ISPP Secondary Technology Support

This activity is designed to help students collaboratively brainstorm and think about ideas. In this example they brainstormed steps they would need to follow to go out and take photographs that communicate a perspective on Phnom Penh. It can be adapted for different learning objectives. This activity gives students thinking time and processing time, and allows them to collaboratively exchange ideas and learn from one another. It is also fun. Learning Objective: determine and reflect on the planning steps for doing a photography shoot ATL: Social -Collaboration; Self-Management -Organization Media / tools: Google Docs, pencil and paper Time: 60 minutes Other possible learning objectives (second ATL would change): words related to a topic, main plot events in a novel, character traits, parts of a cell, periodic table of the elements (have them describe properties in the Google doc and write the elements on the bingo chart), multiplication (have them write multiplications in t...

Technology is frequently the target of complaints about the human inability to focus on relevant, meaningful, and productive tasks; yet this inability is as old as our existence. Check out Hamlet's Blackberry for a great exploration of human focus and tools of distraction through the ages. Technology provides us with a chaos of opportunity that can be distracting, but getting rid of technology will not cause us to tap into our focus. Our minds, untrained, have a chaos of their own. Learning how to tap into our focus takes thoughtful practice and reflection. We need to learn to 'clear the mechanism' as Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) does in For Love of the Game . In this clip, Chapel / Costner has to shut out the voices of critics, the noise of the crowd, and an annoying bull horn. He did not have a phone buzzing in his back pocket, but if he did, he would have needed to shut that out too. It would be lovely if there were a simple formula for engagement. In my experi...