Arts integration - Bringing Legends to Life though Drama

Lessons ideas from The Teaching Channel. Great teaching. Inspiring classrooms.
Use drama to act out a student-created legend..cute children, great teacher.

Tomorrow's Education

"Often the best technologies around the world celebrate the realities inside the classrooms in the school to push the realities and the dynamics of a personal learning journey for the student. And that's the journey we all must be on...We have got to be rooted in questions: what are we trying to do for our learners, what are we trying to inspire them to achieve in the society, how do we embrace the world of technology in a way that it empowers great teaching? And if we do that we can change the world, and students will do so".

As Vice President of Education for Microsoft Corp.’s Worldwide Public Sector organization, Anthony Salcito works with education institutions and partners globally to embrace technology to optimize learning environments and student achievement.
In this talk @ TEDxPanthéonSorbonne in Paris, he defines a new system of education, which relies on technology to improve the acquisition of knowledge. In today's world to teach and to learn have lost their past connection. Internet, new technologies and the new media have revolutionized and made accessible to all the access to knowledge, and have strongly shaken the current system of education. New methods of teaching and learning are needed to facilitate an holistic transformation of education. Interesting perspective about computer games towards the end of the talk...

Gavin DeGraw on the importance of Music

Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector, interviews Gavin DeGraw, US platinum singer, songwriter, musician and ambassador for the Microsoft Shape the Future/VH1 Save the Music program
Microsoft’s “Shape the Future” is a program aimed at helping governments invest in education technology to create jobs, drive economic growth and increase competitiveness. In the past three years, Microsoft has helped 42 countries bring technology access to over six million students, educators and families. VH1 is dedicated to restoring instrumental music education in America's public schools.
-- go to VH1 Save the music foundation

TED-Ed Clubs

Bring TED to your classroom with TED-Ed Clubs! 
TED-Ed Clubs is a new flexible, school-based program that supports students in discussing, pursuing and presenting their big ideas in the form of short TED-style talks. TED-Ed Clubs are for students ages 8 to 18, and can contain up to 50 members. An educator - who gets materials and a hands-on orientation from the TED-Ed staff - leads the club through a series of 13 meetings, designed to get students to permanently wear their thinking caps. For the first three meetings, students watch TED Talks, discuss them and begin to think: what idea most captures my imagination? From there, students learn how to frame their idea and present it in a TED-style talk. In meeting 11, students give their talks in front of the club and, in the next meeting, work on editing their video.
-- read more on dailyedventures (Anthony Salcito)
-- Learn more about TED-Ed Clubs here

Play, passion, purpose

“The world no longer cares how much you know; the world cares about what you can do with what you know.”

"The culture of schooling, as we have grown up with, is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators" 

This an excellent and inspiring talk on how can we design schools that foster innovative thinking. The speaker outlines how an overemphasis on individual achievement, hyper-specialization, and an aversion to risk have stymied inventiveness and describes what teachers and parents can do to sow the seeds of creativity.
Tony Wagner recently accepted a position as the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Prior to this, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. Tony consults widely to schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and a widely published author. He has published five books about education. He has also recently collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create a 60 minute documentary, "The Finland Phenomenon: Inside The World's Most Surprising School System."
-- video introduction of Tony Wagner
-- read more about him here
-- other 2 great talks at "A Collaborative Leadership Summit"

Build a School in the Cloud

"My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite you, wherever you are, to create your own miniature child-driven learning environments and share your discoveries".

"We need to look at learning as the product of education self organization. If we allow the educational process to self organize, then learning emerges. It is not about making learning happen, it is about letting it happen."

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England. He tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. He is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another. This a GREAT and ENTERTAINING talk, please take the time to watch.
-- visit Hole in the Wall experiments

Creativity as a Life Skill

"If all we ever did was to conform, then we wouldn't have growth, we would never try anything new"

"How often have you quickly criticized an idea only to find out later that it really worked. If you move quickly to convergence, to judge fast, you may limit your ability to see new possibilities"

"Today creativity and creative problem solving has never been more important"

"In an era of standardization and accountability in schools perhaps what we are teaching children to do is to be good conformists, instead of teaching them how to be independent thinkers"

Gerard Puccio is chair and professor of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State, a unique academic department that offers the world's only Master of Science degree in Creativity and Change Leadership. In the face of a fast changing and increasingly more complex world, many argue that creativity and innovation are crucial 21st century skills. Unfortunately schools and organizations seem to be ill equipped to promote this critical skill. Discover what you can do to reclaim and sustain this life skill.

