Day 23 - A new website

Today I came across an interesting website www.curiosity,com
The site shares interesting videos which are excellent provocations for the units of inquiry. My favourite one was on the 25 strangest and unusual buildings in the world. I enjoyed seeing the piano-guitar museum in China and look forward to the completion of rotating tower in Dubai where each floor of the buildings can be rotated! I promptly sent the website to the teachers who would be able to make good use of it during their unit.

Talking of teams, I had a marvellous experience this evening as five of the staff members were planning the staff dance. Our music teacher came up with an idea, which we all built upon collaboratively and we built up what we think is an amazing performance idea. Hopefully we'll be able to pull it together as successfully on stage! Clearly, I still haven't got off the cooperative versus collaborative teamwork thoughts and the more I think of it the more readily I am able to connect it to real situations.

In fact, the more I write each day, the more I am starting to wonder about what learning is for me and how best do I learn? Sometimes, I don't read or experience something new but simply reflect on something that I have previously read, or simply on the day and it seems like a fresh 'aha moment!'

For instance, I woke up early this morning and simply made a list of the things I needed to do today at work. Took a good twenty minutes but the day seemed so well organised after that! Now I 'knew' this fact all through and it's not that I haven't done this before. Every now and then I do wake up early and list my jobs for the day. Yet, now as I reflect and write about it, it seems to take a concrete plan in my head and I hope to be able to do this regularly.

So in effect, I learn by reflecting and writing, not only the seemingly big ideas but also the seemingly small ones!

As a teacher, we always make our students reflect on the day's or the unit's learning but as learners we seldom write our own reflections. However, it is an amazing tool and the more I use it, the more it makes sense to me in terms of observation as well as metacognition. Since I know that I will need to write out a blog at night, I try and observe things better and keep a mental note of them for a longer time. Ideas, hence, stick!