May 2012
118 posts
6 tags
6 tags
Resources and Tools for PBL Start to Finish →
Educators from Manor New Technology High School in Manor, Texas, part of the New Tech Network of schools, have provided these resources and tools for project-based learning.
“You are what you click.”
“We are no longer a newspaper company.”
– Jim Kirk, Editor-in-chief, Chicago Sun-Times Media Holdings, in a memo to staff. Crains. Sun-Times shuffles newsroom, stresses digital moves.
The ever important pivot that every traditional newspaper publisher is realizing: “We are a technology company that happens to publish a newspaper. We...
First day of summer and I was awake at 7:30 am.
3 tags
Taxonomy for Blended Learning Environments →
Interesting white paper offering detailed models for blended learning environments.
Two design principles governed the process of updating and expanding upon the blendedlearning definitions:
1. Develop flexible definitions so that they can still be useful even as the field continues to innovate. The definitions are intentionally broad and open, rather than specific. They set forth basic...
2 tags
“The self-motivated learner will be on the web, and there will be far less...”
– Bill Gates
2 tags
3 tags
6 tags
Design for Social Impact: A High School Course for...
Two years ago, a colleague approached me about starting a course at our high school (residential 9-12 school) that dealt with ideation and creativity. As we talked, read, and brainstormed, the course which developed, Design for Social Impact, grew into an experience which teaches kids how to use design-thinking, a process for inquiry, development of a product/service, and innovation to make an...
2 tags
Are you in #ED?
If you’re a teacher or an educator, or involved in education in some way, would you answer this post with your grade level/ area of expertise/ interest?
5 tags
“Life is too short to be wasted in finding answers. Enjoy the questions!”
– Paulo Coelho (via kari-shma)
Last night at school for these kids, and I’m in the hallways at 4am ushering them back to their rooms. So much for their “sneak-out” plans.
1 tag
6 tags
8 tags
“CEOs regard interpersonal skills of collaboration (75 percent), communication...”
– IBM Study: If You Don’t Have a Social CEO, You’re Going to be Less Competitive - Forbes (via smarterplanet)
6 tags
Video Games to Train Middle-Schoolers’... →
The project grew from the intersection of Davidson’s research on the brain bases of emotion, Squire’s expertise in educational game design, and the Gates Foundation’s interest in preparing U.S. students for college readiness-possessing the skills and knowledge to go on to post-secondary education without the need for remediation.
“Skills of mindfulness and kindness are...
3 tags
… yet there is no world other than the one in our heads.
teachingliteracy:
“All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because it keeps the world in our head coherent and understandable.”
—
Marya Hornbacher, Wasted. (via mustardhat)
I ❤ tumblr.
A Wedding Weekend in Buffalo.
On Saturday I reunited with old friends from Brown (I guess we’re not that old, but we are getting older). My friend’s (Anna’s) wedding was yesterday evening in an old church that Ani DiFranco bought years back and renovated into a venue and recording studio space. It’s one of those old style churches with seats wrapping around the perimeter of the second story, where...
1 tag
Don't you just love it when...
someone hacks your credit card and goes on a shopping spree in California?
1 tag
4 tags
Anonymous asked: What you think about students (perhaps one or two, ideally late high school, first year college) as possible editors in the education tag? I've been seeing the discussion about different views and view points but you don't see much from actual students who are interesting in education. I think that the idea has much to offer to both info wise/opinions/new view etc. Care to share your...
4 tags
Any teachers out there do weekly self-evaluations...
If so, how and what do these self-evals look like? What kinds of things do you measure, and how do you go about measuring?
5 tags
First we go, then we write.
I boarded a train this morning. At first the movement, sudden and pointed, did nothing to quell the anxious waters in which I felt I was floating.
I’ve been reading about the human brain: how we decide, the ways in which we know we’re aware of the thoughts we have, and how our brain makes connections.
When I’m traveling, when I’m on a train, or flying high above the...
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become...”
