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Katie Day

Paper Tigers - What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-takin... - 1 views

nymag.com/print

asia usa culture education careers article social_intelligence

shared by Katie Day on 12 May 11 - No Cached
  • while I don’t believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry that we use to sort through the sea of faces we confront
  • Earlier this year, the publication of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother incited a collective airing out of many varieties of race-based hysteria. But absent from the millions of words written in response to the book was any serious consideration of whether Asian-Americans were in fact taking over this country. If it is true that they are collectively dominating in elite high schools and universities, is it also true that Asian-Americans are dominating in the real world?
  • Now he understands better what he ought to have done back when he was a Stuyvesant freshman: “Worked half as hard and been twenty times more successful.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Who can seriously claim that a Harvard University that was 72 percent Asian would deliver the same grooming for elite status its students had gone there to receive?
  • The researcher was talking about what some refer to as the “Bamboo Ceiling”—an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership. The failure of Asian-Americans to become leaders in the white-collar workplace does not qualify as one of the burning social issues of our time. But it is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation
  • It’s racist to think that any given Asian individual is unlikely to be creative or risk-taking. It’s simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and “pumping the iron of math” is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things.
  • Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics. LEAP has parsed the complicated social dynamics responsible for the dearth of Asian-American leaders and has designed training programs that flatter Asian people even as it teaches them to change their behavior to suit white-American expectations. Asians who enter a LEAP program are constantly assured that they will be able to “keep your values, while acquiring new skills,” along the way to becoming “culturally competent leaders.”
  • The law professor and writer Tim Wu grew up in Canada with a white mother and a Taiwanese father, which allows him an interesting perspective on how whites and Asians perceive each other. After graduating from law school, he took a series of clerkships, and he remembers the subtle ways in which hierarchies were developed among the other young lawyers. “There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” he says, and then goes on to define the word coolie,a Chinese term for “bitter labor.” “There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor.” By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.” This idea of a kind of rule-governed rule-breaking—where the rule book was unwritten but passed along in an innate cultural sense—is perhaps the best explanation I have heard of how the Bamboo Ceiling functions in practice. LEAP appears to be very good at helping Asian workers who are already culturally competent become more self-aware of how their culture and appearance impose barriers to advancement.
  • If the Bamboo Ceiling is ever going to break, it’s probably going to have less to do with any form of behavior assimilation than with the emergence of risk-­takers whose success obviates the need for Asians to meet someone else’s behavioral standard. People like Steve Chen, who was one of the creators of YouTube, or Kai and Charles Huang, who created Guitar Hero. Or Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer that he sold to Amazon for about a billion dollars in 2009.
  • though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.
  • Katie Day on 12 May 11
     
    fascinating article (May 8, 2011) in New York magazine by Wesley Yang
Jeffrey Plaman

http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/3_Kalantzis_ELEA_7_3_web.pdf - 1 views

newlearningonline.com/...3_Kalantzis_ELEA_7_3_web.pdf

technology professional_development

shared by Jeffrey Plaman on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Jeffrey Plaman on 08 Jan 15
     
    ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.
Katie Day

Welcome to the Chicago Homer - 0 views

digital.library.northwestern.edu/homer

classics homer poetry close_reading digital_humanities databases ancient_civilizations Greeks

shared by Katie Day on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 02 Aug 13
     
    The Chicago Homer is a multilingual database that uses the search and display capabilities of electronic texts to make the distinctive features of Early Greek epic accessible to readers with and without Greek. Except for fragments, it contains all the texts of these poems in the original Greek. In addition, the Chicago Homer includes English and German translations, in particular Lattimore's Iliad, James Huddleston's Odyssey, Daryl Hine's translations of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, and the German translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Johan Heinrich Voss. Through the associated web site Eumaios users of the Chicago Homer can also from each line of the poem access pertinent Iliad Scholia and papyrus readings. The data of the Chicago Homer have also been integrated into WordHoard, an application for the close reading and scholarly analysis of deeply tagged literary texts. WordHoard does not replicate all functionalities of the Chicago Homer but has some features of its own, notably the simultaneous display of all forms of a given lemma, a metrically parsed version of the text, and the display of the scholia adjacent to the text.
Katie Day

BBC - A History of the World - Explorer - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...explorerflash

