Edina Digital Age Learning

Rabbi Michael Cohen , "The Tech Rabbi," was the third keynote Tuesday at ISTE 2018 . I had the pleasure of hearing Cohen speak at a session at ISTE 2016, and was excited to hear him keynote. His background is in design and graphic arts, and his slides showcase his amazing skills. He began by sharing that a student had emailed him about a problem idea that he didn’t think was possible, but knew that Cohen would be inspirational and give him ideas. It showed Cohen that he was making a difference in that student's life, but also.... .... So much energy is invested in helping students to squire knowledge, but how much time is green to help them think about the abstract. Cohen said we should focus on instilling B elief in Self, Belief in Others , and that there is something bigger than themselves Experiment take risks and courage to do something about those light bulb moments. What abilities are we helping our students do? Cohen had some VERY "...

Katie Martin , author of " Learner Centered Innovation ," was the 2nd Tuesday Keynote at ISTE 2018 .  Martin started with an important statement:    "If we want to change how students learn, we need to change how educators learn."  Prepare kids to solve problems, not for the test. On a personal note, when she noted, "All of my proposals to ISTE were denied last year!" it made me feel a bit better! As she reflects on her journey. She went into teaching because she didn’t see the purpose of school at times. She wanted to teach to show students that their voice matters! She showed her kids at 4 and 5 learning how to make soap. Now they see themselves as scientists. Her daughter’s teacher said she was “needs improvement” in Science. She hadn’t finished her “packet.” She can see at home how interested she is making slime and lipstick…what is she could build on those passions in school. There are so many requirements placed on teachers wi...

Andy Weir , a former software engineer, and author of “ TheMartian ,” was intervened at ISTE 2018 about his passion for STEM and creativity. Gillian King-Carlile founder of STEM Read facilitated the conversation. Here are my notes. The very first thing he wrote was Beverly Cleary fan fiction, at 6 years old. He started working at a National Lab at age 15! More of an internship cleaning test tubes. Got to start analyzing data in the 80’s. Learned how to program. Enjoys the process of learning new things. Researching, problem solving. Goes out of his way to see what others have done, but make his own path. The writing process is solving a series of problems. Software engineering is breaking down solvable problems, but there is artistry to it! Misses beng part of a team. Now he works alone. Failure based learning-sentence by sentence, page by page. There is a lot of failure on the path to publishing. Wanted to be a writer from the get go. Wanted to be a writer, but liked reg...

Neuroscientist, David Eagleman, author of " The Brain: The Story of You " was the 2018 opening keynote at ISTE 2018 . Eagleman has had several TED talks discussing the possibilities with the human brain. Eagleman started broadly, noting that humans have developed programming languages and yet haven't come close to the amazingness of the human brain. What does our knowledge of the brain tell us about education and technology? Forrests look pretty similar to what they looked like hundreds of years ago, but cities are like motherboards rising out of the muck. Our brains have evolved to have larger distance between input and output. More pathways. The prefrontal cortex gives us the ability to ask, "What If?" Most mammals are born and within a few minutes are walking around. Humans, not so much, but eventually, humans can do a lot more. Classrooms haven't evolved from when they were created for the industrial revolution. The Digital Brain: "K...

Recently, my department was approached about the possibility of testing out locking pouches to explore l imiting access to cell phones by students during the school day . To be honest, I was skeptical, because I knew that while it is clear, some students (and adults) are addicted to their device, I was concerned that students would not be able to complete certain tasks. (It is hard to take a video or picture for an assignment with a conventional, non-touch Chromebook, for example.) Students come to school today with d evices in their pocket that are more powerful than the computing power that put a person on the moon , and yet teachers sometimes want to ignore that reality. We know that there are many beneficial aspects to mobile tools for learning, AND, we know that for many people, even having the device in one's pocket can be detrimental to attention and impact learning .  A few staff at South View Middle School were interested in the idea of using the locking pouch. Rather tha...

Susan Nelson,  Coordinator of 3D Design Thinking, Innovation and Personalized Learning for  Spring Lake Park Schools presented on Design Thinking and their 3D model of design. Design Mindsets Tap Into Your Creative Confidence Learn from failure Embrace Ambiguity Be urgently Optimistic Iterate, Iterate, Iterate Why Human Centered Design?  Education full of challenges and opportunities Focus has been on tweaking the system that is fundamentally the same We can't solve our problems using the same kind of thinking we used to create them! -Einstein Human Centered-We are designing for real people Creativity-harness the potential She shared this video to illustrate the importance of design thinking for Fortunate and her mother! Nelsen then shared the background behind making the Embrace warmer and how students at the Stanford dSchool developed the product. Incubators were expensive Children were dying from low birth weight. The Stanford t...

Ken Shelton followed up his Monday Keynote with a session on Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy. Shelton noted that there are many instances where students are funneled to different classes based on gender and skin color/ethnicity. In his experience, he was the only person of color in the AP and upper level classes when he was in high school. This is his story. What are the stories of the students coming in to our schools? Game of Phones- (Nice tech infused Community Building activity) Introduce self Last picture taken-That's appropriate! Context Group Chooses top photo The talk had 3 main parts: Culture Learning Technology Much of this talk is based on the work of Pedro Nogieri. The addition that Shelton makes to this work is technology, as he believes that today it is not culturally relevant not to include it! In school, he wanted to be in the front, but was always told to go in back. If instruction is only happening in front, that is a...