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John Seely Brown: "Even when children are high achievers and facile with new technology, many seem gradually to lose their sense of wonder and curiosity, notes John Seely Brown. Traditional educational methods may be smothering their innate drive to explore the world. Brown and like-minded colleagues are developing the underpinnings for a new 21st century pedagogy that broadens rather than narrows horizons. John Seely Brown, former chief scientist at Xerox, has morphed in recent years into the "Chief of Confusion," seeking "the right questions" in a range of fields, including education. He finds unusual sources for his questions: basketball and opera coaches, surfing and video game champions. He's gathered insights from unorthodox venues, and from more traditional classrooms, to paint quite a different picture of what learning might look like. The typical college lecture class frequently gathers many students together in a large room to be 'fed' knowledge, believes Brown. But studies show that "learning itself is socially constructed," and is most effective when students interact with and teach each other in manageable groups. Brown wants to open up "niche learning experiences" that draw on classic course material, but deepen it to be maximally enriching. In basketball and opera master classes, and in architecture labs, he has seen how individuals become acculturated in a "community of practice," learning to "be" rather than simply to "do." Whether performing, creating, or experimenting, students are critiqued, respond, offer their own criticism, and glean rich wisdom from a cyclical group experience. Brown says something "mysterious" may be taking place: "In deeply collective engagement in processes...you start to marinate in a problem space." Through communities of practice, students' minds "begin to gel up," even in the face of abstraction and unfamiliarity, and "all of a sudden, (the subject) starts to make se

Research shows that students have difficulty achieving deep understanding of many fundamental science concepts, for instance, the nature of matter, pressure, density, and electrical circuits to name but a few. After students have presumably learned the scientific explanations, they often revert back to their initial explanations. The Understandings of Consequence Project has demonstrated that part of the problem arises from differences in how students and scientists think about cause and effect. Scientific explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking that students typically are not familiar with. Thus students attempt to assimilate information about complex concepts into simplistic causal structures which ultimately distort the information. In order to achieve deep understanding of scientific explanations, students need to learn the levels of these dimensions that fit the level of explanation needed. We have developed a taxonomy of causal models to guide these teaching and learning efforts. We have also developed a taxonomy of epistemological "moves", such as comparing more than one model and being alert to possible gaps in one's explanation, that serve scientific inquiry and lead to more complex conceptions.

Twitter: how to use tweetdeck to manage your twitter account

Bright Hub's goal is simple: share knowledge about how the simplest scientific idea evolves into tomorrow's technology. With an expert writer network and an active community of life-long enthusiasts Bright Hub provides a level of technology transparency rarely seen in high tech. The team of writers and managing editors utilize deep domain expertise to focus on creating valuable information for both novice and advanced consumers. With a content inventory of thousands of science and technology articles, software and hardware reviews, buyer's guides, blog entries and forum discussions, Bright Hub is able to provide readers with a dependable resource to make informative technology decisions.

how-to guides and reference for the iPhone

How to delete your account on FaceBook, MySpace...

"understanding how to leverage tech in your teaching and learning situation is critical to developing PLNs. While in the past, we were limited by the occasions that served as "learning experiences," in the 21st century, learning isn't restricted to a special event bound by time and place"

Twitter: Mashable's Twitter Guide Book - a guidebook for new and experienced twitter users. How to build community, customize your profile, issues to consider, things to avoid.

Google Forms: how to create a quiz or a test that automatically grades itself in Google Docs

The What Works in Schools Online Surveys ask participants to create a profile of how their school or district addresses Robert Marzano's 11 factors that affect student achievement -

The What Works in Schools Online Surveys ask participants to create a profile of how their school or district addresses Robert Marzano's 11 factors that affect student achievement -

Surprising tips on how to learn: fail and fail often works!

tips on how to learn (fail & fail often)

Scientific American article on new research making the case for hard tests & suggesting making use of feedback on errors (fail & fail often)

A philosophy of technology re-alignment (as opposed to complete redesign) based on an adaptation of Edward Tufte's principles on the visual display of information.

How is this framework important to the socio-material theory and the evolutionary routine theory? How can this be applied as an edtech workshop, professional development experience, research problem and/or an online learning program?

Testimony on the use of Google wave to collaborate with geo-distributed folks to get work done and calm the chaos

Twitter: how to for teachers

Recommended Best Practice: this tutorial on the focused use of twitter by a presenter is a great way to close the gap between those tweeting at your presentation and what you're presenting on.

How to set up email alerts in Google Scholar

How a Cow Turns Grass to Food

a web application with an available bookmarklet that will automatically take text, either pasted in or from the referring webpage, and summarize it in as few lines as possible. There is a great article over at their blog about how great summaries disambiguate topics. That means that when a word is mentioned it uses context to determine what the actual sentence is about.