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Leslie Healey

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com - 4 views

www.ted.com/...layer_on_top_of_the_world.html

shared by Leslie Healey on 20 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Leslie Healey on 20 Aug 10
     
    why games really are education: I'm still not ready
Adam Babcock

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com - 5 views

www.nytimes.com/...29language-t.html

writing english education reading language culture globe gender

shared by Adam Babcock on 29 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects
  • rash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims
  • new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about
  • You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way
  • but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions.
  • When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant.
  • gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory
  • When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it.
  • Nonetheless, once gender connotations have been imposed on impressionable young minds, they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to see the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to.
aunt tammie

BBC News - World News America - Why do Finland's schools get the best results? - 12 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8601207.stm

bestpractice Finland schools bbc

shared by aunt tammie on 19 Mar 11 - Cached
  • aunt tammie on 19 Mar 11
     
    good story about Finnish educational system
Mark Smith

SpeEdChange: The Big Lies (Part Two) - 9 views

speedchange.blogspot.com/...big-lies-part-two.html

common core

shared by Mark Smith on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Why is a second grader "comparing and contrasting"? Because the Common Core is designed to preserve education as a self-contained hazing ritual for wealth and power maintenance. From the start we are preparing students to write the worthless five paragraph essay, so that those who comply best succeed best.
  • It is, of course, within those "extras" that the human spirit lies. Why learn to read if you cannot read about the things which matter most to you? Why learn to write if you can not write a song? Why learn to count if you do not appreciate the value of what you are counting?
  • The reason we must abandon "core subjects" and embrace Passion-Based Learning is that today we give students absolutely no reason to learn anything. We have turned school into a series of chores with no purpose. Eight-year-olds hate books and reading because they've spent three years drilling in decoding - literacy is pointless effort, not a path to passions. Sixteen-year-olds hate mathematics because they've spent eleven years drilling with numbers, x-s and y-s - maths are totally irrelevant, not a link to a magical world of real and virtual construction.
  • Mark Smith on 06 Aug 11
     
    Tell it, brother!
Dennis OConnor

150 Questions to Write or Talk About - NYTimes.com - 30 views

learning.blogs.nytimes.com/...estions-to-write-or-talk-about

shared by Dennis OConnor on 01 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • For almost two years now, we’ve posted a fresh Student Opinion question every weekday.Each question was originally inspired by something in that week’s New York Times, and all of them are still open to comment by anyone between the ages of 13 and 25.Teachers tell us they use them as “bell-ringers,” as inspiration for lessons, as jumping-off points for student research and journalism, or just to help students practice writing persuasively and responding to others around the world. (We don’t allow last names, and we read each and every comment ourselves before we make it public, so it’s a pretty civil, and safe, place to post.)Below, 1
Kristin Bergsagel

How To Do Things With Words : Learning Diversity - 4 views

www.learningdiversity.org/...how-to-do-things-with-words

shared by Kristin Bergsagel on 14 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • the RRSG theory of reading comprehension is predominantly cognitive rather than cultural. It depicts the text as an encoded representation of a specific situation.
  • Making and having meaning, then, transcend cognition and involve a commitment to values and the pursuit of ideals.
  • These moral qualities are essential to human life, yet they seem to be completely redundant in the case of the aforementioned reader of “the cat is on the mat.”
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Could it be that teachers who are allegedly so obstinately unfaithful to the received theory of reading comprehension do in fact apply it in their classrooms, but fail to achieve adequate outcomes because the theory fails to explain reading as a meaningful human activity?
  • the most authoritative theory of reading comprehension misleads her into performing a futile cognitive exercise.
  • namely, instruct students to read the text creatively by transforming it into a model for exploring ideas such as self-deception, hubris, or the unintended negative consequences of well-intended parenting.
  • it doesn’t address texts adequately as media of communication between purposeful, goal-oriented actors.
  • The meaning of a message, then, is its use by the interacting parties and is therefore always much more than a mental representation. When we treat words or statements as mere representations, we fail to communicate.
  • A theory that fails to enhance communication undermines education, because education is a special form of communication dedicated to the transmission of learning.
  • The words remain his rather than theirs, conveying facts about his dream rather than becoming resources useful to them. These readers have missed yet another opportunity to make sense of the history of their nation and of their own lives in relation to it.
  • hopeful vision coupled to a darker prophecy and a threatening message.
  • This reading, then, intertwines American political history with the history of literature in a way that renders the reader herself an active participant in their making.
  • creativity, diversity, and agency
  • Readers, we propose, ought to associate the meaning of the text with its use. The texts students typically read in school, more specifically, ought to be used for the purpose of exploring ideas. Reading for this purpose is necessarily a creative endeavor because it entails transforming the text into a model of inquiry into certain aspects of the reader’s life experiences.
  • In other words, because they use the text in diverse ways, its meaning varies accordingly.
  • What is at stake is nothing less than how students relate themselves to cultural achievements that have shaped the world in which they live and the society in which they gradually mature.
  • Conversely, education researchers in universities and other research institutes are often insufficiently familiar with how children learn at school, and therefore simply do not have an adequate understanding of the problems their research should solve
Mark Smith

Philip Larkin, the Impossible Man - Magazine - The Atlantic - 3 views

www.theatlantic.com/...8439

poetry orwell larkin

shared by Mark Smith on 13 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • In somewhat different ways, Orwell and Larkin were phlegmatically pessimistic and at times almost misanthropic, not to say misogynistic. Both also originated from dire family backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the colored subjects of the British Empire, and the working class.
  • This is the world of wretched, tasteless food and watery drinks, dreary and crowded lodgings, outrageous plumbing, surly cynicism, long queues, shocking hygiene, and dismal, rain-lashed holidays, continually punctuated by rudeness and philistinism. In Orwell’s early fiction, all this is most graphically distilled in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, but it is an essential element of the texture of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and was quarried from the “down and out” journalism of which he produced so much
Mark Smith

Truthdig - Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System - 7 views

www.truthdig.com/..._her_education_system_20110410

shared by Mark Smith on 12 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”
    • Mark Smith
      Mark Smith on 12 Apr 11
       
      This is as profoundly true now as it ever was.
Leslie Healey

Video Games Are Ruled Protected Speech, Now What? - 2 views

kotaku.com/...uled-protected-speech-now-what

gaming teaching 21stcenturylearning

shared by Leslie Healey on 27 Jun 11 - No Cached
    • Leslie Healey
      Leslie Healey on 27 Jun 11
       
      this is true! why gaming is legitimately a path fro educators to formulate learning strategies
    • Leslie Healey
      Leslie Healey on 27 Jun 11
       
      also--they ask why there are not more erudite games, just as there is "classic" literature--I think games are still a new art form. And aren't there are many fluff books as there are fluff or violent games
  • More important than that historic ruling is the reminder by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice that video games, like books, plays and movies, communicate ideas.
  • Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat," Scalia wrote. "But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional." It raises the question, what video games live up to that legacy of great literary works? And why aren't there more of them?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Now that this distraction is out of the way, lets see the creation of more games like Bioshock, like Shadow of the Colossus, like Flower, games that make you think, that explore new ideas, that shake up preconceived notions.
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