Doodlebuzz

I recently discovered this (like so many other recent discoveries) via Twitter. Doodlebuzz is a mixture of drawing, typography and news. Rather than a conventional online news feed, Doodlebuzz allows you to select a topic, then doodle a shape. This creates a drawing depicting a string of related news items. You can then continue to draw lines stretching from topics you are interested in exploring further. This creates another string of news items. You can continue the process ad infinitum. What I love about this is that the journey from one item to the next need not be linear. You could start with one word or phrase and this may lead to another that is seemingly unrelated but is, in fact, connected tangentially. I also like the way the designer has captured the process of making the application, posting videos on Vimeo and photos from his sketchbook on Flickr.

I had a conversation with Mr Hawes today where we discussed the idea of an extended learning project entitled "Make it better!" that would encourage teams of students (and teams of teachers) to collaborate on creating an idea for something that would improve the quality of our lives. This could be anything from a product or service to an activity or concept. The point would be to explore the process of learning together using an enquiry cycle: do some research, have an idea, refine it, make something, reflect on it. Something like Doodlebuzz would make a great example of how people get on and do this kind of learning in the real world every day.