EDUC 5843 - Creative Design - Day 1

I think this is going to be a very interesting, but challenging course for me. I appreciate hearing new, creative approaches to education that vary from what I know, and I believe Paul's approach and philosophies will be ones that will challenge what I know.

From the beginning, we started by chatting about Media Ecology; media being an extension of the human body & the effects of how things that surround us, in turn, shape is. As Paul said, "the media is the message." It's true that we all teach in environments that have been predetermined years ago, desks & chairs, all facing the board. In terms of ecology, we want to look at the schooling experience as a whole. We need to look at it as its very own ecosystem, which are structures that hold content, which then impact its audience.

I really enjoyed the group projects & presentations, as it gave a really quick look into some common problems that most educators could identify with, and it was nice to hear some different solutions. Our group (Suzanne, Kelly & I) discussed a problem that was universal to all three of our schools, which was the “Tech Gap”. With the upcoming changes to our curriculum, which include coding, the tech gap is more apparent than ever. It was interesting to have a group with Kelly, a middle-school VP from Chignecto, Suzanne, a high-school teacher from Valley and myself, a elementary-school teacher from Halifax. The tech gap within our own province is enormous! As you can see from some of pictures below of our presentation, we thought there were some key factors in the tech gap, as well as some of our (no argument!!) solutions.

Sorry for the sideways picture - Tech Gap, along with our 3 suggestions for solutions

 

- Rory’s Group - presented on the issue of students attending school unprepared. This can be for a variety of reasons, whether it be appropriate amount of energy, prior knowledge; solutions could be having parents come in to see what school is currently like; universal pre-school programs; better ratio of staff-to-student; setting developmental marks for primary, that would give students as much time as they need to get to a certain level

- Andrew's Group - fundamentalists vs. newbies/believers - I like the idea of mentorship setup for new teachers; helps them pair up with helpful, positive teachers so that, together, they can all work towards moving the school towards a better place! It really stems from strong leadership from admin, and has a really positive effect down into the staff. I think schools can become a very negative place very quickly, and fostering a positive, creative, welcoming environment is critical in being a productive school.

- Communication Group (sorry, I missed the presenters name!) - Communication is key! That was the main issue addressed by this group. I appreciated them bringing it up, as it seems like such an obvious rule for success. However, as we all know, it so very often happens that communication seems to fall by the wayside, due to either lack of time, or people being perceived as being in a need-to-know basis. We need to increase and focus on the communication between admin and staff; identifying problem children & letting staff know all the actions that are supposed to be followed for this student. Keeping all staff informed is a great way to keep staff engaged as a whole school.