G5_conflict history timelines images objects

shared by Katie Day on 06 Dec 10 - Cached
  • Katie Day on 06 Dec 10
     
    "At the heart of the project is the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 objects. 100 programmes, written and narrated by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and focusing on 100 objects from the British Museum's collection. The programmes will travel through two million years from the earliest object in the collection to retell the history of humanity through the objects we have made. Each week will be tied to a particular theme, such as 'after the ice age' or 'the beginning of science and literature', and the programmes will broadcast in three blocks, in January, May and September. Deep zoom imagery of the British Museum objects on the site lets you see the detail up close while listening to the programme. You can also watch short videos of many of the objects and download podcasts of each programme as it is broadcast."
Sean McHugh

Do Violent Games Lead Kids Astray? - IGN - 0 views

www.ign.com/...violent-games-lead-kids-astray

learning games gaming violence

shared by Sean McHugh on 24 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • dialogue is far removed, however, from the intensely heated conflict that exists at the smaller, more personal scale. On the one hand you have the millions of Americans who play games, whether on a console or a smartphone, and have been raised in a time where such things are ubiquitous. On the other is a (generally older) population whose exposure to games has been limited to the most visible examples of the medium, including billion-dollar series like Call of Duty and notorious time sinks like FarmVille that paint a limited portrait of gaming's full range.
  • "You’re not wrong to be concerned about the time your son spends playing video games," wrote Moody. "But let me ask you this: If there were no video games here, wouldn’t there be some other stimulus that could threaten his time by diverting his attention away from, wait, what did you call it? 'What I feel are much more worthwhile and ultimately rewarding pursuits.’ 
  • fears about video games are understandable. Like anything else, they can become the focal point of unhealthy behavior all too easily, a point Moody is quick to emphasize. As Moody says again and again, though, that’s hardly the fault of video games.
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  • Video games actually encourage problem solving and memory skills in young people. "[Children] have to discover the rules of the game and how to think strategically,"
  • Even video games that can horrify with their grisly depictions of violence have benefits that individuals like ADCP are unaware of due to an unwillingness to engage the material.
  • some studies are finding that video games can help improve people’s quality of life for longer.
  • their results point to the need for more study. They don’t know for sure if it’s the games that improves mental health in seniors, or simply the mental activity they stimulate.
  • Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that’s followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century.
  • This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective.
  • Sean McHugh on 24 Mar 13
     
    "Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that's followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century. This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective."
Jeffrey Plaman

http://web.media.mit.edu/~kbrennan/files/Brennan_Resnick_AERA2012_CT.pdf - 0 views

web.media.mit.edu/...rennan_Resnick_AERA2012_CT.pdf

scratch programming computational thinking computer science theory

shared by Jeffrey Plaman on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Jeffrey Plaman on 25 Mar 14
     
    Computational thinking is a phrase that has received considerable attention over the past several years - but there is little agreement about what computational thinking encompasses, and even less agreement about strategies for assessing the development of computational thinking in young people. We are interested in the ways that design-based learning activities - in particular, programming interactive media - support the development of computational thinking in young people. Over the past several years, we have developed a computational thinking framework that emerged from our studies of the activities of interactive media designers. Our context is Scratch - a programming environment that enables young people to create their own interactive stories, games, and simulations, and then share those creations in an online community with other young programmers from around the world. The first part of the paper describes the key dimensions of our computational thinking framework: computational concepts (the concepts designers engage with as they program, such as iteration, parallelism, etc.), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they engage with the concepts, such as debugging projects or remixing others' work), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves). The second part of the paper describes our evolving approach to assessing these dimensions, including project portfolio analysis, artifact-based interviews, and design scenarios. We end with a set of suggestions for assessing the learning that takes place when young people engage in programming.
Keri-Lee Beasley

Re-envisioning Writing for a Networked Age: A Few Moments with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl | DM... - 1 views

