Stopping consumerism in the Classroom

http://savedbythe-bellhooks.tumblr.com/

Well this Saved by the Bell Hooks tumblr site has me pretty intrigued. I wonder about this all the time, especially regarding tech.

So many teachers (it seems like anyway) are focused on what apps to use for learning, and so many of these apps (it seems like) are about consumerism, or button clicking or "gamification" that involves little learning.  I fully want students to create and connect, not just consume. I want them to create for freedom, and to help them become full participants in our society. 

So, I need to really think about how I'm modelling these traits in my own learning journey.  I think this ties nicely into environmental education too, because most people know about climate change but not many people are taking meaningful action (myself included most of the time) to become the change. I'll be focusing on this through our community building activities online this week.

Working on Community

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I was reading this George Couros blog about smiling the other day about the importance of smiling and being aware of everyone in the learning community. I often think about who I am including when I go about my day, and who I may be excluding.  I know that at times I focus solely on the students, and miss out on support staff and families.  So this past week my goal was to engage them all with a smile.

Smiling made a bigger difference than I thought.  Not only were people more interested in what I was doing, or what I had to say, but I actually felt better about my day too.

Starting the project

 Some rights reserved by Magic Madzik

We've started trying to make connections regarding our places in school.  I'm planning on working with students to make meaningful connections.  If you want to know more check out this post for my UbD.

The first thing we did was sit in a circle and talked about what it felt like to move from place to place. We all felt an anxiety about moving, when we dug a little deeper we discovered that this anxiety might be a result of not knowing the place or the people. 

As a group we decided to write blog posts about our favourite place (and soon favourite people) in the school in order to alleviate some of the anxiety potential migrants to our school might feel. 

The students are keen to share what they know about the school, and since it's not content driven most students feel like they know their place, so everyone wants to participate. 

The project isn't fully what I wanted, but it is student driven which is important.  I was hoping for more of a shared project, but maybe it will morph into that.  

I'm also slightly disappointed that more students didn't choose an outside place as their favourite spot, but, it's interesting to see why they chose different places. 

Thinking about community

http://savedbythe-bellhooks.tumblr.com/

As an edtech coach, and an environmental educator, I find that most of my conversations happen with people who I think are in my community.

So, I wonder... who am I missing, who am I marginalizing, am I really growing as an educator? 

I hope so, but anyway, it's a wonder.   A crazy busy week, well two weeks, but working hard on my enviroed project. 

It's funny because I always want to push kids to go further, but so often I let teachers feel comfortable.  If we learn from being uncomfortable am I making it difficult for my colleagues. 

Not much to write today, just want to write so I don't forget to keep in the loop.  Next blog post will be about the project.