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Brian C. Smith

Will the coronavirus infect education, too? The risk of a radical shift to online learn... - 0 views

www.nydailynews.com/...bozcxlgq34f22rk4zwm-story.html

education online learning learning

shared by Brian C. Smith on 11 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Learning certainly involves the mind, but also interactions between students, teacher and student, and learning spaces and tools.
  • Though online models may support some of those interactions, they only scratch the surface when it comes to offering diverse, rich, and multimodal educational experiences.
  • Knowledge is not transmitted, it is constructed when we bring our prior understanding in interaction with new ideas, experiences, and environments.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • extensive research showing that the production and maintenance of an online course can be even more expensive than its offline counterpart.
  • the potential of new technology is not in maintaining the status quo but in upending it.
  • New and emerging technologies can instead be used to tweak or enhance existing structures and systems in ways that leverage their particular educational affordances.
  • we can view this as an opportunity to applaud the enormous effort to flexibly adapt to new educational modes under unprecedented circumstances — and, as the dust settles, invite these professionals (rather than corporations or venture capitalists) to be the ones to chart the course forward.
Brian C. Smith

Computer Science Should Supplement, not Supplant Science Education - 0 views

nstacommunities.org/...not-supplant-science-education

computer science science NGSS CSTA

shared by Brian C. Smith on 18 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • In the integrated STEM classroom, using the principles of NGSS, educators are working to seek out real-world, relevant, authentic problems that would be of interest to students and ask them to apply computational thinking to solve the problem using data analysis, visualization, seeking patterns, and computation.
  • And as everyone knows, time in the school schedule is VERY limited and providing computer science as on a separate track cuts the instructional time pie even more, and sets up another silo in high schools.
Brian C. Smith

How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ce-coding-apple-microsoft.html

shared by Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • “It is essential that efforts to increase computer science instruction, kindergarten through career, be driven by the needs of industry and be developed in partnership with industry.”
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17
       
      The danger in this statement is that it says computer science instruction. It has little regard for how students learn or their interests. It is all about industry and jobs. If corporate and industry partners want to help, they must take a backseat to qualified educators, not the other way around. We CAN and MUST do better than industries seeking self-serving initiatives.
  • “They are collaborative partners.”
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17
       
      Another slippery statement. What knowledge and understanding to industry partners have regarding how children learn? Industry perspective seems to always be that they see training as learning. Most coding platforms being promoted are designed to program the child. The difference between programming the computer and programming the child is a powerful idea that we must discuss in depth and know well. Otherwise, we lose out on the most meaningful and powerful learning experiences we could provide.
  • “We have a lot of debate in this country about how to teach,” he said, “and not enough debate about what to teach.”
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 29 Jun 17
       
      Not enough talk about how to learn and how to learn it. Some will say they are one in the same, that's simply not true. Teaching implies something teachers do to students (who may or may not yet be learners). While teaching requires students, learning does not require a teacher or teaching. Learning is the consequence of experience and any teaching designed should reflect this powerful idea. When we leave the decisions about how and what to teach to those outside of education, because they are the area "experts", it becomes about the topic and not the child. We will always fail with that approach.
Martin Leicht

Play Is Serious Business | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...play-is-serious-business

play innovation creativity school education

shared by Martin Leicht on 22 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • the Prussian military developed a model that now resembles our school structure today
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 22 Aug 16
       
      Okay, we throw the Prussians under the bus for developing school, as we know it. 
  • Researchers have already exposed the risks of sitting for hours at a time and know that it increases health problems
  • Stuart Brown, one of the foremost play researchers in the world, states that play is essential for both brain development and social development, from childhood into adulthood.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • It is a biological mechanism for making learning enjoyable.
  • Play helps meld emotion into the experience of learning.
  • If a child is denied the opportunity to play, the body and mind fight back.
  • Play allows children to let off steam
  • positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and increase cognitive flexibility.  Why not embrace the tool in the curriculum?  
  • When school becomes a stressful place for a child, it is no longer a supportive, positive learning environment
  • teachers at traditional schools can adapt their classrooms to include more choices, more creativity, and more open play
  • Play has become a luxury – available in private schools that espouse progressive learning principles, but crowded out of public schools by a teach-to-the-test mentality.
  • Despite increasing research on play and emotion, relatively few studies of play within the school environment exist.
  • Increasingly, educators are calling for a return (link is external) to the greater integration of play into elementary education.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 22 Aug 16
       
      integration, the question what is the integration equation? How much play how much less structured teach to the test? 
  • Fredrickson
Martin Leicht

