Jessilyn Swanson, a Medicine Hat Christian School teacher, speaks at Google headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, about her ideas for getting students to embrace failure as a step on the road to success.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Medicine Hat Christian School teacher Jessilyn Swanson recently returned from a Stockholm conference on innovation in education where she was the sole Canadian participant.
The Google for Education Certified Innovator Program occurred from Nov. 6-8 at the company’s Sweden headquarters, with 36 attendees from all over the world.
“I’ve never been in a room with so many fire-up, inspiring people in my life,” Swanson, 32, told the News. “We spent the three days working through a process called ‘Design Thinking,’ where you come up with a lot of big ideas in a short amount of time. We were able to mix team-building challenges and fun games, but also serious work time.”
These ideas focused on “cultural change in education” and how technology can serve as a pedagogical tool.
“The issues in the world seem so much bigger – maybe we just know more about them – but it’s really cool that we get use technology, like Google but other tools as well, to tackle some of those things and close some of the gaps,” said Swanson.
Swanson’s own project, which she conceived as part of her application to the conference, focused on how to get students to embrace failure as a necessary step in the process toward success.
“I’m working on developing a game that can be used in the classroom – like a card deck – that would have a truth-or-dare sort of feel, but challenges kids to try things outside of their comfort zone and then having a reflective piece attached to it,” she said. “There’s so much connection made around sharing when we make mistakes and actually celebrating that.”
Swanson says it’s of particular importance for educators to keep up with the tech that’s becoming increasingly integrated into everyone’s lives.
“The students that we have are what we call ‘digital natives.’ They have never existed in a world without this digital technology, which is growing and changing at an exponential rate every year,” said Swanson.
“We’ve never lived in a time where technology was so accessible, information was so accessible and we have the opportunity to be so connected.”
Millennials, like Swanson and many of her colleagues, are “gatekeepers” of this technology, with a duty to ensure it gets used for the greater good.
“There’s a lot of negatives to social media and the internet – there’s a lot of danger associated with it – but if we don’t see a way forward as educators that teaches and mentors and gives opportunities to use these tools for good, then I think that we’re doing our kids a disservice,” she said. “We’re preparing our kids for a world that doesn’t exist right now.”
Now a certified innovator, Swanson says she’ll be working on her project with an assigned mentor throughout the next year.
