How To Ignore A List

At the suggestion of #clmooc, I offer a reflection on the first week of making in list form. Here's what I had planned on doing this past Saturday:

First

De-moss the brick patio.

Second

Finish mulching the side plot.

Third

Flagstone path maintenance: Fill in material that has washed away.

Fourth

Weed!

So how much of that did I accomplish? None. Why? Because I started to work on a "How To" video instead:

I thought I would take an hour to look over the footage my son helped me shoot the day before and start to piece a video together in YouTube Editor. Sure enough, three hours later, suddenly I realized. . that three hours had passed, and I was still working on the video. While those other tasks are important, and, each in their own way, enjoyable (even the weeding), I could not stop editing until the project was done. As my attention and focus became deeper and deeper, it shot to the top of the list.  It became the most meaningful and relevant challenge for me on that Saturday morning. 

Now, here comes the educational tie-in: I just presented at the Midwest Chromebook Institute. The thrust of the workshop I led was the need to establish a classroom culture based upon student agency and meaningful learning experiences. With more and more schools going 1:1, including my own, I suggested that teachers early on challenge students with quick creative challenges aimed at having students reflect on and create multimedia statements about themselves.

The hope is that these kind of projects immediately introduce to the students a few critical ideas:

1. They will use their devices to create,
2. They will consider what is meaningful to them,
3. They will share their work.

Making my video reinforced what happens when relevant making enters the picture. We want to continue to explore, shape, craft, and, eventually, get feedback in order to continue the iterative process. The trick is to carve out time for this work in the classroom.

It was a Saturday well spent.

Now it's time to get the mulch.