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"It seems only fitting to explore the role of questions in education by asking questions about the process of doing so. I propose that we start with the customary way of framing this topic and then proceed to questions that are deeper and potentially more subversive of traditional schooling. 1. WHICH QUESTIONS? To begin, let's consider what we might ask our students. The least interesting questions are those with straightforward factual answers. That's why a number of writers have encouraged the use of questions described variously as "true" (Wolf, 1987), "essential" (Simon, 2002), "generative" (Perkins, 1992; Perrone, 1998), "guiding" (Traver, 1998), or "fertile" (Harpaz & Lefstein, 2000). What the best of these share is that they're open-ended. Sometimes, in fact, no definitive right answer can be found at all. And even when there is one - or at least when there is reason to prefer some responses to others - the answer isn't obvious and can't be summarized in a sentence. Why is it so hard to find a cure for cancer? Do numbers ever end? Why do people lie? Why did we invade Vietnam? Grappling with meaty questions like these (which were among those generated by a class in Plainview, NY) is a real project . . . literally. A question-based approach to teaching tends to shade into learning that is problem- (Delisle, 1997) and project-based (Kilpatrick, 1918; Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Wolk, 1998). Intellectual proficiency is strengthened as students figure out how to do justice to a rich question. As they investigate and come to understand important ideas more fully, new questions arise along with better ways of asking them, and the learning spirals upwards. Guiding students through this process is not a technique that can be stapled onto our existing pedagogy, nor is it something that teachers can be trained to master during an in-service day. What's required is a continual focus on creating a classroom that is about thinking rather

"By "NLRBE," I mean core resource-based economy ("RBE") concepts, as fleshed out and expanded by Peter Joseph and his organization, "The Zeitgeist Movement" ("TZM"). *Important Reminder* Please remember that, by using this site, you agree to leave no confidential information in blog post comments or elsewhere on the site, or to rely upon anything in this post, or on this site generally, without qualified, independent, confirming research (per this site's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which you agreed to by accessing this site). Why? Unfortunately, on this website and in my blog posts, I can and do offer nothing more than expressions of opinion and general information, which could be inadequately researched, inapplicable to your situation, out-of-date, and/or mistaken. Thus, no statement on my website or blog posts is intended to guarantee any particular outcome for you, or to constitute any kind of advice, legal or otherwise. Qualified "advice" is customized to your particular circumstances, current, accurate, and offered in direct relationship with a qualified professional. And qualified advice is critical to obtain before you take action. I do offer qualified legal advice and assurances of confidentiality, but only within the context of attorney-client relationships, which are formed exclusively via written attorney-client fee agreements, not through blog posts, blog post comments, website pages or communications, or any other means whatsoever (however, please visit my Services page to see whether or not I am currently accepting new clients). By "RBE," I mean the original economic model, as presented by Jacque Fresco and his "Venus Project" ("TVP"). My take on his RBE model is more fully explained in my last blog post, "What Do I Mean by 'Resource-Based Economy' (or 'RBE')?" Given what I heard in a recent talk by Joseph, I am now sorely tempted to begin using the term "NLRBE," rather than "RBE," to refer

Para esos sitios molestos que no te dejan seleccionar el texto de manera simple... "Enable Right Click and Text Selection Bookmarklet"

"1. Blogging enables reflection. This is true for both students and educators. Too often do we go through our days, class to class, with minimal opportunities for reflection on our experiences or the information that we have acquired along the way. Blogging offers the opportunity to take a step back and connect with our learning and place it in the context of the bigger picture. Make reflection an assignment or part of another assignment - it is an important component to learning. For students: This is not the easiest thing to accomplish - blogging takes time and that is a finite resource during a busy class period. There is great opportunity in academic support periods or advisory classes for students (particularly in 1:1 schools) to blog. Many advisory classes take place throughout the day, which is a great break point for students to create based on their learning from that day. For teachers: This type of reflection can and should be compiled into your lesson planning for future lessons. Take what you learned from teaching and learning that day and incorporate it into the next day's lessons. Find time to do this during a conference period during your day or right after school. Yes, it is tough to get in the habit of doing a new thing - but once you start using reflection through blogging, I think that your lesson planning will be easier and much more meaningful. 2. Develop an Authentic Audience An authentic audience is a great way to increase rigor and in all of my experiences has led to increased performance by students. Authentic audiences in blogging could mean any number of things - family members, students from other classes, students from other buildings, other teachers, individuals interested in the content from around the world, etc. A student knowing that their work may be seen by people other than what they consider their 'typical audience' (read: teacher) typically spends more time and exerts more effort to creating a quality p

