St. Kates TLC

students had the shared classroom experience when something came up outside of class that reminded them of material from class

Classroom Community: Once students started twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space

you can “track” a word. This will subscribe you to any post which contains said word. So, for example a student could be interested in how a particular word is used. They can track the word, and see the varied phrases in which people use it. Or, you can track an event, a proper name (I track Derrida for example), a movie title, a store name see how many people a day tweet that they are at or on their way to a Starbucks. (To do this send the message “track Starbucks” to Twitter, rather than posting the update “track Starbucks” you will now receive all messages with the word “Starbucks.”)

Principles of Knowledge building Scardamalia (2002) identifies twelve principles of Knowledge building as follows:

Real ideas and authentic problems. In the classroom as a Knowledge building community, learners are concerned with understanding, based on their real problems in the real world. Improvable ideas. Students' ideas are regarded as improvable objects. Idea diversity. In the classroom, the diversity of ideas raised by students is necessary. Rise above. Through a sustained improvement of ideas and understanding, students create higher level concepts. Epistemic agency. Students themselves find their way in order to advance. Community knowledge, collective responsibility. Students' contribution to improving their collective knowledge in the classroom is the primary purpose of the Knowledge building classroom. Democratizing knowledge. All individuals are invited to contribute to the knowledge advancement in the classroom. Symmetric knowledge advancement. A goal for Knowledge building communities is to have individuals and organizations actively working to provide a reciprocal advance of their knowledge. Pervasive Knowledge building. Students contribute to collective Knowledge building. Constructive uses of authoritative sources. All members, including the teacher, sustain inquiry as a natural approach to support their understanding. Knowledge building discourse. Students are engaged in discourse to share with each other, and to improve the knowledge advancement in the classroom. Concurrent, embedded, and transformative assessment. Students take a global view of their understanding, then decide how to approach their assessments. They create and engage in assessments in a variety of ways.

Catching yourself using dichotomous thinking (and correcting yourself) can transform an unrealistic thought into a more truthful (and probably less stress-inducing) one. Unglamorous adjectives like “middle-aged” or “in-between” and low-impact phrases like “moderately shy” probably won’t win you any grand literary awards, but they do stand a good chance at helping you view the world through a more accurate lens.