Learning to Think Like a Computer - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-students-computer-code.html

slack coding computational thinking programming code learning think problem

shared by Martin Leicht on 05 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • all-important concept in computer science — abstraction — in terms of milkshakes
  • The idea of abstraction,” he said, “is to hide the details.” It requires recognizing patterns and distilling complexity into a precise, clear summary
  • Concealing layers of information makes it possible to get at the intersections of things
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In particular, “computational thinking” is captivating educators, from kindergarten teachers to college professors, offering a new language and orientation to tackle problems in other areas of life.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 05 Apr 17
       
      a computer follow a logical flow, so by breaking down the steps and working through the process you learn a "logic" if you will. This process can then be applied to other non computing challenges as a problem solving exercise.
  • Computer Science Principles, focused not on learning to code but on using code to solve problems.
  • computational thinking — its broad usefulness as well as what fits in the circle. Skills typically include recognizing patterns and sequences, creating algorithms, devising tests for finding and fixing errors, reducing the general to the precise and expanding the precise to the general.
Brian C. Smith

10 Tips For Launching An Inquiry-Based Classroom | MindShift | KQED News - 0 views

ww2.kqed.org/...ing-an-inquiry-based-classroom

inquiry inquiry-based constructivist

shared by Brian C. Smith on 24 Sep 15 - Cached
  • Brian C. Smith on 24 Sep 15
     
    "Unfortunately, many educators and schools are so focused on achieving standardized outcomes that they don't leverage the best tool at their disposal - students' natural curiosity."
Brian C. Smith

Teaching Children Thinking - 0 views

www.citejournal.org/...v5i3seminal3.pdf

learning Papert thinking teaching

shared by Brian C. Smith on 13 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Brian C. Smith on 13 Sep 15
     
    "The purpose of this essay is to present a grander vision of an educational system in which technology is used not in the form of machines for processing children but as something the child himself will earn to manipulate, to extend, to apply to projects, thereby gaining a greater and more articulate mastery of the world, a sense of the power of applied knowledge and a self-confidently realistic image of himself as an intellectual agent. Stated more simply, I believe with Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget that children learn by doing and by thinking about what they do. And so the fundamental ingredients of educational innovation must be better things to do and better ways to think about oneself doing these things."
Brian C. Smith

Fundamentals of Creativity - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...undamentals-of-Creativity.aspx

creativity HKIS

shared by Brian C. Smith on 13 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Brian C. Smith on 13 Sep 15
     
    Five insights can help educators nurture student creativity in ways that enhance academic learning.
Martin Leicht

It's 'digital heroin': How screens turn kids into psychotic junkies | New York Post - 0 views

nypost.com/...rn-kids-into-psychotic-junkies

screen management parent parenting addiction digital tablets children 1:1 laptops heroin mangement