dmlcentral.net/...ew-moments-elyse-eidman-aadahl

writing digital writers workshop online technology literacy

shared by Keri-Lee Beasley on 23 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • To write still means to make something. Writers are makers.
  • much of the power of writing is that it takes thought and externalizes it
  • whether we are writing on a digital platform or in our spiral notebooks. There is a core to writing that is still about creating and sharing knowledge
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • some components that have hugely changed, mainly the issues of what we can create and how it circulates.
  • teacher who acted as the sole reader of our material.
  • The internet and 21st century tools have opened up the possibility for one individual to not only produce the text but also to design it, circulate it, and manage publicity
  • very young or beginning writers can actually participate in all of those processes
  • we think of digital writing as writing that is not only created using digital tools, but is also typically created in or for a networked environment and meant to be interacted with on a screen.
  • We need to be able to make that part of our understanding of the new normal of writing -- not an additional piece -- but the new normal.
  • As computers become increasingly networked, teachers could see the potential for the read/write web, for writing as a way to participate in online communities, to hyperlink vast amounts of information connected to a text, and to interact and even collaborate directly with others to create something
  • being a writer yourself and participating in digital environments alongside the youth you work with, you are able to observe patterns and experience the new in such a way that you could be part of remaking knowledge in the field of composition. The writing revolution is not done and we can be right in the middle of it.
  • it's all about an inquiry stance and creating learning experiences where students can do the same because the "textbook" is all around us in the reading and writing going on in the world
  • participating as a digital writer and deeply reflecting upon your work by looking for patterns and understanding what shifts are being required of you
  • shift from being the person who hands out formulas for writing success to the person who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the students to understand what happens when we write for real in world.
  • build the platforms for publishing and circulation of student work
  • It’s vital for teachers and curriculum developers to start with the assumption that every young person not only can become a participant in the public internet, but will become a participant and likely already is a participant.
  • youth are going to have to manage their online identity. How they present and represent their identities and manage the multiple footprints they leave on the web are going to be key things for students to understand.
  • develop a sense of responsibility around what they put out there
  • sense of power and authority
  • making, creating, and collaborating about real work that matters to them
  • tools are not the issue
  • They allow us to do new things and expand our capacity to make things, yet deep, consistent issues remain at the center: what am I saying? Is what I have to say warranted? Have I been accurate and credible? Have I crafted something that my reader and my audience can take in? Am I listening to response and looking at my drafts iteration by iteration?
  • it’s so important to slow oneself down and to take one’s text quite seriously.
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 23 Mar 12
     
    "A learning environment expert and education advocate, Elyse is dedicated to improving the teaching of writing by helping educators understand the changing nature of the discipline in a digital age."
Katie Day

Get The Math -- algebra in the real world - 0 views

www.thirteen.org/get-the-math

mathematics teacher_resources lesson_ideas fashion music sports gaming cooking design algebra

shared by Katie Day on 05 May 12 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 05 May 12
     
    Summary via The Scout Report (May 2012): "How does math get used in the "real world?" The short answer is that it is used to create hip-hop music, in fashion design, and through a number of other endeavors. This interactive website combines video and web interactive to help young people develop algebraic thinking skills for solving real-world problems. The series is funded by The Moody's Foundation, along with assistance from WNET and American Public Television. The sections of the site include The Challenges, Video, and Teachers. In The Challenges area, users will find video segments profiling the various young professionals who use math in their work, along with interactive tools to help students solve the challenges they are presented with. Moving on, the Teachers area includes resources for teachers, such as a training video showing how to use project materials in the classroom, along with student handouts. Visitors shouldn't miss the Basketball challenge, featuring NBA player Elton Brand talking about the problems presented by free throw shooting. [KMG]"
Katie Day

NOVA | Hunting the Elements - 1 views

www.pbs.org/...hunting-elements.html

chemistry periodic_table science teaching videos

shared by Katie Day on 05 May 12 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 05 May 12
     
    Summary via The Scout Report (Apr 2012): "After watching this erudite (and fun) program from NOVA, you'll never again wonder "Where's selenium?" This two-hour program is hosted by David Pogue (the host of NOVA's "Making Stuff" program) and it "spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe's most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare." It's a fascinating way to learn about the history of the periodic table, and the discovery and properties of the elements. The site also contains fourteen additional features, such as the Name That Element! quiz, an iPad app, a chemical bonds quiz, an interactive periodic table, and an exploration of the "amazing atomic clock." It may make chemistry junkies out of neophytes, and the already-converted will find much to keep them occupied here. [KMG]"
Sean McHugh

