What does it mean to be part of the Innovative Learning Designs project? How can we have the greatest impact on student learning? Initially, sixteen schools set out on a collaborative journey to explore new practices for 21st century learning. Another forty schools are now following this lead. Then more schools began playing with ideas about their practice, exploring, sharing learning.
We are all connected by our passion for students, our passion for teaching, and our passion for learning. We know that teachers make the difference.
Here are their stories. Here is my story. Here is our learning…
I have much to learn. From each of you.
Elisa Carlson, Ed. D.
Director of Instruction
Surrey Schools
Elisa, wonderful to hear of the passion for teaching in your district, and the journey to explore new practices for 21st century learning. Would that journey extend as far as Courtenay?
There, I could take you to Mesa Verde to live amongst the indigenous peoples, learning their culture and the interaction between them and their environment. Or you could navigate to an asteroid headed to Earth to drill core samples, live as a wolf, negotiate the survival of a wildlife preserve amongst various Kenyan stakeholders, or traverse the scientific ethics of experimentation on one for the sake of the many in a town afflicted by a plague. My First Nations students could take you into the recreation of their ancestral village, where they have learned how to preserve their heritage and rediscover their identity. My FSL students could take you for a walk through a French-Canadian town where you can shop for household goods, visit a museum of French impressionistic artists, or sample some French cuisine. If you prefer, you could visit Ancient Rome with my grade 7 or 8 students, racing chariots in the Circus Maximus, or explore the divergent perspectives of a pillaging Attila the Hun and his victims. For a more local history lesson, you might want to ride the newly constructed CPR rails to Port Moody from Toronto, or visit the House of Commons, or the BC legislature. All this can be done from both my computer my students, who have not simply reading about these things, but recreating them in contextual virtual environments where the knowledge can be learned experientially.
The possibilities envisioned by Jules Verne took many years to emerge from the fiction he created into reality. I hope it will not take as long for us to grasp the potential for learning demonstrated in the movie “Avatar.” It’s a methodology and technology that promotes a profoundly deeper learning experience, is available, and awaits a revolution in education rather than yet another revision. I thought you might like to hear about it.