HackSchooling is a Thing!

                                                    (Photo CC by Jason Taellious)

Bud Hunt’s article, “Centering on Essential Lenses” was very interesting. I always thought that hacking was a bad thing. People would hack into other people’s electronic devices or accounts and put spams on or take money or whatever else they do, I’m not sure because I’ve never been hacked and I’ve also never hacked anyone, so I found it interesting that hacking used to be a good thing because it meant you were changing something. I like how he stated that we must use hacking in the school/education setting because things are always changing and one thing will not work for everyone because children are all so different. You always have to have multiple back up plans just in case, and sometimes even those don’t work, but you have to be flexible and “hack” a new way of doing things.

I also liked how he talked about having different lenses. You can’t look at everything one way because that is not the way the world works. You have to have a different lens for everything that you encounter.

(Photo CC by Dominique Godbout)

I took a class previously in my college career on the power of play and why it is important. I never knew what a big deal it was before I took that class, I always just saw it as a way for kids to have fun and pass time when they can’t be doing anything else. I didn’t realize how much they learn through play. The class talked about how there is different types of play through each different stage of a child’s life and it is all as important as the last. Children learn about the world through play, they get valuable information that and learning opportunities during play, but no one knows that it is happening because the kids are having fun and it doesn’t look like traditional learning. Bud Hunt talks about how you are always hacking while playing. You have to change the rules and the object of the game to keep it going and to keep it fun.

I was also really fascinated by Logan LePante’s TED talk. He never stated how old he was, but he did say that he was a teenager and I couldn’t believe that someone as young as him was already doing a TED talk. I really liked what he said about when people ask hi what he wants to be when he grows up. He wanted to be happy and that’s all he’s ever wanted, which I thought was pretty incredible. I was intrigued when he started talking about his school and his learning. He decided to be homeschooled instead of going to a public school because that wasn’t how he wanted to learn. He was able to hack his own learning and do what worked for him. I wish we could do that in the schools now, but there’s so many rules and standards and things that we have to do that that’s just not reasonable. You can do some things to change it but you can’t do much because they want everyone to be learning almost the same way and by changing it, you’re not doing that anymore.