#pw12 Tell Stories ... (design thinking 4 of 12)

Image by dkuropatwa via Flickr ... about what you learned over the last three weeks.

Over the last three weeks you:

• decided on something you wanted your students more engaged in learning and thought about the second-order concepts they'll need to understand.

• listened in and (hopefully) participated in some passionate conversations with other teachers on twitter or blogs who want the same things for their students. Maybe you even had a good book suggested to you. (You got 5000 points if you read it!)

• searched for analogies to describe what people do and feel when they're engaged in learning something.

That completes the first of the five phases of Design; Discovery. Now we begin phase two; Interpretation.

Finding meaningful insights you can turn into actions is hard work. We'll take it in steps.

What was the most interesting conversation you heard or had yourself? What was most memorable? surprising?

What did people most care about? What motivated them? What frustrated them?

Did anything interesting come up about their environment or the context in which they teach?

Do you have any unanswered questions?

Recount the tale of one or more of these things. You know how when you come home at the end of the day you tell your family what happened at work? Or how you tell stories over coffee at work about things that happened to you yesterday? Tell a tale or two like that. And share it with someone. The more stories you can tell the better. Next week we'll dig into these stories and search for meaningful themes and insights.

You get 1000 points for each story you tell; to anyone. More storytelling is better; we learn best through stories. I know you're honest about keeping track. ;-)

Please share one or two of the stories you came up with this week in a tweet, a blog post, or leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators, 4.2.)

#pw11 Think of analogies ... (design thinking 3 of 12)

Image by Daves Portfolio via Flickr
... for what an engaged learner does, feels, or sounds like.

You've spent a week listening in on passionate conversations that may have started on twitter and hopefully extended into meatier blog posts or books about the things in which you want your students to be deeply engaged. List all the activities, emotions, and behaviours that engaged learners in your discipline display; at least one of each.

Now, for each activity, emotion, or behaviour on your list briefly describe a situation outside of school where you might see that come up. For example if the activity you saw was people engaged in deep conversation you might see the same thing happen among a group of friends at a coffee shop. If you saw people excitedly discussing something, another place people might be excited is on a roller coaster. If the behaviour you noticed was people sharing personal experiences you might see the same thing happen when a grandparent looks through old pictures with their grandchildren.

You're looking for a few good analogies connected to the engagement you hope to develop in your students. Next week we'll weave these into narratives that may help us figure out how to engage our students more deeply in "________", you filled in the blank.

Make a point of sharing your search for analogies with people you've been engaged with on twitter or blogs this past week. They'll probably come up with a few good ideas you may not have thought of on your own.

Please share one or two of the best analogies you came up with this week in a tweet, a blog post, or leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators, 3.7.)

#pw10 Fuel your ideas with inspiration ... (design thinking 2 of 12)

Image by dkuropatwa via FlickrGet inspired by talking to people who are passionate about the same things you are. You've got something you want to improve, people who share your passions probably want to do the same.

How do you "plan activities to learn from multiple peoples’ perspectives and explore unfamiliar contexts"?

You might "spend more time with a select group of people rather than trying to meet many. It will likely help you learn more." (quote source: see below)

Here's one way to get started:

Step 1: If you don't have one already, get a twitter account.

Step 2: Follow people who teach, or have interests similar to you. Scan through the list of teachers on twitter here or there or in this Google doc. Follow as many as you like. More is good.

Step 3: There are regular "meetings" on twitter of educators (and all sorts of other professionals) discussing how to better do what they do. These meetings are called "twitter chats." You can scan through this fairly comprehensive list of these chats listing the dates and times they "meet" in twitter. Start by lurking. If you really want some inspiration and help getting better at what you do share your opinions and ask questions. (You get 500 points for every opinion you share or question you ask on twitter!) Here are some education related chats to get you started:

#edchat #EdNewsChat #elemchat #engchat #kidlitart #kidlitchat #kinderchat

#LangChat #libchat #litchat #lrnchat #mathchat #musedchat

#ntchat #schoolgardenchat #schoolschat #scichat #sschat #UKedchat

By the end of this week, you can consider yourself an advanced player and take an additional 1000 points each time you:

• make a targeted twitter list.
• add an educational blog to read in your reader.
• get suggested articles/books to read by asking on twitter or leaving comments on the blogs posts you've read.
• many bloggers have a "what I'm reading" section in the sidebar of their blogs, look for those and ask for more info about those articles/books on twitter or in the comments of the blogs you're reading.

Buying a suggested book to read is worth 1000 points, actually reading it is worth 4000 bonus points!

Please share one or two of the best ideas you learned this week in a tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

If you bought or read a book let us know that too! (I'm always looking for good book suggestions. ;-) )

This week we're focused on collecting as many different ideas as we can, we'll dig into this a little more deeply next week and focus our learning a little more; make it more personal and 1 on 1.

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators.)

#pw9 How might we ... (design thinking 1 of 12)

Image via Wikipedia"How might we engage students more deeply in ..."

Finish that sentence with any word you like; something to challenge yourself; something that might help you grow as a teacher.

Some possibilities: reading, mathematical thinking, the scientific method, writing, multiliterate expression, critical thinking, understanding bias, media literacy, etc.

Think about the second order principles of the discipline you teach;  use one of those to fill in the blank above. (Examples of second-order concepts in the study of history can be found here and there.)

Spend some time this week thinking about and jotting down one or two second-order concepts, or organizing principles, of the content area(s) you teach. Do you think a focus on these "big ideas" might make for more powerful learning for your students or maybe give them a way to begin thinking about their learning more deeply?

How might you incorporate these ideas into your lessons in the coming school year?

Does thinking about these second-order concepts help you understand your content more deeply?

Is there a course you teach that doesn't have any second-order concepts that underpins the content?

Please share your list of one or two ideas in a tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogy

If you can think of a discipline that has no second-order concepts (SoC) please share that too!

If all this turns out to be hard, don't worry, we'll dig into this a little more deeply next week.  Start by thinking about this on your own. We'll figure out how to get help from other people next week.

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators.)

Design Thinking For Educators

Image via WikipediaStarting tomorrow begins a series of 12 posts inspired by the Design Thinking for Educators toolkit.

We'll start by deciding on one thing we want to do differently to improve our teaching using a design thinking approach. If any one post seems overwhelming don't worry about it. We'll go slow, week by week, incrementally helping each other figure things out.

The first thing we'll do is pick one thing about our instructional design we want to improve. The weeks that follow will build up to how we might best make that improvement.

Along the way we'll try to get our heads around how the buzzword "design thinking" might be practically applied to our work in the classroom.

Riverdale & Ideo's Desigh Thinking toolkit for educators

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