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses | WIRED - 1 views

www.wired.com/...all

education motivation teaching method professional_development technology TEL

shared by Sean McHugh on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • he had happened on an emerging educational philosophy, one that applies the logic of the digital age to the classroom. That logic is inexorable: Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think.
  • In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills.”
  • That’s why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn’t a commodity that’s delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students’ own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “So,” Juárez Correa said, “what do you want to learn?”
  • human cognitive machinery is fundamentally incompatible with conventional schooling. Gray points out that young children, motivated by curiosity and playfulness, teach themselves a tremendous amount about the world. And yet when they reach school age, we supplant that innate drive to learn with an imposed curriculum.
  • inland pared the country’s elementary math curriculum from about 25 pages to four, reduced the school day by an hour, and focused on independence and active learning. By 2003, Finnish students had climbed from the lower rungs of international performance rankings to first place among developed nations.
  • n Finland, teachers underwent years of training to learn how to orchestrate this new style of learning; he was winging it. He began experimenting with different ways of posing open-ended questions on subjects ranging from the volume of cubes to multiplying fractions.
  • Juárez Correa had mixed feelings about the test. His students had succeeded because he had employed a new teaching method, one better suited to the way children learn. It was a model that emphasized group work, competition, creativity, and a student-led environment. So it was ironic that the kids had distinguished themselves because of a conventional multiple-choice test. “These exams are like limits for the teachers,” he says. “They test what you know, not what you can do, and I am more interested in what my students can do.”
  • They do it by emphasizing student-led learning and collaboration
  • Sean McHugh on 24 Sep 14
     
    In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills." That's why a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn't a commodity that's delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the students' own curiosity-fueled exploration. Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for children to discover their passion-and uncovering a generation of geniuses in the process.
David Caleb

Reading photographs - 1 views

www.learnnc.org/677

photographs visual literacy literacy photography

shared by David Caleb on 03 Nov 16 - Cached
  • Photographs have tremendous power to communicate information. But they also have tremendous power to communicate misinformation, especially if we’re not careful how we read them. Reading photographs presents a unique set of challenges. Students can learn to use questions to decode, evaluate, and respond to photographic images.
  • What happened just before this moment, or just after it?
  • The photograph of a crowd of jubilant Iraqis toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, is one of the most common images of the recent war in Iraq. A closeup shot shows a crowd of primarily Iraqis toppling the statue. A wide shot of the same scene would have revealed that the crowd in the square was made up of primarily US forces and journalists.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • One type of photography in which setting is very important is travel photography.
  • Using landmarks, monuments, or famous natural elements in a photograph is a core technique for evoking a sense of place.
  • The photographer selects the focal point not only by focusing the camera but also through other techniques.
  • shutter speed to bring only one element into focus immediately elevates that to the most important part of the image.
  • one element in the photograph is strongly backlit, it may seem to glow and thus draw the viewer’s attention.
  • What is the photographer’s thought process as she composes, frames, shoots and selects an image? Listen as photographer Lisa Maizlish narrates the decisions she made in photographing the students featured on the PBS reality show American High.
  • viewers have to decide how to interpret a photograph’s context
  • information about the people, events, setting, and so on are made explicit by the photographer — there are distinct visual clues that tell us who the people are, what they are doing, and where and when the photograph was taken.
  • implicit — implied but not clearly communicated by the photographer, or left to be inferred by the viewer.
  • identities of the people
  • unclear
  • their purpose may be unknown
  • time and place may be difficult or impossible to discern.
  • simple "W" questions can be open to debate.
  • Viewers may not even realize that they are making those assumptions
  • Just as successful written communication requires that the writer and reader speak the same language, successful visual communication requires that the photographer and viewer share a common "visual language" of signs, clues, and assumptions.
  • Were your assumptions correct? Can you always trust your first instinct? (And even having read the caption, how much do we really know about these girls and their lives?)
  • a different culture might ask why this round brown object is
  • we have to be careful that we have enough cultural background in common with the photographer to correctly interpret what we see.
  • The photograph by itself tells us very little about what’s going on; we probably could have invented any number of captions, and you’d have believed us!
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 03 Nov 16
     
