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Toni Olivieri-Barton

JeopardyLabs - Online Jeopardy Template - 1 views

jeopardylabs.com

interactive game education web2.0 template tools gameboard elementary middleschool web2 jeopardy

shared by Toni Olivieri-Barton on 09 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Fred Delventhal on 09 Feb 09
     
    JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake. Just use our simple editor to get your game up and running. Not interested in building your own jeopardy templates? Well that's cool too. You can browse other jeopardy templates created by other people. It doesn't get any better than this! via Jennifer Dorman http://groups.diigo.com/discovery-educator-network/bookmark/cliotech
  • Nelly Cardinale on 03 Mar 09
     
    Create your own jeopardy template online, without PowerPoint. Or browse the pre-made templates created by other people!
  • Toni Olivieri-Barton on 31 Dec 11
     
    Simple Jeopardy game builder.
Terry Elliott

World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/age-technology-will-richardson

shared by Terry Elliott on 16 Dec 08 - Cached
  • We must also expand our ability to think critically about the deluge of information now being produced by millions of amateur authors without traditional editors and researchers as gatekeepers. In fact, we need to rely on trusted members of our personal networks to help sift through the sea of stuff, locating and sharing with us the most relevant, interesting, useful bits. And we have to work together to organize it all, as long-held taxonomies of knowledge give way to a highly personalized information environment.
    • Jeff Richardson
      Jeff Richardson on 16 Dec 08
       
      Good reason for teaching dig citizenship
    • Terry Elliott
      Terry Elliott on 28 Dec 08
       
      What Will suggests here is rising complexity, but for this to succeed we don't need to fight our genetic heritage. Put yourself on the Serengeti plains, a hunter-gatherer searching for food. You are thinking critically about a deluge of data coming through your senses (modern folk discount this idea, but any time in jobs that require observation in the 'wild' (farming comes to mind) will disabuse you rather quickly that the natural world is providing a clear channel.) You are not only relying upon your own 'amateur' abilities but those of your family and extended family to filter the noise of the world to get to the signal. This tribe is the original collaborative model and if we do not try to push too hard against this still controlling 'mean gene' then we will as a matter of course become a nation of collaborative learning tribes.
  • Collaboration in these times requires our students to be able to seek out and connect with learning partners, in the process perhaps navigating cultures, time zones, and technologies. It requires that they have a vetting process for those they come into contact with: Who is this person? What are her passions? What are her credentials? What can I learn from her?
    • Terry Elliott
      Terry Elliott on 28 Dec 08
       
      Aye, aye, captain. This is the classic problem of identity and authenticity. Can I trust this person on all the levels that are important for this particular collaboration? A hidden assumption here is that students have a passion themselves to learn something from these learning partners. What will be doing in this collaboration nation to value the ebb and flow of these learners' interests? How will we handle the idiosyncratic needs of the child who one moment wants to be J.K.Rowling and the next Madonna. Or both? What are the unintended consequences of creating an truly collaborative nation? Do we know? Would this be a 'worse' world for the corporations who seek our dollars and our workers? Probably. It might subvert the corporation while at the same moment create a new body of corporate cooperation. Isn't it pretty to think so.
  • Likewise, we must make sure that others can locate and vet us.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • technical know-how is not enough. We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching).
    • Terry Elliott
      Terry Elliott on 28 Dec 08
       
      All of these skills are technical know how. We differentiate between hard and soft skills when we should be showing how they are all of a piece. I am so far from being an adequate coach on all of these matters it appalls me. I feel like the teacher who is one day ahead of his students and fears any question that skips ahead to chapters I have not read yet.
  • The Collaboration Age comes with challenges that often cause concern and fear. How do we manage our digital footprints, or our identities, in a world where we are a Google search away from both partners and predators? What are the ethics of co-creation when the nuances of copyright and intellectual property become grayer each day? When connecting and publishing are so easy, and so much of what we see is amateurish and inane, how do we ensure that what we create with others is of high quality?
    • Terry Elliott
      Terry Elliott on 28 Dec 08
       
