We spent the morning together discovering some interesting things about the Champions (including hunting down the Coyote tracks out back). Please take a look at the magazine/book that we composed from our adventures and interviews during our time together!

http://www.tikatok.com/book/viewShared/title/everybody-works-001/code/58c8c1469e8d22063c6f5b750a89b86f

With Easter weekend having come and gone, many of us have fresh memories of kids running frantically through the yard, hunting down those little platic capsules of sugar energy. The dedication and tunnel-visioned effort that kids put into finding those hidden holiday treasures is almost awe-inspiring, and it makes me wish that we could tap into that same gusto in the learning process. Well, why can’t we?

I built a “virtual scavenger hunt” in an online course that I was developing some time ago and received some rave reviews from the students following the activity. I hid little clues throughout the weekly content of the course, and then gave the students a list of items to find, and sent them on their way. They gathered the breadcrumb, and brought them back at the end of the week in lieu of a more formal assessment. Although I didn’t have the chance to fully analyze the outcomes for that week versus the other weeks (the sample size was pretty small), the very positive reactions that I received spoke to something even deeper–i.e. the activity seems to have reenergized the learning process through the spice of variety.

Tapping into that natural human propensity to hunt and gather seems to be a pretty powerful tool; moreover, though, tapping into new ways of presenting learning materials so that the end users (the learners) remain attentive and engaged is a perpetually exciting and energizing experience.

Anyway, I guess real the take-away here is that the educators need to make the “eggs” good, and the learners will keep coming back to hunt for more.

Over the past weekend my family and I took a quick spring break road trip to a little touristy mountain town not far from where we live. Although we were only 1.5 hours from our front door, we got a hotel room for a few nights and immersed ourselves in the local attractions to really immerse ourselves in the vacation feeling. Admittedly, though, I have a five year old son and a baby girl, so just staying in a hotel with a pool was probably enough to create the full simulacra experience for them.

Anyway, we visited an ancient Native American cliff dwelling site, toured a cave with stalactites, stalagmites and columns (a term that I only learned during the visit to the cave, but one that my son surprisingly knew from his pre-trip homework with mom on the cave website), and even ate at a “real” Colorado pirate restaurant. Although the destinations were less than exotic, our family showed an innate ability to let go of the regular grind and immerse itself in vacationland, even if for just a few days.

With that all said (and in the spirit of bringing this post back down to an educational ground) watching the ways in which my son gathered and processed new data while in that less structured “vacation mode” was fascinating. The learning that he did was truly experiential, and the freedom with which he immersed himself in new experiences was inspiring. By watching a group of older boys and girls, he mastered the cannon ball in the pool within about three tries (back in swimming class he would have likely waited for permission and/or recognition from the instructor); in the cave tour, he stepped up and volunteered all kinds of information about the different strata and formations–knowledge that he had mastered on the fly in excited anticipation of the trip; at the cave dwellings, he noticed drawings on the wall, and notches in the rocks that I never would have caught, and he then offered his own personal explanations for what they likely meant or were used for. Never once did he second guess himself, and he was always happy to hear the information that I or my wife could gather from the signs posted throughout the place.

Although I very much understand the need for accountability in education, watching a young mind grasp on to unexpected learning opportunities is almost awe-inspiring. I suppose that what I take with me from these musings is that we have to try, at all costs, to allow children to learn through decision-making, discovery and even serendipity. And, whatever we can do to infuse those possibilities into the very structured world of educational learning, the better we’ll all likely be.