Ideas and Thoughts | Learning stuff since 1964. Becoming an Unteacher: Do the Unexpected. I had the pleasure of seeing Jeremy K. Macdonald’s Soiree of Slides at the Instructional Technology Strategies Conference this past weekend . . . a beautiful five minutes. His message was that as teachers, we learn to do the expected. Students are supposed to behave within the norms and rules of school. Teachers enforce those norms and rules. When students break those norms and rules, teachers discipline the students. But, maybe, just maybe, the student had a “good” reason for doing so and maybe, just maybe, teachers should do the unexpected rather than enforce. Maybe, they should “do” caring instead. Jeremy’s Follow-Up Jeremy reported what happened next via his blog post #Unexpected. My student was at school today. My Own Doing the Unexpected: A Peak Experience I had a similar experience with 8 year old Sherry a while back. Sherry was a tough little third grader in my counseling group at a local elementary school.
I was ready to make the adult-in-charge-type-statement. Like this: Maslow's Hierarchy Hits Home - Coach G's Teaching Tips. The Value of Teachers. Study Links Academic Setbacks to Middle School Transition. Published Online: November 28, 2011 Published in Print: November 28, 2011, as Learning Declines Linked to Moving to Middle School Includes correction(s): March 24, 2012 While policymakers and researchers alike have focused on improving students’ transition into high school, a new study of Florida schools suggests the critical transition problem may happen years before, when students enter middle school.
The study , part of the Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series at Harvard University, found that students moving from grade 5 into middle school show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year that plagues them as far out as 10th grade, even risking thwarting their ability to graduate from high school and go on to college. Students who make a school transition in 6th grade are absent more often than those who remain in one school through 8th grade, and they are more likely to drop out by 10th grade. Mr. Losing Their Edge Mr. Ms. A convenient untruth. Mass customization in education. Seth Godin and Ken Robinson have again taken schools to task for their industrial model of educating students, complaining that we are turning out robots and fail to encourage the natural creativity and problem-solving abilities of every student.
Read Godin and watch Robinson. It's hard to disagree with anything about which they pontificate. What neither acknowledge, however, are the benefits that mass production have brought to society - the affordability of more goods for people at a wider range of economic levels. Mass producing cars, washing machines and blue jeans essentially made these items sufficiently inexpensive that almost everyone could purchase them. The wealthy still had the means to buy customized goods and tailored clothes, but most of us were pretty happy to have a good car - even if it looked just like the neighbor's. So too with education. Public schools were (are) designed to be economically efficient enough to provide a basic education for everyone. Community Forums.
Perhaps the larger questions are these: 1. To what extent are teachers selected into teaching based on their lack of critical thinking abilities? (Particularly their tendencies toward compliance, unwillingess to question authority, risk-aversion, high need for conformity, discomfort with ambiguity, perceived status as an oppressed class, etc.) It may just be that the structure and history of the profession has attracted a large percentage of people who simply don't apply critical thinking in their work -- even if they apply it regularly outside of work. 2.
To what extent does increasing standardization and technology use reduce the need for teachers to think critically? (If my curriculum is standardized, my tests are standardized, and my tools are standardized, what is left to think critically about other than technique -- which is almost always standardized by policy, adoption, or convention within a given school.) 3. 4. 5. 6. It's not the old saw that "you get what you pay for.
" The Curse of the “Smart” Student | Extreme Biology Blog. The Procrastinating Caveman: What Human Evolution Teaches Us About Why We Put Off Work and How to Stop. July 10th, 2011 · 63 comments Survivor: Paleolithic Edition Rewind time 100,000 years ago: several different species of humans co-exist on earth.There was, of course, our own species, Homo sapien, but we were joined by our more athletic siblings from the Tree of Life, Homo erectus, who had left Africa and colonized Asia long before we ventured beyond the mother continent, all the while another sibling, the stocky Neanderthal, was hunkered down in a European ice age. Advance another 90,000 years, however, and our species is the only game left in town. Scientists have worked hard to figure out why we survived while other early humans did not.