College textbooks - online, offline, anytime

Flat World Partnerships helps college leaders make higher education more affordable and accessible for their students. Working collaboratively to drive down the cost of textbooks is a powerful way for forward-thinking institutions to improve student performance and achieve institutional goals like access and affordability. Their innovative publishing and licensing model enables college leaders to better address the needs of your institution's entire community. This is not only about transforming high-priced textbooks into more affordable learning tools, it is mainly about transforming each student's success into a shared success for everyone.
-- go to Flat World Knowledge website

Dedicated to the kids

A short video that helps students put standardized tests into perspective, dispels a few myths about testing, and draws upon personal experiences to remind kids that tests do not define them. The video also highlights some simple research-based activities that reduce test-anxiety.
-- uploaded by Kumar R. Sathy, children's book author and educator

Great Teachings. Inspiring Classrooms.

This is an extremely interesting resource, especially for teachers:
TEACHING CHANNEL - Great Teachings. Inspiring Classrooms.
We will post a couple of video clips:
The Elements of Dance: how to use dance to explore air, fire, water, and earth.
The Elements of Music: Practice reading and playing music.  
We will explore more soon.

My Teacher my Hero

This a great initiative...let's not forget about them. Teachers are the main pillars of education, role models and life mentors for our kids. My Teacher my Hero tells true stories about great teachers...
Below Arne Duncan (nominated to be Secretary of Education by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2009) tells his story:
-- browse other videos on My teacher my Hero website

2U - great universities unleashed

So what is the future of education? Let's explore new possibilities...
Founded in 2008 by a team of education and technology veterans, 2U partners with top tier colleges and universities to create the world's best online programs. Their cloud-based software-as-a-service platform allows their partners to educate and engage students globally. 2U’s dynamic course content, blended experiences and live face-to-face classes offer students around the world the chance to achieve their highest potential. At 2U, one idea guides everything they do: No Back Row. Blending live online classes, dynamic course content and real-world experiences, their approach gives students the opportunity to realize their full potential. They work with our university partners to ensure every student can experience the best possible education for the brightest possible future.
-- 2U website
-- Chip Paucek's blog (2U’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer)



They seem to be quite fun too :)

Leading a Learning Revolution

"It is important not to think of educational change as linear or monolithic...No social change is linear, you can plan industrial processes that are linear...but as soon as you get feelings involved, as soon as you get people involved, as soon as you engage with the culture, as soon as you involve aspirations and hopes, and anxieties and uncertainties, and different ways of seeing the world, as soon as you are talking of social change it is never linear, never. It's unpredictable and it's dynamic. And this is both a challenge and also our opportunity."

"Everything we know about teaching and learning is focused on the idea that we achieve best when our expectations are raised, and we are encouraged and supported. If we are branded or stereotyped people tend to play unwittingly to the stereotype..so we need forms of assessment which are descriptive and not judgemental..empowering rather than disenfranchising..focus on the complexities of learning rather than trying to reduce them to a single number or grade."

Sir Ken Robinson is an English author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education, and arts bodies.
He provides the closing statement for the LWF 12 conference under the theme "leading a learning revolution". Reforms are required for our industrial scale education systems but what forms shall they take, what will they value and what purpose shall they serve? In closing the LWF 12 conference Sir Ken Robinson reflects on what has been heard and discussed with previous speakers and offers a call to action for the delegates to look at the future with a new determination based upon the challenges that future generations face and where our education systems will need to nurture the creative innovators upon which our future well-being will be placed.
Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference, London, 26th January 2012.

The Purpose of Education

“Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?”

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.
In the video clip below he discusses the purpose of education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a cost or an investment and the value of standardised assessment.
First, Chomsky defines his view of education in an Enlightenment sense, in which the “highest goal in life is to inquire and create". Then he moves on to define the opposing concept of education as indoctrination. Under this model, “People have the idea that, from childhood, young people have to be placed into a framework where they’re going to follow orders. This is often quite explicit.” According to him, this model of education imposes “a debt which traps students, young people, into a life of conformity. That’s the exact opposite of what traditionally comes out of the Enlightenment.”
Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference - Jan 25th 2012- London (LWF 12).
-- read more HERE

A crash course in creativity

"The way you ask the question determines the type of answers you get...if you don't ask the question in a thoughtful way, you are not going to get really interesting answers" 

Dr. Tina Seelig is Professor of the Practice in the Dept of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) at Stanford University. She is also the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering. She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the dept of MS&E and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford.
This is an enthusiastic talk about creativity.

