As I’ve explored at some length here, I think of schools today as guided by our mission statements and legal mandates to pursue an ageless ideal of education along the lines of how John Dewey characterized schooling as the act of “preparing students for the adult vocations needed for society to continue to exist.” The question […]
Read more "On 21st Century Schools"“Design thinking asks students to become investigators in their world, attempt to solve problems, bridge gaps of knowledge independently, collaboratively, and resourcefully.” So decrees Lee-Ann Gray of the ability of Design Thinking to “make school more like real life.” Gray positions her view of schooling’s purpose clearly in her opening paragraphs, where she notes that, […]
Read more "Design Thinking as Critical Literacy"I’ve quoted D’Arcy Norman’s MSc thesis here before. However, newly immersed in the introductory strides of Design Thinking, courtesy of UVic and #TieGrad’s EDCI 335 course, I think the following bears on our emerging discussions: …educational technology can be prone to cycles of hype and fetishism, where new tools and applications are rapidly adopted by individuals who are […]
Read more "This year’s new Dylan: Design Thinking"Recently returned from a two-week odyssey around my girlfriend’s native land of Barbados, I’ve been tasked as part of our first module in EDCI 335: Learning Design with introducing myself and my intentions in the course. I’ll admit that it’s something that – this far into the ongoing learning project of this blog – strikes […]
Read more "EDCI335: Introduction to Learning Design"This semester I’ve been using Google Forms to collect reflections, self-assessments and unit feedback from both the Philosophy 12 bunch, as well as the TALONS. As with many aggregating aspects of the web, what I appreciate about this method of collection and feedback is the ability to analyze trends and other information (beyond the individual […]
Read more "Ethics Unit Feedback and Reflection"As part of my personal learning project in #TieGrad’s studies I’ve been guided in my efforts to frame my learning – as well as the intentionality of creating my classroom spaces – by delving into educational research surrounding topics of interest this semester. Aligning neatly with my opportunity this term to be teaching Philosophy 12 […]
Read more "Citizenship Learning and the Project of Enlightenment"I started blogging with the TALONS class (since expanded to two) a little more than four years ago. In that time I’ve learned a great deal about the capacity for such digital publishing tools to help realize aspects of the larger purpose of schooling; part of this has come through developing my own informal network […]
Read more "Blogs as Documents of Learning"A few of us from the #Tiegrad group met up on Sunday morning to talk about all sorts of things: project updates, questions, and frustrations, the nature of personalized learning and education in the ‘open,’ and the unique moment each of us finds ourselves in: presently at the intersection between teacher and learner. Even Valerie Irvine, […]
Read more "On Teaching and Learning"Given the way my own learning had unfolded this semester, it’s not surprising, perhaps, that I would be coming to identify (and experiment) with the idea of emergence in my classrooms and the extra-curricular projects I’ve undertaken. My goals of a month ago talked about my intentions: “to create […] space to reflect on this year’s […]
Read more "Social Media and Personalized Learning Project(s) Update"Having come to the conclusion of our Metaphysics unit in Philosophy 12, I asked the group to respond to several reflection prompts in a Google Form posted on the class site. Some of the questions addressed individual growth and learning related to participants’ chosen philosopher and activities undertaken during the unit; others focused on the […]
Read more "Metaphysics Unit Reflections and Feedback"