Teachers as Designers

This maybe my favorite read yet. I'm not sure if it was because of our current climate or it has been at the forefront of my thoughts lately with all of the current events in our country and how it is reported on social media and traditional media.  The Information Diet and how it parallels to the food industry or the american diet is a fascinating analogy. When we first developed as a nation we had lots of farmers and our food sources we consumed were organic and came from farm to table (the origin). As our society developed, so did our ability to manufacture foods that we could buy from many different sources. The same can be said about our information, originally came from a few credible sources but now we have to sort (or synthesize) through all the different labels and packaging ( both food and information) to find out if something is good for us or not. In my quest for better health I had to learn how to read  food packaging labels to figure out if something is a heal...

This might be where the rubber hits the road for me. After these readings, I am really nervous and anxious about my abilities as a designer and am going to need a lot of "coaching" in this category. I don't necessarily consider myself creative or imaginative, actually I run in fear from that side of me. I am a that-which- does -exist, "pop open the can" kind of sage on the stage. Maybe that's a math thing but I am most certainly a willing participate in learning how to pull away from these undesirable routines and practices. I guess my biggest question is that are these kind of characteristics (creation-oriented and imaginative) or creative spirit of design, learned or or they innate? The article tells me that with disciplined effort, designers can re-make any situation into something that more closely resembles a desired state. I hope they are correct, I'm ready to drive change through continual cycles of creation and flexibility. The one thing I will...

Affordance Analysis This might have been the reading that hit home for me the most, although I’ve never heard the term affordance analysis. It sounds like something a company would do when making a decision to purchase something for their business, and maybe they do. Do they need to do an analyses on whether they can afford to make the purchase or not (I’m thinking money here)? It would make sense to me, we certainly do it at our house.  It didn’t occur to me to the uses in education.  I have often wondered how much money we spend (or waste) in education on technology that accomplishes nothing more than providing me with a different vehicle to deliver the same package. I will admit that I love technology and considered myself very open to trying new things out but after a while I started to think that maybe there was a different avenue to drive these new vehicles on. The other thing this made me think about was the technology should be in the hands of the students (driver...

While it was a very interesting (and easier) book read, I was thinking about how this relates to my classroom. While it was fascinating to see the parallels between what happened with the invention of the telegraph and with the modern day telegraph (the internet :), I wondered how this is going to help me become a better teacher. It wasn't until after our class discussion (which is usually the case) that I needed to shift gears from the mind to the actual tools we use. I had left the teaching profession back in the late 90's and returned around 2006. When I left behind were overhead projectors and copiers and I returned to smartboards and projectors, along with a lot of other unfamiliar technologies. I was awestruck, digital lessons, writing on a smartboard, laptops for all teachers and electronic attendance/gradebooks! I thought these technologies would certainly be savior a solve many problems of years gone by.  I quickly realized that as many problems that ...