I do eventually get to my question "How do you know that you have a good idea?" Bear with me though!
A couple of weeks back I hosted two classes of future teachers from our local college in my library to demo my (Half) Hour of Code. You can read the details here if you're interested.
Since this demo the professor came back to my library to talk with me about some exciting things.
Very.
Exciting.
Things!
She told me that she used to do a 45 minute lesson on code with her college students. At the end of class she gave them a survey. She got responses like "This was fun but I don't think I'll use it in my classroom." or "I don't see how this applies to the classroom." After our demo the surveys were so much more positive! It's one thing to learn about a subject and learn the theory but it's a whole other ball game to see it in action.
She goes on to tell me that normally colleges go out to the community and teach what they've researched and learned. But this time it was the community teaching the college. And not only was it the community it was my students doing the teaching. She tells me she's going to do a write up about our time together. She's going to use my personal blog post about it and also the article I wrote for my school's website to write her paper. She said this way I didn't have to do any of the writing, she'd do it all and include my name as a coauthor. I assured her I did not mind doing my part of the writing but I was also happy for her to take what she needed from my blog post and my article.
How cool is that?!? My name will be in a professional journal!
But y'all!
This is NOT the best part.
It gets better!
She goes on to explain that there is an international conference in Ireland in September. She's putting together a proposal to submit to present at the conference. And she WANTS ME TO GO WITH HER! She's knows of grants that she'll help me write to get my trip there paid for. PAID FOR! Honestly this is the only way I'll be able to go. If this falls through she'll Skype me in during the session. Which is still pretty cool! She'll find out in April if the the proposal is accepted or not. If it is then the grant writing begins!
So I said all that to say this: I had NO IDEA that pulling my students in to help me teach code to the college students was innovative. I had no idea that the professor would want to write about it for a professional journal or do a proposal to present at a conference much less an international conference.
Which leads me to my question: How do you know you have a good idea? How do you know you are being innovative? How do you know that you are burning boxes, as my former principal use to tell me to do?
I asked my husband this question. He's a preacher and comes up with sermons, Bible class topic for church, VBS and studies in people's homes and writes articles for the bulletin. He has to be creative and come up with ideas to present Bible material. How does he know he has a good idea? He said he'd have to think about my question. Haha!
Can you answer that question??? How do you know you have a good idea?
Well, Wow! Congratulations. I suppose one way you know is through feedback. When you have an idea, try it out and see what comes of it.
ReplyDeleteSomething else you said also sparked a thought. It makes sense that college pre-service teachers would learn best when real students are involved, and that college professors of those pre-service teachers would also benefit from seeing the real work of classrooms and libraries. Once you leave the classroom to coach, be an administrator, or to teach education courses, you lose some perspective about what it plausible and possible with children in authentic settings. So it stands to reason that those outside the classrooms would learn best from those of us still in them. I don't say this to disparage anyone. There's a magical something that occurs in classes with children. We innovate to meet the needs of those precious ones in front of us. Without them, we may never have had occasion for those ideas.
Well, Wow! Congratulations. I suppose one way you know is through feedback. When you have an idea, try it out and see what comes of it.
ReplyDeleteSomething else you said also sparked a thought. It makes sense that college pre-service teachers would learn best when real students are involved, and that college professors of those pre-service teachers would also benefit from seeing the real work of classrooms and libraries. Once you leave the classroom to coach, be an administrator, or to teach education courses, you lose some perspective about what it plausible and possible with children in authentic settings. So it stands to reason that those outside the classrooms would learn best from those of us still in them. I don't say this to disparage anyone. There's a magical something that occurs in classes with children. We innovate to meet the needs of those precious ones in front of us. Without them, we may never have had occasion for those ideas.
I usually don't know until someone else tells me it was innovative, or whatever. Most of what I've always done just comes fairly naturally to me (naturally given that I am always out there looking for cool stuff, etc. not that I think it all up on my own every time!) but then later I'm told it is great. Really good question.
ReplyDelete