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Patrick Higgins

Gene Weingarten - Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me. - 0 views

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    The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.
Patrick Higgins

TextFlow - 0 views

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    This looks like an interesting tool. Will need to see how it differs from the functions of Google Docs first.
Patrick Higgins

A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook. - By Vaughan... - 0 views

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    A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment. It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press
Erica Hartman

Comiqs | My First Comiq - 0 views

shared by Erica Hartman on 14 May 08 - Cached
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    create your own comic
Patrick Higgins

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times - 0 views

  • “The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is the part that we can really instill in our students: a sense of wonder that permeates all they do. How do we do it? My idea would be to tap into their passions. What do they go for? Also, one of the jobs of schools is to expose students to things they would not normally be exposed to. This can create new habits and new wonder.
  • The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is where we come in.
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  • Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      This is Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development where our students are stressed to the point of learning, but not beyond it.
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    I am dropping this in your mailboxes today.
Patrick Higgins

The Four Rs: Rigor in Twenty-First-Century Schools | Edutopia - 0 views

  • We believe curriculum becomes rigorous when students are pushed not only to know information but also to apply and demonstrate their understanding of that information. We believe that requiring students to reflect on and analyze their thinking and learning might be the most challenging task you can require of a teenager.
    • Patrick Higgins
       
      Here is an example of a school in California that is taking much of what we have been discussing and applying it to their entire curriculum.
Patrick Higgins

As We May Learn: Revisiting Bush - 0 views

  • I myself learned from good lectures when I was in college. A lecture combined with other high-impact learning experiences can do quite well. But a lecture every day?
  • On the one hand, we’ve put into place many of the technologies necessary for us to change, but on the other, we’ve used those technologies mostly to reinforce what we’ve always done (except for those exciting “high-impact learning experiences”). When I think of some uses of technology, I keep getting the image of using cars, when they first were mass-produced, to pull plows.
Patrick Higgins

Stykz - The first multi-platform stick figure animation program - 0 views

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    Stick-figure animation software.
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