Over the past week as I return back to school and and began the grind of finding ways to present information to my students. As I was developing my lessons I came across a couple of articles that really made me stop and think. The first article was about a 16 year old boy named Christian Owens. Chris made his first million by the age of 16 years old by being creative and finding a niche in a market online and filling it with his own company. This was a new and creative idea that he developed and is what education should be teaching our students today. To read more about Chris check out the article on him called “The First Million Dollar of a 16 Year Old Kid“.
The second article was on Adora Svitak. She is a remarkable student from Redmond Washington who spoke at TED last year. If you have not seen her talk of TED about what adults can learn about kids watch it below. She is 13 now is a published author and now is organizing TEDXRedmond to create a forum where more students can share their ideas.
Both of these students are remarkable but more importantly they are creative. Often times when I am developing my lessons I catch myself developing resources that are very structured for my students. By doing this I am removing their ability to become creative and really learn to think for themselves. I guess you would say that I am often underestimating my students ability to learn and be creative. As educators we must find ways to allow students to be creative, push students to think outside of the box as these two have done. If we truly want to prepare our students for the 21st century this is how we must do it. We must above all not underestimate what students can do if you provide the opportunity.
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Filed under: My Thoughts on Education | Tagged: Adora Svitak, Author, Classroom, classroom ideas, classroom projects, education, Educators, K through 12, lesson plans, online resources teachers, School, successful teaching, technology in classroom, TED (conference), Washington | Leave a comment »
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