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Patrick Higgins

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

www.nytimes.com/...04unbox.html

connections creativity habits nytimes utecht

shared by Patrick Higgins on 27 May 08 - No Cached
  • “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
      Patrick Higgins on 27 May 08
       
      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
      Patrick Higgins on 27 May 08
       
      This is where we come in.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 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
      Patrick Higgins on 27 May 08
       
      This is Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development where our students are stressed to the point of learning, but not beyond it.
  • Patrick Higgins on 27 May 08
     
    I am dropping this in your mailboxes today.
Patrick Higgins

Reading in a Whole New Way | 40th Anniversary | Smithsonian Magazine - 0 views

www.smithsonianmag.com/...eading-in-a-Whole-New-Way.html

smithsonian learning connections english writing reading

shared by Patrick Higgins on 30 Aug 10 - Cached
  • We can agree or disagree with Kevin, but the world keeps spinning. Screens are made and used in instructive and destructive ways. As an educator I need to learn to use screens as learning platforms so that I can model constructive informative behavior for the students I interact with. So here is how I came to write this post. I subscribe to Will Richardson's blog weblog-ed in my Google Reader. He shared a link to Kevin Kelly's blog Technium. As I read the blog post I used Diigo to underline and add sticky notes. I now have this annotation in my Diigo groups. I will Twitter this and add a link in the New Literacies Institute Ning at newlit.org. Kevin will sell a few more books, which I have hundreds of, and add more readers of his blog.
  • This article is very interesting because it made me think.And I thougt that I was right when I bought a computer for my 81st birthday.It has a wide screen,and I could enlarge the letters to be able to read it because my eyes are bad. I felt that I was not anymore excluded of the world.I had entered the 21st century. The last 12 or some years I spend writing a book by hand.Nobody would ever read a single word of the more than 400 pages.No editor would have accepted it.But is has been typed and now it is on the web.Everybody can read it,and sites of military history,dutch and french,published it or parts of it(I wrote it in french)because it is about the 1940-campaign. Thank you,dear author,you made me feel I was right.
  • Bring on the technology, we have plenty of idle brain space waiting to make use of it.
  • Patrick Higgins on 30 Aug 10
     
    Kevin Kelly writes about how reading has changed from a silent, individual pastime to one that is collaborative, more physical pursuit.  
Patrick Higgins

Class Struggle - When teachers reject the Internet - 2 views

voices.washingtonpost.com/...teachers_reject_the_inter.html

homework online posting gradebook assessment communication parents

shared by Patrick Higgins on 21 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 21 Dec 09
     
    What do you think of this? For the best part of the article, be sure to read the comments.
  • Danielle Kopp on 22 Dec 09
     
    Interesting article and comments but it all just makes me mad. I work to hard everyday and spend to much time away from my baby to hear constant criticisms about teaching, especially when I go above and beyond to put everything online yet no one ever looks at it. Great now I"m annoyed Thanks Pat :) LOL not your fault.
  • Patrick Higgins on 22 Dec 09
     
    Danielle, Sorry about that; the intent was not to upset you, but rather to let everyone see that there is a balancing act that is going on all over the country. One of the commentors stated that "this is here to stay, so everyone get used to it," and while I didn't appreciate his or her closed tone, he or she has a point: it's here. Finding a balance between what is communicated, how it is communicated, and how to best maximize the time we spend doing the communicating in addition to the lives that we lead outside of school is now a huge issue. It is now a major discussion point in many of the meetings I attend, and I think the answer will come out after we muddle through it for a little while. There are so many new changes this year regarding openness and transparency, I think we will find that balance after a bit of trial and error with it.
Patrick Higgins

The New Writing Pedagogy - 0 views

www.districtadministration.com/viewarticle.aspx

writing ncte willrichardson pedagogy

shared by Patrick Higgins on 01 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Moving to a new pedagogy is not easy for many district administrators, however, as the Web as a writing space is still primarily an unknown, scary place to put students. But as research is showing, students are flocking to online networks in droves, and they are doing a great deal of writing there already, some of it creative and thoughtful and inspiring, but much of it outside the traditional expectations of “good writing” that classrooms require
  • That change is spelled out clearly by the National Council of Teachers of English, which last year published “new literacies” for readers and writers in the 21st century. Among those literacies are the ability to “build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally,” to “design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes,” and to “create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts.” Very little of that kind of work is possible to achieve without expanding the way we think about writing instruction in the context of online social tools.
  • “Using online writing tools will allow students to write whenever and wherever they feel inspired, and to be able to speak to an audience that is larger and more important to them than the traditional classroom,” Childers says. “There is a reason why we should constantly be looking for ways to incorporate more innovative writing opportunities into our curriculum.”
Patrick Higgins

Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text | Wired Science | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...wikitrust

Wikipedia

shared by Patrick Higgins on 08 Sep 09 - Cached
  • “Online collaboration is becoming more and more central to the way in which knowledge is created and assembled worldwide,” said computer scientist Luca de Alfaro, who runs the UCSC Wiki Lab and led the WikiTrust project. “There are more and more services that simply cannot exist without some notion of user reputation and trust in the content.”
  • Patrick Higgins on 08 Sep 09
     
    "Online collaboration is becoming more and more central to the way in which knowledge is created and assembled worldwide," said computer scientist Luca de Alfaro, who runs the UCSC Wiki Lab and led the WikiTrust project. "There are more and more services that simply cannot exist without some notion of user reputation and trust in the content."
Patrick Higgins

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School | Copyblogger - 6 views

www.copyblogger.com/bad-writing-habits

writing copyblogger

shared by Patrick Higgins on 30 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Go around citing the sources of all of your ideas and people will start avoiding you, because it’s boring as hell
  • Patrick Higgins on 30 Oct 09
     
    What do you think of this?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Danielle Kopp on 31 Oct 09
     
    Pat - this is such a true article - but can it fit anywhere in our classrooms? As an avid reader I have to admit that some of the BEST stuff I've read is just from the heart of an author. I like this - how can I use without making people angry ?? :)
  • Patrick Higgins on 01 Nov 09
     
    Danielle, That's precisely the question I want everyone thinking about. We truly focus so much of our energies on getting the format down and getting the "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed, and for many of the students we teach, that is completely necessary; however, as we begin to look at the next phase of what we'd like to do in the district which includes more than just being "proficient" on some state test, can we blend some of the thinking in this post into what we are doing. And as for making people angry, my advice is that you don't get the results you really want without making a few people angry along the way. Not that you try to, but when you know that what you are doing will make your students better, you just go with it.
  • Danielle Kopp on 01 Nov 09
     
    Pat - I'd love to share this post with the kids or incorporate parts of it. I have to say that the best writing that the kids have done is usually the writing they do when we're in class and they just write. One of the hardest parts of teaching English is having to read 130 well constructed essays that follow the rubric but are so dry and boring that I have to restrain myself from stabbing my eyes out with my pen. It all goes back to the fact that in our H.S. the kids can write a great 5 paragraph essay or write persuasively but they have NO VOICE and I feel that the stress on structure and grammar could be why they have no voice. Interesting - we should discuss this a bit at our next Connections meeting!
Patrick Higgins

Get Local! | OpenSecrets - 0 views

opensecrets.org/index.php

education election history opensecrets politics socialstudies

shared by Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08
     
    Campaign contributions by local area. Great stuff to see who is promoting whom for president.
  • Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08
     
    How great is this for understanding who is contributing to the campaigns?
Patrick Higgins

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...google

google reading technology

shared by Patrick Higgins on 21 Jun 08 - Cached
  • hen the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.
    • Patrick Higgins
      Patrick Higgins on 21 Jun 08
       
      This shows me that new skills are necessary, or in the least, old ones need to be reconstituted. What jobs or tasks become prioritized? Can we not turn off all of our notifiers and our distractors while we indeed focus on what needs to be done? These are skills, not just simple behaviors.
  • Patrick Higgins on 21 Jun 08
     
    this article is well worth the read, if not for anything else than for stoking your thoughts about the future of reading and thinking.
Patrick Higgins

How Important is Teaching Literacy in All Content Areas? | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...n-across-curriculum-importance

shared by Patrick Higgins on 05 Aug 10 - Cached
  • "Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives."
    • Patrick Higgins
      Patrick Higgins on 05 Aug 10
       
      Let's not forget, also, about the "why?"
  • Content is what we teach, but there is also the how, and this is where literacy instruction comes in.
Erica Hartman

Official Google Blog: Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning - 0 views

googleblog.blogspot.com/...vice-to-students-major-in.html

googley connections google njbtea

shared by Erica Hartman on 16 Jul 08 - Cached
  • ... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
  • .. analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
  • . a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • ... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.
  • ... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.
  • Patrick Higgins on 25 Jul 08
     