shared by Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16 - No Cached
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      Signs/signals being sent to the parent. "It's educational" is a reasonable excuse, yet does it trump parenting technique/skill?
  • As his behavior continued to deteriorate, she tried to take the game away but John threw temper tantrums. His outbursts were so severe that she gave in, still rationalizing to herself over and over again that “it’s educational.”
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      Is too much of any one thing, e.g., baseball, food, study, computers, etc., a good idea?
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Many parents intuitively understand that ubiquitous glowing screens are having a negative effect on kids. We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices.
  • Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain’s frontal cortex — which controls executive functioning, including impulse control — in exactly the same way that cocaine does. Technology is so hyper-arousing that it raises dopamine levels — the feel-good neurotransmitter most involved in the addiction dynamic — as much as sex.
  • “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” to be especially true when it comes to tech addiction.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      When do we as parents act? Or is it more a partnership going forward? Yes, we (schools) asked students to use these devices. And we must do are bit to help students manage/cope. At the same time, parents need to be aware too. I know we all want to be liked as parents. In today's modern family, life is complex. Yet, I come to the conclusion that I am not my son's friend. There's going to be a lot of actions/directives he will not like. And yes, I will need to do a lot of work to get us through it, yet isn't that my job as a parent to deal with the changes as they come in order to guide him toward adulthood?
  • According to a 2013 Policy Statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics, 8- to 10 year-olds spend 8 hours a day with various digital media while teenagers spend 11 hours in front of screens. One in three kids are using tablets or smartphones before they can talk
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      1 in 3 before they can talk are using tablets? Okay, this is an interesting statement. Is it supervised use? How long? I would ask the question, why? We as parents make a lot of interesting choices as parents and we all need to stop and reflect on those choices often. If it is before they can talk, then it is definitely not the school asking/requiring the device.
  • Once a person crosses over the line into full-blown addiction — drug, digital or otherwise — they need to detox before any other kind of therapy can have any chance of being effective.
  • So how do we keep our children from crossing this line? It’s not easy.
  • That means Lego instead of Minecraft; books instead of iPads; nature and sports instead of TV
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      Great strategy, active parenting. I would suggest, cooking, surfing, and any activity involving ones hands. Of course, do parents have time for this?
  • When I speak to my 9-year-old twin boys, I have honest conversations with them about why we don’t want them having tablets or playing video games.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      I like the "conversations" point. Not one, many conversations.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      Another great strategy. I would add, the conversation is on going. The author references the distracted parent syndrome above, that one is key!
  • Developmental psychologists understand that children’s healthy development involves social interaction, creative imaginative play and an engagement with the real, natural world.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 07 Sep 16
       
      Moderation, no? Does not the standby wisdom that everything in moderation apply here too?
  • Thus the solution is often to help kids to connect to meaningful real-life experiences and flesh-and-blood relationships. The engaged child tethered to creative activities and connected to his or her family is less likely to escape into the digital fantasy world.
  • Brian C. Smith on 27 Sep 16
     
    Yeah, this is why the Reggio Emilia Approach and maker-centered learning is excellent. The blending of the digital and physical world to learn nearly anything on any topic and beyond. Kids might spend more time with devices in activities stemming from maker-centered learning, but it isn't all on the device and it provides alternative ways of knowing, understanding, and doing. We, the adults, are ultimately responsible for creating the conditions for this to be so. Papert has taught us this decades ago. I don't know why we don't study his work among the others that have known this for a very long time. Isn't it time to do so with the technology group?
Martin Leicht

Is Design Thinking the New Liberal Arts? - CIO Journal. - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...-thinking-the-new-liberal-arts

design thinking liberal arts college mash up remix

shared by Martin Leicht on 15 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • The first is feasibility
  • Next comes viability
  • The final dimension is desirability
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • Design thinking is now being applied to abstract entities, such as systems and services, as well as to devise strategies, manage change and solve complex problems.
  • d.school, was launched in 2004 as a graduate program that integrates business, the social sciences, the humanities and other disciplines into more traditional engineering and product design
  • take on the world’s messy problems together.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 23 Nov 16
       
      human values & continuing evolution
  • deliberate mash-up of industry, academia and the big world beyond campus is a key
  • rigorous engineering education; entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking; and the arts, which broadly encompasses creativity, innovation and design
  • students needed to learn how to think critically and creatively every bit as much as they needed to learn finance or accounting.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 23 Nov 16
       
      approach from different perspectives & even combine approaches to find innovative solutions
  • has design thinking now become the new liberal arts? After pondering the question, I believe the answer is: No
  • Design Thinking is frequently identified as an engaging process and methodical framework for approaching complex, multidisciplinary problems in ways that consistently result in solutions that are successful and often creative in unpredictable way
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 23 Nov 16
       
