Another great OTF Connects online workshop tonight -- a little over my head, some of it, and I am so wiped out from today's adventures, which I will blog about shortly, that instead of recounting the session tonight, I will share some videos and links and let interested teachers and others explore for themselves...
First, a little vintage Seymour Papert, father of "constructionism" (not constructivism) -- dig the hair!! | And now, the "modern" turtle... by Papert's daughter!! Here's a VIMEO introducing what the kids can do. MIT is still into teaching kids coding... check out SCRATCH online -- it's free! I'm going to investigate it a little with with Simon a bit next week, I think. (He's not as enthusiastic about my brilliant "poverty" unit as I had hoped, hehe.) |
In terms of inquiry... how do we move our students beyond simply regurgitating information? Peter wrote a blog post about using journals to prompt student thinking. Some interesting resources to get students thinking are linked below, but first, a question: Is graffiti always "bad"? This Grade 11 student didn't think so, and wrote a rap to communicate his thoughts about it. (The guy should come to BsAs -- the "art" here is super "public"!! Hehe.)
Visible Thinking and Natural Curiosity seem to be two sites worth checking out.
When students are engaged in inquiry, neat things can happen. Here's a "product" an elementary student came up with as part of an inquiry project he was involved in...
When students are engaged in inquiry, neat things can happen. Here's a "product" an elementary student came up with as part of an inquiry project he was involved in...