Monday, May 11, 2015

Consuming Greatly

If you thought the title was about eating, I commend you. I like BBQ also. I'm talking about a different consuming.

After you read William and John's thoughts on this ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I'm waiting for you to read theirs ....................................................................................................................................................................

Ok. Now that you've had enough time to read theirs, I'll tell you how I came to the same conclusion.

It was odd. I read John's post the same day that I was grading a bunch of assignments. This was the assignment. I wasn't really reading anything that was knocking my socks off. Honestly, I was a little bored reading their responses.

Then, I read one that knocked my socks off, figuratively speaking, of course. After I was done assessing it, I went to her the next day and asked her about it. I just asked her questions about her learning process. Where did you get your ideas? Where did you get your information? What were you thinking? Comparing to?

She said that she checked out all my links. She took individual notes over the videos. She looked up more websites on her own.  She watched more YouTube videos than what I had given her. She took some time to plan her responses. Finally, she put it all together.

It showed great thought.

This huge lightbulb went off above me. It's not that I didn't already know that the more you consume, the better your creation will be. It's that my students didn't know. Well, except this one girl.

So the next day, I printed off John's post and read it to my classes. I used her as an example for other students. I told them of the difference between what she did, and what others did and how much higher quality her end piece was because she took the time to invest in her consuming and garnering of information on the topic.

They just didn't know that to create something great, one must greatly consume first. 

The examples in John's post really made sense to the other students, especially the music one.

In William's post, he mentions that we, educators, are putting too much emphasis on the maker/creation part. I agree. Any time that I have done something where the students will end up creating something (Here's an example) I try to put the emphasis on the consuming aspect. Do I always do a good job of it? Probably not.

I'm a "focus on the process" coach on the basketball court. I'm big on taking care of the little things first. Once those are taken care of, then the game takes care of itself.

For the next assignment, I added more content to the assignment sheet.

Consuming is a little thing, but without it, your creation can't be big. Place your focus on consuming and the creation will take care of itself. 
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Thursday, May 7, 2015

I Sat Down To Write

I sat down to write.




I thought.




I thought about something to write.




Nothing came to me.




Well, some things did come to mind, but they weren't interesting. So I thought some more.








But still nothing that I thought would be worthwhile to an audience.





An audience?







Do I write for an audience?






I'm not sure. I don't write enough to have an audience. Is what I say worthwhile? Is it emerging? engaging? interesting? innovative?






Why do I write then?





Why do you write?




I need a topic. I don't "see" topics throughout the day. Should I? Is that what makes me a good blogger? To "see" my topics throughout the day?




I see my day as simple: Plan lessons that kids want to attend if they had an option. Have fun. Assess a little bit. Repeat.



Isn't that it? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?




Why don't I "see" deeper into my content? my students? my delivery style? my classroom management? my organization methods? my integration of technology? my ways I let students access content? my ways of allowing choice? my interactive notebooks? my how to make a digital notebook? my how I transformed my teaching this year to go 1:1? my almost ditching of the textbook? why I choose to use humor and puns to start the day? my weird props? my weird clothes? my walls that are covered in student work? why I have bucket seats? my student feedback forms? why I'm thinking of doing podcasts? why it would be cool to present at conferences? what would I present at conferences? my thoughts on innovation? my thoughts on consuming content? ....



Why don't I see these as topics for blog posts?




Why do I see them as just a part of me and simply as a "you don't care about this" topic?




I don't know,...




...but I did sit down to write.


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