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John Seely Brown on Interest-Driven Learning, Mentors and the Importance of Play

in the past, it was likely to be very hard to find other people around you with your specialized interests. For example, when I was obsessed with building transmitters and radios as a kid, there were maybe five other kids in the entire state of New York who were also designing electronic equipment. I had no cohort group. Today, no matter how specialized a kid’s interest is, he or she will find a cohort group. When my godson was 9, he became fixated on penguins. He went on the internet, and he found himself a group or a collective that was deeply engaged with penguins. I said to him one day, “Well, who is this group?” And he said, “Well, they have a funny name.” And I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Johns Hopkins!” He’d locked into a research group at Johns Hopkins! Yes, as a 9-year-old.

I personally feel that in order to get hooked on something—well, that’s the role of a great teacher, a great mentor. The role of the mentor is to get you to discover things you might not actually know you were interested in, to confront topics you may not be very good at understanding, but once discovered, you will.

Beyond Q+A: Six Strategies That Motivate ALL Students to Participate

One powerful aspect of technology and assessment is that it can show the journey of learning and serve as a form of curating the learning in the digital realm. Students can use these collections as reflection tools not only across a unit but also over years of learning.

In other words, think of your IWB as a portal, rather than a destination.

Chop YouTube Videos TubeChop allows you to easily chop a funny or interesting section from any YouTube video and share it.

pedagogical challenges or outcomes and align them with the strengths

strengths of Twitter include real-time, rapid communication and feedback; ease of sharing links and resources; and the ease of making a channel more public than a particular classroom.