Podcast - The Bad Idea Factory

In this episode, we talk about the Bad Idea Factory, brainstorming 20% Time project ideas and our experience at the MOREnet technology conference. Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter: Don (@dayankee) and Melissa (@melissahellwig4).

The #twistedpair list

The #twistedpair blogging challenge asks you to put together an unlikely pairing of characters - these can be historical, contemporary or fictional - and write about the connection they have (however tenuous) and how it relates to teaching and learning. Here is the original challenge. You can use any of the pairings listed there or create a strange pair of your own.

So, what is the thinking behind this challenge?

Going through the process of thinking about this should involve a lot of creative, lateral thinking, and the end result will be a unique perspective on education - on a blog post which we can all enjoy reading and learning from. If we try this out ourselves, perhaps we can adapt this and similar ideas to promote good writing skills for our students too!

Below is a growing list of all the awesome, thought provoking blogs that people are publishing as their responses to the #twistedpair challenge. Join in!

Maha Bali - Audrey Watters meets Doc McStuffins
Niall Barr - Walter Bright, Professor Branestawm and me (Walter Bright // Prof Branestawm)
Sue Beckingham - Enquire within upon everything (Pablo Picasso // Sir Tim Berners-Lee)
Chris Betcher - Twisted pair (Pablo Picasso // Sir Tim Berners-Lee)
Steve Brophy - Know thy context
Amy Burvall - Madonna meets McLuhan (Madonna // Marshall McLuhan)
Amy Burvall - Twisted Pairs (The Beatles // Alfred Hitchcock)
Amy Burvall - Twisted Pairs: Pedagogy from the Unlikely
Amy Burvall - Leonardo Da Vinci meets Billie Holliday

Vanessa Camilleri - It's all about Spiderman and Paulo Freire

Lee Mark Davis - Of Grace and Mansbridge (W.G. Grace // Albert Mansbridge)
Debsnet - Coaching fields forever (Strawberry picking // coaching)
HJ DeWaard - What Dewey and Yoda reveal about learning (John Dewey // Yoda)
Charlene Doland - Downton Abbey and Frog and Toad

Terry Elliott - Epictetus and Mojo Nixon
Terry Elliott - A short ride on a fast hoverboard
Wendy Eiteljorg - Twisted Pair (5th graders // 12th graders)

Enoch Hale - Learning transformation or Chindogu?
Scott Haselwood - Doctor Who + Jack Sparrow + Leonardo da Vinci + Me
Sarah Honeychurch - Fools march in (Alexander Pope // Roobarb and Custard)
Sarah Honeychurch - Kicking down the cobblestones (Dave Cormier // The Red Queen)
Sarah Honeychurch - Blogging is a way of life (Mr Motivator // Steve Wheeler)
Sarah Honeychurch - Making an ass of you and me (Aristotle // Chicken Licken)
David Hopkins - Connor MacLeod and Wile E Coyote

Andrew Jacobs - Spoonful of sugar (Mary Poppins // Isambard Kingdom Brunel)

Gordon Lockhart - Connection not content (Hound of the Baskerville // MOOCow)

Richard Martin - Fork in the cat (Erwin Schrödinger // Jonny Wilkinson)

Laura Ritchie - The music lesson and the walnut tree

Tania Sheko - How Seinfeld and Maria Montessori influence me as an educator
Tania Sheko - #twistedpair for teacher PD (Slideshare)
Andrew Smith - How Monty Python and Albert Einstein inform my professional outlook (Albert Einstein // Monty Python)

Wendy Taleo - To twist or not to twist? That is the question (Deleuze and Guattari // Yuen et al)
Steve Turnbull - Talking gibberish - from nonsense to meaning in learning (Jack Bauer // Teletubbies)

Colin Warren - If at first you don't succeed... (Wile E Coyote // Sisyphus)
Sue Watling - Klimt and the Venus of Willendorf
Steve Wheeler - Danger illustrated (Socrates // Maria von Trapp)
Steve Wheeler - Einstein, Monty Python and lateral thinking
Steve Wheeler - I want to break free (Nelson Mandela // Jack Sparrow)
Noeline Wright - Heston Blumenthal and the research process

If you notice one that is missing, let me know in the comments section below, and I will add it to the list.

