Like much of the western part of North America, we got hit with a pretty nasty blizzard. For my Australian readers, a blizzard is defined as “severe winter storm condition characterized by low temperatures, strong winds, and heavy blowing snow.” But what does that really mean? Rob posts some photos from outside his school, like the one to the left.
While my part of the province didn’t get quite the same weather, I was certainly paying close attention. Daryl Pearson’s class in Meadow Lake posted some very interesting videos of what they did as a result of a depleted school population as well as some weather updates.
“We took the morning to divide our 13 student class into four groups to create a project about the effects of the blizzard. We had a podcast group, a newsletter group, a video group and a digital story group.”
This is what school should be like everyday. Kids creating and publishing content based on what’s important to them and the world. After reading Alec’s post about Lessig, it clearly demonstrates:
Anybody with a $1500 computer can take sounds and images and remix them in ways that say things differently, in ways that express ideas more powerfully than any written text could ever, given the character of the cultures we’ve become. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. They represent a new potential to speak, a new potential to learn, they are a new literacy for the 21st century, doing for images and music and film what we took for granted growing up, were our freedoms with the pencil and the typewriter. The freedom to capture and share and remix ideas in ways that express them differently.
Too bad it sometimes takes a blizzard to get this.
When I was in school and there was a blizzard… we played 7-UP.
How times have changed..
Pardon the pun — but cool.
It often takes disruptive events to make us act differently. Sounds like you all made the most of the opportunity! Thanks for sharing, and the link to the post on Lessig.
Meanwhile those of us further north miss the actual storm but just get the cold weather that is pushing the storm down you rway. Supposed to hit – 45 celcius tonight and stay that way for several days. BBBRRRR!
Wow…It’s been at least a couple of years since I’ve seen snow in person. Here in Florida about all we get is hurricane days, along with a couple days off after the fact for repairs and stuff. But I love how you’ve applied your assignment to a real world issue.
I’ve never even seen snow…
cool
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Being flexible and creative, you took advantage of this great opportunity to allow the students to be emerged in a new type of learning environment. In many schools, snowy weather like this would mean a movie-afternoon or games in the classroom; however, what a better way to collaborate with peers than this project you discussed.
It is true, why does it have to take snow days for students to work collaboratively learning about real-world issues? I believe more of this should be integrated into curriculum. There is potential in these types of learning environment for students to use their creativity while really learning about what’s important in the world around them.