14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools

I read an interesting article recently by Icelandic educator, Ingvi Hrannar.  What surprised me was the number of ideas which really surprised me which have for so long been--in my mind at least--hallmarks of schools.

1. Computer rooms: computers should be built into curriculum, not just a once a week phenomena.
2.  Isolated classrooms: the classroom should be visible from beyonds its four walls.
3. WiFi-lessness: students and teachers ought to be connected.
4. Banned cell phones & tablets: they are so much more than just single function devices.
5. Tech director with admin access: people need be working with teachers and students.
6. Non-Sharing Teachers: teachers should share ideas.
7. Schools without Facebook or Twitter
8. Unhealthy cafeteria food
9. Starting school at 8:00am for teenagers: not too sure about this one.
10. Buying poster-, website-and pamphlet design for the school
11. Traditional libraries: libraries should that just about reading books.  I once heard a librarian describe these places where students connect with ideas.  Brilliant!
12. All students get the same
13. One Pro-D workshop fits all
14. Standardized tests to measure the quality of education

http://ingvihrannar.com/14-things-that-are-obsolete-in-21st-century-schools/

Book Creator

Did some more work with a buddy class of grades 2/3 and 5/6.  Pretty impressive collaborative results.

Grade 5/6 students worked with their grade 2/3 buddies to begin the process of book creation.  While not yet eligible for numerous book prizes (e.g. Booker, Pulitzer, Newbery, etc.), time may be the only limiting factor.  Check out their work.

• Submission A
• Submission B
• Submission C

Students worked through the following self-generated checklist:

• add a picture
• how to write text
• insert a photo
• change the background colour
• change the font
• new page
• add a textual description of an image
• save an image from the internet and insert it
• switch the pages around
• place text over pictures
• make someone look like a superhero
• create a good ending
• draw an image using the pen tool
• change the font size
• draw a moustache on someone you know
• make a cartoon of yourself and add a talk bubble
• make a scary picture of yourself with photo booth
• tell a story about a unicorn and a dragon
• insert a photo of a really fat alligator
• put yourself behind bars
• place yourself standing on the moon
• create a text about a hippopotamus with a talk bubble

Book Creator

Today's buddy class was fantastic!  In addition to using a great little story building tool, the grade 5/6 students did a wonderful job teaching and guiding the kindergarten students on a pretty amazing literary journey by creating ebooks.  Previous to the buddy class, we came up with some practical and ambitious tasks we thought would be important to teach (see list) the kindergarten students.  Some of the results are below.
Class samples:

• Book 1
• Book 2
• Book 3

Check out the following resources:

• Book Creator App
• How to Create a Book with Book Creator (wikiHow)

Bossy vs. Leadership

Learning with iPads: students teaching students

Such an exciting Friday! We began our day with a session where the older kids (our class) taught the younger kids (kindergarten) various functions on the iPad. Yesterday I asked two questions: 1) what do the younger children need to know about the iPads? and 2) how will you teach it? We generated a long list for the first question and came up with some great strategies for the second question. This morning's results were amazing as the older students demonstrated their fantastic teaching abilities. Division 2 parents should be proud! Check out the student-created video below.

Cubic

Problem of the Week: Cubes

I am continually impressed by the variety of learning strategies students use to complete tasks.  I confess that I am still guilty of trying to impress upon them the way that is most comfortable and understood by me, and not necessarily by them.  Today's math class reminded me of this fact.

Today was the second time I ran this exercise, but this time was with a group of older students.  The task was to build a simple cube and I gave them only a piece of paper.  We began with some basic review (activation of prior knowledge) and some gentle cues as to what sorts of supplies they would need.  The knowledge was in place, but the real surprise was in the application.

One student completely surprised me.  Not normally known for his/her effective task execution skills, the student completed well before everyone else and completed the task with very little time to waste.  The student followed a different strategy than I had envisioned, yet the end product was brilliant.  In fact, only one student actually completed the task in the manner I would have guessed.

Many students cut out individual pieces and then reassembly the cube with tape.  Others constructed the cube from a couple pieces of paper while others had great difficulty in knowing where to start.

In sum I thought this to be a brilliant activity to learning where some of my students excelled.  I also learned--rather quickly--of some of their weakness and am currently thinking of ways to tweak this exercise for future use.  I also really loved that the end goal was not the traditional assignment submitted with words on paper; it was a thing which was built with their own hands.

#SD48ID13