Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Soaking in Some More Great Learning

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After a whirlwind day one, a brain break, and some much needed sleep, I was pumped to begin Day 2 of the ISTE Conference.  Our group started the day by attending the keynote speaker.  What we didn’t know was that we would get to hear from two other leaders in education...one for literacy and one for computer science.  First up was Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org.  Another team member and I are trained in Code.org and our district is beginning its implementation district wide next year.  It was amazing to listen to him speak on the importance of computer science beginning as early as elementary school.  He also announced that Code.org would be including Frozen and Star Wars in their lessons.  I know my kids are going to be so excited!  The second one was Lavar Burton of Reading Rainbow.  He shared some important messages.   If you want to reach kids today you need to be in the media/digital environment which is why his work with Reading Rainbow has brought us Skybrary.  “Skybrary is a carefully curated, ever expanding interactive library of digital books and video explorations designed to engage young readers and foster a love of learning.”  Lavar knows that technology when used appropriately in education allows students to take charge of their learning and get them prepared for the future.  This is the world we now live.  We can’t teach tomorrow’s kids with yesterday’s practices.

The rest of the day was filled with more great sessions and learning opportunities.  One quote that I loved from the day was “become comfortable with living in beta to model creativity.”  Today’s learning can be messy, and mistakes will happen.  But this is learning.  This is the mindshift I know needs to happen.  Teachers need to relinquish control and allow the children to explore and make mistakes.  

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.” - Sir Ken Robinson

One other focus I had today was on assessment.  I attended a session titled Project-based Learning to Enhance Student Creativity Through Technology.  In this session, we learned about the ways to assess creativity.  Rubrics are your best bet when assessing PBL, creativity, and STEM.  ASCD’s Educational Leadership has a great article called “Assessing Creativity” that was shared with us.  This was a piece of I really wanted to gain insight on and the rubrics shared in the article and by the presenters were a perfect starting point.  

The last big takeaway for today revolved around the Design Thinking Process.   This process can be applied to all grade levels, the vocabulary may change but the pathway remains the same.  It’s the process we need to have our students follow and at the end, start over to improve their design.

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Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often.  That’s a consequence of exploration.  Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you’re doing.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

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