I co-teach a very small class (referring to number, not stature, of students) called Creative Solutions for the Global Good. This semester, I’ve taken a bit of a different approach to the early homework assignments.
For the one due next class, I finished the instructions with, “Try adding something to this assignment that isn’t required in the instructions.”
They (all high school boys, by the way) did well with the previous two assignments, when I added to the instructions, “make a point of formatting the information in your answers in a cool way.”
Rita (one of the school’s administrators, and the other teacher of the class) and I were both impressed with the interesting and even artistic approaches the guys brought to their work. Hopefully we’re setting in motion a sustained interest in adding something personally distinctive to what they turn in.
It may be important that the material I asked them to react to in the first two assignments carried plenty of cool in their stories, and I’ll share one of those videos here.
Your question is this: watching the video below, could you use it to get students to draw creative connections to the work they do for you, no matter the subject?
This is Marble Machine, by the Swedish group Wintergatan.
What ideas have you added to homework that brought new and interesting things to what the students turned in?
Last week we released the Next Vista for Learning September newsletter. In the freebies section, you’ll find the video above and nine other interesting video stories, along with a half-dozen items each in the “Worth the Read” and “Worth the Try” sections. You’ll also learn about The Memory Project, which is one of the coolest things I’ve run across in the last decade.
You might also enjoy from last week the latest webinar offering Richard Byrne and I did in the Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff series, or perhaps the Activities Across Grade Levels episode on Jamboard, which Susan Stewart and I did with the help of guest star Tom Mullaney.