I just got back from Atlanta, Georgia, where I went to my first National Educational Computing Conference with FableVision!

There were plenty of highlights, but my favorite part was speaking with teachers who introduced me to new “North Star” inspired lesson plans. One teacher told me about making North Star Constellations the first day of class, and asking students to introduce different topics over the course of the year, based on their interests. (So, to introduce a unit on wildlife, the student who wrote “birds” on his or her constellation might introduce it by sharing some information with the rest of the class).

I want to continue the discussion. What’s your favorite North Star resource? What would you like to add as a North Star resource?

On Sunday we launched the inaugural public event of the Constructivist Consortium (http://www.constructivistconsortium.org) at the NECC Conference (National Educational Computing Conference) - nestled into the Atlanta Botanical Gardens a hop, skip and jump from midtown Atlanta. We dedicated the day to the “godfather” of constructivism Seymour Papert, who is still recovering from a serious head injury when he was hit by a motorcycle while at a conference on mathematics in Vietnam. We announced that several Consortium members are raising money to help defray the medical costs - and we hope others will follow our lead.
The event itself was hugely successful - with a sell-out crowd of over 100 attendees and a long waiting list. I’ll write a full review of the day soon - but the basic take-away points are

1) the huge draw was evidence of a healthy and growing constructivist movement and

2) encouragement to all the attendees that they are not alone - that there is a supportive network of progressive educators ready to share best practices and help them fight the good fight to empower students with learner-centric experiences/tools/approaches/best practices.
I am COMPLETEY ENERGIZED - and ready to help grow this out nationwide - and globally - with parallel focus on changes at the policy level to create room for constructivist learning (including socio-economically depressed communities.)

Onward, Paul

necc07

One of my most memorable North Star experiences this year didn’t involve The North Star book directly, but certainly involved the North Star Approach.

As a school counselor, I worked with a student, David, who needed some help reframing his focus and attitude toward school.   To help David with this, I tapped into his interests in animation and computers.  Together, he and I followed a little online tutorial Peter put together about how to animate in Flash (http://www.fablevision.com/flash), and by end of our second meeting, David had created a small, simple animation of a ball!  He was elated.

I met with David weekly for the remainder of the year, and he chose to work on the computer, animating in Flash, every time – which helped motivate him to come to school.  He became more patient with himself, and began to challenge himself… and eventually proclaimed that he was “really good at animating in Flash”.  

It was truly inspiring to be on that journey with this student as we explored his interests, his path… opening doors… witnessing him walking through… exploring some more… and watching him grow, along with his confidence, as he sailed forward to the possibilities… his possibilities… ahead.

To other NSCoP members:  What has been one of your most memorable North Star experiences or moments this past school year year, or years before?   Please share!   

Hi everyone,

Being new here, I don’t know a lot of the Community of Practice Members. I’ll introduce myself with a little background; please comment and tell me a bit about yourselves.

I grew up surrounded by educators, most of whom were obsessed with this new-fangled “learner centered education” idea. It took me a long time to recognize that not all teachers and administrators knew about this idea, and it took even longer for me to begin to identify why some are so frightened by the idea of a radical change to a learner-centered environment.

In an effort to get away from education, I went to school for theatre, music, and writing, but quickly found myself drawn to arts education, and arts’ place in the school curriculum. I spent a year teaching English to French children and began putting those theories into practice in my classroom. Now I’m back in the states, working at FableVision, and I’m drawn more than ever to learning about the theories, opinions, lesson plans and stories that other educators have to share.

Next?

If you have any questions about posting, commenting, tech or content in the site, this is the area to ask.  Just comment to this post with your question, and someone will respond.

“Can American students afford to take a summer vacation? This summer, 50 million kids will spend valuable time instant messaging, watching TV, playing video games and nagging older siblings to take them to the mall. They will also be putting their academic futures at risk.” -Frederick M. Hess

The rest of the article is here, at Time For Kids.

Hess is rather dramatic - “…putting their academic futures at risk,” and I wonder about the way I once spent my summers - generally with either a book in my hands or a new project or adventure underway. Personally, I suspect many students learn as much, if not more, from summer adventures, family trips, summer jobs, or even wandering through their backyards, as they would from an extra few weeks of studying.

What do you think? Is summer too long? Should there be more, shorter vacations year-round? Do summer activities provide places for students to use the knowledge they gained during the year, or are they just a waste of time?

I have to apologize for not posting more often. (Hmm, “So Few of Me“?) The good news is that we’ve been extremely busy settling into our new home at the Boston Children’s Museum, where we are co-located with other great organizations committed to fostering human potential in creative ways (JumpStart, Citizen Schools.) But this site and this amazing community is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT in FableVision’s overall mission.

To that end, I’ve made some general promises moving forward:

1) We will do better outreach to let you all know what’s going on here and share our build-out plans of The North Star Community site.

2) We will soon be inviting every “founding member” from my original co-researcher group to have blog privileges - so we share this stage better. This is OUR community - not mine.

3) I’ll keep my posts as short as possible. : )

4) We are inviting Marli Mesibov, one of our newest FableVisionaries,to help be an active caretaker of the North Star Community of Practice site. (You’ll meet her soon!) She will be working directly with Doug Gastich and Maribeth Bush who have already been instrumental in establishing this community site.

We have many action items on our to do list to increase the “aliveness” (as Etienne “Community of Practice” Wenger and Jean Lave would say) of our virtual community - but if you have ideas, please post them here. We’re listening - and getting ready for the very best ahead!