C4T #4

Dean Shareski
For my last C4T assignment of the semester, I was assigned Dean Shareski's personal weblog, Ideas And Thoughts- Learning Stuff Since 1964. Dean Shareski is a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. He specializes in the use of technology in the classroom and recently started working for Discovery Education as the Community Manager of the Canadian DEN or Discovery Educators Network. The whole layout of Dean Shareski's blog was eye catching to me. He has his posts set up as if they were hanging from a string by a nail. I just found the layout really neat which made me want to explore his blog more. I think this is important in any aspect of life. In my elementary classroom, I want it to be colorful and inviting to my students. Another interesting thing I found about Dean Shareski's blog was that it his own personal weblog. It isn't a blog for his work, although he does make references to his work, but this is his personal space to share his ideas and thoughts. I guess I find it interesting because its more personal.

Post #1
The first post of this series was titled, Whatever Happened to Joy? or A Culture of Joy: Part 2 from July 2, 2013. This post was about opportunity Shareski had to speak at TEDxWestVanEd. TED is a nonprofit organization where world leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in about 18 minutes. TEDxWestVanEd started out as a casual conversation between three educators at an Unconference in Delta, BC in the fall of 2012. Their focus is on education and learning through new eyes. The opportunity Shareski got to speak at one of these events meant a lot to him. His video is about joy in the classroom, a theme that has been emerging in Shareski's work since 2011. Shareski talks about the importance in keeping joy alive and engaging students. The two definitions of joy that he gives:

1. the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.
2. the expression or exhibition of such emotion.

I couldn't agree more with how Dean Shereski feels about the importance of joy and its role in the classroom. In his video, he says that some would argue when we tie joy to education, it becomes nice but it isn't necessary. Shereski argues, as would I, that joy in itself is a worthy goal to pursue.

Dean Shereski shows his audience clips of children and the "joy" on their faces when they succeed at an experiment, or after completely a funny video with friends. After seeing the happiness on those children's faces and see how they light up after success, I can only think, why would any educator not make that a goal in their classroom? Another part of his talk, he shows a news video of an educator, Jarad Heidinger, who flies a helicopter in his classroom to pick out vocabulary words. Heidinger shows videos of people from all over the world who addresses his class and says the meaning of each vocabulary word. I LOVE this idea. Instead of the usual, putting vocabulary words on the board and having the students look up the definition, this is a more fun and engaging way to get the definition. I know the students will remember a famous athlete telling them what a word means than having to look up the word themselves. I probably wouldn't use a toy helicopter flying around in my classroom, but I would love to have people video themselves telling my students vocab words!


Comment #1
My comment to Dean's post on joy was a brief introduction of myself and my assignment to visit his page and post a summary of what I've read. I left my feedback on his post and thanked him for sharing! My comment:

Hi Dean,
My name is Melissa Canterbury, and I am one of Dr. Strange’s students in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. We are assigned a blog every two weeks to comment on and at the end of this unit I will be leaving a summary post on my blog, I would love for you to visit and leave feedback!

I really enjoyed reading this post because I am a strong believer in making the classroom fun. I am still getting my degree and haven’t started my started teaching, but I hope to always engage my students and make the learning process enjoyable for them. I know through personal experience, I always wanted to do the best I can for particularly the teachers who always had fun with us. Even in college, my Music for Elementary teacher was silly with us and made the classroom fun. I hope some day I am that teacher!

Thank you so much for sharing the video of Jarad Heidinger! I probably won’t use a helicopter in my elementary classroom but I love the idea of having other people from all over the world tell his students the vocabulary word. I think that is so neat! Dr. Strange has his students communicate with other educators from different places and also kids from all over the world. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to visit any students because it is the summer but it’s still an awesome idea!

I’ve had a lot happen recently in school and work and also my personal life, and I have been trying more to enjoy those things and have fun! I really enjoyed your video and look forward to visiting again.
Melissa Canterbury

Post #2
The second post I commented on was titled, The Stupidest Creative Act, from June 29, 2013. Dean Shereski writes about the honor it was to be chosen to speak at the opening session of this year's ISTE conference in San Antonio, TX. International Society for Technology in Education is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting the use of information technology to aid in learning, teaching of K-12 students and teachers. Shereski says how this particular format of presentation was hard to do and that he tried to submit slides that contained videos but he wasn't allowed to. He says if he ever got the honor to speak at this conference again he will be more creative with his time.

The talk he gave at ISTE was about being silly. He begins his talk by talking about a conversation he had with his daughter. His daughter walked up to him and said, "Dad, I can’t fit any more apps or songs on my phone it’s says it’s full”. Dean took his daughter's phone and found the problem......985 selfies. Dean says he is known to take a few selfies himself, this is his introduction to him being a big fan of silly. Silly is what makes us human. Yet in our "achievement obsessed" schools, we would do better to reconsider ways of bringing in silly and joy. I agree with Dean that we can not convince any school district to make silly a part of the curriculum. However, everyone can agree that creativity is an important part of learning now. Silly is a wonderful spark for creativity. Creativity does not come to us, however silliness is a great place to start.
Dean talks about how when he first started writing posts, it was of the things his dog would chew up. Of course then, people would tell him he has too much time on his hands. While he was posting pictures of chewed up shoes, he assumed the people telling him this was out finding a cure for cancer. The evolution of his work then became the important things others were telling him to produce. He then quotes Clay Shirky, “The stupidest creative act is still a creative act and that the real gap isn’t’ between the mediocre and great work, the real gap is between getting started and doing nothing." If you've created something, even if it's stupid or silly, you have put yourself in a starting position to do more.

Next, Dean calls Twitter the "ultimate experiment in stupid". Who came up with the idea to tell the entire world that we just ate a sandwich? However, as experienced in Dr. Strange's class, Twitter has became a community for personal and professional relationships formed.

Then educators come into play. "Great teachers can take stupid or throwaaway and turn it into something beautiful and meaningful." -Dean Shereski. Often stupid creations are safe and risk free. Teacher's need to allow students to create, experiment, and at times be silly, but lead students to reflect and ask, "What more can this be?" Sometimes, silly creations will blossom into something of beauty and value and sometimes it won't. If teachers want to see their students be more creative, we should allow them to be silly at times. Dean says, "It’s one of the attributes of new media and indeed the benefits of technology. Cheap failure."

Dean ends his talk by leaving his audience with a quote, "Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up." I LOVE this! In the classroom, students are always going to be watching me. I need to be the teacher that allows them to be silly and who can be silly with them. This quote reminds me of what the coach said that visited our EDM 310 class. He told us how he would wear a hat of his favorite team while teaching a lesson of his. Yes, the students thought he was silly and he ended up on Pinterest, but they remembered what he said and was more engaged in the lesson. If I am the teacher who is afraid to be silly with my children or allow them to creative, why would they ever want to grow up to be some boring ole adult?

Comment #2
My comment to this post was agreeing with Dean Shereski's views about joy and silly in the classroom. I gave him my thoughts on the subject and left a link to the summary post I would be writing of my visit. My comment:

Dean,
Great post! I have always considered silliness and fun to be an important part of learning. Especially in my elementary classroom why would I want to limit their creativity by telling them they are "wrong" for being silly.
I really enjoyed visiting your blog and feel strongly about your topics of joy and silly in the classroom. It's so overlooked now that our culture is so obsessed with standards and achievement.
I will be posting a summary post of what I have read onto my EDM 310 blog. I would love for you to visit and leave a comment!

Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed your posts.

Melissa Canterbury
A Student in EMD310 at the University of South Alabama