    Reading images - lots of good strategies here
  • David Caleb on 07 Nov 16
     
    Reading photos
Katie Day

Education Week Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: Change Agent - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...01richardson.h04.html

teaching 21stcenturylearning

shared by Katie Day on 17 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • You’ve written that too many teachers are “un-Googleable.” What do you mean by that and why does it matter? What I mean is that too few teachers have a visible presence on the Web. The primary reason this matters is that the kids in our classrooms are going to be Googled—they're going to be searched for on the Web—over and over again. That's just the reality of their lives, right? So they need models. They need to have adults who know what it means to have a strong and appropriate search portfolio—I call it the “G-portfolio.” But right now—and this is my ongoing refrain—there’s no one teaching them how to learn and share with these technologies. There's no one teaching them about the nuances involved in creating a positive online footprint. It's all about what not to do instead of what they should be doing. The second thing is that, if you want to be part of an extended learning network or community, you have to be findable. And you have to participate in some way. The people I learn from on a day-to-day basis are Googleable. They’re findable, they have a presence, they’re participating, they’re transparent. That’s what makes them a part of my learning network. If you’re not out there—if you’re not transparent or findable in that way—I can’t learn with you.
  • Why do you think many teachers are not out there on the Web? I think it’s a huge culture shift. Education by and large has been a very closed type of profession. “Just let me close my doors and teach”—you hear that refrain all the time. I’ve had people come up to me after presentations and say, “Well, I’m not putting my stuff up on the Web because I don’t want anyone to take it and use it.” And I say, “But that’s the whole point.” I love what David Wiley, an instructional technology professor at Brigham Young University, says: “Without sharing, there is no education.” And it’s true.
  • What could a school administrator do to help teachers make that shift? Say you were a principal? What would you do? Well, first of all, I would be absolutely the best model that I could be. I would definitely share my own thoughts, my own experiences, and my own reflections on how the environment of learning is changing. I would be very transparent in my online learning activity and try to show people in the school that it’s OK, that it has value. I think it’s very hard to be a leader around these types of changes without modeling them.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Secondly, I would try to build a school culture where sharing is just a normal part of what we do and where we understand the relevance of this global exchange of ideas and information to what we do in the classroom.
  • There’s a great book called Rethinking Education in an Era of Technology by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson. For me, these guys absolutely peg it. They talk about how we went from a kind of apprenticeship model of education in the early 19th century to a more industrialized, everybody-does-the-same-thing model in the 20th century. And now we’re moving into what they call a “lifelong learning” model—which is to say that learning is much more fluid and much more independent, self-directed, and informal. That concept—that we can learn in profound new ways outside the classroom setting—poses huge challenges to traditional structures of schools, because that’s not what they were built for.
  • What we have to do is build a professional culture that says, “Look, you guys are learners, and we’re going to help you learn. We’re going to help you figure out your own learning path and practice.” It’s like the old “give a man a fish” saying. You know, we’re giving away a lot of fish right now, but we’re not teaching anybody how to fish.
  • If you were a principal, in order to foster network literacy as you envision it, what kind of professional development would you provide to teachers? I think that teachers need to have a very fundamental understanding of what these digital interactions look like, and the only way that you can do that is to pretty much immerse them in these types of learning environments over the long term. You can’t workshop it. That’s really been the basis of our work with Powerful Learning Practice: Traditional PD just isn’t going to work. It’s got to be long-term, job-embedded. So, if I’m a principal, I would definitely be thinking about how I could get my teachers into online learning communities, into these online networks. And again, from a leadership standpoint, I’d better be there first—or, if not first, at least be able to model it and talk about it.
  • But the other thing is, if you want to have workshops, well, that’s fine, go ahead and schedule a blogging workshop, but then the prerequisite for the workshop should be to learn how to blog. Then, when you come to the workshop, we’ll talk about what blogging means rather than just how to do it.
  • If you were starting a school right now that you hoped embodied these qualities, what traits would you look for in teachers? Well, certainly I would make sure they were Googleable. I would want to see that they have a presence online, that they are participating in these spaces, and, obviously, that they are doing so appropriately. Also, I’d want to know that they have some understanding of how technology is changing teaching and learning and the possibilities that are out there. I would also look for people who aren’t asking how, but instead are asking why. I don’t want people who say, “How do you blog?” I want people who are ready to explore the question of, “Why do you blog?” That’s what we need. We need people who are willing to really think critically about what they’re doing.
Katie Day

