Relevance Through the Students’ Eyes via Diana Rhoten

This video of Diana Rhoten via Edutopia really resonated with the chapters I am writing for my book from my school visits last year.  In particular, the idea of “relevance” is one of the six key indicators I saw of schools that are really shifting away from the assembly line model, where relevance is almost always an afterthought.

Diana captures four aspects of relevance that align exactly with what I found as well. Students will engage when they can:

• Experience learning in a very personal way.
• Relate it to something in their own life or an area of personal interest or passion.
• Re-shape or re-tell the story of their learning within the context of their passions.
• Do something tangible with their learning in the community, be that local, regional, international, or virtual.

Thanks, Diana for such a succinct outline of what relevance means to our students.