Soft Technology

This afternoon, a group of adults, admins and teachers, and I met with a group of 5 students to work together to plan our Day of Code event. One of the young men told a story that I feel compelled to share. It really rocked my world. I'll paraphrase for you . . . "I watched a ten minute YouTube tutorial about how to code in HTML; before that, I knew nothing about it. Then, I opened up Notepad and followed the instructions to type in some code in the way I learned from the video. After that, I opened up the text file I made with Safari, and that's when I understood what coding was. Sometimes, you just have to do something before you understand it." And that my friends, rocked my world.

The idea of the "Student Choice Continuum" has had quite a bit of traction thanks to followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Thanks for your feedback. Below please find the updated Student Choice Continuum which has discarded the "Based on Curriculum" anchor found in the original version. Educators pointed out to me that any of these activities could be based on curriculum or not and that often teachers think their activities are based on curriculum (word search) when they are actually not helpful to student learning. Keep sharing and sending feedback! I'm listening! Vector Version (svg format) Extra Large PNG Version

https://twitter.com/itechjess JESSICA POWELL ,  @iTechjess Instructional Technologist and Staff Development Professional. VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE On March 22, 2013 something amazing is going to happen: 600 elementary students are going to take over their school and their teachers aren't going to do ANYTHING about it.  You read that right. That day,  Innovation Day , the students at Samuel Houston Elementary are going to "drive the bus" and their teachers are just going to make sure they keep it between the lines.  If you're not familiar with  Innovation Day  (also known as  FedEx Day  or Genius Day), you're missing out on one of the newer trends hitting education right now.  The concept that we've killed creativity in our young students has never gotten more coverage than it's receiving today, thanks to state and national debates about standardized testing. The basic idea is this: ask students what they WANT to learn and then........LET THEM...