Back to Education!

It's been a long winter so far, and really it has only begun. Lots of snow in thie area of the world and much mroe to come before the first flowers of Spring start to show. In the world of education nothing ever seems to stop. The video I have included today is not new. It's not eye-catching. It is however, eye-opening. if you haven't thought about how to prepare students for the years ahead this video is something to look at. Told from a student perspective, I think it really shows what we as educators need to realize about the 30+ students sitting in front of us everyday. Take a look at the video. I am working on a presentation right now on creating digital essays for an authentic audience. I will upload it when I am complete. I presented the idea to a group of students this week and they were interested in working on creating something out of their own personal essays. More to come!

Learning for a Purpose

What does this picture have to do with the title?

Wow!! I can't believe I started this post and then got so busy that I totally forgot to finish it.

Look at the above picture. It looks like a wire with a farm in the background, right? Well, it is. It's also something else. There is learning going on here. Self-directed learning at that. I can give anyone a camera and tell them to take pictures. When I get them back some will be good and some will be OK, but probably very few will be great.

However, give them a purpose and you will get results. This is what I did in this case. I worked with a group of students on digital photography with the knowledge that each one of them would be entered in a wonderful photography contest. The River Valley Photography Contest is a great place for students to showcase their work and get recognized.

In this case, it wasn't a case of 'I'll take the best two or three shots'; they knew that each one of them would have an entry in the contest. With that in mind, I gave them the contest "themes" and they were off.

Sure, I got blurry photos, off-theme photos, crazy pictures, funny pictures, but I also got excellent photos and a group of grade 6 and 7 students who were engaged and could tell you a story about each picture.

The photos are now entered in the contest. They were engaged in their learning, and I believe that they will remember this one activity for a long time. So much fun!