Shutdown Food for Thought: See the Opportunity

Happy Tuesday Morning,
Just to preface... What follows is my opinion and meant to encourage thought and discussion. I don't claim to be right, only to have an opinion. 

It seems like everywhere I look I see companies and other individuals talking about tools and strategies for moving to a virtual style of education. While these things are nice to keep in mind, and maybe we'll need to think that way at some point, I think that we're missing an opportunity (and the bigger picture) by jumping to this type of thinking right away. Remember when learning was about engaging your brain to think and grow and make sense of the world around you, not mastery of CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.3.3.A? How many times in the past few years have you had that nagging thought that it would be awesome to do a certain activity with your students, but you don't have time because of everything you have to "cover?" I would urge you to reach out to your students and their families with ideas and activities that fit in that category. Get them discussing, making, experiencing, questioning, growing without being "for a grade" or to check a box. Give them a spark rather than an assignment and encourage them to share their experience with you and others.
Just a few of the ideas that have caught my eye recently:

• Our Middle School sent out this Bingo game to students with a challenge to submit their "work" to be entered for prizes. I've shared this forward to a number of other teacher friends to adjust for their students, and they loved it.
• @dailystem on Twitter shared out these 77 Simple STEM Activities for Families and then followed up with 77 More (just in case 77 wasn't enough?). I plan to steal ideas from this list for my own nuggets at home, and I'm guessing you might have some students and parents who would appreciate the ideas. Just be careful to point out that not all of these activities would be great in our current "social distancing" format of daily life.
• My wife stumbled across a great 30 Day Lego Challenge that I just had to share. Lego is one of the all time great examples of how rich learning can be when it happens through play.
• Don't overlook the amazing learning opportunities hidden in a pile of cardboard destined for the recycling center. Tell me that building a Geodesic dome isn't PACKED with high school level math, engineering, and problem solving... I'm guessing many of us might start accumulating cardboard, also, seeing as how online ordering is the only way to get toilet paper right now.
• Start a class Padlet, Flipgrid, or even Google Classroom discussion for students to be able to connect and share some of the things they are doing.

I think that for as uncertain as all of this feels and for all of the negatives that come to our minds related to our current situation, it's very important for us to step back and remember that this is a great opportunity for us to remind our students and ourselves that not all learning has to be tied to a standard. Sometimes we just have to experience it and figure stuff out on our own terms.