This year, I used Sara VanDerWerf's name tent idea in my computer science class. I loved it! It gave me a chance to get to know student names/faces AND some interesting things about them. Handing out name plates each day gave me additional opportunities to learn student names as well. The last day of the name tents I asked students to answer the question "What problem do you want to solve?"
I got this idea from either NPR or the MTBoS (I cannot remember), but the philosophy behind it was that asking students "What do you want to be when you grow up?" isn't a great question since so many of the jobs available for them haven't been invented yet. Additionally, students only know what jobs they see in their lives (thus why "teachers", "doctors", "lawyers", are frequent answers - they see these jobs in their lives or on TV). HOWEVER, these big problems need to be solved, and those won't be going away anytime soon.
I was really surprised by their answers! Check out some of them here:
I definitely wasn't giving my students enough credit for thinking big. I had this assumption that a lot of these students were driven by grades, but they also were thinking of some really challenging things!
I also know we will be able to touch on how technology can help solve these problems throughout the course. It might even lead to some neat final projects! It's going to be a great year!
No comments:
Post a Comment