Action Research

A colleague sent me this video as she knows I love all things creative , and I was quite taken with the simple message. John Seely Brown has caught my attention before – he has written about the classroom as an Architectural Studio where students work side by side, exploring with design, tinkering, testing, witnessing one another as they work and struggle. He believes schools must do more to foster imagination, which leads to: creating, reflecting, sharing and building knowledge through a new culture from a peer-based learning community.

At 6:40 in the video he begins to describe how technology can assist this concept and expand learning much further through the use of digital tools and a world audience.  Students know how to “stand on the shoulders” of others, taking their work, re-mixing and mashing it into something new and better. They build upon old ideas, share them and in turn are used once again by someone else. With the spread of Creative Commons we have access to a huge wealth of material to “tinker” with and to create.

Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production in a Digital Age: John Seely Brown from carnegie commons on Vimeo.

The rest of the conversations hosted by the Carnegie Foundation can be found at http://vimeo.com/2183356?

Here is a four minute video I made with grade 5 students in a drama workshop.  The teacher asked me to work with character and story – I decided to use Mantle of the Expert, Role Play, Hot Seat and Drawing as the main strategies.  I chose to highlight select scenes that show students at work in different ways. Though loud and boisterous, most are quite engaged throughout, but when in role they become extremely focused on the task at hand.