The Fresh Classroom by @PaulKelba

"Moral and intellectual courage only comes from experience" J. Darling I just read a piece about 2 and 3 year olds cooking over a fire. Author Emma Conder summarized the essence of experiential education in one picture and about four paragraphs. 'Sam with his damper bread' Emma Conder The simplicity of this strikes me. Yup, it's all there, the process of understanding, information transfer. The concrete experience and reflection stage is occurring simultaneously, this child is no doubt set for success to conceptualize this in the near future. Ms. Conder calls it 'ignighting minds'.  Makes one curious how large school districts embrace this and at older ages. 'Bushcraft' and outdoor education experiences (most importantly overnight ones) almost entirely remain as extra-curricular activities and appear as enhancements to a schools program. If a school/districts vision revolves around interacting with experiences and buildi...

One of the latest project-based challenges we faced in our grade 8 & 9 classroom was designing and constructing a safe and beautiful stage set for our (public) school's (k to 9) younger students holiday concert. Made helpful by both our district and province mandating 'competency focussed learning ' and made into reality through developing an effective PLN. Right:  One of the Grade 8 groups developing prototypes to answer the challenge: "With the area of 5 sheets of plywood, you must create a set that has 4 houses and can safely hold students 'on top of them'" I jumped at the opportunity when our school's music teacher asked our staff team for some help, I knew it was risky putting students in charge of a project that not only the entire school and staff  would see, countless parents would as well.  The doubts were many: Would the students fail to take ownership of this ? Was the task too advanced for the age group to create something l...

Figure  A & B .  Re-Imagining Dewey fro the 21st Century , by  John Seely Brown ,  Year ,  Retrieved from   http://www.johnseelybrown.com/ A few excerpts from the latest grant proposal: Tell us about your school and the role technology currently plays in the classroom and learning experiences of the students. (max 500 words) At Louis Riel School, we are a public school within the Calgary Board of Education with a theme ‘the science of learning’. As our principal constantly reminds us: “we are not a bunch of students in lab coats, with beakers, following instructions” such as experiments where you add this chemical, measure this arc. We have embraced the vision of experimentation in the ‘ makerspace movement’, one that is inquiry-based, learner-driven, it is cross-disciplinary and as such undisciplined in an engaged and powerful way. We seek methods for students to play and build and hack and make. Of course we do. We're human. The Ma...

"Awakening people to the marvels and mysteries of daily life they are missing-increasing their perception by holding on to the childlike qualities of bubbling effervescent joy at being alive;  their marvelous ability to totally immerse themselves in the moment, to lose track of time and space and just merge with the flow of life ; their insatiable curiosity and sense of wonder about everything around them".  Steve Van Matre How do we truly deepen students’s relationship with their community and their local natural world?  We are in week 5 walking the community twice a week as a class (many curricular 'field studies' outcomes achieved; however, the focal outcome is always positive experiences outside of the classroom). Next week we pose specific questions, in hopes dynamic relations are formed using mindful questioning with a sustainable lens: How is everything interconnected? Should you care about others and/or ...

One of the roles I have this school year is to succeed in selling (can't think of a better word for it) our districts, commonly misunderstood, project-based learning program. Here are just a few key resources I use to articulate 'CTF' to students, parents, staff AND myself. Inappropriate assignments turn into 'projects' just by students being assigned weeks/months for completion and proper project-based learning (no specific method) is branded a free for all (my most recent criticism). A student whose project is substantial, share-able, and personally meaningful is the ticket. A very incomplete list: Ten Things I've Learned Learned Going Project-Based  :the best, most simple articulation of projects in the classroom by the insightful teacher, Jon Spencer Amy Meyer nails it by separating out 'doing projects' A comprehensive framework connecting projects to learning locally and Community AS Classroom  by Learning for a Sustainable Future. ...

I spent a week with   @garystager  and a crew of passionate educators at  Constructing Modern Knowledge . Most takeaways were as expected: project collaboration, chats with high minded ed-reformers, scientists and intellectual giants, as well as witnessing the anti-disciplinary culture of the Media Lab  of the Massachusetts of Technology. However, the moment that made the week invaluable was when the educational workshop was interrupted by a jazz performance. At first it appeared Stager was imposing his obvious affinity of jazz music onto his participants for a welcome break to the project-based dialogue taking over the week. The couple hundred of us sat down for a few songs by jazz masters Jimmy Heath and Emmet Cohen and the tunes they played were just that, a pleasant escape from our work...but then everything reached a new level. You see, in conversation with the audience after the performance, Heath (86 years young) was asked by the crowd of technology ent...

Slideshare of the Paul Kelba session at the ISTE 2013 What's Your ECOpedagogy?-Paul Kelba from pekelba ..if this link does not embed it is also here