4 Ways to Increase Student Attention in the Age of Distraction MIT professor Sherry Turkle tells a story of teaching a class on memoir, during which students talked openly about the intimate details of their lives, meanwhile their classmates texted under their desks. “We were losing the sense of this class as a conversation, and that is the value of what we’re there to do together,” she remembers. Turkle, author of Alone Together, is not alone in her concern about where technology has the potential to take the classroom—and society—should we let it. On this blog, I’ve written about how when left to their own devices (quite literally), some students will check their phones excessively during class (18 times in 50 minutes, for example), but I’ve also written about how and why professors should teach with the very technologies that are distracting their students, like smartphones, Facebook and Twitter. Technology: An Attention Thief Technology, of course, is the future. In June, a Newsweek piece, “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” #2: Do what’s always worked
School Choice: The Good, the Bad, and the Untested | Education on GOOD Schools, like politics, are a seriously local issue today. At first glance, school choice initiatives in communities around the country—which determine how children choose and are assigned to schools—seem like part of a monolithic national movement called school choice. On closer inspection, however, they display tremendous diversity, for good and for bad. This was not always so: Neighborhood schooling was once the American norm for assigning children to elementary schools. It was seen as the modern, progressive way to provide universal, free, accessible, efficient and equal schooling to all children. By the second half of the 20th century, however, the idea of universal provision of infrastructure—including schools, electricity and telephone wires—was under attack by many as inefficient, unequal and constraining. As a result, there's no single school choice paradigm. The entire genre, by the way, is untested. But we are learning a few things. Illustration by Fatim Hana
The Most Comma Mistakes Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. As I noted in my earlier article, rules and conventions about when to use and not to use commas are legion. But certain errors keep popping up. Identification Crisis If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times. I went to see the movie, “Midnight in Paris” with my friend, Jessie. Comma after “movie,” comma after “friend” and, sometimes, comma after “Paris” as well. I went to see the movie “Midnight in Paris” with my friend Jessie. If that seems wrong or weird or anything short of clearly right, bear with me a minute and take a look at another correct sentence: I went to see Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Midnight in Paris,” with my oldest friend, Jessie. You need a comma after “movie” because this and only this is Mr. The syntactical situation I’m talking about is identifier-name. Grammatically, there are various ways of describing what’s going on. A Bronx plumber, Stanley Ianella, bought the winning lottery ticket. And even Or
Are Lazy Students the Real Problem in Public Education? | Students on GOOD Over the past few years teachers have borne the brunt of the blame for the challenges facing the nation's public schools. But in a scathing op-ed in Salt Lake City's Deseret News, Teresa Talbot, a veteran of Utah's public schools who's about to enter her 25th year in the classroom, claims "the main problem with our education system today is not what is taught, where it is taught, by whom it is taught or how it is taught." Instead, says Talbot, the issue is students who refuse to put in the work required to earn a good grade. As evidence, Talbot cites several examples of teachers having to scale back assignments or needing to give students time in class to complete work they didn't finish at home. Talbot's own math students balked at doing multiple step problems. Talbot's op-ed isn't the first time a teacher's frustrations about unmotivated students have sparked debate. The hand-wringing over lazy students isn't confined to K-12 education, either. Photo via (cc) Flickr user Slongood
Great Teachers Don't Teach In a conversation on LinkedIn, one person asked, "What are the characteristics of an effective teacher?" I read quite a few excellent remarks that describe what such a teacher does to be effective. I couldn't help thinking about some of my best teachers. I had an amazing psychology professor in college. He was on fire every class period and his enthusiasm was contagious. My psychology professor was an effective teacher because he provided experiences that created long-term memories. "I appreciate all of the comments that have been made so far. My experience is that good teachers care about students. All of this is good but great teachers engineer learning experiences that maneuver the students into the driver's seat and then the teachers get out of the way. In The Classroom Long past are the times when we teach content just in case a student might need it. The philosophy that supports such a great teacher is simple. Taking Action How can you keep from teaching and promote true learning?
