have the fortune of reading George Couros’s The Innovator’s Mindset . I am using this post to reflect on Part 1: Innovation in Education which covers chapters 1 - 3. Like with any good vision for change, Couros states the purpose, or the “why” of his strategies. He advocates that today’s learners should be encouraged to become creators and leaders. This will then create a better world. The title phrase Innovator’s Mindset is the what we want to advocate for. But what is the Innovator’s Mindset? The Innovator’s mindset is one in which the individual is not only attempting to increase and ability or skill. The innovator’s mindset is one in which the learner looks to create new ideas and understandings with this ability or skill. This pushes the idea that learners should not simply be consumers of content, but creators. The business leaders of today are not looking for workers who simply bring them proble...

The End IS the Beginning IS The End

If you haven't read about our sharing of the personal learning project, you can read it here . This post will focus on reflections on the project and process. After getting some informal feedback from students on the project, I created a Google Form to collect some class data on the project to have in addition to the feedback presented in the portfolio from individual students. The questions were guided by theses informal conversations I had with students. Student Reflection What follows will be some class data in addition to a few individual reflections: Freedom of choice (1 = strongly disagree 5 = strongly agree) "I felt like by choosing my projects I used my time more productively because I was researching something I actually wanted to research." "The thing I enjoyed the most was the freedom that we got to choose an idea that appealed to us. This is a stunning change to normal class projects where the teachers choose what you lea...

Sharing Personal Learning Projects Through Conformity

Students wrapped up their personal learning project today. On exam days, our classes met once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The morning was for sharing and the afternoon for putting all of their learning process pieces together. I'll focus on reflection in my next post, but it was tough for me to see how I gave students such free freedom in their learning but dictatorial control in their sharing. Morning Session In the morning, students did a gallery walk of the one sheet posters. The one sheets were created using the student's program of choice. Many used graphic friendly sites like Canva or Pickochart, but using Google Docs or Draw worked fine for others thanks to the host of formatting available to text and visuals. During the gallery walk, students walked around the halls with a smartphone or tablet and a pair of headphones. By looking at a one sheet displayed on the wall, they were informed about the topic and the process o...

Never Coasting with Collaboration

I'm going to keep the text of this blog short because the real action is in the videos in the Storify below! Today was our final collaboration with Angela Patterson, Kate Sommerville, and TEAM Togetherness of the year. We decided to take the marble roller coaster project we do over the course of a week in AP Physics to study conservation of energy, rotational motion, and centripetal forces and bring it to the 4th graders. In order to scale down a 5 day activity into a 2 hour time frame, we changed the ultimate goal just a bit. The design challenge for the teams was to build a marble coaster which had 3 obstacles. Obstacles could be hills, loops, jumps, or corkscrews. Each team was made up of a group of 4th graders and 2 - 3 AP students serving as coaches. The role of the coaches was to Help complete the team’s vision and stay within the rules. Aid in construction and making the 4th graders' design ideas a reality. Let the 4th graders fail, help the...

Q & A with Dr. James Rickabaugh

We had our last book club PLC meeting of the school year. Now, we only made it through chapter 2 of the book. But, we had some very good discussions and I think everyone in the group has a better grasp on what it means to personalize learning. Today, we were lucky enough to have the author of the book Dr. James Rickabaugh in for a Q & A session. I used Periscope for the session. Because of using Periscope, the quality of the videos I have added below is less that great. But the message is not. Regardless of where you are on the continuum of understanding the "why", "what", and "how" of personalized learning, these are must see! (or listen - I posted a SoundCloud link at the bottom of the post) Question: What is the history of personalized learning and the honeycomb model? Question: How do we know personalized learning strategies work? What research guides it? Question: How can teachers is traditiona...