8 Tips and Tricks to Redesign Your Classroom Remake Your Class is a 3-part video series that covers how one educator transformed his classroom with the help of his students, some community volunteers, and design experts. Editor's Note: Author David Bill is a designer and educator who consulted with The Third Teacher+ on the Remake Your Class project highlighted in the videos below. The tips in this post go along with the companion video. We are excited by the simplicity (and low price tag!) of this great redesign. If you're thinking of completing your own classroom remake project, good for you. The tips below can be used for smaller scale remakes right way. Whether you are looking to reorganize one corner or redesign the entire room, here are eight tips that may help you throughout the process. 1. Students are your primary users and should be at the center of such a remake process. Create Visual Inspiration Ask parents, colleagues or friends to donate a variety of appropriate magazines. Students Define Pain Points 10x10x10 2. 3. 4.
Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher by Terry Heick Surviving as a teacher isn’t easy. Between the sheer work load, diversity of tasks, brutal pace, and seemingly divergent initiatives pulling you in a thousand directions, education can break even the most noble spirits. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Below are ten tips to keep you ticking when things get tough. 1. 2. 3. 4. If you have to move mountains to extract and implement data you’re going to fail. 5. Be yourself, not “a teacher.” Make trying new things a habit. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Only it’s not. Whether you view your job as taskmaster, inspirer of lifelong learning, or somewhere in between, your job is to bring learners to content. To survive as a teacher, you have to constantly find ways to make content fresh, exciting, and literally life-altering. And that’s teaching in a nutshell.
Design Thinking – John Spencer Every day, I ask my kids, “What did you make in school today?” Too often, they can’t give me an answer. But on the days that they do, their eyes light up and they passionately describe their projects. It’s in those moments that I am reminded that making is magic. I want to see schools transform into bastions of creativity and wonder. But here’s the thing: this is hard to pull off. This is what I love about design thinking. This is why A.J. Every Child Is a Maker I believe that every classroom should be filled with creativity and wonder. I realize that school can be busy. We can do better. I am convinced that creative thinking is as vital as math or reading or writing. I believe all students deserve the opportunity to be their best creative selves, both in and out of school. I have a crazy belief that all people are naturally creative. What Is Design Thinking? The term “design thinking” is often attached to maker spaces and STEM labs. Isn’t that what we want for our students? A.J. 1. 2. 3.
How-to Remain Relevant in Higher Ed with ‘Active Learning’ Active learning…. the topic frequently polarizes faculty. Active learning has attracted strong advocates … looking for alternatives to traditional teaching methods, while skeptical faculty regard active learning as another in a long line of educational fads.” (Prince, 2004) Is active learning a fad? What is Active Learning? Yet the lecture method is proving to be problematic in today’s digital culture. When using active learning students are engaged in more activities than just listening. The words, ‘involved’ and ‘problem solving’ are worthy of emphasis; active learning is not busy work, but is purposeful instruction that guides students towards learning outcomes. These findings are consistent with Harvard’s Professor Eric Mazur, a pioneer of active learning who developed a method called Peer Instruction. Active Learning in Higher Ed Before examining instructional techniques, we need to define the role that lecture plays in active learning. IndividualCollaborationCooperative Resources:
How to Apply Design Thinking in Class, Step By Step By Anne Stevens For educators ready to try the idea of design thinking, you’ll be glad to know it does not require extensive transformation of your classroom. That said, it can be a transformative experience for all involved. Can my classroom become a space of possibility? For students, the best classroom experience is a space of possibility. It can be challenging to transition a traditional classroom into a space of possibility. But in a classroom that is a space of possibility, the students have agency, and the products and processes can be moving targets. Can I run a design thinking classroom on Tuesdays from 1-3pm? You can run a flexible studio space in your classroom for a certain part of the day. I am not a designer. The first place to seek the curriculum is in your classroom’s daily activities. How much time do I need? I am not an artist. Most professional designers work with simple materials in the design process, and kids should too. The instructor is facilitator.
