According to wikipedia, serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated.
Sometimes we ask students to do one thing and they end up stumbling on something new all on their own.
I had this happen last week when I asked my students to update their blogs, learning logs, and versions of their most recent project. My student, Sierra, not only uploaded her most recent progress and blogged about it, she figured out how to insert a link directly to the file from her blog. She was so proud of herself and so was I. She had taken what direction was given to her and added a whole new dimension to it.
Encourage your students to take a little dip in serendipity as often as they can.
Until next time the soap box is yours.
2 comments:
Sometimes I think this is the best way to learn! When you realize that you just taught yourself something, that is an amazing feeling. Students teach themselves all the time; when they get a new smartphone or learn a new social networking site online. The cool thing is when they don't mind applying the "teach myself" mentality in our classrooms... and this is part of the whole Globaloria concept. "Wow, I can teach myself to do anything as long as I have the right tools!"
Bill - I really like reading this blog post. I love and believe in Serendipity. For me, Incidental Learning and serendipity is always so powerful. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to look for a certain word in the Dictionary, or Encyclopedia (those thick heavy books) and land on a new, unexpted words or photos or definitions. Globaloria students can benefit from incidental learning as they figure out their own design and research problems, or as they click and look at their peers' project pages on the wikis. Lovely! Happy New Year, Idit.
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