Weekly Blog Post #6

February 20, 2018

Another week, another presenter. With this presentation a teacher from Flin Flon School Division, Daniel Dillon, joined our class through video to discuss with us some of the practices that he uses. The main focus of this presentation is how he and the other staff members bring in digital tools to assist them with their teaching, with a special emphasis on project based learning. It should be noted before going much farther though, that these tools are not meant to be a replacement for strong pedagogy and teaching practices but a way to push the boundaries for the students to enhance their learning potential.

In his classroom, Daniel Dillon has adopted this idea of Big Picture Learning and Project Based Learning to enable his students to bring some of their own passions into the classroom. To get a better sense of where the inspiration for Daniel Dillon came from, watch the TEDx video below from Kevin Brookhouser about his 20 Percent Time Project, since he allows 20% of the students time (or one of the five school days) to work on whatever they want. This also has been known as a Passion Hour project in other areas. Students are tasked with fitting these passions into the curriculum of whichever class they are in, and students are asked to share their ideas and end projects with the larger community. Through these projects, students are authentically tasked with learning something new or creating something that serves a greater purpose in the grand scheme of things. Daniel Dillon was able to share some examples of some of the projects that he had been a part of and that were being completed in the community, which I thought were really quite remarkable. It really seemed like the students could go great places with some of their ideas, and develop skills and legacies that can last them a lifetime. Even bad ideas could lend themselves to some valuable learning opportunities for the students without even initially realizing it.

 

                                           Kevin Brookhouser - Don't Call it a Classroom
                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqG-bppvW7k

The second part of the presentation which was shared with us was around the idea of using Virtual Reality as another tool to help classroom teachers. It doesn't come as much of a surprise to hear, but being able to use a tool such as this would definitely help with student engagement. Although my experience with VR is still somewhat limited, being able to become fully immersed with anything such as this would only add to the excitement and level of learning for the students. If this is something that interests you, and that the school you are in has the funding and VR headsets available for you to use, the website SteamVR has plenty of great apps and programs to check out. It really is quite remarkable to experience VR if you haven't ever before.

In closing, I just wanted to speak about the implications of having students take the initiative and working through these Big Idea Projects. There is value in trying something new, and figuring it out as you go. Getting students to realize that having difficulties and possibly even failing at something before getting to the their desired end goal, if even, is just part of the overall process. Getting students to practice being resilient is a skill that they need to work on that will help them later in life. Reflecting on the process as they move through it helps them as well, and is another skill that they need to develop. The great part of these projects though, is how naturally they lend themselves for being authentic and how they can be developed with a purpose in mind. It gives them autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which fosters creativity and motivation, according the YouTube video above. For myself, if I am able to incorporate some Big Idea Projects or make use of VR to assist in lessons, I definitely think that I will.

-B