      Partners and predators? OK, let's not in any way go down this road. This is the road our mainstream media has trod to our great disadvantage as citizens. These are not co-equal. Human brains are not naturally probablistic computer. We read about a single instance of internet predation and we equate it with all the instances of non-predation. We all have zero tolerance policies against guns in the school, yet our chances of being injured by those guns are fewer than a lightning strike. We cannot ever have this collaborative universe if we insist on a zero probability of predation. That is why, for good and ill, schools will never cross that frontier. It is in our genes. "Better safe than sorry" vs. "Risks may be our safeties in disguise."
  • Students are growing networks without us, writing Harry Potter narratives together at FanFiction.net, or trading skateboarding videos on YouTube. At school, we disconnect them not only from the technology but also from their passion and those who share it.
  • The complexities of editing information online cannot be sequestered and taught in a six-week unit. This has to be the way we do our work each day.
  • The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly -- a frontier that traditional schools have rarely crossed.
  • Look no further than Wikipedia to see the potential; say what you will of its veracity, no one can deny that it represents the incredible potential of working with others online for a common purpose.
  • The technologies we block in their classrooms flourish in their bedrooms
  • Anyone with a passion for something can connect to others with that same passion -- and begin to co-create and colearn the same way many of our students already do.
  • I believe that is what educators must do now. We must engage with these new technologies and their potential to expand our own understanding and methods in this vastly different landscape. We must know for ourselves how to create, grow, and navigate these collaborative spaces in safe, effective, and ethical ways. And we must be able to model those shifts for our students and counsel them effectively when they run across problems with these tools.
  • Jeff Richardson on 16 Dec 08
     
    Article by Wil Richardson on Collaboration
Pat Hensley

Innovations Unlimited a student-run company concept - 0 views

web.me.com/...Welcome.html

pbl

shared by Pat Hensley on 02 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Pat Hensley on 02 Aug 08
     
    Project Based Learning - awesome projects; whole plan is very well organized
Art Gelwicks

SmallWorlds - 0 views

www.smallworlds.com

virtual worlds

shared by Art Gelwicks on 21 May 08 - Cached
  • SmallWorlds is a 3D virtual world that runs inside your web browser. It enables you to build your own room, house, or even your own world, and fill it with a wide variety of items and fun activities.
  • Art Gelwicks on 21 May 08
     
    Another virtual world space. Think "Second Life" meets "IMVU" meets "Wii Miis". I wonder what a classroom would look like here?
Dean Loberg

Education Week's Digital Directions: Building Gaming Into Science Education - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...04sciencegames_web.h01.html

gaming science

shared by Dean Loberg on 13 May 08 - Cached
  • "I've had teachers tell me,” says Eklund, “that after they introduced the game to their students, the classroom went completely silent because all of the kids were just reading." "You just don't get that kind of engagement and involvement with the story" with a textbook, he says.
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 13 May 08
       
      Is this because of the visual appeal or the storyline? I can see this happening, but does silence mean high levels of engagement?
    • Dean Loberg
      Dean Loberg on 13 May 08
       
      Assuming that they are not sleeping I think it does mean engagement, but engagement does not equal education. It depends on the content as well.
  • A report written by researchers about The River City Project for a 2006 conference concluded "that students learned biology content, that students and teachers were highly engaged, that student attendance improved, that disruptive behavior dropped, that students were building 21st-century skills in virtual communication and expression, and importantly, that using this type of technology in the classroom can facilitate good inquiry learning."
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 13 May 08
       
      Is this limited to only the River City Project alone though? How does it promote more inquiry, problem and project-based learning in other content?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "I'm in a unique situation where there's a computer at every lab table," he says, pointing out that many teachers do not have that ratio of students to computers.
  • when the games don't work properly, but most teachers don’t have that level of technical skill, she points out.
  • "There are little things you need to know," she says, to keep the games running smoothly. "[Otherwise], it's not going to work in the classroom, and teachers aren't going to use it."
  • "If [the game] doesn't have a focus or clear reason for what they're doing, it really doesn't work," says Pokrzywinski. Adapting games to the curriculum is possible, she says, but it takes time—something many teachers don't have.
  • Brian C. Smith on 13 May 08
     
