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Michael Sheehan

Learning Never Stops: Futility Closet - An Entertaining Collection of Curiosities - 6 views

seekoutlearning.blogspot.com/...t-entertaining-collection.html

learning futility closet entertaining collection curiosities

shared by Michael Sheehan on 14 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Michael Sheehan on 14 Feb 13
     
    A collection of curiosities from history, science, literature, math, art, and philosophy. Fun to read with material that can make your lessons more interesting.
Michael Sheehan

Futility Closet - An entertaining collection of educational related curiosities - 59 views

seekoutlearning.blogspot.com/...t-entertaining-collection.html

learning futility closet entertaining collection education

shared by Michael Sheehan on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Michael Sheehan on 22 Jan 14
     
    An entertaining website that shares strange and curious stories from history, language, literature, math, science, art, philosophy and more.
Maureen Greenbaum

Sugata Mitra - the professor with his head in the cloud | Education | The Guardian - 16 views

www.theguardian.com/...itra-professor-school-in-cloud

hole in the wall SOLE Mitra children learning school teaching education

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 05 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • “A generation of children has grown up with continuous connectivity to the internet. A few years ago, nobody had a piece of plastic to which they could ask questions and have it answer back. The Greeks spoke of the oracle of Delphi. We’ve created it. People don’t talk to a machine. They talk to a huge collective of people, a kind of hive. Our generation [Mitra is 64] doesn’t see that. We just see a lot of interlinked web pages
  • “Within five years, you will not be able to tell if somebody is consulting the internet or not. The internet will be inside our heads anywhere and at any time. What then will be the value of knowing things? We shall have acquired a new sense. Knowing will have become collective.”
  • if you imagine me and my phone as a single entity, yes. Very soon, asking somebody to read without their phone will be like telling them to read without their glasses.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Twenty children are asked a “big question” such as “Why do we learn history?”, “Is the universe infinite?”, “Should children ever go to prison?” or “How do bees make honey?” They are then left to find the answers using five computers. The ratio of four children to one computer is deliberate: Mitra insists that the children must collaborate. “There should be chaos, noise, discussion and running about,” he says.
  • . Year 4 children (aged eight to nine) were given questions from GCSE physics and biology papers. After using their Sole computers for 45 minutes, their average test scores on three sets of questions were 25%, 26% and 13%. Three months later – the school having taught nothing on these subjects in the interim – they were tested again, individually and without warning. The scores rose to 57%, 80% and 16% respectively, suggesting the children continued researching the questions in their own time.
  • he says the main benefit of his methods is that children’s self-confidence increases so that they challenge adult perceptions.
  • the propositions that children can benefit from collaborative learning and that banning internet use from exams will get trickier, to the point where it may prove futile. It’s worth remembering that new technologies nearly always deliver less than we expect at first and far more than we expect later on, often in unexpected ways.
Ed Webb

How to Wake Up Slumbering Minds - WSJ.com - 2 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124079001063757515.html

bestpractices review cognition styles learning education

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Jul 09 - Cached
  • what school requires students to do -- think abstractly -- is in fact not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy
  • it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration. When this balance is struck, it is actually pleasurable to focus the mind for long periods of time
  • Students are ready to understand knowledge but not create it. For most, that is enough. Attempting a great leap forward is likely to fail.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • students cannot apply generic "critical thinking skills" (another voguish concept) to new material unless they first understand that material
  • Trying to use "reading strategies" -- like searching for the main idea in a passage -- will be futile if you don't know enough facts to fill in what the author has left unsaid.
  • what is being taught in most of the curriculum -- at all levels of schooling -- is information about meaning, and meaning is independent of form
  • At some point, no amount of dancing will help you learn more algebra
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 27 Jul 09
       
      But if you learn dancing AND algebra, you may be better at both, or at least approach each in a more interesting way.
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