-
What Does (and Doesn’t) Progressive Education Plus Technology Look Like? Thoughts on AltSchool
-
5 Ways Student Choice Impacts Learning – A.J. Juliani
HT @ChipHouston1976
-
10 Commandments of Innovative Teaching – A.J. Juliani
HT @ChipHouston1976
-
HT @jbrettjacobsen
-
What do College Professors Want from Incoming High School Graduates? | the becoming radical
HT @HollyChesser
-
To offer a negative to the opening question, just as art professors at the college level do not want students who have done only paint-by-number, college professors who ask students to write do not want students who can write only canned essays and students who believe “never use ‘I’” or “don’t start sentences with ‘and.’”
-
As writers, then, students need ample experiences in high school with choice—choosing what texts they read and then choosing what types of writing they produce.
-
And here, I note, is the key quality college professors want from students in all aspects of academics (and life), including writing: Students who are purposeful, thoughtful, and autonomous. Too often the best students approach professors with “What do you want?” instead of having the background and confidence to make their own informed decisions.
-
To offer a negative to the opening question, just as art professors at the college level do not want students who have done only paint-by-number, college professors who ask students to write do not want students who can write only canned essays and students who believe “never use ‘I’” or “don’t start sentences with ‘and.’”
-
And here, I note, is the key quality college professors want from students in all aspects of academics (and life), including writing: Students who are purposeful, thoughtful, and autonomous. Too often the best students approach professors with “What do you want?” instead of having the background and confidence to make their own informed decisions.
-
As writers, then, students need ample experiences in high school with choice—choosing what texts they read and then choosing what types of writing they produce.
-
here are some experiences that high school students need before entering college as young writers
-
learning not to act like a student anymore, but to become a writer, and specifically, to become a scholar who writes.
-
-
What is Humane Education? | Institute for Humane Education
“What if we all had the passion and skills to solve the most pressing challenges of our time, and, through our daily choices, work, and acts of citizenship, made choices that do the most good and least harm for ourselves, other people, animals, and the earth?”
-
Watch Zoe Weil’s Talk | Institute for Humane Education
HT @JennyNovoselsky
Who’s the author and DJ of a student learners’ school experience?
A few weeks ago, one of my relatively new colleagues – an incredible learning partner of mine – shared this quote:
If your time at school is a story, then who’s writing it.
I can’t get this question out of my mind. I’m wondering if we teachers insert ourselves into our student learners’ stories, or if it’s more like we ask (require?) them to insert themselves into ours.
As many of you readers know, I watch a TED talk every day. This morning, I watched “Mark Ronson: The exhilarating creativity of remixing.”
During the viewing, with the Hathaway Brown quote freshly on my brain folds from a morning mediation walking Lucy, I wondered if student learners are the mixologists of their school learning episodes. How are they remixing the samples of “melodies” that they hear in various classes and schedule periods? How are we making time and space for them to be the authors and DJs of their stories as learners in school? Where is the primary agency in the relationship between student learner and teacher learner?
#MustRead Shares (weekly)
-
Twitter / 61WatsonWarrior: #ctedchat What are you? How …
HT @scitechyedu
-
“Undergraduate students that join VIP teams earn academic credit for their participation in design/discovery efforts that assist faculty and graduate students with research and development issues in their areas of expertise.”
-
The Maker Movement Conquers the Classroom — THE Journal
-
“When kids and teachers are given an opportunity to make, to create,” Moran said, “all of a sudden you see people becoming passionate about who they are as learners.”
-
-
22 Things We Do As Educators That Will Embarrass Us In 25 Years
HT @SAISNews #Priceless
-
Teachers as Technology Trailblazers: Personalizing PD: It’s About Empowerment; Not Tools
“The magic ingredient for personalized learning isn’t prescriptive content; it’s empowerment.”
-
if you’re defining personalized learning as targeted content delivery, you’re missing the mark.
-
the process must “begin with the learner.” This means that the learner is integral to creating the goals, tasks, and methods by which learning actually happens.
-
The magic ingredient for personalized learning isn’t prescriptive content; it’s empowerment.
-
When people decide what they want to learn, individualized ownership creates the magic.
-
As we select the tools that will help us grow the capacity of educators, personalized learning should be considered. But rather than pick tools that prescribe the type of learning that should take place, perhaps we should use our resources to truly answer the following question for every teacher: What do you want to learn?
-
-
Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating | Video on TED.com
-
Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics | Granted, and…
Fabulous Grant Wiggins piece on conceptual understanding in math and why we need to focus more on such an objective in schools.
“Conceptual understanding in mathematics means that students understand which ideas are key (by being helped to draw inferences about those ideas) and that they grasp the heuristic value of those ideas. They are thus better able to use them strategically to solve problems – especially non-routine problems – and avoid common misunderstandings as well as inflexible knowledge and skill.”
Good list of misunderstandings/myths, and an interesting little “test” from Grant.
HT @nicolenmartin
-
There is a world of difference between a student who can summon a mnemonic device to expand a product such as (a + b)(x + y) and a student who can explain where the mnemonic comes from.
-
By comparing a variety of solution strategies, children build their understanding of the relationship between addition and subtraction.
-
Being helped to generalize from one’s specific knowledge is key to genuine understanding.
-
Conceptual knowledge refers to an understanding of meaning; knowing that multiplying two negative numbers yields a positive result is not the same thing as understanding why it is true.
-
Dear @MissKFitzgerald’s 1st Grade Class… #VisibleThinking #MVPSchool
Dear @MissKFitzgerald’s 1st Grade Class,
THANK YOU for my “See-Think-Wonder” Visible Thinking Routine that you created on my truck. I love it! To see the evidence of your thinking and learning is so fun and exciting.
Sincerely,
Mr. Adams
What if form followed function in school? Inspired by David Epstein #TED talk
On May 11, 2014, I will (quietly) celebrate a third anniversary. That day will mark the moment that I have spent exactly three years watching a TED talk every day.
Being an educator, as I watch TED talks, I think about how they might “fit” into school. I sometimes imagine the speaker as a student in a typical high school, and I wonder what courses and subjects his or her talk would align with.
And often that exercise bothers me. It bothers me because I imagine a speaker like David Epstein prepping and preparing his “Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?” talk embedded below. I wonder…. Would David be doing this “project” in math class? In science class? In history class? In English class as a persuasive speech assignment? Maybe in some technology course? Would he be so lucky as to have teachers who would allow a single project to “count” for all of his courses? After all, the project integrates a number of disciplines that we subdivide and separate in school.
And that entire imagining bothers me because of the ridiculousness of having to think this way. Why do we continue to remain so wed to the unnatural subdivision of the “school subjects?”
What if at least part of David’s school day allowed for him to pursue the project of his dreams and interests and the subject-area lenses were more like threads in a tapestry that David is weaving?
And what if that deep project identification and discernment had developed partly because of more innovative “homework” that encouraged and made room for David to explore his developing passions and curiosities?
And what if the subject areas in his school behaved a bit more like “subjects on demand” and recitations in which David could schedule time with a relative expert to spend some concentrated time digging into the statistics or biology specificity that he needed for his emerging understanding?
And what if his assessments were more akin to badges and endorsements showcasing the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and understandings that David was building?
And what if David were at the center of his own progress reporting and learning conferences?
Then school would look different. Because form follows function.
Enjoy the talk. It’s amazing.
