TuftsAT

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle.

the work of the humanities is to create the vessels that store our culture. In this sense, the digitization of archives and collections holds the promise of a grand conclusion: nothing less than the unification of the human cultural record online, representing, in theory, an unprecedented democratization of access to human knowledge. Equally profound is the way that technology could change the way knowledge is created in the humanities

entering an experimental period of inventiveness and imagination that involves the creation of new kinds of vessels—be they databases, books, exhibits, or works of art—to gather, store, interpret, and transmit culture

“much better signal to noise ratio” than Google

A recent synthesis of more than 25 meta-analytic studies investigating the role of computer-based technologies in student learning found that the teacher may play an even greater role in students’ technology-enhanced learning than the nature of the technology intervention itself.

professional development programs can improve instruction when they immerse teachers in inquiry investigations

Inquiry investigations engage teachers in activities such as comparing alternative forms of curricula and pedagogical techniques, analyzing the range of students’ ideas in a targeted subject matter, connecting students’ ideas to specific elements of instruction, and critiquing lesson plans in a mutually supportive teacher community

Education is not the transmission of information or ideas. Education is the training needed to make use of information and ideas

Educators are coaches, personal trainers in intellectual fitness

It is as though elite educators, upon noticing that we can't program a computer to discern what is on the mind of an undergraduate, decided to pretend that if we just let those seeking an education talk among themselves (in grammatically felicitous sentences), they will somehow come to express difficult ideas in persuasive arguments and arrive at coherent, important insights about society, politics, and culture. As someone who spends time with students in directed conversations on difficult subjects, I'm sure this method won't work. We will, instead, produce graduates who cast assumptions they've never really questioned into grammatically correct slogans, and the sloganeers with the catchiest phrases, the most confidence, and the most money will shape the future