Reinventing the School — Better Humans Teachers Like most problems, it’s best to start at the very root. Students are educated by teachers, and a good teacher is nothing short of invaluable. Now, say that you’re a teacher with 10 years of experience based in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. How much do you think your salary is? The real problem lies in the attraction. Technology Let’s imagine that a tablet sits on every child's desk, and text books have been banished. One of the key relationships in any students educational life is the one between the teacher and parent. Just as technology companies track and analyze their customers, teachers should be assessing their students in real-time. What else would benefit from the vast amount of data generated by students? Classes More often than not we are not prepared for life after education. The classes taught today are begging for an overhaul. Fees There is room for a middle ground.
Replacing Teachers with Emotion Image credit: iStockphoto Teachers mean well. By teachers, I mean you. You mean well. After all, you're here, aren't you -- looking for resources to become a better teacher or administrator? And you're in education to begin with -- that's a selfless and Sisyphean pursuit in itself. That part's simple: it's emotion that makes them tick. Emotion in Children The need to belong, the desire to be understood, the instinct to understand -- these are all universal human emotions that do not fade with time, vary across generations, or stop just because you've got algebra to teach. But in western education -- being the purveyors of both ambition and science that we are -- we've tried a more analytical route, attempting to decode how learning happens (and the human genome as well, not ironically). A solution, though, is well within reach. Replace teachers -- that means you -- with emotion. The Neuroscience of Emotion and Learning Or the ultimate prize in K-12: proficiency. It supersedes learning.
How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different by Terry Heick This content is proudly sponsored by The Institute for the Habits of Mind, promoting the development of personal thinking habits in 21st century learners. In an era dominated by constant information and the desire to be social, should the tone of thinking for students be different? After all, this is the world of Google. In this world full of information abundance, our minds are constantly challenged to react to data, and often in a way that doesn’t just observe, but interprets. As a result, the tone of thinking can end up uncertain or whimsical, timid or arrogant, sycophant or idolizing–and so, devoid of connections and interdependence. The nature of social media rests on identity as much as anything else—forcing subjectivity on everything through likes, retweets, shares, and pins. But this takes new habits. Information Abundance Persisting. Managing impulsivity. Responding with awe. Questioning. Innovating. Thinking interdependently.
Learning How to Teach History in a Digital Age You only have to read a few of Mills Kelly’s posts at his blog Edwired to pick up on his overarching argument: historians should pay as careful attention to scholarship on teaching as they do to the scholarship in their fields of research. There is a growing body of “Scholarship on Teaching and Learning,” demonstrating, for example, that lecturing is the least effective method of teaching. Kelly contends that historians “have remained stubbornly ignorant of the history of teaching and learning in our discipline.” In his recent book, Kelly provides his own contribution to this scholarly literature with a book focused on the pressing question of how we should go about Teaching History in the Digital Age. Kelly has organized his book around a series of gerunds: thinking, finding, analyzing, presenting, and making. The “thinking” chapter discusses how to teach historical thinking, as opposed to the content or coverage model. This book is intended for historians. Return to Top
The Smarter You Are, The Stupider You Are : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture iStockphoto.com Education is necessary if democracy is to flourish. What good is the free flow of information if people can't make sense of it? How can you vote your own interests if you don't understand the consequences of policy choices? How can you know what's best for you or your community? A recent study by Yale's Dan M. Put another way, the brainier you are, the better you can twist facts to your own pre-existing convictions. Far from showing that there's no hope for democracy, or that education is not necessary for democracy to thrive, these findings give us occasion to recall that education isn't just learning how to be good with numbers. First, though, the finding itself. Pretend that these are the results of a new medical study: Of patients given a medicine, 223 showed marked improvement in their symptoms, whereas 75 showed no improvement. Is the medicine effective? If you're like a lot of us, you'll say yes! And you'd be wrong. But this isn't a shortcoming of liberals.