Hacking Education

Wow, I learned a lot from the TED Talk and the blog this week. Both resources provided me with so many techniques, strategies, and ideas that I can save to use in my future classroom. Let me tell you a little more about them!

The TEDx Talk is called “Hackschooling makes me happy” by Logan LaPlante. When this video was recorded, in 2013, he was 13 years old and wise beyond his years. He started off his talk with asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is a question that I can recall getting asked a lot when I was growing up. His response to that question was really intriguing for me. He said, “I want to be happy”. I can honestly say that I have never thought of that when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. Then in the rest of his talk he went on about how he was pulled out of school when he was 9 and since then he has had a great education. He hacked his education and he couldn’t be happier.

I really liked watching this video. Logan was really smart and made a lot of points that really intrigued me and got me thinking. Our students really do know what is best for them and what will help them learn better. So as a future teacher, why don’t we let students have more of an input when it comes to their education? This is something that we all need to start thinking about and if possible applying to our classroom.

The blog post that I read for this post is called, “Centering on Essential Lenses”. Bud Hunt is the author of this blog post and he had some really great things to say. He had three things that he emphasized in his blog; making, hacking, and playing. Bud said that some of the greatest learning can happen when we make things. Whether it is making sense of new situations or making tools to help us to do things we might not yet be able to do, we should always encourage our students to make things. I already talked about hacking above, but I will give a little more detail here. Bud talked about how to hack means to fiddle with something, to improve a process or a program. So in education it means to change the way that traditional education is thought of and done. As a teacher, we should always encourage our students to think of new ways to do things and never discourage them. Lastly he talked about playing. Bud refers to playing as the search for freedom within constraints and doing this can also lead to very powerful learning.

When I think about these three powerful tools I realize how many teachers did not do these things as I was growing up. I want to change that I want to be the teacher that provides my students with powerful learning tools and helps them learn and understand more. I thought this was a great blog and it really helped me learn a lot.

 

References:

 

Hunt, B. (2012, May 24). Centering on Essential Lenses. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://budtheteacher.com/blog/2012/05/24/centering-on-essential-lenses/

 

TEDxTalks. (2013, February 12). Hackschooling makes me happy | Logan LaPlante | TEDxUniversityofNevada. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY