In an effort to change how American schools think about teaching, Jenkins’ team developed a strategy called PLAY (Participatory Learning and You) to explain the exploratory and experimental approach to teaching they think students would benefit from. The team worked with teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and recently released a series of studies that describe what they found.
“PLAY describes a mode of experimentation, of testing materials, trying out new solutions, exploring new horizons,” Jenkins said. It’s how kids interact with games – throwing themselves in without reading the rules, testing the limits and feeling free to try and fail. But this learning style is hard to achieve in a system ruled by high-stakes testing where there is no room for students to fail. Everything they do goes on their academic record and they have become unaccustomed to experimenting.
Berta Winiker on 08 Jan 13Librarians have been called by many titles but this article pens a new one to me - innobrarian. It might grow on me, or not. Reflect on the degree to which you and you librarian might be on the same page as change agents in your setting. Here is the direct quote from the article ;Not only can we be innovators ourselves, but in doing so, we can support the dreamers, the players, and the innovators in the building, both students and teachers. We can help them embrace their creative ideas, harness them for the classroom, bring in supporting materials, and provide that open-minded partner that innovators need. Libraries can become the places to "seed" new ideas that can spread throughout our campuses. Our role provides us with tremendous flexibility to self-define what we want to be for our campuses." Note to self - figure our how to link words so that "new technologies" and "change agents" aren't separated. Yay, one task done. Whoops, how to now tag it with Mat622???
