Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com

One of the most relevant and interesting talks in a while...

Community Gardens: Experiential Learning with GTGK

Green Thumbs Growing Kids is a Toronto-based group that provides experiential learning in environmentally sustainable community gardens for urban youth and their families.

I had the opportunity to volunteer with them a few summers ago and had a great time in their Winchester community garden learning about plants and drawing some of the helpful pollinators.

This is a recent video of theirs, produced by an OISE teacher candidate.
To find out more, have a look at their site.

The Third Teacher

I have to link to the site for a fantastic book that I just got: The Third Teacher.
This book is the result of a collaboration of three design firms, one in engineering (OWP/P | Cannon Design), one in educational furnishings (VS America) and one in culture (Bruce Mau Design).


The focus of the book is the role that the design of the physical environment plays in supporting or inhibiting learning. This is a question that every teacher should consider: how does your classroom help or hinder your efforts as an educator?


Class Activity: ask the students, what elements of the design of the classroom and of the school help your learning, and why; and what elements are obstacles, why? How can we address these issues?

Stefan Sagmeister: Don't Take Creativity For Granted

This presentation addresses the great challenge of the creative process: how to keep it new.
They come up with some pretty fascinating results including an interactive digital spiderweb with type  and animals eating their way to produce type...

Stefan Sagmeister,
@sagmeisterinc 

Class Activity: This would be good to show to get students thinking about where they find inspiration. A survey could be completed by the class before watching this about typical sources of inspiration. We could suggest some different approaches to try after watching the video and having a class discussion.

AGO and TDSB negotiating art collection

The TDSB may be lending the AGO a substantial collection of Canadian art. Negotiations are currently underway. Here is the article from the Globe.

Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change

"Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change."

"Design is education. 'In order to do something good you first have to do something'"
An inspiring story for design and for public education.

Class Activity: In groups find some issues or problems in your community and suggest some ideas of how art or design could be used to better them.

Surrealism

Surrealism: "Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express (...)the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason and outside aesthetic or moral preoccupations." (Andre Breton)

Presented in 1924 by Andre Breton in the First Surrealist Manifesto.

Class activity: "Exquisite Corpse" practiced by Andre Breton.
Start with a big piece of paper. The first student draws something and folds the paper to conceal most of what they drew, leaving only a few marks visible, and then passes it to the next student. The next student continues to draw from the marks left visible by the previous student and then folds and partly conceals their addition. This process is repeated for every student. At the end you can unfold the paper and present a collaboratively drawn surrealist work.

"I believe in the future resolution of these two states- outwardly so contradictory- which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak." (Andre Breton)

There is lots of fun surrealist work to explore with students by Salvador Dali and
Rene Magritte.