The Fresh Classroom by @PaulKelba

                                                                                                                                                             A combination of technology with experiential education, promoting advancements in holistic (whole student) knowledge. Advancing Holistic Knowledge? "Reeling in the widening gap between life and learning” New platforms such as Coursekit  will become global leaders in innovative digital spaces for students compared to current awkward localized ones. Joseph Cohen, Coursekit's co-founder states: “Our education experience is truly offline,” he said. “We want to build what Facebook has done for your personal life, but for your school.” Combining the power of digital tools that overwhelmingly  empower students with a trusted culture of experiential/stewardship education directly has supported academic, physical, personal, and social development. In other words, programs such as work experience, outdoor education &am

This past month, I happily organized a 'Team Building' unit with various ages of students at a middle school. Team building structured activities or  'Adventure Activities' , when delivered by practitioners comfortable with delivery and reflection, have proven year after year a highlight for students, leading to extremely powerful possibilities to transfer the experience beyond the activity. Something was different this year... As the students joyfully navigated through a challenge (working to a particular goal such as weaving through a web of rope or moving the group to a large mat on the floor) I noticed an increased air of impusivity and extreme lack of patience compared to any of the years past. Keeping the variables in mind; such as an off day, time of the day, group size, transitions, and delivery, I then recorded the specific behaviours in a journal on different days with the various grades. The simple summary below notes the differences of students in 2

 21 st Century Learners Need More Soul: “The most stunning change for adolescents today is their aloneness. The adolescents of [today] are more isolated and more unsupervised than other generations ... not because they come from parents who don't care, schools that don't care, or a community that doesn't value them, but rather because there hasn't been time for adults to lead them through the process of growing up.” Patricia Hersch The focus of The Fresh Classroom is more about good teaching, wherever it takes place, not solely 'place-based'. Real Learning advocate Marc Prensky reminds us "we can increase our students' learning most if we think of technology as a way to vastly improve the teacher-student interactions that go on inside our classrooms". Something is in the air that has lead me to this accusation that 21 st century learners to ‘need more soul’. The gap of healthy student to teacher relationships has widened an