Podcast: The End of Swiss Cheese Learning with Dan Spencer

SHOW #6! We have had a great time chatting with teachers, administrators, and technology integration specialists and this episode was no different. We had on our guest, and friend, Dan Spencer. Dan is a high school science teacher turned tech integration specialist turned high school science teacher. We love that he brought some great insight, not only from his classroom but to education in general!

Now, here’s the notes:

• We chatted about our experiences at the MACUL Conference and some of our biggest takeaways — namely seeing Sir Ken Robinson in person. You might know him from his famous TED talk about changing paradigms in schools.

• We’re digging Loom. It’s a quick and easy screen recorder that you can launch from a Chrome extension, create a screen recording/video of yourself and then send a link to others through your Gmail or Microsoft Exchange account. Loom is super easy and works really well! To see a little more about why we love it, check this out.

Dan chatted with us about how he thinks about the future our students will face and how he’s working to set them up for success by…

• Envisioning what kind of world our students will enter and what skills will be imperative for them to have.

• Ending “swiss cheese” learning where students know some stuff, but there’s a lot of “holes” in their knowledge too.

• Allowing students to move at their own pace and seek understanding rather than moving on when the rest of the class does.

• Challenging students to thrive in this new environment.

• Digging into research about what students really remember weeks later.

Dan rocked trivia on his alma mater — Brigham Young University — and got 5 out of 7 correct, tying for first with Rachelle in our last episode!

• We discussed our own #campfire: How do we embrace personalized professional learning for teachers?

• And just in case you missed it, we’re still offering to send you swag if your #CampfireQ was chosen for the show! You can Tweet it, post it on Facebook or Instagram, or even find us on Snapchat — Erin (Twitter, Snapchat) and Jeff (Twitter, Snapchat) and ask questions there!

• Lastly, we shared a quick little plug for Day Camp 2017 and our keynote speaker Pernille Ripp!