Group items tagged

This is the journal/report of a computer science teacher at a private school who redesigned his classes, moving away from a grades- and information-based model toward an adaptive learning, self-motivating, community-of-scholars, discovery approach. He designed it as an ongoing action-research project for his graduate degree. The narrative is easy to follow and good things happen.

Douglas Rushkoff makes some interesting points about how we are living our lives in the digital age. He reminds us that although the internet, social media, smart phones, etc. all seem as ubiquitous as gravity, they are human constructs. In this clip and accompanying text, Rushkoff makes the case for ten "commandments" to remain human in a digital age.

If you have a chance to read this book, it really gets you to think about how we have structured our work environments potentially to our overall disadvantage. I heard an interview with Schwartz on NPR, was intrigued, so got the book. He talks about four basic human needs: Sustainability/Physical; Security/Emotional; Self-Expression/Mental; and Significance/Spiritual. Schwartz asserts that we need elements of all four in our lives, including at work, to be fully functioning and growing.

This YouTube clip shows a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson on how we need to revolutionize our educational systems. It resonates with what Myles Horton said in his interview about "molding" vs. "liberating." Schools have been about preparing students to become productive members in an industrial based society. Like Horton, Robinson argues that we need to break free of that model. Robinson also has a couple of good talks on Ted.com related to education. Some of us watched his talk on how schools kill creativity when we took Creative Thinking.

A video of three Canadian teacher's effort to incorporate project based learning into their curriculum.

This got me thinking again about inquiry and problem-based learning. Engagement and ownership while working through/with their own ideas allows students to grow.

Organizational Behavior is the study of individuals behave in organizations. This site discusses the four major models or frameworks that organizations operate out of, Autocratic, Custodial, Supportive, and Collegial.