In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19Industry-t.html

cognitive_science creativity ideas thinking

shared by Katie Day on 20 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Jump’s work has elements of management consulting and a bit of design-firm draftsmanship, but its specialty is conceiving new businesses, and what it sells is really the art of innovation. The company is built on the premise that creative thinking is a kind of expertise. Like P.&G. and Mars, you can hire Jump to think on your behalf, for somewhere between $200,000 to $500,000 a month, depending on the complexity and ambiguity of the question you need answered. Or you can ask Jump to teach your corporation how to generate better ideas on its own; Jump imparts that expertise in one- and five-day how-to-brainstorm training sessions that can cost $200,000 for a one-day session for 25 employees.
  • What’s clear is that in recent years, much of corporate America has gone meta — it has started thinking about thinking. And all that thinking has led many executives to the same conclusion: We need help thinking. A few idea entrepreneurs, like Jump, Ideo and Kotter International, are companies with offices and payrolls. But many are solo practitioners, brains for hire who lecture at corporations or consult with them regularly. Each has a catechism and a theory about why good ideas can be so hard to come by and what can be done to remedy the situation.
  • “We’re not only blind to certain things, but we’re blind to the fact that we’re blind to them.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • You often hear this from idea entrepreneurs: Don’t ask us for the answers. Let us help you frame the questions, so you can answer them yourself.
  • At Jump, they prefer to brainstorm with a variation of a technique pioneered in improv theater. A comic offers the first sentence of a story, which lurches into a (hopefully funny) tale, when someone else says, “Yes, and?” then adds another sentence, which leads to another “Yes, and?”— and back and forth it goes. In the context of brainstorming, what was once a contest is transformed into a group exercise in storytelling. It has turned into a collaboration.
  • Why now? Why did innovation-mania take hold in the last decade or so? One school of thought holds that corporations both rise and die faster than ever today, placing a premium on the speedy generation of ideas.
  • Other ideas entrepreneurs offer a “great man” theory, pointing to the enormous influence of Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and an author of books including “The Innovator’s Dilemma”and “Innovation and the General Manager.”
  • Dev Patnaik of Jump has his own answer to the why-now question. He contends that advances in technology over the past three decades have gradually forced management to reconceive its role in the corporation, shifting its focus from processing data to something more esoteric.
  • “Suddenly it’s about something else. Suddenly it’s about leadership, creativity, vision. Those are the differentiating things, right?” Patnaik draws an analogy to painting, which for centuries was all about rendering reality as accurately as possible, until a new technology — photography — showed up, throwing all those brush-wielding artists into crisis.
  • Most idea entrepreneurs offer what could be described as Osborn deluxe. Govindarajan, the Dartmouth professor, presents companies with what he calls the three-box framework. In Box 1, he puts everything a company now does to manage and improve performance. Box 2 is labeled “selectively forgetting the past,” his way of urging clients to avoid fighting competitors and following trends that are no longer relevant. Box 3 is strategic thinking about the future. “Companies spend all of their time in Box 1, and think they are doing strategy,” he says. “But strategy is really about Box 2 and 3 — the challenge to create the future that will exist in 2020.” He recommends to clients what he calls the 30-30 rule: 30 percent of the people who make strategic decisions should be 30 years old or younger.
  • Katie Day on 20 Dec 10
     
    long article on creativity, innovation, and people who are dedicated to the process of coming up with ideas....
Katie Day

Re the ethics of reproducing whole poems in blog posts -- from A Year of Reading: Poetr... - 0 views

readingyear.blogspot.com/...riday-digital-citizenship.html

copyright poetry poems digital_citizenship blogging

shared by Katie Day on 23 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 23 Jul 12
     
    "The short answer to that question is that no, a person should never publish a poem on one's own blog/site that's not in the public domain unless permission has been secured (and is included in the post). The true answer is the one you've discovered for yourself -- people do it all the time. The grey space between the short answer and the true answer is the digital citizenship that many Poetry Friday bloggers try to teach by example. If we can't get permission for the poem, we post part of it and link to the site where we found it. Or we link to the book it is from, so that our reproduction of the poem is a form of advertising for the author."
Katie Day

Giving children the power to be scientists - 1 views

www.eurekalert.org/...uon-gct030911.php

teaching science software free download research primary_school

shared by Katie Day on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 15 Mar 11
     
    "Children who are taught how to think and act like scientists develop a clearer understanding of the subject, a study has shown. The research project led by The University of Nottingham and The Open University has shown that school children who took the lead in investigating science topics of interest to them gained an understanding of good scientific practice. The study shows that this method of 'personal inquiry' could be used to help children develop the skills needed to weigh up misinformation in the media, understand the impact of science and technology on everyday life and help them to make better personal decisions on issues including diet, health and their own effect on the environment. The three-year project involved providing pupils aged 11 to 14 at Hadden Park High School in Bilborough, Nottingham, and Oakgrove School in Milton Keynes with a new computer toolkit named nQuire, now available as a free download for teachers and schools. Running on both desktop PCs and handheld notebook-style devices, the software is a high-tech twist on the traditional lesson plan - guiding the pupils through devising and planning scientific experiments, collecting and analysing data and discussing the results."  Software is free to download
Katie Day

