Learning in the 21st Century

I have been experimenting with making my own videos and creating a “flipped” classroom environment for a couple of years now. However it hasn’t been a smooth journey, rather lots of little experiments with different tools and approaches. I recently made a series of videos for my grade 11 Maths class and got really positive feedback,  so I thought I would share my workflow for any other teachers out there conducting these type of experiments. The tools I used were my Macbook Pro 13 inch mid 2012 , my Galaxy Note 10.1 inch Tablet (N8000) with the very useful S-Pen and then the App – Explain Everything. I also knitted together everything  using iMovie.

1.    The 20 Time Project How educators and parents can launch google’s formula for future-ready innovation 2.  The Second Machine Age:  Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies 3.  The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined 4.  Sully: My Search for What Really Matters 5.  Long Walk to Freedom:  The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela 6.  Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead 7.  Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education 8.  The Alchemist 9.  Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition 10.  How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It

Link to full  MindMap Recently I finished reading the book Deep Work by Cal Newport after hearing it referenced in one of my favourite  Ted Talks . It deals a lot with the issue of using our time in productive ways and especially limiting our use of technology to things that actually add value to our lives and education. It definitely helped shape an awareness in me, that not every tech tool that seems useful is worthy of my time. Time is our ultimate scare resource and so we would should allocate our time, including our technology usage in a way that is most conducive to us reaching our goals.  It’s well worth a read in the context of how our modern lives are being saturated with technology and how we as individuals need to set appropriate boundaries to deal with this.