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Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

VizThink is the global community for visual thinkers - In addition to our semi-annunal conferences and workshop series we also actively encourage and support the development of the global community outside of our regular events.

I haven't seen these and some may not really be something I'd watch, but many of you are thinkers and I want you to know that this list is there and being circulated. Lots of video for thought. As always, screen before you show anything to students and some of these don't look appropriate for them.

1 Voice 2 Choice 3 Time for Reflection 4 Opportunity for Innovation 5 Critical thinkers 6 Problem solvers/finders 7 Self assessment 8 Connected Learning

Benefits for creating a classroom environment for student blogging begin with establishing a foundation for their success. Why is this important? Integrating blogs transforms a classroom into a learning community where students become self-directed learners and thinkers. This in turn, causes students to use higher order thinking skills as they create and post entries in their blogs, along with commenting on other student's blogs.

Conference for educational bloggers -- too bad it is in the waning weeks of the school year.

Join thought leaders in education policy and national politics to discuss how the Internet is changing the discourse of education reform, and how those changes are affecting the 2008 presidential election. ED in '08 welcomes ed-bloggers and political bloggers to take part in the discussion. I'm glad the "thought leaders" in American can come, however, the timing of this conference precludes most teachers I know from even considering coming we're all in the "home stretch" and rarely are we able to leave the classroom, especially this time of year. I would hope that one day the edublogosphere would truly level us so that teachers would be included in these discussions. For, until that happens, I doubt we'll find any truly relevant change for the classroom.. just more buzzwords and "programs" that don't suit today's student. Hint: If you want reform, ask some good teachers or at least include them in the discussion. There are some big picture thinkers out there that ARE teachers in the public classroom.

we all should now be cognizant of the critical importance of innovation across all spectrums of our society -- this includes teaching and learning. We need change agents, we need out-of-the-box thinkers, we need creative minds. We need to foster a generation of risk takers and I believe we, as educators, need to be weaving risk-taking into our pedagogy to model it to our students. Risk-taking is teaching creativity.

[George Siemens] June 12th, 2007 "...It's the change underlying these tools that I'm trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated. But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow's world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we're not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It's reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon. What is your vision for change?"

""A tribute Steve Jobs' thinking." RSS Curated by JackieGerstein Ed.D. "

Build an Online Debate Community for Your Classroom! Host debates and assign effective homework. Students evaluate, analyze, and synthesize topics on a deeper level through intellectual interaction with their peers.

Build an Online Debate Community for Your Classroom! Host debates and assign effective homework. Students evaluate, analyze, and synthesize topics on a deeper level through intellectual interaction with their peers. I learned of this product at either NECC 09, or the Sloan Consortium Meeting in San Francisco. I was impressed with the ideas underlying an online system that promotes the great critical thinking tools of debate. Just got a trial account. Hope to delve deeper soon. Early adopters can probably get the free 90 / 10 seat deal I was offered. This is a startup and I was impressed by the young thinkers behind this idea.

"What are those key phrases you hear from frustrated teachers in the staffroom during breaks? Or on those rare occasions, you get to meet up with teachers from other schools on training courses? For me it is the following: 'They give up so easily,' 'Where is their stickability?' 'Why do they fear making a mistake?' However it is phrased, you get the gist, that pupils today have no resilience, they aren't prepared to keep going in the face of challenge or set back. They can't think their way around a problem. In discussions with staff within my own school (a large primary in an area of high deprivation in the north of England) I am frequently asked how we can help these children. As part of our school's SLT I have already supported staff to make daring changes to our curriculum but we still seem to be falling short of what we state in our vision; that we want our children to become resilient learners, confident individuals, critical thinkers and lifelong learners. (Traits that I am sure many schools up and down the land wish for their pupils to develop.) Why are our pupils struggling with 'resilience'? What opportunities can we, as a school, provide our children so that they develop these skills? After reading the blurb and the introductory pages, I was, as you can imagine, excited to delve further into this book to see if it could answer some of my questions."

"When we set out to create and encourage critical thinkers and problem solvers. We need to look at various aspects. How people will respond and adapt to the change. We need to further establish what our students need, do they need constant attention or space? Decoding a teenage brain, is it really difficult to understand teenagers?  I took workshops this year to enhance my understanding and sharing my know how with others.  I have realised that I always look for what's going to push the student, egg them on to ask questions, to look at themselves as stakeholders in their learning process and something that adds value to their existing experience of learning. "

Includes an extensive list of websites which can be used for teaching the concept of critical thinking and evaluating the information we find on the Internet. Based on a presentation by Howard Rheingold.

An interesting article about some of the benefits of blogging.

The goal of education is to enrich the lives of students while producing articulate, expressive thinkers and lifelong learners, that are socially responsible, resilient, and active citizens of the world.

Video from the Digital Generation Project at Edutopia. Food for thought!

I learned that students needed to be taught how to make choices. I learned that affect matters as much as cognition. I learned that assessment that supports teaching and learning trumps assessments that label.

Links, research and readings on constructivism

David, back up your argument. If you think this is junk science, then be a real scientist and substantiate your claim. I'm a very objective thinker and will listen and gladly debate this with you, but having studied this and used it, I'm skeptical of your dissent. It is the only thing that has gotten me through our failed education system, not the reason the system has failed (unless your argument is that our system is failing due to lack of use of constructivist approaches).

Constructivism is a prime example of the dangers of deductive reasoning. Instead of starting with evidence from observed reality which the scientific method dictates (inductive reasoning) constructivism starts with theories and then makes the evidence fit the theory or else dismisses it and rationalises it away. It's the same type of thinking that has gotten all ideologues into trouble throughout history, whether it's the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis, the hippies or the recent Wall Street bankers who drove our economy off a cliff. Any true system of thought must start with the real world as its beginning, or else it's just a bunch of people making stuff up and then defending it despite all evidence to the contrary until the weight of truth destroys them and usually the institutions they've taken over.