Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 57 seconds

What’s in #YourJar Blog Challenge

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 57 seconds

Laura Ritchie sent me this blog challenge inspired by an activity Chrissi Nerantzi tried in a face-to-face event.

She describes it as

Everyone gathers three things to put in a real or figurative jam jar. This is #YourJar and the things in it represent some aspect of your learning or teaching. (If you were in a conference setting, everyone would put their jars on a table, labelled with names on the bottom, and people would select a jar that looked interesting and then seek out the person to find out the story behind the objects.) For this blog topic game everyone can post a photo of the jar, or of three things in a glass if you have no jar – and then you describe them. Explain and say why you have chosen those things? You can be as intuitive or erudite as you like

Hmmm

What would I put in my jar? I loved what Laura came up with and am trying to think of mine.

#1 Play doh about to get mixed together

I have all kinds of elements in my teaching that are very flexible in terms of how I can put it together and sometimes I mix it all up in ways that makes it less recognizable (as in, you can no longer tell what it was) because of how I try to respond to how students respond and what interests them. So there would be different colored play-doh touching but not yet mixed

#2 Legos without instructions
This is another thing that is remixable. Legos are more concrete though and less flexible than play-doh, so those would be some elements of my teaching that are building blocks for learning but that aren’t completely pre-determined. Like my assessments maybe? I need students to write blogposts and design educational games. But how they do so and in what format and order, how it all fits together is variable and again students can often play around with it

#3 Mirror
To help me and my students reflect 🙂

I also thought I might put an egg surprise to demonstrate sometimes how I can completely end up with something I wasn’t at all expecting. I could put any of the above inside a plastic egg for that 🙂

Yayyyy I did it. No pictures for now – sorry! I can’t upload pics onto WP from this device

2 thoughts on “What’s in #YourJar Blog Challenge

  1. Maha I love this!! I’m thinking of using this challenge with my new students next year as well. I think these jars could also be a great workshop tool for a staff meeting/development session…. I especially like the mirror in your jar and that it is for both you and your students. It can be a challenge to reflect, but it is extremely good, refreshing, and inspiring that you cast the mirror for both you and your students to reflect together. Thank you for sharing your jar! 🙂

    1. I love it as f2f activity too! Tho ppl may need to know in advance so they can bring stuff… Alternative is to just write or draw…but less impactful? I thought of it for students but also love it for faculty!

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