Photo by Greg Jordan on Flickr


The #twistedpair list by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Einstein, Monty Python and lateral thinking #twistedpair

The #twistedpair blogging challenge asks you to put together an unlikely pairing of characters - historical, contemporary or fictional - and write about a connection they have (however tenuous) and how it relates to learning. I hope that going through a process of thinking about connections between two seemingly unconnected characters will involve a lot of creative, lateral thinking, and that the end result will be a unique perspective on education from which we can all enjoy reading and learning.

Yesterday Sarah Honeychurch wrote a first blog post in response to the challenge and came up with Fools march in which is a brief but pithy reflection on professional practice and human impulsiveness using a tentative connection between Alexander Pope and the cartoon characters Roobarb and Custard (I love it!).

Andrew Smith swiftly followed up on my #twistedpair challenge with another strange pairing: How Monty Python and Albert Einstein inform my professional outlook just goes to prove my point that a lot of lateral thinking can be generated when we stretch our imagination a little. I created a whole bunch of other unlikely pairings in my initial blogpost. What kind of conversation might Tarzan have had with Jean Piaget? How might the love child of Marshall McLuhan and Madonna have turned out? Would Han Solo have been BFF with Queen Elizabeth I or would he have been beheaded? And what the heck has that to do with education?

Feel free to choose one of the unlikely pairs, or better still, make your own up, and join in with the fun and mayhem, as together we explore our professional practise through humour, imagery and creativity. I look forward to reading your #twistedpair blogs!

Photo source


Einstein, Monty Python and lateral thinking #twistedpair by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Twisted Pair #twistedpair

Are you up for another blogging challenge? If you accept this challenge, it should encourage you to write creatively, and you'll end up sharing a new idea with a large audience.

It's happened before: you might remember the #blimage and #blideo challenges from the summer. The first was a challenge where you were sent an image to inspire you to write about learning. The second was the same idea, but with a video.

Many of those who participated said it caused them to think more deeply and creatively about how they teach or learn. Some remarked that they had discovered new bloggers they didn't know existed, and many reported that their blog traffic had increased significantly. It was a win-win for everyone who took part.

So here's my idea. It's called twisted pair. After my post from yesterday about how Socrates and Julie Andrews (a strange pairing indeed) influenced my teaching, I got to wondering. Are there any other strange (twisted) pairs that would inspire people to write thoughtful blog posts on education and learning? Well, if anyone is up for this challenge, here are a few very strange pairings to get you going. I bet you can think of loads more.

Batman and John Dewey
Michaelangelo and you
Paulo Freire and the Hunchback of Notre Dame
Eddie Izzard and Pavlov's dogs
Jack Sparrow and Nelson Mandela
Pablo Picasso and Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Micky Mouse and Adolf Hitler
Han Solo and Queen Elizabeth I
William Shakespeare and Buzz Lightyear
Marshall MacLuhan and Madonna
Tarzan and Jean Piaget
Paddington Bear and Barack Obama
Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Easter Bunny
Walt Disney and the Grim Reaper
Sir Winston Churchill and the entire cast of Frozen
Doctor Who and Snoopy
Jack Bauer and the Teletubbies
Mr Spock and Margaret Thatcher

Go on - I dare you. Choose a strange pairing from above (or make up one of your own, the weirder the better). Let your imagination run wild, go very slightly unhinged and dig deep into your knowledge of those characters. Some of the connections may be tenuous. That's part of the fun.  Come up with an inspirational, satirical or thought provoking blog post about teaching and learning. Share it and include the tag #twistedpair. Don't forget to also challenge at least three other people. I'm gathering responses together on this page so they are all together in one place. Up for the challenge? So, let's twist again, like we did last summer...

Photo by Baran Ivo on Wikimedia Commons


Twisted Pair #twistedpair by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Podcast - Kickoff Day and Edcamp Harmony

In this episode, we talk about Kickoff Day, the day of the year that we introduce the concept of 20% Time and what the program will look like this year. We also talk about Edcamp Harmony, our first student edcamp. Follow us on iTunes (search Harmonized Learning) and follow us on Twitter, Don (@dayankee) and Melissa (@melissahellwig4).

