There’s been a growing amount of attention on the concept of “Hacking Education” For some, the term hacking conjures up negative thoughts – like unauthorized connection to someone else’s computer or network. However, on the positive side, hacking also refers to having enough energy or sustained interest to deal with something. To help me get a better handle on this concept and understand the potential for changing educational practices, I attended the Philly stop on Steve Hargadon’s "Hack Your Education" City-by-City Tour.
On Friday night, we framed our discussion around Experiences, Lessons and Strategies for meaningful learning. This rich conversation led to the importance of: Passions-carving out time to following our interests without external expectations; Habitudes-combining our attitudes toward learning with habits of risk taking, endurance, personal forgiveness for mistakes, and production/accomplishment of getting things done; Resources-finding the tools, identifying individuals and making connections that work for our continual learning.
On Saturday we looked at the tools that help us curate our work, our interests/hobbies and ourselves. It important to have one place on the web to collect everything we've done so people can find out more about us. The creation of a Personal Learning Website is an opportunity to ask ourselves what we have done and what we have to give. Creating our own brand is a gift for helping others. Steve mentioned that in the near future there would be room for people who are personal brand coaches.
For a chunk of the afternoon, we spent time creating a website using Weebly for our PLN and/or as a tool for our classes and students. Weebly is user-friendly, intuitive, and with the drag and drop options, a professional looking website is created and published rather quickly. Today’s technological tools and mobile devices offer many new opportunities to support learning at all levels. Good pedagogy is good pedagogy with or without technology. But with the intersection of both, we have potential for creating spaces for engagement, production, and sharing that will put our students and us on the path to life-long learning,
Thoughts to keep pondering
On Friday night, we framed our discussion around Experiences, Lessons and Strategies for meaningful learning. This rich conversation led to the importance of: Passions-carving out time to following our interests without external expectations; Habitudes-combining our attitudes toward learning with habits of risk taking, endurance, personal forgiveness for mistakes, and production/accomplishment of getting things done; Resources-finding the tools, identifying individuals and making connections that work for our continual learning.
On Saturday we looked at the tools that help us curate our work, our interests/hobbies and ourselves. It important to have one place on the web to collect everything we've done so people can find out more about us. The creation of a Personal Learning Website is an opportunity to ask ourselves what we have done and what we have to give. Creating our own brand is a gift for helping others. Steve mentioned that in the near future there would be room for people who are personal brand coaches.
For a chunk of the afternoon, we spent time creating a website using Weebly for our PLN and/or as a tool for our classes and students. Weebly is user-friendly, intuitive, and with the drag and drop options, a professional looking website is created and published rather quickly. Today’s technological tools and mobile devices offer many new opportunities to support learning at all levels. Good pedagogy is good pedagogy with or without technology. But with the intersection of both, we have potential for creating spaces for engagement, production, and sharing that will put our students and us on the path to life-long learning,
Thoughts to keep pondering
- It is better to be in charge of your digital footprint than allow Google to curate you.
- Risk-taking is necessary for moving forward
- Go-give-get
- Making mistakes is not failure: it’s reiteration!
- Find your mentors: individuals, professional organizations, twitter #hashtags
- Take time to wonder and wander
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