Welcome to our blog

This is the story of two educators on one journey. Each day we will record our reflections on the process of being involved in an innovative educational environment. The decision on our part to leave the public education system was deliberate due to our growing frustrations over the factory "one size fits all" model of education. This model has dominated the educational landscape and is not designed to meet the needs of the 21st century learner. Step one in our journey was to find a place that would allow us the freedom to break out of the system. We needed a chance to just breath and facilitate learning in the ways that we both know are best for children. That step has led us to Rosemary Beach Florida to work with the students attending the OH Institute. The OH Institute is a unique educational environment that we find humane. The curriculum focus is on the individual learner with an infusion of technology project based learning. Currently, it has 20 students in grades 4-11 all of whom are seeking something different than what the factory system of education has to offer. This is where our adventure begins...

Thursday, October 21, 2010

October 7th

Thursday October 7 -
Randy -
Morning - Spent some time with Elementary using spore for guided inquiry within the science content of behavioral vs physical adaptations of living things. We were pleasantly side tracked with a website by jibjab - they made short movies using their own faces and some of their classmates. It was neat to see them feverishly figure out how to use the site even though they have not seen it before. Ms and HS were on FLVS. I was able to check in with Olivia during this time also and help her with a technology issue involving turning in assignments.

Block 2 -
MS - We sat and had further discussion about their presentation tomorrow. We did a run through with me stopping them and also another run through on their own. They are excited and nervous and I think that is a good thing. Also, we got further on our ideas of PBL with Mitchell going to do a scientific paper on high pitched sounds that will be really neat. I sent him the steps to a formal scientific paper and a student example. Mason and Davis spent some time on wix.com to see if it is an easy and viable solution to web site construction. It seemed great but had some issues on saving the site.

HS - We did a check up on our formal writing that is due tomorrow. Also, we did a WHIP activity with our books and talked about them. The HS students decided that they would like some scheduled reading time and work on how to do a literary response. I think this is something we will all do together so I will bring my book.

-We had lunch, tennis, and design today but it ended short enough to allow us to catch up on some work and also put in a good blog response. Most HS students were able to get pictures of their books on their blog. Mira had a great blog where she put up videos and pictures of her trip to get her car. This would be neat to share.

Tomorrow we have presentations first thing in the morning so I need to be there extra early. I'm looking forward to it.

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