Thursday, December 9, 2010

Community Gardens: Experiential Learning with GTGK

Green Thumbs Growing Kids is a Toronto-based group that provides experiential learning in environmentally sustainable community gardens for urban youth and their families.

I had the opportunity to volunteer with them a few summers ago and had a great time in their Winchester community garden learning about plants and drawing some of the helpful pollinators.

This is a recent video of theirs, produced by an OISE teacher candidate.
To find out more, have a look at their site.


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Third Teacher

I have to link to the site for a fantastic book that I just got: The Third Teacher.
This book is the result of a collaboration of three design firms, one in engineering (OWP/P | Cannon Design), one in educational furnishings (VS America) and one in culture (Bruce Mau Design).


The focus of the book is the role that the design of the physical environment plays in supporting or inhibiting learning. This is a question that every teacher should consider: how does your classroom help or hinder your efforts as an educator?


Class Activity: ask the students, what elements of the design of the classroom and of the school help your learning, and why; and what elements are obstacles, why? How can we address these issues?

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Stefan Sagmeister: Don't Take Creativity For Granted

This presentation addresses the great challenge of the creative process: how to keep it new.
They come up with some pretty fascinating results including an interactive digital spiderweb with type  and animals eating their way to produce type...

Stefan Sagmeister,
@sagmeisterinc 

Class Activity: This would be good to show to get students thinking about where they find inspiration. A survey could be completed by the class before watching this about typical sources of inspiration. We could suggest some different approaches to try after watching the video and having a class discussion.