    Science and gaming
  • Dean Loberg on 13 May 08
     
    Science and gaming
Eloise Pasteur

Using visuals to discover deep metaphors » VisualsSpeak blog - 0 views

www.christinemartell.com/...als-to-discover-deep-metaphors

learning metaphor visualisation

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 11 Jul 08 - Cached
  • is the description how often we are lead astray in our thinking by focusing on surface differences rather than searching for the significant similarities expressed in deep metaphors. Three Levels of Metaphors The Zaltmans describe three levels of metaphors, and use this example: Surface Metaphors Money runs through his fingers I am drowning in debt Don’t pour your money down the drain The bank froze his assets Metaphor Theme Money is like liquid Deep Metaphor Resource
  • Eloise Pasteur on 11 Jul 08
     
    Overview of deep metaphors and using visualisation to help clarify them
Reggie Ryan

Change Agency - Advocating a better education system for the 21st Century. » ... - 1 views

www.ed421.com/?p=433

tools

shared by Reggie Ryan on 29 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Equipment: 1 Apple MacBook Pro 1 Canon Elura DV Camera 1 Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (webcam) Software: Ustream (web-based) CamTwist
  • Ustream Set-up: After clicking on “Broadcast Now”, I made the following adjustments to the controls: Video Source = CamTwist (note: CamTwist had to be already running in order to do this.) Audio source = Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (The audio from the webcam sounded better than the audio from the built-in microphone. The “built-in audio input” didn’t seem to work for my configuration even though I did have a nice mic plugged into the input on my computer ) I adjust the audio and video quality as needed, and under “advanced” features I increased the frame-rate for the video since I was connected via ethernet cable (not recommended if connected wirelessly.)
  • Reggie Ryan on 29 Mar 08
     
    Good%2C%20basic%20description%20of%20tech%20side%20of%20hosting%20UStream%20event
  • Reggie Ryan on 29 Mar 08
     
    Detailed UStream setup on Mac side
yc c

Wolfram Demonstrations Project - 0 views

demonstrations.wolfram.com

mathematics visual science software interactive labs

shared by yc c on 05 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Pam Shoemaker on 05 Feb 09
     
    Offers interactive demonstrations of anything that can be modeled mathematically - bacteria growth, light refraction, supply and demand, etc. Running a demo requires Mathematica Player, which can be downloaded free, along with the demos
  • yc c on 30 Oct 09
     
    About the Wolfram Demonstrations Project Conceived by Mathematica creator and scientist Stephen Wolfram as a way to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts in science, technology, mathematics, art, finance, and a remarkable range of other fields. Its daily-growing collection of interactive illustrations is created by Mathematica users from around the world, who participate by contributing innovative Demonstrations. Interactive computational resources have typically been scattered across the web--requiring specialized programming knowledge that's made them difficult and expensive to develop. As a result, their coverage has long been limited, and progress has been slow. In many ways, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project introduces a new paradigm for exploring ideas. The power to easily create interactive visualizations, once in the domain of computing experts alone, is now in the hands of every Mathematica user. Demonstrations can be created with just a few short lines of readable code, powered by the revolutionary advances in Mathematica. This opens the door for researchers, educators, students, and professionals at any level to create their own sophisticated mini-applications and publish them online.
Jeff Johnson

TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook - 0 views

www.tiddlywiki.com

education javascript software tiddlywiki tools web 2.0 wiki

shared by Jeff Johnson on 22 May 08 - Cached
  • Welcome to TiddlyWiki, a popular free MicroContent WikiWikiWeb created by JeremyRuston and a busy Community of independent developers. It's written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to run on any modern browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to a WebServer, sent by email or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick. Because it doesn't need to be installed and configured it makes a great GuerillaWiki. This is revision 2.4.0 of TiddlyWiki (see recent changes), and is published under an OpenSourceLicense.
Ruth Howard

