Category Uncategorized
Learner-Driven Community and Out of Eden Learn
In this blog post, I describe my journey with Out of Eden Learn as an educator in a learning context called The Aspiring Phoenix Foundation (TAPF), an Acton Academy, where “studios” replace classrooms and learner-driven environments are core to our mission. Out of Eden Learn (OOEL) offered new opportunities and a new venue for the […]
Exploring 6 Powerful Teacher Moves for Enhancing Dialogue in Digital Exchange Programs on Out of Eden Learn and Beyond
Even with the Dialogue Toolkit as a resource, without teacher support, many students may still rely primarily on “liking” an online post or providing quick comments that do not move the conversation forward. The following strategies for enhancing student dialogue, using and extending the Dialogue Toolkit, emerged from a series of interviews with educators. In these teacher’s classrooms, we observed students using the Dialogue Toolkit effectively and seeing the value of using the Toolkit’s moves to support thoughtful dialogue.
Listening to Learn: An Open Letter to Our Community
Greetings to our Out of Eden Learn Community and other readers of this blog, We have been thinking about our community members in different places and contexts at this extraordinary time. As you know, the Out of Eden Learn team is physically situated in the United States, where recent and ongoing events connected to police […]
The Universe as Classroom
Charlotte Leech, writer of this piece, co-founded Loka together with Sanat Kumar. Paul Salopek visited Loka on his walk across Northern India, and later met up with the Out of Eden Learn research team there. Once upon a time there was a Small School with Big Dreams called Loka. It was tucked away along the […]
Mapping Local Planetary Health in Chicago
Mike McPharlin is a 5th grade teacher at the Francis Parker School in Chicago, Illinois, USA, and a longtime member of the Out of Eden Learn Community. Spending the second semester doing a deep dive into Planetary Health opened my students’ eyes to the role of choice and its impact on the interdependence of environmental […]
Announcing a New Partner: QFI
Out of Eden Learn (OOEL) is honored to announce a gift from Qatar Foundation International (QFI). QFI shares with OOEL a commitment to supporting students and educators in developing more nuanced understandings of culture, with a special focus on cultures in the Arab world. We invite readers to explore QFI’s active blog through which they […]
A letter to our community
Dear Members of the Out of Eden Learn Community – educators, students, parents, project partners, and other friends of the project, We wanted to reach out to you today to acknowledge the extremely troubling and tumultuous moment that we are currently living through in the United States. While we are not a politically partisan project, […]
After the Election: Reflections from Out of Eden Learn
This post was co-authored by Carrie James and Shari Tishman. This week, the US presidential election came to a close with an outcome that surprised many in the US and around the world. This election will be widely discussed and remembered as one of the most contentious and challenging elections in our history. Both the campaign and its […]
Cultivating Cosmopolitanism in a World of Echo Chambers
At the end of July, Project Zero held its seventh annual Future of Learning institute for educators. This year’s theme focused on “nurturing digital and global citizenships.” Taking a broad conception of citizenship, the institute explored how educators might support youth to develop the skills and dispositions to engage meaningfully with others in their own […]
Out of Eden Learn in the age of Brexit and Donald Trump
I have just spent a week in England visiting family and friends as part of my annual vacation. For a bit of context, I am British by birth and still a UK passport holder, though I was not eligible to vote in the recent referendum because I have lived outside of the country for too […]
Out of Eden Learn Blog 