The Martin Institute is pleased to announce that teacher John Hunter, a 4th grade teacher with Albemarle County Schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been named as the first Martin Institute Teaching Excellence Fellow. Much attention has been brought to John Hunter’s teaching because of his 2011 TEDtalk, which was named by TED and the Huffington Post as the most influential TEDtalk of 2011.

John Hunter believes that his fourth grade students can solve world peace, as well as develop strategies for solving nuclear disasters, oil spills, global warming, endangered species issues, mineral rights, water rights—a total of about 30 interlocking, real world problems. John sets The World Peace Game in motion and then guides his students through the critical and strategic thinking, collaboration, and negotiation processes needed to understand and develop solutions for these global issues. Hunter explains, “The World Peace Game is about learning to live and work comfortably in the unknown.”

Over the course of the last 25 years, John has developed The World Peace Game, a multi-dimensional strategic board game that requires his fourth graders to solve world dilemmas that are environmental, geopolitical, financial, military, and every other layer he can think of combined. He uses his large scale game grounded in real world problems to teach his students critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, coordination, communication, research, negotiation skills, and the skill of synthesis, among other vital 21st century skills. His approach is to create a stimulating learning environment that excites, inspires, challenges, and supports students in their learning. Students learn to observe, connect, think, and construct meaning through inquiry, collaboration, and experimentation.

John’s teaching approach is completely student-centered and aligned with an emphasis on 21st century thinking skills. The learning environment that he structures is dynamic, fast-paced, and intense which results in highly motivated and engaged students who take real ownership and interest in their learning. For these reasons, the Martin Institute is delighted to welcome John Hunter as our first Teaching Excellence Fellow.

Martin Institute to Develop Educational Resources with John Hunter

John Hunter, in conjunction with the Martin Institute, will be developing educational resources and Master Classes for teachers interested in developing student-centered learning approaches that promote high levels of critical thinking and engagement.

Read more about John Hunter and the World Peace Foundation here.

As he explains in his TEDtalk, John’s work has been documented in the film World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements. Filmmaker Chris Farina chronicles John Hunter and his class through a whole cycle of the World Peace Game. This excellent film captures the energy and intensity of students who are capable, with guidance, of handling large amounts of often ambiguous and conflicting information that surround real world issues and working through it to develop solutions. We see a classroom of students negotiating their learning, collaborating both with peers and the teacher who is at once teacher and co-learner.

Martin Institute to Develop Curriculum Based on World Peace Film

The Martin Institute has also formalized an agreement with the filmmaker Chris Farina to develop a viewer’s guide and a facilitator’s guide for schools that want to use the film as the basis for transformative conversations about teaching and learning. The Martin Institute will also be developing a half day professional learning session around the film to take to schools across the country…

Read more about Chris Farina and Rosalia Films here.

[From The Martin Institute read more]

Spontaneous and Relentless Compassion

This TED Talk, is about a geo-political exercise I created for public school children in 1978. Its consistent successful outcome over the last three decades (negotiating and solving fifty inter-locking global problems, and having every nation’s asset value and societal good increased), I would say is based almost entirely upon the nature of the relationship between the teacher and the students, and between the students themselves. The game board itself is a multi-level tower of Plexiglas covered with thousands of game pieces and layer upon layer of complex, global crisis requiring hyper collaborative problem solving, in the midst of chaos, uncertainty, and adversarial pressures. Everything is, and is designed to go wrong on every level and in every sphere… all at once… for everyone.

And yet what I find, when my students are thrown into this super-heated crucible with its recipe for immediate and complete failure, that instead of boiling over they add new ingredients, performing a sort of alchemy, turning leaden problems into gold. Solving problems in the Game is certainly a messy process, with false starts, inaccurate assessments, and wrong-headed impulses. But the thought of there being no way out does not seem to occur to the children, although the situations presented are structured to appear that way. No way out, they come to realize is a self-designated option created by the conceptual mind. This concept actually has no inherent existence in reality.

The children have a lack of pre-conceptions, a lack of experience really, of what has or has not worked, of what can or cannot be useful. Because of that innocence, or naivete, their solutions come across as bold, creative, and often wildly open-hearted. Their failures, which I fully expect and accept, are welcomed as sincere experiments. They are working from a place before perspectives harden and attitudes solidify, where for example, compromise is demonstrated to be a lack of separateness from others, rather than being seen as personal sacrifice. Compromise as a method does not seem to be experienced as a lost of self. Rather the students’ over riding concern in negotiations is for a happier outcome for all…

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– Arianna Huffington and Chris Anderson

Last fall we re-started media relations and content development services for an old friend – Logical Choice Technologies (LCT). If you’ve been following our work in education, you might make the connection: Logical Choice is the largest seller and servicer of Promethean classroom technology products in the USA, and one of our earliest education clients.

