Moving Students Beyond Making Connections to Making an Impact

Home » Education Trends and Topics » Technology » Get Connected (PLN Building) » Moving Students Beyond Making Connections to Making an Impact

Students making toys for kids in Africa who have none? Kids taking a live virtual tour of the Great Barrier reef with scientists? Designing with a purpose? Australian Teacher Brian Host is all in with his seven and eight-year-old students. Students don’t want to just make connections. Students of all ages want to be making an impact. Here’s how Brian helps his students do things that matter.

Essential Questions: Moving Students Beyond Making Connections to Making an Impact

How do you apply problem-based learning to global connections?
How are Brian’s students making an impact with a classroom in Africa while using design thinking?
How can teachers do 3D design with 7 and 8-year-old students?
How did Brian’s students go on an underwater diving experience through Google hangouts?
Why was finding the person with the biggest heart more important than technical skills when they looked for a school-wide blogging champion?

[callout]Hat tip to my friend Craig Kemp for letting me know about Brian’s awesome work. If you know an awesome educator, tweet me or shoot me an email at vicki at coolcatteacher dot com. Let’s share the awesome stories of educators everywhere![/callout]

Educator Resources from this Episode

Brian’s Teaching Blog
Brian’s Classroom Blog
Problem Based Learning Model from the Buck Institute
@HostBrian

[tweetthis]The first step to connect your classroom to the world is to connect yourself first. Vicki Davis[/tweetthis]

[button href=”https://www.facebook.com/groups/everyclassroommatters” primary=”false” centered=”true” newwindow=”true”]Join the Every Classroom Matters Awesome Educators Network on Facebook[/button]

[callout]You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.[/callout]

Never miss an episode

Get the 10-minute Teacher Show delivered to your inbox.

Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis has been an educator and IT director in Georgia since 2002. Today, she also works as an instructional technology coach, staying side-by-side with active teachers and students so her work stays grounded in real classrooms.

She's a mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world.

She has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk (radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms), interviewing remarkable educators around the world. Vicki focuses on what unites us — a quest for truly remarkable, life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers, grounded in truth and shared with love.

If you talk to Vicki for long, she'll encourage you to "Relate to Educate," to "innovate like a turtle," or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and runs half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and telling your friends about the work we do here! - Vicki

All Posts »

2 comments

Abby November 5, 2015 - 1:18 pm

I think you and Brian Host bring up a great point about how to take making connections to the next step and make an impact. In today’s world where we are surrounded with technology, it is no longer enough to just make connections, it needs to be taken to the next level as to what are we doing with those connections. This is such a great way to approach problem based learning. Digital technologies allow connections but it is the students creativity and evaluation that can take that connection to make an impact and “make something.”

Vicki Davis November 5, 2015 - 4:33 pm

Make something that matters, I would add! Great points Abby! Thank you for sharing them!