Artists in the Classroom - 11 views

artistsintheclassroom.tumblr.com/...bits-and-pieces-from-week-9

classroom management teaching purpose arts drama

shared by Ruth Howard on 11 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Ruth Howard on 11 Feb 10
     
    Love this dialogue- quote I feel like part of my job as an artist and educator (and specifically the combination of the two) is: - To be a prodder and poker of conventional thought. - To be a student advocate. - To think about what schools are for, really, in the long run; Is their purpose to prepare students for the way the world is now? To prepare students for the way the world will be? To prepare students for the way the world should be? To prepare students to change the world? To teach students how to follow rules? To teach students how to meaningfully break the rules? To teach students how to re-write the rules? To teach students about what interests them as individuals? To teach students about what we (the teachers) think should interest them? To teach students how to take tests? To teach students how to teach themselves. etc……To do all of these things at the same time?
Vicki Davis

Faceless no more: Facebook admits errors | The Australian - 9 views

www.theaustralian.com.au/...story-e6frg996-1225835350571

education digiteen edu_news

shared by Vicki Davis on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Staff reacted with shock and disbelief as they learned of the defacement of tribute pages set up to honour 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher and eight-year-old Trinity Bates.
  • Facebook stood accused of being faceless in Australia.
  • "Are people really doing that to a tribute page for a dead child? None of us as a group of people wants to see the product that we built used like that. It's awful."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • If Facebook is subject to the traditional rules of publishing, then it is legally responsible for all the content that it hosts -- a commercially untenable position for a company of just 1000 employees for 400 million users globally.
  • But in fact, there was no security breach -- the people who defaced the Bates and Fletcher tribute sites had Facebook accounts and the tribute groups or pages were left open for anyone to join or comment.
  • but people who set up tribute sites do not have to wait for the website to remove objectionable material. When a person sets up either a group or fan page on Facebook, they can set controls about who is allowed to join or post content and what types of content -- such as comments, photographs or videos -- are permitted. The person running the tribute page can also delete any content they want without any need for a higher authority to intercede.
  • the problem was compounded by the fact the group founder quit and the page was left without an administrator.
  • Vicki Davis on 01 Mar 10
     
    "Staff reacted with shock and disbelief as they learned of the defacement of tribute pages set up to honour 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher and eight-year-old Trinity Bates." This is an important article to discuss with students as the defacement of these pages happened because the group was set up for anyone to join and without moderation. Education Education prevents hurt and harm as happened in this case. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that Facebook, even though it is a global company, seems to have a centralized communications structure.
Vicki Davis

TimeBridge | Run Great Meetings - 5 views

www.timebridge.com

edu_newapp

shared by Vicki Davis on 11 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 11 Mar 10
     
    This is our favorite tool for scheduling cross time zone meetings. Very powerful tool!
David Wetzel

Algebra: Investigating Positive and Negative Slopes - 10 views

www.teachscienceandmath.com/...g-positive-and-negative-slopes

algebra activities extension math rules negative slopes positive rise over run slope

shared by David Wetzel on 21 Apr 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 21 Apr 10
     
    Learning algebra is difficult for most students. Ask any student what they are learning in algebra and you will probably receive an answer similar to this (after - Why do I need to know this?). "Using Xs and Ys a lot, a bunch of numbers and symbols, and memorizing a lot of rules." This often comes with learning algebra without connection to anything students can relate to. When students learn basic math, they can make a lot of connections.
Ed Webb

High-Tech Cheating on Homework Abounds, and Professors Are Partly to Blame - Technology... - 15 views

chronicle.com/...64857

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Apr 10 - Cached
  • "The feeling about homework is that it's really just busywork,"
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 03 Apr 10
       