Hard Fun: Transforming Education Through the Arts

The Arts Education In Maryland Schools Alliance (AEMS) participated in the production and distribution of the Hard Fun: Transforming Education Through the Arts advocacy DVD. AEMS has presented the video to over 5000 individuals including legislators, principals, supervisors, educators, teaching artists, arts organizations etc. AEMS presentations of Hard Fun have been included in state, national and international conferences, summits, workshops, meetings, and professional development sessions. The production and distribution of this video was funded by the Alvin and Louise Myerberg Family Foundation.

The Current Dis-Educational System

"We don't need to cram data into people's head, what this society desperately needs is wisdom, is wise choices, and we teach people to memorize but we don't even teach them how to memorize"

Wyatt Woodsmall is the founder and President of Advanced Behavioral Modeling Inc, a training and consulting firm committed to dramatically increasing the performance of organizations and individuals through the use of advanced behavioral and learning technologies. Wyatt is an expert modeler, business consultant and trainer.
Quite a passionate talk...good points... (video originally uploaded by TEDx but with bad microphone quality so got fixed in the video below)

The Freedom to Learn

"Ideally the healthiest learning environment is challenging, it's engaging, it's relevant, meaning the learning is relevant to the learner, it' supportive, and it's experiencial"

"..the things they (students) are evaluated on are those skills that community has decided are the skills of free people: communication, collaboration, curiosity and wonder, leadership, self awareness, creativity, critical thinking" (talking about model schools) 

"What it means to be FREE is to discover one's full worth and to have the skills to unleash one's full potential on the world... Democracy is less about the what of the past and more about then who, about the unique individual, about having the skills and self confidence of discovering our unique voice and unleash that voice on the world"

Sam Chaltain is a DC-­‐based writer, educator and organizational change consultant. He works with schools, school districts, and public and private sector companies to help them create healthy, high-­‐functioning learning environments. Previously, Sam was the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy, an education advocacy organization. He was also the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-­‐12 principals create more democratic learning communities. Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-­director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public and private school systems of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam's writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today.
GREAT TALK, worth watching -- please listen to it.

Teaching through the Prism of Arts Integration

Experience the power of art integration—the blending of art and other subject areas—and see how learning comes to life. In Teaching through the Prism of Arts Integration: Teach with O'Keeffe, hear from teachers, students, and administrators from New York to New Mexico on the impact of art linked to learning in The Phillips Collection's educational initiatives.

"The Fourth Purpose"

We just discovered a documentary series called "The Fourth Purpose",  based on John Taylor Gatto's books and ideas. We have not been able to find out if this documentary has ever been made but it is still a very interesting idea.
From the website: "The work of this film will not be to uncover some vast conspiracy at work for the past century and a half, consisting of industrialists, twisted utopians, and phrenologists. Much more to the point, we hope the viewer will be compelled to look at the evidence of the persistent dumbing down of our children and ask: Is it simply bureaucratic dysfunction that has caused this or have there been other dynamics, other forces, trends and tendencies that have produced these appalling results? If so, what might they have been? The urgency of our young utopian visionaries to create a more perfect and perfectible society? The needs of our juggernaut economy to absorb a docile and tractable workforce along with its complementary requirement of a vast army of compliant consumers?"
Eddie Martinez is Bronx-bred Puerto Rican filmmaker. After slipping out of high school he studied film at the SUNY Purchase film program. He graduated and worked on a bunch of movies, of which one went to Sundance and another to Tribeca. A year after graduating, he got his masters in education policy and theory at the Harvard Grad School of Education. He just finished a feature documentary called To Be Heard (about 3 teenage poets growing up in the Bronx) that currently airing on PBS.
-- go to Eddie's website
-- go to "The Fourth Purpose" website

Please take the time to watch this DEMO by clicking HERE or on the screenshot below

Please take time to watch the DEMO.