The answer to this question lies at the core of our species’ story, but it also provides insight into a topic of significantly less importance on the grand scale, but nonetheless one that haunts many of us in our everyday lives: procrastination. The Planning Edge Rethinking Student Procrastination Let me flesh this out. (Image by Kevin Dooley) Harvard Education Letter. Students in Hayley Dupuy’s sixth-grade science class at the Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif., are beginning a unit on plate tectonics. In small groups, they are producing their own questions, quickly, one after another: What are plate tectonics? How fast do plates move? Why do plates move? Do plates affect temperature? What animals can sense the plates moving? They raise questions “that we never would have thought of if we started to answer the first question we asked,” says one of the students. Far from Palo Alto, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Mass., Sharif Muhammad’s students at the Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) have a strikingly similar experience.
These two students—one in Palo Alto, the other in Roxbury—are discovering something that may seem obvious: When students know how to ask their own questions, they take greater ownership of their learning, deepen comprehension, and make new connections and discoveries on their own. Think You're An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It's Unlikely : Shots - Health Blog. iStockphoto.com We've all heard the theory that some students are visual learners, while others are auditory learners. And still other kids learn best when lessons involve movement. But should teachers target instruction based on perceptions of students' strengths? Several psychologists say education could use some "evidence-based" teaching techniques, not unlike the way doctors try to use "evidence-based medicine.
" Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. For example, if a teacher believes a student to be a visual learner, he or she might introduce the concept of addition using pictures or groups of objects, assuming that child will learn better with the pictures than by simply "listening" to a lesson about addition.
In fact, an entire industry has sprouted based on learning styles. 10 Infographics for Learning. We all love infographics. Why? Well, they help us grasp information in a quick and fun way that appeals to our visual senses. In fact, there’s an infographic here explaining that. Below you’ll find 10 infographics that discuss learning in many different capacities – online, blended, mobile, etc. Tell us, what’s your favorite infographic on learning? 1. Knewton published an infographic on “Blended Learning: A Disruptive Innovation” that explores K-12 blended learning models by Innosight Institute and Charter School Growth Fund. 2. Voxy Blog published an infographic titled “Are We Wired for Mobile Learning?” Photo Courtesy of Voxy Blog 3. Rick Man posted an infographic, “Why infographics accelerate decision making,” that identifies the ways we traditionally present information versus the visual way we can present information through infographics.
Photo Courtesy of Rick Mans 4. Photo Courtesy of the NY Times 5. Photo Courtesy of Rasmussen College 6. Photo Courtesy of Mashable 7. 8. 9. 10. How to Re-program Your Memory to Become More Self-Reliant. Do you think, “The Classroom Is Obsolete: It’s Time for Something New”? As I read the following article by Prakash Nair from Education Week, it began to make me wonder just where are we in education. Are we limiting our students’ growth and learning experience? Will technology change the obsolete classroom? Is there a need for those four walls? Can public education handle a transformation such as the one described in the article?
What are your thoughts? Published Online: July 29, 2011By Prakash Nair The overwhelming majority of the nearly 76 million students in America’s schools and colleges spend most of the academic day in classrooms. The debate over education reform has been going on for longer than anyone can remember. Lost in all this hand-wringing is the most visible symbol of a failed system: the classroom. The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution, which required a large workforce with very basic skills. The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution, which required a large workforce with very basic skills. Is Your School or Classroom Developing the Future Innovators? - Leading From the Classroom. 50 really useful iPad 2 tips and tricks. An absolute gem of an article by John Brandon and Graham Barlow from MacLife on 30th March over at TechRadar.
This is going to become my iPad manual from here on in. Customised iPads for all iPad 2 tips and original iPad tips - get 'em here! With great new features like two video cameras, a faster processor and a thinner design, the iPad 2 is the world's best tablet device. iPad 2 review It's also fully capable of running the latest version of Apple's iOS operating system and great apps like iMovie and GarageBand. 1. iOS now supports folders. 2. Double-clicking the Home button shows you all the apps that are running on your iPad in a bar along the bottom of the screen. 3. The internet got mightily upset when Orientation Lock was replaced with Mute on the iPad during the last iOS update. 4.
If you're carrying around sensitive data, you can now enable a feature that'll erase all the data on the device if someone inputs the incorrect passcode 10 times. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. The Innovative Educator.