"there is no live teacher engagement... Currently, just 10 percent of MOOC registrants complete their courses. Where Will MOOCs Be Just Two Years From Now? Within the next two years, MOOCs will quickly evolve from lacking teacher engagement to having a lot of teacher engagement. Right now, it's essentially a model where computers are teaching students. This model is simply not sustainable in the long run without live student-teacher engagement. Teachers are the key that unlocks learning in these courses. They help students resolve issues and problems. Will the biggest change in online education moving forward be putting live teachers at the center of the MOOC (not just on video)? We will know the answer very soon."

"1. The teacher is choosing the technology. It's not always possible, but when you can, let the students choose, and see what happens. Not all of them will be able to. Some need help; so let other students help them. 2. The teacher is choosing the function. This doesn't mean you can't choose the function, but if you students can't control the technology the use nor its function, this can be problematic: the learning is passive from the beginning. 3. The teacher is determining the process. To an extent you have to, but don't overdo it. 4. The technology is distracting. If the technology is more magical than the project, product, collaboration, process, or content itself, try to muffle the bells and whistles. Or use them to your advantage. 5. The technology isn't necessary. You wouldn't use a ruler to teach expository writing, nor would you use a Wendell Berry essay to teach about the Water Cycle. No need for a Khan Academy account and a fully-personalized and potentially self-directed proficiency chart of mathematical concepts just to show a 3 minute video on the number line. 6. The process is too complex. Keep it simple. Fewer moving parts = greater precision. And less to go wrong. 7. Students have access to too much. What materials, models, peer groups, or related content do students actually need? See #6. 8. The teacher is the judge, jury, and executioner. Get out of the way. You're (probably) less interesting than the content, experts, and communities (if you're doing it right). 9. They artificially limiting the scale. Technology connects everything to everything. Use this to the advantage of the students! 10. They're not limiting the scale. However, giving students the keys to the universe with no framework, plan, boundaries or even vague goals is equally problematic. 11. Students access is limited to too little. The opposite of too board a scale is too little-akin to taking students to the ocean to fish but squaring of

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures, or simpl

"Last year I went to West Kalimantan in Borneo to see for myself the effects of the runaway growth of the palm oil industry. I came home firm in the belief that Iceland would not continue using palm oil until companies delivered on their zero deforestation commitments. This is because palm oil has had devastating consequences for local communities, who are being displaced, and on endangered species like the orangutan (our closest relative in the wild), which are being driven close to extinction. Palm oil has many benefits, chiefly that its yields are better than the alternatives. But it is grown almost exclusively in areas of tropical rainforest, which are the 'crown jewels' of our planet's biodiversity. With 146 football pitches of rainforest being lost every hour in Indonesia alone, the urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated. And global demand is set to double by 2050. At Iceland the 1,000 tonnes of palm oil we used annually pale into insignificance compared to many of our competitors. As such a tiny player we took the decision that the only way we could create meaningful change was to shout very loudly from outside the established palm oil industry. So we decided simply to stop using palm oil until the industry cleaned up its act. It was our own decision to give consumers a choice where previously there was none. We never called for a wider industry ban, and accept entirely that a wholesale boycott of palm oil is not the right long term solution. ..."

"Contents:Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci ('The Codex Arundel'). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as 'a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams. "

This is an automatic bot that randomly generates posts, this is not an interactive bot (not yet, at least) so you can't send request to have a specific outcome. Most of the maps used come from these sources: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ https://gadm.org/ How it works A random territory is chosen Another random territory close to the first one is chosen and is conquered right away. There's no battle. It repeats the process until only one country remains

"What is Tour Builder? Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you've visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation. How is Tour Builder different from the existing "KML Tour" feature in Google Earth? Tour Builder is accessible from your web browser, makes it easy to add photos and videos to a sequence of locations on Earth, and then share links to these tours with your friends."