    Great article from the Google Blog about who they want and how to promote thinking skills in the classroom.
  • Patrick Higgins on 25 Jul 08
     
    Read this. It's worth it.
Patrick Higgins

Messaging Shakespeare | Classroom Examples | Focus on Effectiveness - 0 views

www.netc.org/...messag.php

connections english motivation shakespeare sms text

shared by Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08
     
    How to bring Cellular technology to Stratford-on-Avon. This is a wonderful example of a teacher leveraging technology that is essential to the lives of students to further their understanding of a traditionally challenging subject.
  • Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08
     
    Texting Shakespeare. Check out this use of the cell phone.
Patrick Higgins

Bad News for Newspapers - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20090312-papers-graphic.html

nytimes news media change

shared by Patrick Higgins on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 17 Mar 09
     
    This graphic is telling about the state of the newspaper business model. What I question, a little, is the rise in profits shown at the bottom for the NYT.
Patrick Higgins

ZIPskinny - Get the Skinny on that ZIP (demographics by ZIP Code) - 0 views

zipskinny.com

connections data demographics maps reference research statistics zipcode zipskinny

shared by Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 03 Aug 08
     
    This is a great tool for getting data on a town. You can drill down and compare across the neighboring towns. Also there is the ability to create a widget for your website or blog so your students can always see the representation.
Patrick Higgins

The 6 Myths Of Creativity | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...creativity.html

creativity innovation management work

shared by Patrick Higgins on 13 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 13 Feb 09
     
    This is a must read for anyone who thinks creativity is germane to a small segment of society
Patrick Higgins

The Fischbowl: I Read (?) The News Today, Oh Boy - 0 views

thefischbowl.blogspot.com/...i-read-news-today-oh-boy.html

fischbowl writing connections meetings text change

shared by Patrick Higgins on 10 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Note that this is additive - no one is suggesting that words don't matter, that what we traditionally think of as "writing" is no longer important, but that the very nature of composition is more complex now, and that our instruction, our pedagogy, our learning spaces need to reflect that.
Erica Hartman

This. . . is. . . Sparta! The Culture of Education 2.0 - O'Reilly Radar - 3 views

radar.oreilly.com/...is-sparta-the-coming-cult.html

sparta education this is connections culture

shared by Erica Hartman on 07 May 10 - Cached
  • Erica Hartman on 07 May 10
     
    this is an interesting article, esp since we teach in SPARTA
Patrick Higgins

UDL Guidelines | National Center On Universal Design for Learning - 1 views

www.udlcenter.org/...udlguidelines

udl education learning guidelines assistive

shared by Patrick Higgins on 19 May 10 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 19 May 10
     
    This is something that is really influencing my thinking.  It's a method of designing curricular materials that appeals to the broadest array of learners.  Really powerful stuff.
Patrick Higgins

Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...-education-beats-the-classroom

education research online learning onlinelearning nytimes

shared by Patrick Higgins on 21 Aug 09 - Cached
  • People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”
    • Patrick Higgins
      Patrick Higgins on 21 Aug 09
       
      This is a key point in making those who feel that there are huge flaws in online learning. While there is definite potential for the "correspondence course" model they mention above to still be present, there are myriad ways in which online learning can be extremely communal. What I love about it is that it automatically eliminates pacing concerns in that students can move through material at a rate that is more to their style.
  • Patrick Higgins on 21 Aug 09
     
    Very interesting one.
Patrick Higgins

9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online | Lateral Action - 0 views

lateralaction.com/...9-responses

content blogging publishing writing audience

shared by Patrick Higgins on 17 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 17 Sep 09
     
    Read this. Now.
  • Patrick Higgins on 17 Sep 09
     
    How we view online content is fundamentally changing what is important to us as readers. This method really makes sense to me.
Patrick Higgins

http://spacemag.tumblr.com - 0 views

spacemag.tumblr.com

connections publishing spacemag studentwriting

shared by Patrick Higgins on 27 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Patrick Higgins on 27 Jun 08
     
    If you are interested in publishing your students' work and collaborating with other classrooms from around the world, this is worth looking at.
  • Patrick Higgins on 27 Jun 08
     
    This is a magazine created by students from around the world. It's truly amazing on so many levels.
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