Danger illustrated

Students often struggle with critical thinking. They are great at description, but ask them to move beyond this into critical analysis and they look at you and shrug. And yet critical thinking is a vital graduate skill that once acquired, can be applied to all aspects of life.

Recently I have been teaching a research skills module to a whole year group of third year education undergraduates. The time came to address critical thinking, and I thought long and hard about the best way to help them to learn.

There are some great exemplars of effective education from across the ages. Think of Socrates with his constant questioning, or the great educator Comenius with his naturalistic approach to learning by 'obtaining knowledge through objects rather than words'. Then there was Maria von Trapp (played by Julie Andrews in the movie musical The Sound of Music. Look, I'm being serious here - kind of). She used a combination of sounds, imagery and mnemonics to teach the children to sing. She could have taught them to sing anything using this method - even Firestarter.

I brought all these ideas together to teach critical thinking this week. I illustrated my teaching with a simple plastic bottle of water. I asked my students to describe it. 'It's transparent', 'It's made of plastic', and 'It holds water' were perfect answers. These are superficial qualities to the bottle of water, but they don't really tell us much more about it. It's dangerous to accept something at face value without examining it in depth.

So, I made the illustration a little more difficult. I asked them to analyse the bottle of water. Now, there are many ways you can do this. You could chemically analyse the contents for example. Or you could simply trust the manufacturer and read the contents label on the side to see what levels of calcium, sodium or magnesium were present. You could also analyse the shape of the bottle - its design - and the affordance of the bottle top and whether it allowed you to twist or flip the bottle open.

The next stage is one that most students struggle with. How do we critically analyse the bottle of water? After a lot of thinking, several ideas were ventured including 'the water is almost gone, therefore the owner might have been thirsty', and 'the design of this bottle isn't as good as another brand I usually buy.' In essence the students were speculating based on their analysis of the bottle, and were also beginning to evaluate the worth of the bottle. They could have gone further and evaluated its worth in terms of value for money, or its health benefits in comparison to other popular drinks. They may have discussed the history of bottle water, its cultural impact, or even debated the plastic bottle in terms of how easy it would be to recycle its component parts. In fact, when you get to the critical analysis and the evaluation stages of thinking, there are endless possibilities. Let's hope the students make the connection to their education studies.

Photo from various sources to numerous to list here


Danger illustrated by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Readings for creative teachers - time to fight back against the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)

Add caption

By Allan Alach

I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz

Great tech can’t replace poor teaching

Yes - someone tell Pearson Group, Murdoch, McGraw Hill, etc.

“Investing heavily in ICT for education doesn't lead to appreciable improvements in student

achievement in reading, maths or science, according to a new OECD study.

'Technology can amplify great teaching but great technology cannot replace poor teaching,' Andreas Schleicher, Director of the organisation's Directorate for Education and Skills said, and added the reality in schools 'lags considerably behind the promise of technology’.”

http://bit.ly/1G5Qq1g

What Students Wish Their Teachers Knew

I was sent this by Eveline Bailey who said, “This is a bit of self-promotion, but my students are so happy I took their words and wrote a blog for them.”

“I told them it was an anonymous activity and that if they would provide real feedback, I would blog about it. Goodness! I’ve never seen a group of kids move so fast! Amidst all the “Are you really going to tell other teachers this?” and “Do you care if we cuss to make a point?” and “How many can I write?”—I have to say, it was probably the most effective writing assignment I’ve ever given. Certainly enlightening. Often scathing.”

http://bit.ly/1FjHYRj

Do We Forget What We Are Asking Students to Do All Day?

As adults we forget how tiring that must be.  How not only are they asked to pay attention, but they are also asked to sit still, take notes, and be ready to answer any question we throw their way.  We expect them to care about what we are doing and give us their very best, every minute, every day.

http://bit.ly/1FxjBPS

Factory Model Education “Reforms” Were Designed for Product Testing, Not Children

“The factory model was developed to ensure quality control and produce identical “consumer” products cheaply. It is NOT an approach that should be used with children. Modern researchers and professional educators have come to understand that the human brain is wired for learning, and that the most effective methods of education are aligned with how children naturally learn.”

http://bit.ly/1FjKA1J

This week’s contributions from Bruce Hammonds:

Here are two articles about project based learning.

