“A teacher is a professional, one who must constantly seek to improve and to develop certain qualities or virtues which are not received but must be created. The capacity to renew ourselves every day is important.” Paolo Freire (1985) It … Continue reading →

It is amazing that in a world where new ideas shoot up like bamboo through the rainy season, some long-standing ideas hold their ground, acting like old-growth trees in the forest of my thoughts.

I was in a discussion the other day with a friend and fellow educator, Pak Greg, and we were discussing new potential courses that he may like to run in his High School humanities. He was keen to have a comparative studies class wherein two visions of a positive future for humankind were explored: a technophilic version where we find solutions in emergent technology, and another where we seek to better understand the technologies that have been developed over millennia as humankind learned to thrive in every bio-region in the world.

The latter brought my train of thought to something I explored during an indigenous education course at UBC: The Axe Handle Academy. While the idea has likely gone through many iterations since its original publication, I sought out the original publication to revisit this idea. One of the memorable pieces of the curriculum was that it had three orienting quizzes, each asking a driving question:

How well do you know your place?

How well do you know your culture?

How well do you communicate?

What struck me as I went through these quizzes again was the level of permanence and relevance each of them had. The original curriculum was proposed in 1986, and the most recent update to the website was in 2009. Yet, reading through the questions of the first quiz made it apparent that these are eternally relevant questions. The same is mostly true for the questions around culture. Communication, on the other hand, has radically changed since the authoring of the Axe Handle Academy Curriculum.

It was also interesting to consider my own learning and understanding through such a set of questions. I have moved around a fair amount through my life, and so my responses to the prompts around the first two orienting quizzes have changed radically. In reflection on my time in Hungary, I recognized that over the course of two years living there I developed knowledge of the culture and place that would indicate a good deal of progress. I learned about geographic landforms, geological history, indigenous groups to Hungary, the political climate, and much more. However, there were obvious gaps in my knowledge as well, which the quizzes above could point out and lead to further inquiry.

Being back in Bali, I am in a place where I am far more embedded in the culture (largely through my wife and her family) and have established a longer relationship. I recognize that part of what makes me feel a sense of place is being able to address these questions in a more comprehensive manner. This long-term relationship also holds another benefit; in a time of rapid change having a working knowledge of what may be considered normal for a bio-region or culture has a grounding effect on my spirit. While I cherish variety and novelty, I also recognize the power of routine to help create the focus and open-mindedness I need to make sense of this rapidly changing global culture I live in today.

This introspective element you just read above is not a tangent… it is in fact a core focus of what the Axe Handle Academy recognized was needed. As they summarized:

By placing the focus of the Axe Handle Academy on the learning of the teacher we want to provide a model of skills in inquiry, discovery, and synthesis. We believe that the professional teacher who is actually learning together with his or her students is the only means of teaching this attitude toward life-long learning. This is why we have called our model for education the Axe Handle Academy.

Reading through the curriculum of Axe Handle Academy is bittersweet. The intention and values of their place-based model connect intuitively and deeply with where I believe education needs to go. However, education is a big ship and takes a long time to respond to the cues of those steering it. More worrisome still is that the Captain of the ship may not even be aware of these needs.

This analogy is flawed though because the world of education acts more like a swarm than a ship. There are a growing number of outliers around the globe, pushing forward with new (and old) models of learning that respond to some of the prompts of the Axe Handle Academy. The truth as I see it is that we have all the tools we need to create spaces for learning that not only can adapt to a rapidly changing future, but also recognize, honour, and empower the cultures that we are all still very much part of.

Tell me is any of this rings true for you at this time of year: If you were able to answer yes to even one of these, then you need “The 12 Days of Techie Christmas” with 4 all-new bonus pages filled with activities. NOTE: For all activities built on Google Slides, Docs, Sheets or …

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Coil has created a Web Monetization WordPress plugin. In this post, I walk you through the steps in setting up the Coil Web Monetization WordPress plugin, including troubleshooting of some common set up issues.

The post Coil Web Monetization Plugin for WordPress – Set Up and Troubleshooting Issues appeared first on Erica Hargreave.

This summer we aim to hone in on the endless imagination and creativity of youth as we teach them animated storytelling in this online summer camp. Together we will enter the exciting world of interactive digital storytelling by creating animated books and stop motion videos.

