Cultivating an inquiry based community around Roblox Studio in the elementary library has been demanding but in every way extremely rewarding. Our first focus was to find ways for students to have frequent access to laptops. This sounds simple but access and the freedom to play have been essential to establishing a student-led Roblox Studio game design community. For adults – parents, teachers and guardians – who are rightly concerned about student welfare in gaming environments, it has also been important to provide clear information so they can understand their role in ensuring student safety.
Continue reading ROBLOX STUDIO : inquiry and learning through playCategory Archives: #design
Designed for Discovery [audio - Part I & II]
Designed for discovery (Part II : Features of discovery)
Continued from “Designed for discovery : Part I” or click here to listen to the full audio version
[Feature 1]
Now, let’s return to consider the common features of what “discovery” means. Discovery is a transformativeexperience where we have crossed a threshold into an understanding that fundamentally changes us and influences our future actions. After a moment of discovery, we cannot view the world in same way we have in the past. This is where discovery closely parallels the idea of threshold concepts in information literacy where these threshold concepts aredefined as transformative, integrative, irreversible, bounded and troublesome (Visit the Threshold Concepts and Information Literacy website for many freely available resources). An example in my personal experience is my discovery of the world of audiobooks that fundamentally changed my perspective and provided access to books that I would not have read or been able to read previously. Moby Dick read by Anthony Heald, was one of my first audiobooks. When ever I had picked up a copy of Moby Dick, I felt it to be too cumbersome, too much of an epic investment to attempt, however, to have it read to me by a professional voice actor opened up whole new experience of literature and story that was previously obscure to me. This discovery was transformative and fundamentally added to my literary experience. Continue reading Designed for discovery (Part II : Features of discovery)
Designed for discovery (Part I)
Our human state is one of a continuous exploration, growth and discovery. When we land on the shore of discovery, the next beckons.
Click here to go to Part II or click here to listen to the full audio version Continue reading Designed for discovery (Part I)
A BigBookSnap : “A Blueprint for Tomorrow” by Prakash Nair
“Six Educational Strategies That The Design Principles Should Support”
From “A Blueprint for Tomorrow : Redesigning Schools for Student-Centred Learning” by Prakash Nair
Inspired by our secondary students who have been using Booksnaps over recent weeks, I decided to make my own. The problem is that my #Booksnap grew to become a #BigBookSnap. I am definitely biased here but it often seems that the school library is an obvious place to support student centred learning through collaboration, supportive environments, technology, flexibility and opportunities for connection, since these have long been the core functions of the school library. This BigBookSnap picks up on some of Nair’s strategies and connects them directly with the library. This is not really in the spirit of the concise booksnap but here it is anyway.