Ed Tech I’m Using
Storybird is a unique online platform that allows students to create their own beautiful stories using captivating artwork as inspiration. Teachers can use Storybird in their elementary classes to ignite their students’ creativity and love for storytelling. With a vast library of stunning illustrations, students can easily craft their narratives, whether it’s a fairy tale, an adventure, or a heartfelt poem. Teachers can incorporate Storybird into their language arts lessons to teach storytelling techniques, enhance vocabulary, and develop writing skills.
Teaching Practice I’m Trying
Another suggestion from Jim Knight is the use of thinking prompts. These can be videos, quotes, poems, pieces of text, pictures or memes. You can use them with your students or other teachers to pose a question. I tried one out with our teachers when i was introducing the updates I made to our technology curriculum. I used two cars in a drag race. As the cars are lining up, both have to reverse to get behind the start line. Then, when the lights hit green, one car (the white car) spins off in the right direction, whereas the other is still in reverse (the dark grey car). It jumps back a half meter or so, and then stalls. I asked teachers where did they see themselves when it came to adopting new technology. It got quite a few laughs, with a bunch of teachers saying that they were the dark grey car!
Media I’m Consuming
Our World in Data! It’s like a treasure trove of charts and data. You can dive into thousands of charts across 100s of topics, all for free. Each chart has some background information which could lead to a bunch of awesome conversations around the data.
The String I’m Pulling
I absolutely loved this podcast on the Huberman lab with Dr. Maya Shankar. My favourite part was her suggestions on goal setting, which I found very useful. Here are my notes.
- Choose approach goals rather than an avoidance goal. For E.g. make the carrot appealing, rather than focusing on the stick
- It’s better if you set your own goals.
- When setting the goal, make sure that you are in the same psychological and physiological state, as the one you will be pursuing the goal. In other words, if you’re going to set a goal for studying, don’t set the studying goal on a Saturday night when you’re out with your buddies, set the goal you know during that time when you are studying which could be for example I’m on the evening. This makes it much more likely that your goals will be reasonable and that you won’t meet them.
- Lives: Build in emergency reserves or slack. Give yourself 3 lives to be able to skip a particular time when you should be working on that goal.
- The middle problem: Shorten the time you have given yourself for the goal, in order to maintain motivation; most motivation for goal pursuit comes at the beginning and end of the goal. There’s a lull in the middle. If you have a larger goal, perhaps break it up into smaller chunks.
- Fresh start effect – choose a milestone moment, e.g. moving house, new years resolution or even the start of the week. For example, when I came back from holiday recently I immediately unpacked all my bags and then cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. Because in the past I was very laissez-faire about cleaning it once or twice a week if I was lucky so now I like I’m just cleaning as I go every day next week in the floor mopping floor once a week.
- Temptation bundling – pairing an unpleasant activity with something that you enjoy immediately. It’s essential that you forgo enjoying this activity, whatever it happens to be, at any other time other than when you’ve completed that unpleasant activity. It’s better if these two coexist eg. Playing your favourite music whilst doing the dishes.
Quote, I’m Pondering
“We are surrounded by living thoughts, we are moving through other peoples’ thoughts. Everything was an idea at a particular time.” Dario Calmese. I was listening to him on Debbie Millman’s podcast when I was in the gym. I then immediately thought about and I colours and I started to wonder why they were chosen! By the way, most of the colours in this gym were black and grey on the machines and most of the plates, and I started to wonder why…