PLN Education Blog
My journey of learning digital literacy, establishing a personal learning network, and becoming a qualified 21st century teacher.
The TedTalk "Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering" is full of powerful messages about education. Gever Tulley runs a tinkering school, a six day immersion program where children come and build. But it is so much more. The points that are brought up in this video go far beyond tinkering and building, while those are important skills as well. However, it is the trust and failure components of this program that are emphasized and highlight how important these are for children and their education. At the tinkering school the children learn to make plans, but also have the freedom to try new ideas. They are free of the fear of failure, and as a result come to understand that failure is a part of learning and that great success will undoubtedly be proceeded by mistakes, dead ends, and obstacles. Children are able to work with their hands and see their ideas and efforts come to fruition. These are lessons that transcend content area, and are essential to life. And the children are trusted, trusted to use the tools and not hurt themselves or others, trusted to work and create and try, trusted to be creative and imaginative. With this trust, the children are able to create and explore and make wonderful products. As adults we take this trust for granted, but are ever aware when a boss or friend or coworker does not trust us to complete the task. We become resentful, but yet cannot see how we treat children can breed that same resent and possibly even contempt. Let the children fail, they need to because life will be full of failure. But when they fail, be there to help them learn and improve and capatilize on the experience. If failure is stressed as a disappointment when they are young, what kind of tools are we giving the children to deal with the world they will enevitably live in? In an education system that can have such rigid standards, expectations, and confinement (sitting in a desk surrounded by four walls), we need to allow more of the opportunities that are available at Tulley's tinkering school. We need to help our students learn lessons that will last their lifetime, incorporating those lessons into the content, because that is what they will ultimately remember and help them succeed well past their school years.
[Ted]. (2009, July 1). Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvHViFc0ekw&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp&index=17
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMy name is Margaret Sullivan, and I am a teacher candidate at California State University San Marcos, on my way to becoming a 21st century science teacher Archives
December 2016
Categories
|