Encouraging Teachers to Teach Creativity

by | Jun 5, 2012 | Less Teacher, More Student, Local Professional Collaboration, Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

As the person most directly responsible for our school’s professional learning, I have been wondering what professional development looks like when you turn Bloom’s on its head and ask teachers to encourage students’ creative thinking early in the learning process. Teachers need to model their own creative thinking and embrace “messy” assessments.

Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy

by | May 15, 2012 | Less Teacher, More Student, Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

I think the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is wrong. I agree that the taxonomy accurately classifies various types of cognitive thinking skills. It certainly identifies the different levels of complexity. But its organizing framework is dead wrong. Here’s what I propose. In the 21st century, we flip Bloom’s taxonomy. Rather than starting with knowledge, we start with creating, and eventually discern the knowledge that we need from it.

Teaching Poetry the Connected Way

by | May 1, 2012 | Less Teacher, More Student, Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices, Web Tools That Deepen Learning

Students use Google Docs to write their poems. They use the GDocs sharing function to share their poem documents with me and some of their classmates (if they choose). I read their poems (from anywhere at anytime), give them one specific comment, and offer one constructive suggestion to improve their poem that I hope also adds to their poetry writing repertoire. Then we share in VoiceThread to a public audience.

Why I Love Project Based Learning

by | Apr 6, 2012 | Less Teacher, More Student, Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

While some teachers may wonder about the merits of PBL, I’m sold. My high school students have learned much more in an inquiry classroom than others did when we had a traditional one. PBL allows them to have a say in what they learn and how they present their knowledge. Every semester I’m impressed by the hard work and energy my students pour into their projects. Here’s the story of our biology projects this year.

TED in My Classroom

by | Mar 16, 2012 | Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, The Teaching Life, Voices, Web Tools That Deepen Learning

Framing a lesson is important to me. I try and do this in varied ways; sometimes I’ll share a story, sometimes I’ll use a quote related to a theme, sometimes it’s a picture, and quite often it’s a short video. Something inspiring that helps my students understand its relevance to what we are learning, something that will fire those brain neurons, something that frames our lesson. Something from TED.

Creativity and Problem Solving – A 21st Century Marriage

by | Mar 14, 2012 | Passion Based Learning, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Creativity is an invaluable tool in problem solving. In a digital age where innovation is highly valued, teaching creative problem solving is essential. It seems everything I’ve been up to recently has been leading to a focus on creative problem solving. The convergence of these events has had quite an impact on my thinking and teaching.