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"Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's work on growth mindsets has dominated much of the attention around how students can influence their own learning. But there are other ways to help students tap into their own motivation, too. Here are a few other important mindsets to consider."

"Growth mindset has become a pervasive theme in education discussions in part because of convincing research by Stanford professor Carol Dweck and others that relatively low-impact interventions on how a student thinks about himself as a learner can have big impacts on learning. The growth mindset research is part of a growing understanding and acknowledgement that many non-cognitive factors are important to academic learning."

The posting below looks at a new approach to evaluating teaching. It is by Carl Wieman a professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He is the founder of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia and the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado. He is a Nobel Laureate in Physics and served as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Cwieman@stanford.edu, 650 - 497-3491. The posting is a condensed version of a substantially longer article that appeared in the January, 2015 issue of Change Magazine. http://www.changemag.org Regards, Rick Reis

"Like many kids of my generation growing up in India, I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton's novels. Many of her books were written as a series ("The Famous Five," "The Secret Seven" and "Five Find-Outers") and I recall wondering if the lives of characters overlapped in any way. Did a character from one series ever run into one from another, for example? I recall wondering the same thing in later years about P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle and Jeeves series. Today, in a world where communities real and imagined are digitally connected via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, we can reframe that question in terms of those common nodes (or friends) in those characters' social networks. As it turns out, network theory as an analytic technique, or what I'd call computational literary analysis, is not just a bona fide research endeavor. It's also a great example of how computational thinking (CT) is truly a cross-disciplinary skill that can be weaved to enrich learning in any subject (not just math and science, as is sometimes the assumption). In an earlier article on computational thinking, I offered teasers of how CT could be integrated into language arts and social studies, in addition to math and science. Here's a detailed treatment of one of those examples, drawn from the work of Franco Moretti's group on "Computational Criticism," which is part of the broader Digital Humanities initiative at Stanford. (See this New York Times profile for more on the work of this group)."

" TWEETSHAREEMAIL Over the summer, academics debated the impact of growth mindset, the belief that one's intelligence can be developed with hard work and effort, and whether it can move the needle on academic performance. Even Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, who is often credited with the term, chimed in with additional research supporting the efficacy of mindset interventions. An Education Week survey found that the vast majority of educators believe that a growth-oriented mindset can help improve students' motivation, commitment and engagement in learning. But the study found that applying those ideas to practice, and helping students shift their mindset around learning, remains an elusive challenge. Those findings largely coincide with my observations as an administrator, coach, technology implementer, and now founder of an education company. Over the summer, my team ran a series of professional learning community sessions with dozens of educators across the country, focused on instructional practices that foster and support growth mindset. At these events, almost all teachers said they get the big ideas around growth mindset, but over 80 percent said their schools don't implement them well."

"Math has been a traditionally thorny subject in many American schools. Lots of children dislike math and many more adults stopped taking mathematics as soon as they are able, even when they were successful in their classes. At the same time, mathematical thinking is a crucial part of many of the most exciting and growing careers in science, technology, engineering and math, not to mention important for a general understanding of the mathematical world around us. So, what can U.S. math educators do to shift this dynamic? Stanford Mathematics Education Professor Jo Boaler is championing a dramatic shift in how many math teachers approach instruction. Rather than focusing on the algorithms and procedures that make mathematics feel like a lock-step process -- with one right way of solving problems -- Boaler encourages teachers to embrace the visual aspects of math. She encourages teachers to ask students to grapple with open-ended problems, to share ideas and to see math as a creative endeavor. She works with students every summer and says that when students are in a math environment that doesn't focus on performance, speed, procedures, and right and wrong answers they thrive. They even begin to change their perceptions of whether they can or can't do math."

"Playtime. Downtime. Family time. According to Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, these three factors - or PDF as she calls them - protect kids against a host of negative outcomes, strengthen resilience, and bolster students' mental wellness and academic engagement. "

"Five years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. Here are 250 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free 250 MOOCs from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. medium.freecodecamp.com I've compiled this list of over 438 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 7,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating"

"For many attending the Future of Work symposium on Wednesday, there wasn't any question whether automation is going to take over jobs-but rather when, and how education should respond. Hosted at Stanford University, the day-long event brought together dozens of minds who are thinking about what careers and skills students need to prepare for, and how an increasingly digital higher-education system will need to adapt to help get them there. Speakers including edX CEO Anant Agarwal, associate dean and director of Stanford's Diversity and First-Gen office Dereca Blackmon, and Deborah Quazzo, a co-founder of investment firm GSV, shared their ideas on what that might look like. Here are a few major themes we heard throughout the day:"

"Six years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. I've compiled this list of 430 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 8,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating."

"People of all ages struggle to evaluate the integrity of the digital information that rains down with every web search and social media scroll. When the Stanford History Education Group released findings showing that most students couldn't tell sponsored ads from real articles, among other miscues, it intensified the scramble for tools and strategies to help students discern better. But a more recent study by Stanford's Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew suggests that many of the techniques that students and teachers employ - which include checklists and other practices most recommended for digital literacy - are often misleading. A better solution for navigating our cluttered online environment, they say, can be found in the practices of professional fact-checkers. Their approach, which harnesses the power of the web to determine trustworthiness, is more likely to expose dubious information. The following guidelines for interrogating online information, inspired by the fact-checkers' techniques, will increase students' odds of determining unreliable sources (and consuming reliable ones)."

"Satisfaction and engagement may not be the most common feelings among students studying introductory calculus. According to Jo Boaler, a professor of math education at Stanford, roughly 50 percent of the population feels anxious about math. That emotional discomfort often begins in elementary school, lingering over students' later encounters with algebra and geometry, and tainting the subject with apprehension-or outright loathing. Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California has explored how emotions are tied to learning. "Emotions are a piece of thinking," she told me; "we think of anything because our emotions push us that way." Even subjects widely considered to be outside the realm of emotion, like math, evoke powerful feelings among those studying it, which can then propel or thwart further learning."

"So what qualities would a teacher possess in a constructionist environment and how would these superheroes behave? Thank you to FabLearn Fellows Mark Schreiber and Erin Riley for their feedback for this post. They are quoted below from our small group meeting on April 7th. Here is a list of top five qualities and behaviors to keep in your tool kit for fostering a constructionist learning environment."

"In the second semester of Problem based Science, my 5th graders are introduced to their "Spring hard problem." The spring hard problem marks the end of our patterns unit and the beginning of our study of structures and systems through the lens of making and problem solving. During our study of structures, students get a chance to use their understanding of materials, measurement and patterns to make blueprints for novel designs and to conduct scientific testing of those designs. If those structures involve moving parts or varying materials or embedded electronics, they are also learning about the relatedness of things that make up a system. This year's spring hard problem had a design thinking and sustainability twist. Below is an account of this 6 month long unit, the unit learning outcomes and student feedback regarding the process."