Category: EDCI 336

Within the film Most Likely to Succeed, its exploration into the innovative school of High Tech High captivated me completely. The way the school functions, completely breaks the traditional ways of instructing, learning, and assessing. Students and teachers have almost complete autonomy as to how they teach, learn, and show their learning. At large, High Tech High is the high school of my dreams. The school is focused on genuine learning of not only content, but soft skills such as communication, creative thinking, time management and conflict resolution, with the intent to prepare students for the technologically advancing world we live in. The students in the film were completely engaged and in control of their learning and It was clear that High Tech High Students were experiencing insightful learning, rather than short-term memorization.

There is a lot to learn from the way the High Tech High teachers approached instructing in the film. Seeing the amount of control the students were given to complete their projects shows that their teachers were prioritizing deeper understanding. They allowed for students to experience conflicts with one another, and to get lost in their learning process no matter the time it would take to find understanding and success. A huge example of this is the way the student Brian, failed to lead his group to finish their exhibition piece on time, but he continued to work on it even through the summer. His teacher stuck by him and supported him as he made more mistakes and learned from those missteps to finally find success. There is a scene in the film where Brian’s teacher observes him making mistakes right in front of him. His teacher voices how tempting it is to plainly point out the issue that needs fixing, but he resists, knowing full well that it would actually be a disservice to Brian’s learning process. In the end, not only was Brian incredibly content, but it was obvious his teacher found an equal amount of excitement to see Brian’s growth. As a future teacher, I hope to build a similar community within my classroom where students feel comfortable to learn and make mistakes.

I entered the first class of EDCI 336 with no idea what to expect, but was intrigued by the course’s name: Technology Innovation in Education. The 3-hour length presented on the timetable was daunting and I quite honestly feared the possibility of a 3-hour lecture. It was a relief however to discover the prediction I feared was not accurate. Considering how much technology and technology’s relation to education has evolved in recent years, I feel there’ll be a lot to learn and I look forward to the projects lined up for the term.

The Free Inquiry project is one I am especially looking forward to in the course, as its concept reminds me of the Genius Hour Project. Some of my fondest memories of learning come from working on genius hour projects and presenting them in elementary school. The objective of Genius Hour is to allow students to choose any topic they are interested in and work to understand it better in a way that they want to. Ultimately, students present what they’ve learned through a medium of their choosing such as, videos, art, an experiment or a creation.

As another similar opportunity to explore my personal interests has presented itself through the Free Inquiry project, I am so excited to dive into a new or existing interest to explore! Although I haven’t decided on a topic, some ideas I have include painting landscapes (something I’ve always avoided) or painting with natural pigments, while learning to make my own natural paints. Art is the focus I want to take with the free inquiry project as it is already a passion of mine, but I hope to delve into parts of art which are unfamiliar and daunting to me!