When I am at a conference and a little burned out and don’t want to get stuck in a session for an hour, I head on over to the poster sessions. Poster sessions are a collection of specific projects grouped together in one area. You walk through the table and displays to see what interests you.

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Topics: share, students, technology integration, teachers

In the last post, I talked about the natural partnership of creativity and tinkering.  Once again, I am inspired by Dr. Henry Olds and want to expand on the idea of play. In his article, Iconic Pattern Play, he finds, with Dr. Walter Drew, that "unstructured, child-initiated creative play can strongly contribute to children’s growth and development."

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Topics: engage, students, learn, play

You may already be back to school or just beginning to get your classroom and plan for 2011 in order. If you are like most technology-using educators, you probably have a few tried and true first technology projects that you return to year after year. You know, the projects that are light on content and fairly light on technology skills so that you can get students started out on the right foot and begin to learn their abilities communicating with various technology tools.

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Topics: students, 21st century classroom, project, technology, claymation

Topics: pixie, students, 21st century classroom, project-based learning

While digital natives may be the current rage in the media, our classrooms are also full of students who are not prepared for work at grade level and are not interested in school. Many have disadvantaged backgrounds, some need help learning even basic skills, others are bored because they aren’t being challenged. Without a rich and powerful educational experience, these students will have a harder time succeeding in the world outside of the classroom, now and in the future.

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Topics: creativity, engage, literacy, students, learn, 21st century classroom, technology integration, multimedia, constructivism, adolescence