This little paper was prepared as part of the Alberta Distance Education Review. All rights belong to Carbol and Associates and Alberta Education.
Using A Challenge Driven Innovation Approach and Design Based Thinking
CDI and DBR
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Author Archives: Susan
Angela
Thanks to Angela for compiling a few vertical garden options for our consideration.
More and more on the vertical garden
More on the vertical garden
Vertical Garden
Thanks to our great students and colleagues, we’re well on our way to designing and implementing a vertical garden for the ILC. This addition to the ILC brings together elements of design (txs Serveh), trades (txs Rick), air quality, learning environments, belongingness (txs Angela), and curricular ties …
These images are from a facinating resturant in Cape Town, South Africa. Check out their site on urban farming – http://www.moyo.co.za/restaurant-moyo-va-waterfront/aquaponics.aspx
Maker Links
Little bits
This is way too cool …
littleBits is an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun.
littleBits (spelled lower case L, upper case B, all one word) consists of tiny circuit-boards with specific functions engineered to snap together with magnets. No soldering, no wiring, no programming, just snap together for prototyping, learning and fun. Each bit has a specific function (light, sound, sensors, buttons, thresholds, pulse, motors, etc), and modules snap to make larger circuits. Just as LEGO™ allows you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits are small, simple, intuitive, blocks that make creating with sophisticated electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together.
Crave creativity? Make something! Light it, push it, turn it, twist it, bend it, buzz it, blink it, shake it…
With a growing number of available modules, littleBits aims to move electronics from late stages of the design process to its earliest ones, and from the hands of experts, to those of artists, makers, students and designers.
To see what you can make, check out community.
To come up with your own Bits, check out dreamBits.
For education, press and distributor inquiries, contact us.
http://littlebits.com/momastore
http://littlebits.com/
Harvard’s Innovative site
Inspired teaching
Our Mission
Center for Inspired Teaching is building a better school experience for children through innovative teacher training.
Our Model
Central to Inspired Teaching’s professional development is a process that encourages teachers to rethink their role. We’re committed to ending the practice of “delivering” professional development to teachers. We’re working toward making teachers full collaborators in school improvement and reform strategies.
• • •
Inspired Teaching’s professional development model is supported by evidence-based research about how people learn. Our programs are based in best practices in teacher education and in the belief that every student possesses the ability to think critically, understand information, and solve complex problems. Inspired Teachers are Instigators of Thought who teach students how to think, not what to think. Inspired Teachers engage students in the Wonder-Experiment-Learn cycle and embrace the 5 Core Elements of Inspired Teaching and the 4 I’s: Intellect, Inquiry, Imagination, and Integrity.
Challenging contexts
Teachers working in challenging contexts face even a more daunting task. Crichton and Onguko (2013) define challenging contexts as settings in which individuals, due to a variety of circumstances, conditions or environmental constraints, do not have
- Access to consistently available and affordable electricity
- Access to reliable, unfiltered or uncensored Internet
- Access to previous formal learning and / or opportunities for ongoing formal learning that support individual learning needs
- Access to non-formal, yet appropriate learning opportunities
- Access to or participation in learning activities due to cultural or religious reasons
- Access to transportation and mobility
- Access to prior learning
- Other access situations linked directly to poverty (health, fees, low wages, inappropriate clothing, etc.).
That list is not exhaustive, and thanks to the contribution of educators in Mombasa, Kenya[1], additions have been made, including
- Access to clean water and adequate sanitation
- Access to fair and just leadership
- Access to adequate nutrition and safe food supply
- Access to a safe environment free from hostilities and violence
- Access to support for the disabled.
The conditions identified above are, unfortunately, all too commonly experienced in many parts of the world today. They require initiatives that first recognize the constraints and then attempt to ameliorate them by providing simple solutions that minimally disrupt the learners’ lives.
[1] The author shared the initial list with students in a certificate course offered by Aga Khan University, Institute of Educational Development, East Africa. Students were then asked to brainstorm conditions / constraints that should be added.