The post Animated Storytelling Online Summer Camp! appeared first on Ahimsa Media.

In this article, Bjorn Yearwood discusses different art therapy theories and approaches, including his own.

The post Exploring Art Therapy Theories appeared first on StoryToGo.

#ePIC22 Day 1 Day 2 was the day I noticed this helpful poster, which lays out the value of the recognition ecosystem that badges permit. The recognition of individuals and professionals are more likely to be discussed in our higher ed contexts here in BC, and I like that the notion of social capital, human capital and confidence capital were included as part of individual benefits. Less discussed here in BC are the bottom two: communities and regions/provinces. The inclusion of these as part of the badge ecosystem offers some interesting avenues for discussion and dreaming, and Day 2 would offer some tangible examples of those. Day 2 started with some research sessions, and one that stuck with me was a presentation by Sebastien Rollin, whose research highlighted the potential of using badges to recognise transversal competencies in higher education, which he helpfully framed as “hidden curriculum”. At the same time, the research showed that the biggest uptake was with high performing students, resulting in a risk of “privileging the privileged”.  I think this is an important message, given that this was also the case with MOOCs and is currently a question being asked about microcredentials.  Ultimately, who are badges for and what problem do they solve?    The next few presentations were clear examples of badges solving a problem. First up was Stella Porto from the International Development bank describing a community based badge project called HydroBID. This was clearly a case of badges being built with the HydroBID community, in a context where various levels of contributions are taking place in the community. The goal of the badge was to provide a way for community to recognize itself and the range of various individual contributions. Importantly, the badge wasn’t there to rank, rather everyone gets the same badge through telling their own story of contribution, which may take many forms. The process to get the badge involves reviewers who assess the evidence that individuals have uploaded upon applying for a badge. 2. Alissa Bigelow and Lyndsay Woodside from e-campus Ontario described the Ontario Extend set of badges that lead to a micro credential that then pathway to a program at Conestoga College. This was a helpful and tangible example of all 3 functioning as a group – badges, MCs and recognition. 3. HPass, a skills platform for humanitarians, with over 24k users earning badges from 30 different organizations. This was a helpful example of badging and recognition at both a sector and global level and presumably with 24k users is having tangible impact. HPass is being used by organizations to: recognize knowledge (badging courses) recognize participation (and counting towards a professional certification recognize behaviour recognize action While Day 2 provided lots of examples of badges in use, there were two notable presentation that focussed on recognition. First, the keynote by Nan Travers about Credentials as You Go, who similar to CLOCK from Day 1, began with a compelling case as to why we should care about recognition as a means to address the large numbers of people who never finish formal higher education, representing an invisible population of some higher ed, but no credential. She challenged us to think about both our communities and structures in terms of who they are leaving out and highlighted that there are people with and without power in any of these systems (a concern that I share anytime we romanticise community as a way of addressing power and gatekeeping). Credentials as You Go is trying to address both external and prior learning, informal and formal, incrementally awarded upon validation. This is highly appealing to those of us working in access-oriented institutions attracting more marginalized or adult learners. And for those of us who stuck around to the end of a very full day, we were treated to a mind stretching presentation by Susan Forseille on decolonizing PLAR in a BC context. I was curious how this topic would land in a European context and to be fair, there was a parallel stream of presentations running in French at the same time. Nonetheless, I got the sense there was a lot of interest in the project that Susan described, where Indigenous knowledge was honoured and PLAR’ed through a guided process of storytelling. This mirrored a message that seemed to be present throughout the conference of the importance of having the agency and empowerment to control one’s narrative or learning story, of being able to tell it in a way that can be counted or validated, and the importance of listening and creating room for these narratives in our systems.

Tajik Persian: Readings in History, Culture and Society seeks to help students develop reading proficiency in Tajik at advanced level through authentic texts written for native speakers and provides them glimpses into the history, culture and society of Tajikistan without losing its focus on cultural aspects of the country—an aspect that constitutes a core component […]

Known also as fab labs, tinkering areas, or hackerspaces, makerspaces are generally areas where people can gather to make, create, and experiment with a variety of materials and tools. As the name suggests, makerspaces are spaces where people can make stuff. While these creations are often physical things, digital productions can also be included. Varying […]