'education' Category
Herd Poisoning
Graham Wegner points out some problems that cropped up in the comments of a couple of education blogs. He comments on the perils of taking up heartfelt issues in blog comments, and assuming we’ll be understood.
Neil Postman’s Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk has an excerpted chapter, Propaganda [pdf], in which he argues that propaganda [...]This Explains Everything
Paul Krugman:
Some people seem to think that I’m saying that racism and the other issues I classify as “weapons of mass distraction” are what movement conservatism is about. They aren’t.
What the movement is about is economics: the core goal is, as Heritage says in its fundraising letters, to roll back the New Deal and the [...]Between Scylla and Charybdis
There are many other things I could be writing about. But I got sidetracked by teacherken:
I am angry. I despair. I am outraged. I am exhausted. I teach about a government that perhaps no longer exists, one that had three co-equal branches, that had checks and balances, in which the power [...]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 [...]
Managing the InfoStream
Chris Lott’s post about managing the infostream comes at a time when I’m feeling overwhelmed with competing demands for my time and attention. There are hundreds of unread feeds in my reader, and a dozen open tabs on the web browser while I grade papers, plan lessons, meet with teachers, call parents, and work [...]
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? [...]
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.
