Scrapbooking . . . I just never really go into it. Well, I do have books of scrapbook paper in my closet and an empty scrapbook. I wanted to be a scrapbooker, but it was just too much. It took way too much time. I just couldn’t take time to get the supplies out and get it out.
In my last post, New and Improved, I reflected on how we know something is really innovative. I said that we have to have a body of evidence to support that something is better. The evidence can’t be a once at the end of the year state test. That doesn’t tell us enough.
Johnna Weller (@johnnaweller) of Discovery Education says we should look at evidence like we look at a scrapbook of our kids’ lives. We don’t want just one glossy 8×10 school picture. That doesn’t tell the whole story. It tells part of the story, but not enough. It’s better than nothing, but if that one picture is all we have, it is unfortunate. To really see how our kiddos have grown, we want to see pictures from the first day of school, pictures from sporting events, pictures for birthdays .
But, again, paper scrapbooking has always been too much trouble for me. I would much rather go digital, put all the pics in an online album or make a movie. My favorite movies, though are the ones my kids made themselves, the collages they post to Instagram. Those tell me even more than what I made. Those give me the best picture of how they have grown.
So, how do I know that something is new and better, that something is good for my learners? What if I asked them? What if the learners kept their own “scrapbook” of their growth? What if they were the innovators who determine if something is new and improved?
Tracie G Cain 