The importance of Play

This video highlights the importance of play and tinkering in learning. Its a shame that many teachers are so fearful of letting students play or tinker with technology. It's the way I learn and many of us do. So often many teachers imagine that letting students play with computers is a way of losing classroom control.
Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production in a Digital Age: John Seely Brown from carnegie commons on Vimeo.

Higher order thinking

1. There's a bit of talk at our school about the NSW Quality Teaching Framework especially about higher order thinking. It seems most teachers are already doing this in their classes without realising. Take a look below? Are they?? How many teaches are getting students to explore their creativity through authentic real inquire/project tasks. Its important to note that 'create' isn't even mentioned in QTF. I think there is lots of confusion about what higher order thinking really is. Not to mention other pedagogy terms like deep knowledge, deep understanding and connectedness that are treated with a superficial understanding. I believe that all this pedagogy metalanguage is confusing the issue. The emphasise all seems to be on the teaching but not on the learning. No mentioned is made about how students really learn. No mention is made about learning styles or brain function research in the QTF. There are no practical examples or guidelines about how teachers are meant to implement all this each lesson. What about the big picture? Shouldn't all these dimensions of pedagogy be built on slowly and cohesively through a whole course of work eventually leading towards deeper understanding. What do you think?
   

Read more on the lack of creativity in education here.