– The Iron Lady (via quote-book)
3 tags
Facilitators of Group Learning #2
[Another great facilitator who is on my radar is known endearingly as Doc Klein. He has experience as a consultant, as an Outward Bound instructor and an expert climber. Doc sees to the heart of people. I asked Doc to participate in the conversation about facilitation.]
Me: Doc, In what ways do you measure your own effectiveness as a facilitator?
Doc: There are many ways of knowing in this...
3 tags
Yahoo Announces Axis, A New Visual Paradigm In Web... →
Interesting.
We take our search engine experience so much for granted that it can be hard to see with clear eyes. Consider this: The dead-simple process of Googling something actually has three distinct phases. First, you arrive at the URL and type your query. Second, you scan the long list of blue links that are your results. Third, you hopefully find what you need. With their new search...
4 tags
Facilitators of Group Learning #1
[Recently I've been interested in how, as teachers, we can become better facilitators in our classrooms. At a school which touts the Harkness conference model as the cornerstone of a student's educational experience, the importance of understanding how to facilitate a group cannot be overstated. I spent the year working with a number of expert Outward Bound Instructors. Just watching them lead a discussion and debrief an experience taught me a great deal about facilitation and forced me to think about what's really going on when we make the assumption that learning is happening in groups. I asked Arianna, one of the North Carolina Outward Bound instructors for some advice. She inspired me to begin a journey of conversations with people whose facilitation styles I admire. Be on the lookout for great bits of wisdom in these chats. I've already learned so much; I'm excited to share with you and work on practicing what they've taught me.]
Me: Ari, What makes a facilitator effective?
Arianna: when facilitators guide their work based on the tone of the conversation--what is being said, how it is being said, how it is being heard; when they are able to attend to the mood of the conversation and gracefully make the implicit, non-verbal conversation in the room part of the explicit spoken conversation. Authentically showing up, being fully present and listening deeply with all our senses (including the subtler senses like intuition and the heart) have been key ways for me to do this. Facilitators are also effective when the people involved in the conversation feel like 90% of the process was based on self-discovery and their own decision-making. (in line with Lao Tzu's wisdom "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.")...
5 tags
#education editors and followers
I’m amused by the discussions currently going on among followers of the education tag and the editors of the highlighted post stream. I like the idea that they could work together to develop some shared criteria that will push posts to the forefront. However, if I’m reading the responses correctly, it looks like people feel as though the posts featured on the tag only represent a range...
5 tags
Lessons from Abroad: Singapore's "holistic... →
lessonsfromabroad:
Singapore, often one of the top-performing countries on international assessments, is moving away from memorizing facts to an emphasis on creativity in learning, reports the BBC.
So what does this look like? For one of the country’s top schools, it meant taking a “learning journey” through a…
contains live and active cultures: It’s... →
sofriel:
It’s interesting to see what tumblr has done to my speech/writing distinction.
I used to have a very sharp distinction, in that I basically never wrote how I talk. When I started on LJ, I started using a more colloquial type of writing than I do in stories or schoolwork, but it still was really…
What would you like to see #education editors...
TeachFail #122
…when you go into a conversation with an administrator and you come out less happy and slightly drained.
3 tags
4 tags
“When Milton Glaser was sixteen, he decided to draw a portrait of his mother. “I...”
– Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
I had to go buy a jacket for an upcoming wedding, so I stopped in at Banana Republic while some of the boys were picking up their tuxedos for prom.
First of all, I got a fifteen percent discount for being a teacher, which is AWESOME!
But unexpectedly, I learned that the woman at the register is a metallurgical engineer.
A METALLURGICAL ENGINEER working at Banana Republic? — people with...
4 tags
What if Schools Weren't Schools Anymore? →
Seen through this lens, school is a place where people “learn to live a life of selfless service on behalf of the community; it’s where we find the path to virtue, subordinating innate self-interest as individuals to the interests of the community, the good of the whole.”
If it sounds a little pie-in-the-sky, think about the alternative. Students aren’t exactly breaking...
