Colleague @jgough sent me: The Cockroach Beatbox. YouTube’s version is below. Fascinating! Made me think we should facilitate more of this kind of work with students. Yet, I hope the students would be the scientists, not just the audience. I hope they could produce the equipment, animations, video.
Then, I read comments at Cockroach Beatbox; my brain sparked to invaluable discussion and debate possibilities, too.
Stewardship of resources, responsibility, empathy, work ethic. These characteristics are important, and I hear educators rightfully name them as essential skills. Why don’t we schools incorporate daily custodianship and campus care into our routines? I am sure some schools do, but many do not. Hour a day? Rotating chores for admin, students, faculty? Brooms, mops, hedge trimmers as another 1:1 idea?
“Susie is a fabulous student! However, she is so quiet. I wish she would speak up more in class.” How many times have I read, heard, written, and said such. “Educare,” though, the root of education, means to draw out. It’s 2012! Technology makes it even more possible to empower introverts to share their thinking in “alternatively audible” ways. Polling, quick writing, Google docs, backchanneling, etc. What if we scaffolded, not “scolded?” What if we empowered the introverts before trying to change them?
[83 words. Again, I embrace that failure. I will work to improve and succeed more in tomorrow’s post! Thanks for reading.]
At TEDxAtlanta: Community on Tuesday, I heard many amazing thinkers and doers. Among them, Rhonda Lowry shared the idea that networked literacy is essential – that we must value relational connections over industrial-age containers (like…bell schedules?!). At virtually all the TED and TEDx events, we hear from amazing folks that are making positive differences in the world. What if we tried 1/2 time with the traditional departmentalized subjects and re:purposed the resulting 1/2 time as “grand challenge curriculum.” We could explore and attack the various challenges of our “real world” and benefit mightily from the problem-solving and transdisciplinary studies.
[My word count today is 95. I embrace that failure! Thanks for reading the extra 50+%. I could write for WEEKS and MONTHS just on this topic!]
When scheduling, many schools factor in “snow days” – days that won’t be re-calendared for inclement weather cancellations. What if schools factored in experiment days like snow days? We could plan for radical pilots and seemingly outlandish learning designs to test various hypotheses. We could learn by doing and negate the argument, “We have too much to cover.” Call ’em…”grow days!”
