If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for.
Richard Feynman, as shared on Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings
As I breezed the Twitter stream awhile today, I noticed a number of people from various reaches of the United States hailing that their school had already been announced CLOSED on Jan. 6 due to inclement weather – snow and ice!
Just one example:
Well well my former Michigan co-workers already have school closed for tomorrow. They r deep n snow! Their bragging has begun lol [emphasis mine]
Like you maybe, I’ve heard about strange rituals like children wearing pajamas inside out and flushing ice cubes down the toilet to encourage the elements to delay or cancel school.
So, of course, I cannot help but wonder:
What would make school so great as a learning-and-engagement community that teachers and students would actually be sad, devastated even, when school was canceled for inclement weather?
We should design for that emotion! For that desired user experience!
And if school canceled simply provides more time for people to do other things that get neglected “due to” their professional/school lives – hence the excitement about the cancelation, then we could learn from those insights, too! But I imagine that’s not all that’s at stake. How ’bout you?!
[Selfish blogger’s note: I so wish hundreds…thousands of people would fill the comments with examples of what school would/could be like that would make them sad if it got canceled due to weather. And then I wish we would make those schools happen more!]
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RELATED POST FROM THE PAST:
The problem with thinking ‘content is king’ in education
“Mistaken belief that changing the content of what stus study will magically alter what occurs in classrooms” Cuban: http://t.co/BaadM0f18P
Harvard EdCast: Making the Rounds | Harvard Graduate School of Education
“In School-Based Instructional Rounds: Improving Teaching and Learning Across Classrooms, published by Harvard Education Press, Lecturer Lee Teitel explores this innovative approach of improving teaching and learning. Through case studies at five distinct models of K-12 schools, Teitel examines how the instructional rounds methods were implemented and what the schools have learned from the process.
In this edition of the EdCast, Teitel speaks about the book and shares his evolving research on school-based instructional rounds. ”
[HT @cliffordshelley via “LS Chilipeppers” Diigo group]
Steve Seidel has run educational #rounds at PZ for years. Do any of you do it in your schools/museums/etc.? http://t.co/56wIL2KEl6
Teachers: How Slowing Down Can Lead to Great Change | Edutopia
“It’s time to slow down. In our crazy whirling, we are only creating more chaos and mess to clean up.
If we slowed down, we could reflect on what we’ve been doing and what’s been working; we could ask questions, explore root causes, and we could listen to each other. And if we engaged in some of these practices, there’s a greater likelihood that we’d uncover authentic solutions, make some significant changes, feel better about our work, and deliver some sustainable results.”
Creating Great Students | Edutopia
HT @cliffordshelley via “LS Chilipeppers” Diigo group
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Teacher Data Dashboards Are Hard, Pt. 2
Dan Meyer provides a number of important thoughts and resources in the investigation of Teacher Data Dashboards and progress reporting. This is part 2.
[HT @occam98]
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Teacher Data Dashboards Are Hard, Pt. 1
Dan Meyer provides a number of important thoughts and resources in the investigation of Teacher Data Dashboards and progress reporting. This is part 1.
[HT @occam98]
Marco Cibola – Explore Create Repeat – by 4ormat
“I think it’s very important to never stop learning. There’s a tendency, especially when I’m busy and working for clients, to just become a machine that churns out work that builds a portfolio of clones. There’s a certain comfort and security with repeating what you know and giving the client what they expect. But it can also get boring and unsatisfying. It can feel stagnant. I think that curiosity and going into the unknown is what makes work interesting. I love problem solving, but not when I’ve already solved the problem.”
Unstuck’s Best Advice of 2013 – 16 Tip Cards
Unstuck Point of View
“There’s no shame in getting stuck. The more we get stuck, the more often we can make life better. Let’s embrace the stuck moment — and then do something about it.”
Put into Practice
“This year, we had the pleasure of sharing all kinds of tips and ideas in the name of Unstuck. Your response has been gratifying, because every time a tip works, someone’s life gets a bit better. And most likely, that makes someone else’s life better. The ripple effect of getting unstuck is an exponential force for good. So in the spirit of building that force, we present the best of Unstuck’s advice in 2013 as printable and pin-able tip cards to keep handy and to share.”
Solving Problems for Real World, Using Design – NYTimes.com
“While the projects had wildly different end products, they both had a similar starting point: focusing on how to ease people’s lives. And that is a central lesson at the school, which is pushing students to rethink the boundaries for many industries.
At the heart of the school’s courses is developing what David Kelley, one of the school’s founders, calls an empathy muscle. Inside the school’s cavernous space — which seems like a nod to the Silicon Valley garages of lore — the students are taught to forgo computer screens and spreadsheets and focus on people.”
“interested in experiential learning for multi-disciplinary teams”
Predicted primary themes in my blog posts in 2014:
Patches of a common quilt, for sure…
We are more than six billion people and we are suffering from complex global problems, many of them man-made. The world is one-unit, one body, but our minds still think in terms of we and they. In reality, however, there is no such thing as us and them. We are one body. So the destruction of one part is the destruction of the whole. We must make an effort to recognize that the “others” are also part of humanity, that my future depends on your future. We may find some comfort in the notion of independence, the idea that we control our destiny and can take care of ourselves, but that idea only exists in our mind. In reality, we are all interdependent.
– the Dali Lama, as quoted in Being Global: How to Think, Act, and Lead in a Transformed World, by Angel Cabrera and Gregory Unruh
– reminded me, too, of Roman 12:4
.
.
.
We know (and have known for a long time) that the best all-around way to get students to learn is student-directed learning (also known as student-centered), but after all this time, we are still trying to get the teachers to quit doing so much direct instruction and engage more students with inquiry, project-based learning, and experiential learning.
.
If we slowed down, we could reflect on what we’ve been doing and what’s been working; we could ask questions, explore root causes, and we could listen to each other. And if we engaged in some of these practices, there’s a greater likelihood that we’d uncover authentic solutions, make some significant changes, feel better about our work, and deliver some sustainable results.
From Explore, Create, Repeat – an interview with Marco Cibola
I think it’s very important to never stop learning. There’s a tendency, especially when I’m busy and working for clients, to just become a machine that churns out work that builds a portfolio of clones. There’s a certain comfort and security with repeating what you know and giving the client what they expect. But it can also get boring and unsatisfying. It can feel stagnant. I think that curiosity and going into the unknown is what makes work interesting. I love problem solving, but not when I’ve already solved the problem.
Modifications in brackets made by me, practicing “association” as an innovation skill, and hypothetically creating a riffed quote for myself:
I think it’s very important to never stop learning. There’s a tendency, especially when [we’re] busy and working [in the ambitious school-calendar cycles], to just become a machine that churns out work that builds a portfolio of clones. There’s a certain comfort and security with repeating what you know and giving the [student(s)] what they expect. But it can also get boring and unsatisfying. It can feel stagnant. I think that curiosity and going into the unknown is what makes [school and learning and education] interesting. I love problem solving, but not when [we’ve] already solved the problem.
it's about learning 