Eclectic Technology

Jackie Gerstein shares nine questions that you might consider asking yourself as you design new units. Two are listed below. The infographic she designed, with nine questions is in the image above, and you can access a list of the nine questions as well as the infographic in her post.

* Will the learners get the chance to share their work with other learners with a more global audience?

* Will the learners find the learning activities engaging? interesting? relevant? useful?

Gerstein's questions help you focus on the learner.They may help you transform lessons in ways you had not envisioned.

If you are looking for a variety of information on Design Thinking this post is for you. Gestein share many resources including:

* An Introduction to Design Thinking, a Facilitator's Guide with a script, talking points, takeaways, and set-up considerations (available from Scribd)

* A slideshare presentation "Design is hacking how we learn (presented at AIGA Into the Woods 2012)

* links to a variety of articles, including "The d.school's Virtual Crash Course of Design Thinking"

She also discusses some of the problems with Design Thinking, once again providing links several articles. She shares views from people in business who have turned Design Thinking " into a linear, gated, by-the-book methodology that delivered, at best, incremental change and innovation." She expresses concerns that this may also happen in education.

The final section of her post looks at hacking, but with a different flavor than we often read. A number of definitions of hacking are provided and one is below:

"In developing hacking as a skill, an attitude, and/or as an approach to construct and de-construct the world, it is more than just hacking in terms of computer science.  In order to hack the world, we need to tear it apart, deconstruct it and analyze its components parts and how they operate in relation to one another within various systems.  This is a mental, social, emotional, and whenever possible, a physical process."

Challenge yourself to read this post. Chances are you will come away with some new ideas.

This infographic illustrates how SAMR may be used as a framework as we move from Education 1.0 to Education 2.0 to Education 3.0. The actual post also includes a wide variety of links to additional resources.

Have you considered using the SAMR model as you develop new curriculum or revise curriculum. As you move up SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) Gerstein would say that Substitution and Augmentation are Education 1.0, Modification is Education 2.0 and Redefinition is Education 3.0.

For more information on these concepts click through to the post.