      The real core of the problem
  • professors didn't put much effort into teaching, so students don't put real effort into learning
  • "The current system places too great a burden on individual faculty who would, under the circumstances, appear to have perverse incentives: Pursuing these matters lowers course evaluations, takes their severely limited time away from research for promotion, and unfortunately personalizes the issue when it is not personal at all, but a violation against the university."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In the humanities, professors have found technological tools to check for blatant copying on essays, and have caught so many culprits that the practice of running papers through plagiarism-detection services has become routine at many colleges. But that software is not suited to science-class assignments.
  • a "studio" model of teaching
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 03 Apr 10
       
      At Dickinson we do workshop physics - I bet cheating is reduced.
  • The parents paid tuition in cash
  • The idea that students should be working in a shell is so interesting. It never even occurred to me as a student that I shouldn't work with someone else on my homework. How else do you figure it out? I guess that is peer-to-peer teaching. Copying someone else's work and presenting it as your own is clearly wrong (and, as demonstrated above, doesn't do the student any good), but learning from the resources at hand ought to be encouraged. Afterall, struggling through homework problems in intro physics is how you learn in the first place.
Dave Truss

What Makes a Great Teacher? - Magazine - The Atlantic - 27 views

www.theatlantic.com/...2

success TeacherEvaluation studentteacher good2great teaching teachingstrategies

shared by Dave Truss on 31 May 10 - Cached
  • Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing. Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
  • one way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” does not work, and it’s a classic rookie mistake. Students are not always the best judges of their own learning. They might understand a line read aloud from a Shakespeare play, but have no idea what happened in the last act.
  • Mr. Taylor follows a very basic lesson plan often referred to by educators as “I do, we do, you do.” He does a problem on the board. Then the whole class does another one the same way. Then all the kids do a problem on their own.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “We see routines so strong that they run virtually without any involvement from the teacher. In fact, for many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.”
  • On the front wall, Mr. Taylor has posted different hand signals—if you need to go to the bathroom, you raise a closed hand. To ask or answer a question, you raise an open hand. “This way, I have the information before I even call on you,”
  • Before they leave, all the kids fill out an “exit slip,” which is usually in the form of a problem—one more chance for Mr. Taylor to see how they, and he, are doing.
  • I make it my business to call the parents—and not just for bad things.”
  • Dave Truss on 31 May 10
     
    Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing. Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully-for the next day or the year ahead-by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.
David Warlick

21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong | Intrepid Teacher - 9 views

www.jabizraisdana.com/...arning-conference-in-hong-kong

shared by David Warlick on 22 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • I am embarrassed that it is 2011 and we are still trying to convince teachers and administrators who run schools to use technology in their classrooms, as if we still have a choice
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 22 Feb 11
       
      It is embarrassing, but sadly it is true.  The momentum of industrial age education is great and many are still swept up in its continuing wave.
  • We do not really need conferences because we are teaching in an environment that resembles an ongoing global conference.
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 22 Feb 11
       
      A valid point, but I'm not sure the f2f conference is dead.  It needs to evolve.  We talked about this on the bus.
  • If you want your staff to do amazing things you have to hire the right people and give them an opportunity to play, experiment and grow. You must give them time to play, experiment and grow. You must give them money to play, experiment and grow. You must give them room to play, experiment and grow.
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 22 Feb 11
       
      Well said!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I want the session to be conversations about challenges and successes of collaboration and not just a “book report” of what we did.
    • David Warlick
      David Warlick on 22 Feb 11
       
      I hope that you can work this out, but what about people who want to learn what you are doing, how you are doing it, and about the successes and barriers.
Mrs. Duarte

Can a Facebook page replace the need for a website? - 23 views

humancapitalleague.com/...11076

shared by Mrs. Duarte on 12 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • One thing is for certain: Custom Facebook page landing tabs have a huge impact on encouraging users to convert into followers.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 12 Feb 11
       
      If schools and nonprofits wish to make money they should also have initiatives on Facebooks.
    • Reba Gordon Matthews
      Reba Gordon Matthews on 12 Feb 11
       
      Our family has a non-profit organization and it is wonderful to learn about this Facebook initiative.
  • Guy Kawasaki’s post on how he chose a Facebook page
    • shawnsieg
      shawnsieg on 12 Feb 11
       
