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At one point, I realized that I was teaching
the course in a way that was sort of timeless.

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And it's really about, I really wanted to
think about it much more in a way that was

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set in context - of today and the history
of education in the past. And I wanted to

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do that in a way that felt like, again I was
embodying the constructivist principles that

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I really think are important to learning.
And so the first thing I brought in was Current

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Events. I wanted students to bring in, to
understand what's going on in the world of

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education today because it's changing very
rapidly in terms of what we know about teaching

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and learning, what technologies we're using
for teaching and learning, and the policies

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surrounding all this, and people's attitudes
towards it.

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So rather than sort of me... sort of telling
them about this, I wanted the students to

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take some ownership over that, and we brought
in Current Events. And so students... investigate

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current events, choose things that are important
and meaningful to them, and bring it into

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the classroom for discussion. And then, over
time, we've sort of changed the way that we

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do that, so that we think about the ways that
- can we use the online components more effectively

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so that students are doing some of the...
thinking about the issues before they get

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to class, and then use the class time for
something that's unique?

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For the Current Events, we actually think
that there's enough that you can get out of

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an article and some questions online and some
online forums so that actually some of that

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conversation can happen before they even get
to class. So, in those cases, there's a current

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events article that goes up - usually relatively
short - and some questions that are posed

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with it, and students need to read the article
and respond to those questions.

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And then what happens in class is a follow-up
to that. So sometimes there's themes that

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happened in student responses. Sometimes there's
an issue raised that was, that maybe the people

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who were responsible for the Current Events
that week didn't think of in advance. And

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that's a chance to kind of follow up on some
of that.

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And this year actually for the first time
we were actually saw, started seeing some

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groups do some interesting activities that
were follow-ups to those as well. Not just

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pure discussion, but activities that sort
of brought out some of the big issues, or

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sort of pointed out some similar thinking
or dissimilar thinking that was happening

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in the class.

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There was some that were sort of like voting
with your feet. So it was a matter of like

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looking at distributions on... in terms of
viewpoints on issues, where, you know, people

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who thought like "Yes" about one issue and
"No" about one issue went to different sides

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of the room. And then there was some debate
around the issues around there. So it was

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a nice way to sort of call out, "OK, there's
distributions on issues. There's people that

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think different things about this, but there's
reasons for that, and let's have some dialogue

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within people that have common thoughts, and
people who have disparate thoughts as well."