Our journey to bring this idea to life began in July 2014, when we were one of 7 winning teams chosen as the top new education technology companies in Europe, out of 650 entries. The idea is a simple one, to create a community digital library of everyday objects and their connected learning possibilities. Everyday objects are the things found under your sofa, you might throw them away without thin
king twice. A rock from a walk in the woods, a bottle top from the side walk. I collected them as a child, didn’t you? These things are more than your childhood memories or things that clutter your surroundings. We have seen their potential as amazing thinking tools. Children know this and keep them safe, telling stories with them, adding them to their imaginary play, making with them and more. But, we tend to take these things away when it is time to learn, especially the older they get. They must empty their pockets and many times their minds to be fully focused and ready to learn. Why are more and more children disengaging with learning? Is it possible to capture their attention and sense of wonder during structured learning, like those things in their pockets do? At Think with Things we intend to meet this problem head on by helping every ONE every WHERE see the potential in every THING. Over the past 14 years I have been developing this methodology and it is exciting now to combine it with technology in order to share the idea with the world and most importantly for the world to share their wonderful teaching practices with others. One thing we have learned after working with 100’s of teachers with this method is that it needs to be easily integrated into every part of the learning process, at any stage of development, and with a large variety of concepts. Listening to this we have designed 4 powerful tools within our library. These tools integrate easily into many learning scenarios in some cases making the teachers life easier and saving time. They are TWT collect- allows you to keep track of collections, create wish lists and include parents and children in the collection process. TWTconnect- allows you to start with a concept or a collection easily searching our library for connected learning possibilities. TwT capture-allows teachers as well as children to record thinking, by image, video or audio in order to reflect on their learning journey. TWTcommunicate- Allows you to easily share this with colleagues, parents, etc. to show learning, start a conversation or get feedback.
