Archive for September, 2007
Putting Something Back
This coming week I begin teaching an after-school Web Tools for Teachers course. I’ve never done any professional development work, except on my own behalf, and I’m thinking about blogging and altruism today.
The idea of “sharing” is central to my understanding of blogging. I suppose that out of zillions of bloggers, others are [...]Learning Theory
Pete Reilly:
If you work in a school district, can you answer this question, off the top of your head, within the next 30 seconds:
What is the theory of how people learn that guides school and classroom practices in your district?I say, it depends on the goals of the teacher. For memorizing facts, rote practice and [...]
Are You Smarter than a Billionaire?
Clay Burell threw down a fun little quiz challenge yesterday, and I took it. My result said I’m smarter than 97.64% of the population (whoever that is) which, according to his preliminary results, puts me behind his 98.3% score, and Stephen Downes’ 98.98%. I left a comment asking, What does it mean to be smart? [...]
Treeline Habitat
We took a trip up to the top of the dome yesterday to study plants at treeline. But when you’re constructing meaning at a conceptual level, you need to establish a context. My group of town kids with little outdoors experience didn’t know what “treeline” was. So we started at the bottom and made a [...]
Say what?
For those of us working to “raise the bar” in public schools, we need to keep an eye on the Hypocrite-in-Chief, who consistently lowers it whenever he wanders off script. Disgusting.
Going the Distance
One of my students was having trouble with some math exercises (as in, 480 cm. = __m) and I asked him to show me about how long a centimeter is, and how long a meter is, but that was hard for him because he didn’t have an intuitive sense of the relationship between meters and [...]
Differences and Inferences
We started germinating seeds in the classroom a few days ago. Since the growing season outdoors is closing down, we’ll grow some on the window ledge. The science objective is to have students observe differences between monocotyledons and dicotyledons, and so they’re germinating beans and corn in wet paper towels. But I have another, more [...]
Protecting Child Genius
Dennis Kucinich:
The government has a major responsibility. After all, an educated populous is core, central to democracy. Charlie, as you walk up the stairs of the Capitol on your way into the House of Representatives, way over the top of that entrance to the House is a statue of a woman whose arm is outstretched, [...]Tools for Teachers
On a positive note, some of the teachers I work with requested that I teach a 1 credit professional development course about web authoring tools. So the other night I wrote up a course proposal and presented it to the staff yesterday at the end of a meeting. I spent about 15 minutes explaining to [...]
My NCLB Testimony
Since many people, including Linda Darling Hammond who offers (exceptionally) a comparative international perspective on education reform, are giving testimony in Washington this week at the ESEA reauthorization hearing…
“We’ve learned a lot, and we shouldn’t ignore that evidence,” said Miller, who is leading the overhaul of the law in the House, which starts this week. [...]
