C4T #4

Dean Shareski is a digital learning consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan , Canada and specializes in the use of technology in the classroom. In 2012 Shareski started working for Discovery Education as the Community Manager of the Canadian Discovery Educators Network.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Shareski's blog. He is very entertaining and a joy to watch. For this C4T, I watched two videos that Shareski posted of him speaking at two separate events, ISTE conference in San Antonio and TEDxWestVanEd event. To me, the two videos went hand in hand, though they were about different topics, one about creativity and the other joy.

The first post I read by him was entitled "The Stupidest Creative Act." Shareski talked about how being silly is a good thing and that our schools could use a little bit more silliness. I could not agree with him more! Shareski said that silliness is a door opener to creativity. Wow!! I never thought of silliness to be a door opener! He quoted Clay Shirky by saying "the stupidest creative act is still a creative act!" Of the three quotes that Shareski quoted in his speech, that was my favorite, because it is so true!
"If we really do want to see our students be more creative, we’re going to have to allow them to do things that at first glance might seem kind of stupid. It’s one of the attributes of new media and indeed the benefits of technology." -Dean Shareski

"Mr. Shareski, my name is Caitlin Lankford and I am in EDEM310 at the University of South Alabama. I will be coming back to your blog to comment on your posts as an assignment for Dr. Strange. For this post in particular, I loved! I enjoyed the video of you speaking at the ISTE conference in San Antonio. You kept the audience engaged with humor and visual aids. I want to frame the three quotes you spoke about in your speech. "The stupidest creative act, is still a creative act" quoted by Clay Shirky was my favorite. Thank you so much for sharing this post with us!"

The reason I believe that the two posts go hand in hand is because for this next post, Shareski quoted some of his same points that he did in the first video. However, for this post, Shareski talks about joy in classrooms, at a TED event. Shareski started out by asking, why schools are not places of joy? He responds by saying,

"Unless we justify our learning and tie it to joy, that joy becomes nice but not a necessary idea. However, it needs not be justified, that it’s an end unto itself. It’s not necessarily a means to something else that joy and joy by itself is a worthy goal to pursue." -Dean Shareski

Shareski then quotes Mark Twain. He says, "to get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with." I love that quote! We can't just sit alone being joyful, we have to share our joy with the world!! Shareski showed the TED audience some video examples of what joy looks like. For instance, one of the videos was of a little boy trying to "master" a domino type maze. However, it took the boy four tries to be successful and by the fourth try, he was. When his "maze" worked, he was jumping for joy and had a HUGE smile on his face! It was so delightful to see the little boy accomplish such a task, and to see the joy on his face when he had mastered it. Then, Shareski switched to a more specific topic, joy in the classroom. Shareski shared five ways to see joy in a classroom.

1. Be mindful.
2. Create something.
3. Regular random acts of kindness.
4. Turn psedo learning (learning about things) into real learning (learning with people due to today's technology)
5. Be silly and laugh everyday.

Shareski continued by saying, "we live in a world where we are information rich, and a little scarce on joy."

"Mr. Shareski, I love this post. It is exceptional! The visual aids you presented to show what joys looks like, where phenomenal. I agree with you, we do live in a world where we are information rich, and scarce on joy. Once again, I loved watching you speak. You seem to be a joyous person and wanting to see more joy in this joy deprived world. Thank you again for sharing with us and I look forward to reading your blog in the future."

As said before, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dean Shareski's blog. It was very intriguing and I plan on adding him to my PLN so that I may be able to see what else he has to say.