"In this Instructable, I'm going to be showing you how to build your own crack the code game in which you use a rotary encoder dial to guess the randomly generated code to the safe. There are 8 LEDs on the front of the safe to tell you how many of the digits you've guessed are correct and how many are in the right place as well. The safe is initially open, allowing you to put something into the inside compartment. The Arduino and battery are housed in a separate compartment in the back. You then push the dial to lock the safe, which is done using a servo on the inside of the door. You then need to input the code by turning the dial to select the digits and pushing the dial to confirm each digit. After your fourth digit is chosen, the safe displays how many of your digits are correct and how many of them are in the correct place using the red and green LEDs on the door. "

"Un informe de Human Right Watch ha estudiado el comportamiento de 149 aplicaciones que han sido utilizadas en 49 países, con el consentimiento de los gobiernos, en relaci´n a la infancia. La mayor parte de estas soluciones de software han vigilado a millones de menores, recopilando datos personales de todo tipo sin su consentimiento o el de sus familiares."

"El blog escolar es una herramienta que cada vez se va afianzando más y más en los centros escolares, bien sea a través de una asignatura, bien sea a través de un blog de tutoría… Es por ello que, ante el creciente aumento que está protagonizando dicha plataforma, conviene tener algunos aspectos perfectamente definidos. Es el caso de los derechos de imagen de los alumnos. En este artículo tengo la intención de daros a conocer qué aspectos hay que tener en cuenta si se decide la creación de un blog escolar por lo que respecta a los derechos de imagen de nuestros alumnos."

"Tenemos que explicar por qué ni madres ni padres pueden decidir si sus hijas e hijos reciben o no educación sexual en la escuela. Porque los niños y las niñas son sujetos de derecho y porque el Estado es el garante. Y que, además, esto está reconocido en convenciones internacionales ratificadas en la Constitución Nacional y en leyes nacionales como la 26.601 (de derechos de niños, niñas y adolescentes) o la ley de Educación Nacional. Tenemos que explicar, también, que la educación sexual es inevitable. Que no existe la posibilidad de no educar sexualmente, que educamos con lo que hacemos, con lo que decimos y con lo que callamos. Y es a partir de la disparidad de la educación sexual que cada niño, niña o adolescente recibe en su familia y entorno, que el Estado ofrece los contenidos mínimos necesarios para garantizar un piso equitativo entre las infancias y adolescencias de todo el país. Tenemos que explicar, además, que el 70% de los abusos infantiles se da dentro de la familia. Y que los abusadores no necesitaron una ley de educación sexual para perpetrar esos abusos. Entre otros temas, la ESI enseña a niñas, niños y adolescentes que entre sus derechos está que no acepten que nadie les toque sin su consentimiento, que puedan diferenciar una caricia de un abuso. Tenemos que explicarles que, aunque hayan elegido una escuela confesional, la educación en la Argentina es pública y se rige por una misma ley (Ley 26.206), indistintamente de la forma de gestión, que puede ser pública o privada, confesional o no. Y que más allá de las diferentes opiniones respecto de la ESI de las diferentes iglesias, todas deben adecuarse a las leyes nacionales y a los Lineamientos Curriculares propuestos por el Ministerio de Educación de la Nación en 2008. Tenemos que ser capaces de explicar que nadie plantea que las familias no sepamos qué se les enseña a nuestros hijas e hijos. Porque, para el beneficio del programa, la ley prevé la ne

"¿Cuál es la legislación que protege los datos personales? ¿De qué estamos protegidos y de qué no? ¿Existen los derechos humanos en Internet? ¿Qué derechos y deberes tenemos en la web? ¿Qué resguardo legal tiene una foto que publico en un tuit, Facebook o mi blog? ¿Existe el fair use (uso justo) en la Argentina? ¿Existe el derecho al olvido en Argentina? ¿Dónde se hacen los reclamos?"

"En los últimos años, seguramente has escuchado hablar de copyright, piratería, copyleft y Creative Commons. En este sitio, vamos a recorrer las bases del derecho de autor, las transformaciones en los consumos culturales en los entornos digitales, y la propuesta de las licencias abiertas."

"Columna de Pablo Sigismondi en Nada del Otro Mundo... "