But this time we aren’t focused on Interactive Whiteboards. Today LCT stretches the horizon once more with an amazing new software/hardware product, created in-house and rapidly soaring to the top of every Pre-K – 2nd grade classroom teachers Christmas wishlist for educational technology.

Letters alive is a revolutionary supplemental reading curriculum that uses the innovative technology of augmented reality to bring letters to life for students in the form of 3D, interactive animals. In the curriculum, students master the building blocks of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, concepts of print, and comprehension. Letters alive aligns with Common Core State Standards and applies best practices in phonics-based reading instruction.

Letters alive 2.0 makes learning to read even more fun and exciting with its faster response times and augmented reality tracking. Students interact with the animals by using the cards, and learn about the animal, the letter, and sentence building.

Letters Alive pioneers the integration of 3D, augmented reality into the classroom environment. No special glasses are needed to render animals, letters and videos into crisp, clear 3D images. Sentences built using an animal card and three sight word cards demonstrate concepts of print and punctuation. At the same time, augmented reality prompts the…

[Read more]

Afternoons at Sensible City are usually filled with coffee and e-mails. Last week we took a break from our regular programming for the betterment of our Asheville Community.

Partnered with Hands On Asheville-Buncombe, The Sensible City Team spent a day volunteering day at the Family Resource Center’s community garden in Emma. There was plenty of fresh air and sun at Emma Elementary School as everyone worked to set the Community Garden to bed for the winter. The afternoon was spent planting winter cover crops, mowing, and cleaning. “The clients we work with are geared towards education and social change,” says Sensible City Multi-Media Producer Andrea Desky, “so we like to reflect that with our own values.”

Take a look at the video to see the crew in action.

(See the full report at www.TEDxPhillyED.com)

We’ll have more in-depth reports shortly, but first, session by session, quick glimpses that make us happy, with photos courtesy (and thanks) of participant Kevin Jarrett.

"In order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first." - Adora Svitak

"Be that one teacher, be that one voice that sees deep." - Ashara Ekundayo

"Rather than a journey into the future, we're going to navigate current day glimpses of what's invisibly creating future change." - Christine Weiser

"Who is an expert? What is a primary source? Let's break down the information challenge of the digital age." - Joyce Valenza (wheeling a circa 1989 library cart on the stage)

"What distinguishes one child from another is not ability, but access." - Barbara Chandler Allen

"Everytime I saw a teachable moment, the teacher said, 'Class, open the textbook...' / ...the iPad removes the shackles of the book" - Matt MacInnis

"The universe matters because we are the universe mattering." - David McConville

Collaboration break at TEDxPhiladelphiaED

Art abounds during collaboration breaks at TEDxPhiladelphiaED

https://eschoolnews11.eduvision.tv/Default.aspx?q=CT1wecDsedD6OJbfryJUzw%253d%253d

It’s not so black & white, as Dr. Pisecco so eloquently explains. Hat tip to eSchoolnews for this double-length video interview with Stewart Pisecco, CEO of Psychological Software Solutions – shot at TCEA 2011.

Sensible City note – if you work in Special Ed, watch this video. It knocked our socks off and made us proud to be working with such a dynamic and visionary bunch.

This is the first in a series of broadcasts from our community/media event at Gulf Coast High School in Collier County Florida. The story glimpses the district’s pilot program that has placed  “smartpen” technology in the hands of over 150 classroom teachers.

Fox turned out for our community/media event at Gulf Coast High School in Collier County Florida and had this to day on the evening news…

Already, freshman Sage Taylor at Gulf Coast High School in Naples gives the gadget high marks. Her algebra teacher, Renee White, has been using the pen to record lectures in an earlier class, which allows her to replay her instructions for a later class and frees her to walk around the room and help students.

“My grades were slipping before this,” Taylor said. “And I’ve noticed them improving.”

On Tuesday morning, White’s freshman students helped her demonstrate the technology for local media. Teachers volunteered for a chance to test the technology. The only requirement was that teachers had to have some special education students in their classes, because it may be most helpful to them.

Marketed as the Livescribe pen and selling for about $149 regular retail — plus $20 for the special paper needed, sold in a notebook — the smartpen allows the user to write on the paper and record his voice at the same time.

It’s then possible to stop and rewind to an earlier point in the session by tapping the penpoint on a character or simple dot written earlier. It syncs with computer software to project it all onto a large wall screen for classroom use.

White has observed more kids asking questions or for help as she walks around the classroom while the lecture plays. This educational multitasking has also helped students who missed a day or more of school.

By signing in to the Angel online learning platform, which the district has used for several years, students whose teachers use the smartpen can pick up the day’s lesson and not…

[Click here to read the entire story]