Students as Teachers – Designers of Weekly Activities Start this month by discussing with students your Do Now questions and make explicit your daily goals. Shift the responsibility to your students while supporting them as they create the check-in activity. Goals Start class with an engaging activity.Empower students to design, evaluate and reflect about a student check-in activity.Foster a more collaborative student centered classroom. Activity Plan: Students as Designers Organize your class into pairs, then assign each group a week and topic during the fall term. What are Do Nows? Since your last class there have been numerous opportunities for students to improve their understanding or make false connections and lose track of where you left off. So how do you gauge what your students understand at minute zero of class? As students trickle into class have them log into your Socrative room and engage in an entrance activity of two to three questions. Examples Do Now activities:
An Exercise in Design Thinking: Step 1: Discovery Browsing the “printable backpacking checklist” search results, I ran into two common themes: They’re either all super rigid, bloated and overly exhaustive, or they’re not actually printable. For example, many are weighed down with various bright colors/artwork (increased ink usage) or they’re not formatted to print in any sort of logical/economical way. The top Google result features a tiny text link to a downloadable PDF, but you’d have to adhere to one person’s specific packing ideology, i.e. a somehow vague, yet specific “2/2.5 lbs of food per day”. The second result I found gets pretty close to the content I would be looking for (complete with a Papyrus header), but the only way to print is to download an “ms word” document. Addressing the Problems: Taking a page from IDEO’s Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, I framed out my design challenge. Considering My Packing Method: Step 2: Content Creating the actual List (component 1.) Thoughts on Nutrition: Step 4: Design
Seeing Students As Co-Collaborators The traditional model of education is hierarchal, with organizations and administrators of learning on top and students and their families receiving the learning somewhere below. While this made sense in the past when public education–inclusive systems of public education at that—were still finding their way, there is little excuse for such a workflow as we approach 2013. Embedded in this simple pattern are troubling implications that sabotage learning processes from the beginning. In informal and as they occur learning circumstances, the concept of power and currency is highly dynamic, constantly shifting based on context. In these situations, you are constantly evaluating information and re-contextualizing it—understanding what you hear or read, and seeing how it makes sense to the specifics of your situation. In formal learning settings, this is all turned on its head. Collaboration, when it occurs, is “lateral”—that is, from teacher to teacher. Evidence of Collaboration Conclusion
Design Thinking – The New Innovation Strategy – Leader In U Today we are living and doing business in complex modern technology driven environment. There are various types of complexities, in different forms and faces, and in this volatile environment, business need to experiment with different approaches to thrive. They not only need to understand the complex technologies but also make sense to start using the same for their benefit. We are seeing a massive transformation across the business world – where they are applying the principles of design to the way people work. They are investing in design to get to the top of the trend to deliver more value to their customers. How Design is playing a critical role in modern business environment? Although Design is most often used to describe an object or end result, Design in its most effective form is a process, an action, a verb not a noun. Have you seen your newspaper? Let’s talk little more about the foundation of Design Thinking: Integrate your thinking – think ‘HOW’ Be ready for some bumps
Top 10 Posts of 2012: Deep, Meaningful and Creative Learning Flickr: CriCristina It may come as no surprise that the ideas that are top-of-mind for educators, parents, and policymakers are the very topics conveyed in the most popular MindShift posts this year. Giving kids the tools to create, teachers the freedom to innovate, making students’ work relevant in the real world, giving them access to valuable technology. Being able to use the Internet and operate computers is one thing, but it may be just as valuable to teach students how to code. So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. The conversation in education has shifted towards outcomes and training kids for jobs of the future, and in many ways the traditional classroom has become obsolete. Can creativity be taught? At its core, the issues associated with mobile learning get to the very fundamentals of what happens in class everyday. Related
50 Questions To Help Students Think About What They Think - TeachThought contributed by Lisa Chesser Using the right questions creates powerful, sometimes multiple answers and discussions. Aristotle said that he asked questions in response to other people’s views, while Socrates focused on disciplined questioning to get to the truth of the matter. Ultimately questions spark imagination, conjure emotions, and create more questions. If students are the ones gathering that information then they’re the ones learning it and student-driven learning cements lessons into the students’ minds making any lesson more powerful with this strategy. The questions are unrestricted and open the mind up to unfettered thought, perfect for innovation and understanding. See also our 28 Critical Thinking Question Stems For Classroom Use Logical Questions Within the realm of mathematics, there are certain types of questions that build up to those aha moments or topple barriers. The addition of philosophical questioning to mathematics enhances critical thinking in every learner. 1. 2.