EdTech Camp 2017 & Kevin Brookhouser

My first EdTech Camp experience started with inspirational stories from Kevin Brookhouser, the keynote speaker of EdTech Camp 2017. 

His emphasis on motivating students to become ‘wicked’ problem solvers – because today’s most dire problems won’t be solved with algorithmic approaches - have made him start the 20% project. When he told his students that they could spend 20% of their time for whatever they would like to work on, surprisingly students were not happy because they were not used to autonomy. It was so hard to make them even begin brainstorming, so he started ‘Bad Idea Factory’ and students got really motivated and produced tons of ‘bad’ ideas while having lots of fun. In fact, many of those were not bad ideas at all e.g. someone trying a wheelchair for a whole day inspired them to become advocates and finally ramps were built.

Two things I learned: 
1. Students can become a lot more capable when opportunities are given
2. Project based learning can facilitate student autonomy and build innovative thinkers

The EdTech video of his talk today is not available but here is his talk at TEDxMonterey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqG-bppvW7khttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqG-bppvW7k