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| Spencer Drake, 2014 |
I had one of the most enjoyable Saturday mornings this weekend and I actually spent it with some of our students from Lambton College participating in Sarnia's CanStruct. What is CanStruct? It is a community project where teams compete in local shopping malls to build sculptures out of non perishable food items. At the end of the event, the food is then donated to the local food banks. The Inn of Good Shepherd in Sarnia is the recipient of ours. This is a big event in Sarnia and during the pep rally in the morning the Inn of the Good Shepherd informed the crowd that in Sarnia last year they raised more food then cities like Toronto and London England during their events. This is the first year for Lambton College to compete and I am sure that it will not be the last.
Lambton College has always been a leader in student centered learning. We totally understand the importance for students to participate in the learning and have experiences that are the same or very similar to the actual experiences they will have in the work force. We have been a leader in activities centered around student experience such as our learning studio's. The next step is to embrace the new digital world. We have implemented what we call Class Plus. Class Plus is what others are calling "Mobile learning" but ours is more than that. Students will have a mobile device with which they are going to be participating and interacting with the learning during class. The possibilities are endless. Due to our direction and commitment to have all programs utilizing a mobile device in the class room I decided that we would build an ipad. I had gathered all the material that I thought they would need and all the canned food items and made a very rough sketch of my idea and then turned it over to the students on Saturday morning.
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| Spencer Drake, 2014 |
Most people think that when they choose a discipline that they wish to study, they will only learn job related skills at college. As educators of the future, we have a responsibility that is much deeper and all encompassing. We have to be part of the transformation of these young adults into good citizens by igniting in them a sense of social justice by showing them how important it is to give back. We also need to help them develop other skills such as working on a cross functional team, being able to respect each others ideas, problem solving under pressure and the ability to accept constructive criticism and learn and grow from it.
The reason I so enjoyed the day was because this project linked all of those related skills and these students performed as a team and were able to successfully complete the project. It would have been very easy for me to simply give them directions and have them simply assemble it but that was not the point of the day. I simply gave them everything that I had created and then stood back. They bumped into a few problems which they solved. One solution they came up with actually made it worse. They had to different types of cans. Juice Cans in the back (Apple for an Apple ipad) and then vegetable cans in the front. The back was very unsteady so they decided that hey need to link the front and back together using duct tape. This actually made it worse and almost pulled it over. They actually jumped into action, stabilized it, took the entire thing down, decided on another solution and then built it again. ( I only advised and guided them, it was their idea) I think the finished product of the day was great and these students are positioned well be be successful in their future. By the way, the CanStruction project turned out alright as well.
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| Spencer Drake, 2014 |
Jeff
