LIBE 477 - Vision Project Post #2: Why and for Whom?

 The Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies curriculum builds on students’ natural curiosity, inventiveness, and desire to create and work in practical ways. It harnesses the power of learning by doing, and provides the challenging fun that inspires students to dig deeper, work with big ideas, and adapt to a changing world. It provides learning opportunities through which students can discover their interests in practical and purposeful ways.

- BC's Curricular Rationale for ADST

 

In the world of Education, the reasons why we do things, and for who we do things are big open questions sometimes. As teachers we carve our own ways in teaching content for our students and we choose how to teach because we want to reach our students in specific ways. We develop methods to reach those key students, and therefor we have targeted them and made decisions surrounding their needs. As part of our vision project we are asked why and for whom? What is our rationale for building this idea and allowing it to become a part of our personal learning journey? 

Above this post is a rationale pulled from the BC's Curriculum Wesbite. The reason why Applied Design, Skills and Technologies should be taught. It's within this rationale that I find mine. 

I want to provide learning opportunities for students to discover, in a "boxed up, here's some help for educators kind of way". Let's face it, as educators with an open curriculum, its overwhelming to plan for students to reach these goals. Below is a chart of the curricular competencies for just the first few grades!  Somehow we have to come up with new innovative, creative ideas to guide our students. 

We manage. Some of us do really well, and some of us struggle, relying on Pinterest or our colleagues for ideas (by the way, this is never a bad thing).

Enter me. 

What if...? And just hang on here because its doosey. 

What if we had the opportunity to have these curricular competencies met, by taking out a box from our local library, that then match to a website? 

As an educator, I could do a lesson, use the materials, post our results (nice evidence of learning opportunity here), bring back the box and voila! done! 

 So...Why? 

There's always a need for making teachers lives easier. This curriculum is relatively new and many teachers struggle with the openness of its content. I'd like to create a network for teachers to connect, by developing a website with lessons (shareable, I might add) and a place to post results of lessons! This all comes with the ability to "rent" out a box with the materials needed. 

So, why? For convience, networking and collaboration, a passion for hands on learning and connecting with our libraries! 

For Whom? 

Educators and Teacher Librarians. The idea is to involve the district after some testing in an elementary school. If I am able to get the district onboard it should be available to all. 

How's It Going So Far? 

So far I've started working on a website and creating the different pages of it. It's been tricky designing a site that allows for file uploads. I'm also trying to design all this on free platforms which has some challenges and limitations. 

My next plan is to create a tester kit that would go along with a lesson plan on the site. I also have an interview with a teacher in my district scheduled to ask what they are looking for in a ADST kit/borrowable lesson kit. 

I also got a bit over excited about a logo to accompany my vision.I'll give you a sneak peek below! 

Stay tuned for the next blog post which will include (dundunnah!) my vision project! 

Sources:

Wix.Com, https://www.wix.com/.

"Applied Design, Skills And Technologies | Building Student Success - B.C. Curriculum". Curriculum.Gov.Bc.Ca, 2020, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/adst.