'commonplaces' Category
Homework for Pirates
Yesterday one of my students had some gold coins with mysterious markings on them, and I asked him where they came from. I don’t know, he said. I told him they looked like something you’d find in a pirate’s chest.
He said, “I have a shirt that says, ‘Pirates took my homework’. And that’s kind of [...]Setting the Dial on Rationality
Davis and Sumara’s book about complexity theory in education, mentions the Santa Fe Institute, a center for complexity research, but I’d never heard of it. They also referred to a book by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, which as it turns out, tells the story [...]
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, [...]My Sicko Turn
I saw Sicko mostly because of this article:
… the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete [...]Teaching Rocks
Since Sarah Puglisi is thinking about rocks and Dada today, this might be the time to drop this one into the pool. For fun. As Sarah said, I hadn’t expected Dada, but then, one can’t expect Dada.
I like to read Bird Baylor’s Everybody Needs a Rock to my students. After we get the “rules” [...]Democracy 2.0
Will Richardson’s post about Web 2.0 as “Cultural and Intellectual Catastrophe” referenced Andrew Keen’s critique of “radical democratizers” who threaten the “intellectual life of our society.” Will wonders “…what systemic impact we can have by pushing at the education door.”
Keen sounds off about web technologies, but he’s really talking about preserving the status quo, and [...]A Political Voice
A 10 year-old girl in my class asked me last week if she could publish an anti-war comment. I said, Sure. Just realize that everyone might not agree with you. We live in a town with an Army post, and a lot of people from here have been deployed. She went ahead and wrote her [...]
And tonight we still remembered
I left this as a comment on Michel Duffy’s site, Duffy Writes. A story that Michael tells on his blog, and which he posted as a comment to a recent post here, reminded me of something from Ordinary Wolves, a book I can’t recommend highly enough for people who like to think about these things. [...]
Greenup - now
Greenup in the subarctic is when the forest canopy bursts into leaf. In a few short hours, the hillsides become a sea of green. And because summer lasts only a few short months, we don’t take any of it for granted.
With just 10 school days remaining this year, seasonal changes are coming strong.
So, with [...]Choosing a life
I’ve been (and still am for a few more hours) away from home in the desert visiting my mom. Traveling Outside from Alaska is always a mild shock. The flood of people in the Seattle airport is the first jolt. And from that point on, I’m out of place, feeling a bit alienated and strange [...]