What the Heck Is Project-Based Learning?

“You know the hardest thing about teaching with project-based learning? Explaining it to someone.  So to help you in your own musings, I've devised an elevator speech to help you clearly see what's it is all about.”

http://bit.ly/1R4gpNe

George Lucas - Edutopia

My PBL Failure: 4 Tips for Planning Successful PBL

‘Our first project, filmmaking, had kept them interested. The subject of their films, recycling, hadn't been the driving force for them. I hoped that our second PBL experience would combine an interesting topic and work to keep them engaged. However, despite this goal, that second unit turned into what my students might call an "epic fail.”’

http://bit.ly/1R4gAb8

Jane Gilbert NZCER

Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching - a New Zealand perspective

“It is widely argued that current educational systems, structures and practices are not sufficient to address and support learning needs for all students in the 21st century. Changes are needed, but what kinds of change, and for what reasons? This research project draws together findings from new data and more than 10 years of research on current practice and futures-thinking in education.”

http://bit.ly/1NPVRbc

10 Tips For Launching An Inquiry-Based Classroom

“It takes time to build up a strong inquiry-based teaching practice, to learn how to direct student questions with other questions, and to get comfortable in a guiding role. But when Laufenberg talks about what it takes, she makes it sound easy. We’ve broken her advice down into digestible tips for anyone ready to jump in and try for themselves.”

http://bit.ly/1L9FBTn

Feedback Should Be More Work for the Recipient

Bill Ferriter:

“Stew in all of this for a minute:  If William is right that effective feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor, how much effective feedback are you giving in your classroom? What's keeping you from giving more?”

http://bit.ly/1VdXyQ9

Report: 7 Future Roles for Educators

The evolving role of the teacher - what do you think?

“The role of the teacher continues to evolve, according to a report that envisions seven roles that teachers could take on. They are, according to KnowledgeWorks, learning pathway designers, competency trackers, pop-up reality producers, social innovation portfolio directors, learning naturalists, microcredentialing analysts and data stewards.”

http://bit.ly/1iP9XhM

Principal Connection / Choose Your Yardstick

Thomas Hoer – schools ought to choose what to measure

“Decisions about what to assess shouldn't be made without us or done to us. We should take the initiative and develop metrics to help frame our school and focus our efforts. Sure, many measures are thrust upon us, determined by state governments, school boards, and central office administrators, but we should be an integral part of the dialogue.”

http://bit.ly/1KToe7B

From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:

Five Minds for the Future

“Howard Gardner, renowned worldwide for for his theory of multiple intelligences, shares his latest ideas in his new new book 'Five Minds for the Future'.Based on the premise that students are entering an accelerating world of change in every area of life Gardner believes that such changes call for new ways of learning and thinking in schools if students are to thrive in the world during the eras to come.”

http://bit.ly/1Oxmmnt

Developing a democratic curriculum.

“I visit a wonderful school that makes use of an integrated learning approach based on the ideas of James Beane. James Beane's ideas fits into current talk of personalizing learning but within an environment based on democratic ideals.Relating back to the ideas of John Dewey he believes that if people are to live democratic lives they must have the opportunity to learn what that way of life means. His ideas are based on the ability of students to participate in their own education.”

http://bit.ly/1JglCA9

Ideas of Ernesto Sirolli

“As a result of his experience Ernesto has a passionate disbelief in bureaucracy and believes strongly in a 'person centred approach' to development and education. Ernesto believes that when ‘passion is the starting point skills can be learnt, doors can be unlocked, and dream can become reality.’ The governments, he says, can only influence through providing infrastructure and that the facilitator is a person who helps ‘transform the dream to reality’ only by using a ‘person centred approach.”

http://bit.ly/1WlZys1

Does your classroom have the 'wow' factor?

“The first sign of ‘wow’ is the overall first impression the room gives you. The feeling you get is that you are indeed in special place. There is a feeling of positive relationships between teacher and learners and often parents are to be seen quietly helping students. Other students seem to be working without supervision. A quick look around the walls, covered with students creativity gives an impression that this is a room dedicated to the students themselves.”

http://bit.ly/1FxlCvx