Personalized Learning With a Passionate Group! #CMSPL

by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 15, 2014 | Reflect

You know when you can feel the learning energy in the room? I could feel it today in Charlotte.  I met a wonderful group of passionate educators diving into Personalized Learning at their district institute.  There is nothing better than being surrounded by that energy.  Thanks for the warm welcome, Charlotte Educators.

I am sure the most enjoyed video that I shared was 7 year old Audri’s Rube Goldberg Machine.  This kid reminds us what passion in learning is about.  He’s not afraid of failure and when he succeeds? Well, just watch. It will light up your day.

Don’t forget to follow the hashtag on Twitter! #cmspl [Tweetchat]

Keynote “Personalized Learning: A Journey Guided By Every Student I’ve Ever Taught.”

Download PDF: PersonalizedLearningCMSPL

Breakout Session: Genius Hour: Help Students Tune Into Their Passions

Download PDF: GeniusHour

Breakout Session: Building Innovation: Classrooms Where Ideas Grow

Download PDF: BuildingInnovation

Krissy Venosdale, EdS, Innovation Coordinator at Kinkaid School, Houston, TX   

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Something Priceless

by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 11, 2014 | Reflect

We’ve been moving this week and I found something very special to me in our garage.  Under the Christmas tree and tucked behind my husband’s military uniforms.  There he was. Woodward.

Meet Woodward.  Woodward’s been a friend of mine since I was five years old.  When I was five, we were building our family home and  I was that kid that was digging in the dirt, pushing cars in the mud, and playing with the concrete chunks.    In my exploration, I collected wood scraps.  I found a hammer, some large nails lying around, and took the scraps from a wood pile.   I wanted him to have hinged arms so they could bend.  I used my markers to color in his clothes and make his smile.

I didn’t keep many of my toys from my childhood,  but I kept Woodward.  He reminds me of something.

I look at him and I see what it’s like to be a child.  To look at a pile of scrap wood, bound for the trash, and see something in it.   To get a hammer, nails, and even though you’ve never used them, you do it anyway.  My parents never stopped me.  They didn’t tell me to put the tools down.  They didn’t throw Woodward away.  They never told me playing with giant nails and a hammer was too dangerous– I’m sure they were there, but they probably let me bang up my own thumb and get splinters while I made Woodward.   They gave me something better than too much help or too many restrictions…. they gave me the time and  the space to create.   They let me make a big mess and they allowed me  to learn, explore, my way, the kind made of crushed thumbs and crooked boards.

And today? I value that so much.  That space I had to learn.  Woodward is a messy little crooked reminder of what learning looks like to me.  He’s far from perfect, but he’s perfectly mine. Part of my journey.

I think Woodward will have a place on my desk this school year. Nestled between iPad chargers and app codes, he’ll stand there smiling. A reminder that innovation comes in all shapes and sizes.   Standing tall on the idea that innovation is not about “stuff,”  but it’s about what you do.  The intersection of ideas and actions.  Seeing a pile of scrap wood, knowing it can be so much more, and then building it.

And knowing, thirty years later, that it’s one of the most valuable things you own.  The idea that became something. Something priceless.

NOTE: Please excuse my dog looking on in the background.  I think she see something special in Woodward too…. something to chew up.  🙂 

Let’s Make Learning…

by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 7, 2014 | Reflect

Let’s not just create a Maker Space in the spare room in our schools.  Let’s not reserve Makey Makey, Little Bits, and tinkering for a room down the hall or on the other side of campus. Let’s not try to schedule making.  Let’s make making part of our environment. What about the science lab? Art room? Every classroom? Let’s integrate making.  Making IS learning.  Let’s embed curriculum into authentic, integrated projects where making is part of the journey.  Let’s ask kids the kind of questions that we don’t know the answers to, and then let them discover.  Allow them the time and freedom to dream big, right under the roof of our school.  Kids thrive on tinkering, exploring, dreaming up new things.  Let’s not think of it as a “Maker Movement.”  Let’s think of it as getting back to what learning really is.  Under test booklets and behind strictly mandated curiculums that fence kids in.  Let’s release their thoughts and guide their exploration.  Let’s not wait one more day.  Let’s make learning as great as it really is.  We are all makers.

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Light Up the World With Us

by Krissy.Venosdale | Jul 6, 2014 | Reflect

I’ve been thinking about this since I returned from ISTE, the world’s largest edtech conference where passion flowed down the escalators and through the wide open halls like a river.  Excitement, hugs, pure joy over connections.

I’ve also been thinking about this since I read Pernille Ripp’s post “When Teacher’s Bully.”  Pure heartache. What teachers do to each other in the midst of stress, competitive feelings, and jealousy.  What people do when they lose their focus and teaching becomes about them. Stuff that rips people’s hearts out and stuff that’s just not good for kids or for the world.

The joy and the heartache.

Think about how powerful we all really are, together.  How we each have thoughts and ideas that when put together?  Are unstoppable.  Sure, education has it’s problems.  We could list a billion.  But what else does education have?  Us.  We need to openly share and provide each other with the ideas and thoughts that can keep us going. Stoke each other’s fires. Fan each other’s flames.  Share before we’re even sure what works because that’s what collaboration is. Open sharing.  Open doors. Open learning.   We’d provide each other the thing we need most:  Support.    Because what happens to a fire when it doesn’t get air?  It’s extinguished.

I don’t think any of us get up in the morning thinking, let’s change the world today.  We’re thinking, where are my shoes? What time is my meeting?  I need to grab a snack in case that one student, or ten, didn’t get breakfast again.   Did my own kid get out of bed yet?  Is this donut healthy because it has cherry flavored sprinkles?

But, we CAN change the world. Never alone, because a tiny flame in the wind can’t light up the world all by itself. Together.  Your shine. Plus my shine. Plus every other educator around us.  We could light up the world with us and be the very thing our kids need.  A community of sharing. Learning. Growing. Together.

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