{"id":9,"date":"2013-07-03T20:05:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T03:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/?p=9"},"modified":"2013-07-04T10:40:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T17:40:39","slug":"why-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/2013\/07\/03\/why-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Why School?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Richardson’s\u00a0Why School?\u00a0<\/em>was a great read. It managed to be thought provoking and inspiring at the same time as being overwhelming and scary. It did, however, spark some great discussion during class. While I always have lots going on in my head, I sometimes tend to be the student that sits back and let’s the others take over. Today though, I couldn’t help but contribute wholeheartedly throughout our discussion. <\/p>\n

Our group was discussing Richardson’s main points in writing the book. We discussed both their merits and downfalls. For example, the teacher that handed his students a PLO and asked them how they wanted to learn about it. I can just imagine the great discussions and inspirations that could come from this type of self-directed learning. But, we considered, students need to be at a certain point academically already to participate in this type of learning. They can’t do their own inquiry based research project without some sort of firm knowledge base in reading, writing, etc. Or can they? Richardson’s got my head spinning here (in an absolute good way). <\/p>\n

A couple of years ago I volunteered at a very small independent school in Vancouver. The tiny student population (8 at the time I think) was each working on their own unique and very interesting project – chosen of course by them. A couple of girls were working on a community fundraising initiative by selling handmade items. It was great – what a positive way to learn about community, empathy, and being proactive. It is with skills like this that our future citizens can help repair the shape of our earth. With community and student directed learning perhaps students will learn to foster a better sense of ownership over their learning, and therefore over their home and Mother Nature. Maybe? Hopefully. <\/p>\n

But I digress. The point I was aiming to get to a while back was Richardson’s quote from the founder of High Tech High: “we have to stop delivering the curriculum to kids. We have to start discovering it with them.” He follows with “I wrote that down.” Me too, Will, me too. I love learning and am always thirsty for new knowledge and new learning experiences. I love learning right along with my students, so I found this quote exciting and hopeful. <\/p>\n

If you haven’t done so already, check out the Ken Robinson videos discussed in our group post from today. <\/p>\n

One of my teachers last summer compared us to lemmings, all of us about to blindly jump into the unknown together with the changes to teaching and teacher-librarian-ing taking place right now, especially when it comes to technology. So lets trust each other. Here we go!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Richardson’s\u00a0Why School?\u00a0was a great read. It managed to be thought provoking and inspiring at the same time as being overwhelming and scary. It did, however, spark some great discussion during class. While I always have lots going on in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[763173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assignment-1-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mosleykate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}