      Guy is a great resource!!
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 12 Feb 11
       
      Yes he is and the alltop education is very useful to give people that don't want to use an RSS reader.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 12 Feb 11
       
      Demonstrating to educators the power of annotated web.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Vitaminwater
    • shawnsieg
      shawnsieg on 12 Feb 11
       
      following Vitaminwater on FaceBook :) -shawnsieg
  • A targeted subsection of another site: If you need to brand and market a subset of your organization and the gap between the markets or messages is too diverse, a Facebook page might offer you a home on the web without the need to develop another site. That said, WordPress can be an easy way to get a strong site up and running – we’d recommend giving it a good look before ruling out another site.
    • Mrs. Duarte
      Mrs. Duarte on 12 Feb 11
       
      Testing a sticky note...
Dave Truss

Seth's Blog: The future of the library - 15 views

sethgodin.typepad.com/...the-future-of-the-library.html

Library techintegrator sethgodin LINC

shared by Dave Truss on 16 May 11 - No Cached
  • They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all.
  • Librarians that are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.
  • Post-Gutenberg, the scarce resource is knowledge and insight, not access to data.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user servicable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it's fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.
  • The next library is filled with so many web terminals there's always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don't view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight--it's the entire point.
    • Dave Truss
      Dave Truss on 16 May 11
       
      This is brilliant... librarian as information tapper & recognizing the value of peer-to-peer information networks!
  • Dave Truss on 16 May 11
     
    They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all. ...librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.
Ed Webb

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com - 13 views

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

language epistemology psychology

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: 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.
  • When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.
  • 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. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 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
  • one conclusion that seems compelling is that while we are trained to ignore directional rotations when we commit information to memory, speakers of geographic languages are trained not to do so
  • if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant
  • our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue
  • some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.” After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense. Does the need to think constantly about epistemology in such a careful and sophisticated manner inform the speakers’ outlook on life or their sense of truth and causation?
  • The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same.
Ed Webb

Tenured Radical - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 3 views

chronicle.com/...-dont-teach-in-graduate-school

autism education opinion educators

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • there is little to no attention being paid to giving full-time faculty the training to teach students who have a wide range of capacities when it comes to what counts for normal classroom discipline:  sitting still for an hour and taking notes, being in crowded rooms where they risk being bumped and touched, overcoming obsessive behavior to get to class or hand in a paper on time, working in small groups with other students, or being in large classes with crowds of strangers.  It is also happening in a context in which being full-time faculty is becoming anomalous, and the financial “flexibility” of running higher education on per-course labor makes it unlikely that the vast majority of faculty will be eligible, or open to making unpaid time available, for the training that would make their classrooms accessible to autistic students
  • People with autism, Gilman notes, also tend to have disordered sleep, affecting the capacity to function at high-stress times of the semester when we assume that most students are pulling all-nighters.  They have difficulty relating to someone they are intimate with (much less an impatient, overworked faculty member who wants all students to act like the adults they appear to be), what they are experiencing and what is wrong, which would make even the most generous office hours not useful. So when we are putting together arguments for hiring full-time faculty in the next round of budget cuts and declarations from foundations that tenure is holding us back, think about adding this one in.  The demands on faculty to be well-trained, knowledgeable, creative and flexible teachers are growing — not subsiding — and attention to this will make all the difference in keeping our classrooms truly inclusive
  • colleges and universities don't have the infrastructure to replicate what these students have relied upon in high school
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • please don't generalize from specific autistic traits to all the students on the spectrum. Our autistic daughter isn't a visual learner, she's a voracious reader. Still, the number of times people have assumed that she learns in a visual or tactile way, in the style of Temple Grandin? Too many to count.
  • a good first step would be to listen to autistic undergraduates themselves and to put the needs they express first instead of responding primarily to the perspective of the neurotypical parents of autistic children. The perspective of autistic undergraduates, which seems to me to be the most important on the subject, is entirely missing from this post
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