Creative Agency in the Connected Classroom

Promote global collaborations among classrooms of the world by involving students in creating their learning space and connecting physical and virtual learning spaces.

Two years ago, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of speaking at the White House and sharing the story of a global collaboration project. It was part of the Future Ready initiative and I spoke about the need to leverage the connective and creative power of technology in design projects that were human-centered. I shared a few success stories, but the reality of the project is that we faced tons of mistakes and ran into tons of barriers. We had groups fail to complete the project. We had one class abandon the project right before it began.

Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working

A few days ago, I noticed people sharing a few random articles from Atlas Obscura. I noticed a few of their tweets rising to the top of my Twitter feed as well. As I drove to work, I caught a part of an NPR story with one of the lead curators from Atlas Obscura as well. Why all of this buzz for a site that’s been around for awhile? Why was this suddenly becoming viral? I had a hunch this wasn’t entirely organic, so I visited the website. Sure enough, they are selling a book.

It's not uncommon to see popular education strategies become muddied by people who don't understand them well.

Are you interested in integrating media making into your classroom? Making media, such as videos, narrated slideshows and online maps, can be an engaging way