400 minutes a day
Imagine if someone offered you 400 minutes a day to work on something. What would you want to focus those minutes on? #Empowerbook gives the math - most students in traditional educational settings spend 400 minutes a day in school? How are your students spending their 400 minutes a day? How many of those minutes are given towards creating something?
Choosing something
Planning something
Discovering something
Living something
400 minutes is a lot of time.
I'm reminded of an article I read some time ago interviewing a co-founder of a highly successful tech company called Dyn. The co-founders started the business while they were in college. What started as a way to solve their own networking issues eventually became a worldwide internet performance management firm. One of the pieces of advice I remember reading was for college students to use their time wisely. To take the opportunity to create something new now, ,before they graduated and not wait until after. To have more to their name than just the classes and the degree. I now wonder if we should be shifting that advice even younger.
How many of those 400 minutes a day are spent creating, building, imagining, designing?
How many of those 400 minutes do students spend feeling inspired, confident, and encouraged to follow their passions to new ideas?
By the end of the introduction to Empower, I'm looking a lot more closely at the chunk of that time students spend with me. Am I giving them opportunities to create? Are they actually "doing" something or are they just being present? How often am I telling them what I think they should know versus guiding them to learn how to learn. Are we doing school or doing learning as the say in #empowerbook?
What would happen if students were encouraged to believe that they are creative and that creativity is valuable?
What if we worked on building creativity and curiosity skills for even half of those 400 minutes per day?
It starts with small changes. Gentle shifts in thinking. Nudges.
My planned shift this month -
Goal: Give students a chance to practice creativity
Plan: Instead of the library staff planning what books to highlight on displays I'm going to ask for groups of students to plan something. As leader and mentor, I will offer some guidelines beginning with:
- Work with others to identify topics you think will be of current interest to other students
- Develop a list of possibilities and explain how you narrowed it down to the top three
- Choose which of the three chosen displays you want to work on
- Using the online catalog locate materials from the collection that match the topic
- Create an eye-catching display to encourage other students to try the books you selected
- Create a visual to explain the section
- List some "I can..." statements you think you proved about youself with this activity
I can't wait to share their work with the world. Time to let the students help create the library they want to use.
#Empowerbook