Striving for Imaginative Learning

You give up something, for everything you gain.
Just as every pleasure, has its edge of pain.
You pay your ticket, and don't complain.
- Bob Dylan

One of my goals for this year was to provide as many technical "opportunities" for my students, especially with respect to handing in their work.

To often, I feel that today's "modern" educators are still stuck in the same old mentality: Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. Although I agree, these skills are the main building blocks around which our system was set up hundreds of years ago, things are moving much faster these days. Thus, I salute Beth Knittle's thoughts on creating a more significant (and interpretive!) set of goals or a mission statement, but in the mean time, think about it for your own classroom.

Most students are smart enough to figure out that we are simply changing the windrow dressings. But that's ok, learning on any level still involves some kind of "pain" or what I like to call "effort." Too often I get kids who are excited by the computers in my room at first, but after a while, they realize that they are having to research and (God forbid!) actually read what some websites say! Shocking. But defiant children are all part of it, what you have to do is read how they are communicating with you. Maybe the student in question is embarassed about their reading skills, who knows, what's important is having a plan B.

My latest thing is getting some of my "continuously moving" kids to record their journal entries into E-Pearl or onto Audacity. I feel kind of sly when I do things like that, because suddenly I have them Edupunking their way around a new program, and they start learning without even realizing it.

As the year moves along, I find I am narrowing my scope in terms of what I'm looking for, and it is not the same old Power Point presentations. Instead, I notice I'm pushing outright IMAGINATION, regardless of the tool they use. You'd think we were back in pre-school! But that's the reality. Orginal though - presented through original work. Few jump at the opportunity, but the ones who do not only impress you as a teacher, they force you to think up new ways to push them...

Like Richard Mondoux - Here is what he presented to the class for his Career Exploration:



Absolutely brilliant.