      DT - it's a framework for thinking about complex, multidisciplinary problems to be applied to anything
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 23 Nov 16
       
      successful design solutions are found at the intersection of "feasibility", "viability," and "desirability.'
  • How is design thinking human-centered,
  • Do disciplines, in order to evolve and advance, need some place in which to play and from which to be provoked?… Research-as-questioning is a much freer and more playful approach to discovery. It keeps us in closer contact with our natural disposition to curiosity and wonder.”
  • concluded that their action-oriented approach to problem solving did not pay proper attention to past knowledge. “A truly human-centered design, if it takes culture at all seriously, would have to take pastness seriously
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 23 Nov 16
       
      study of the past sets us up to live well in future
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 24 Nov 16
       
      Design Thinking does not really focus much on the past beyond the definition of the problem/challenge were liberal arts does.
  • But for them to really shape the future of university learning, they will have to do a better job of engaging with precisely what the university was designed to promote, and what design thinking, with its emphasis on innovation, has thus far completely ignored: the past.”
  • The difference between science and engineering is often described by the nature of the questions that are asked: scientists ask why as they attempt to understand the world, while engineers ask why not as they attempt to change it and create what has never been
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 24 Nov 16
       
      You need both Science, the why, and Engineering, the why not, to fully leverage/use/benefit from design thinking. As do Liberal Arts and Design Thinking. Both are a symbiotic twin.
Martin Leicht

Where Non-Techies Can Get With the Programming - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mputer-programming-coding.html

slack coding computational thinking programming learn code

shared by Martin Leicht on 05 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • They aren’t going to become programmers, but they realize these are skills that will make them better lawyers
  • for example, learn to write short, tailored programs that can identify clusters of words and concepts in Supreme Court rulings more accurately than a Google search
  • Code, it seems, is the lingua franca of the modern economy.
    • Martin Leicht
      Martin Leicht on 05 Apr 17
       
      BIg data, by using code you fine tune your search and pull in the data/information you need.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • One recent institutional adaptation is the creation of so-called CS+X initiatives at schools like Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Illinois. These programs are hybrid majors that combine computing with other disciplines, including anthropology, comparative literature and history — a nod to the reality that software skills can advance research in nearly every field.
  • Today, at many universities, at least half of the student population takes the intro courses.
  • coding as a window to “computational thinking,” which involves abstract reasoning, modeling and breaking down problems into the recipelike steps of an algorithm
Brian C. Smith

Teachers Going Gradeless - Arthur Chiaravalli - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...s-going-gradeless-50d621c14cad

grading assessment student-centered

shared by Brian C. Smith on 13 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • study showed that scores alone made students either complacent or unmotivated depending on how well they did. Scores with comments were just as ineffective in that students focused entirely on the score and ignored the comments. Surprisingly, it was the students who received comments alone that demonstrated the most improvement.
  • student self-assessment/self-grading topped the list of educational interventions with the highest effect size. By teaching students how to accurately self-assess based on clear criteria, teachers empower them to become “self-regulated learners” able to monitor, regulate, and guide their own learning.
  • The reason students never develop these traits is that our monopoly on assessment, feedback, and grading has trained students to adopt an attitude of total passivity in the learning process.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • For some of us, the word gradeless means to grade less, that is, limiting the impact of grades within the context of current constraints. Some are just trying to get away from toxic assessment and grading practices, like assessments with no opportunity to redo or retake or zeroes on the mathematically disproportionate 100-point scale.
  • For others, gradeless means without grades, that is, avoiding the damaging and demotivating effects of grades entirely. These teachers are trying to put the focus squarely on learning, eliminating grades in favor of feedback and growth.
Brian C. Smith

Educating Modern Learners - 0 views

us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=052672a467e4a0d16c48b9bef&id=b73183c7f8&e=1de693b59d

shared by Brian C. Smith on 16 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Brian C. Smith on 16 Sep 15
     
    A newsletter that shares many topics around Modern Learning.
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