Battle For Singapore for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G ... - 0 views

itunes.apple.com/...id498223166

singapore history wwii apps gps

shared by Katie Day on 19 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 19 Apr 12
     
    "The National Heritage Board of Singapore is proud to present the "Battle for Singapore" application for self-guided trails. Embark on a journey to experience the Battle for Singapore during World War II, learn more about our local war heroes and relive the painful experience of the Prisoners of War (PoWs) and civilians alike during the Japanese Occupation. Through the incorporation of GPS tracking technology, the "Battle for Singapore" application will offer four different trails and provide a companion guide to 32 different historical World War II sites in Singapore. As you progress through each hotspot, you will discover weapons used by the resistance fighters of Force 136 and get promoted in rank at the completion of each trail. Kindly note that this application will require GPS tracking and internet connection for the downloading of content and the transmission of pictures. Please also note that continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life so remember to turn-off the Location Services function when you have completed each trail."
Sean McHugh

The Overprotected Kid - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...358631

shared by Sean McHugh on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Sandseter began observing and interviewing children on playgrounds in Norway. In 2011, she published her results in a paper called “Children’s Risky Play From an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences.” Children, she concluded, have a sensory need to taste danger and excitement; this doesn’t mean that what they do has to actually be dangerous, only that they feel they are taking a great risk. That scares them, but then they overcome the fear. In the paper, Sandseter identifies six kinds of risky play: (1) Exploring heights, or getting the “bird’s perspective,” as she calls it—“high enough to evoke the sensation of fear.” (2) Handling dangerous tools—using sharp scissors or knives, or heavy hammers that at first seem unmanageable but that kids learn to master. (3) Being near dangerous elements—playing near vast bodies of water, or near a fire, so kids are aware that there is danger nearby. (4) Rough-and-tumble play—wrestling, play-fighting—so kids learn to negotiate aggression and cooperation. (5) Speed—cycling or skiing at a pace that feels too fast. (6) Exploring on one’s own.
  • This last one Sandseter describes as “the most important for the children.” She told me, “When they are left alone and can take full responsibility for their actions, and the consequences of their decisions, it’s a thrilling experience.”
  • the final irony is that our close attention to safety has not in fact made a tremendous difference in the number of accidents children have.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • sometimes it seems as if children don’t get the space to grow up at all; they just become adept at mimicking the habits of adulthood. As Hart’s research shows, children used to gradually take on responsibilities, year by year. They crossed the road, went to the store; eventually some of them got small neighborhood jobs. Their pride was wrapped up in competence and independence, which grew as they tried and mastered activities they hadn’t known how to do the previous year. But these days, middle-class children, at least, skip these milestones. They spend a lot of time in the company of adults, so they can talk and think like them, but they never build up the confidence to be truly independent and self-reliant.
  • Sean McHugh on 01 Apr 14
     
    Sandseter began observing and interviewing children on playgrounds in Norway. In 2011, she published her results in a paper called "Children's Risky Play From an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences." Children, she concluded, have a sensory need to taste danger and excitement; this doesn't mean that what they do has to actually be dangerous, only that they feel they are taking a great risk. That scares them, but then they overcome the fear. In the paper, Sandseter identifies six kinds of risky play: (1) Exploring heights, or getting the "bird's perspective," as she calls it-"high enough to evoke the sensation of fear." (2) Handling dangerous tools-using sharp scissors or knives, or heavy hammers that at first seem unmanageable but that kids learn to master. (3) Being near dangerous elements-playing near vast bodies of water, or near a fire, so kids are aware that there is danger nearby. (4) Rough-and-tumble play-wrestling, play-fighting-so kids learn to negotiate aggression and cooperation. (5) Speed-cycling or skiing at a pace that feels too fast. (6) Exploring on one's own.
Sean McHugh

11 Ways Finland's Education System Shows Us that "Less is More". | Filling My Map - 0 views

fillingmymap.com/...tem-shows-us-that-less-is-more

teaching assessment

shared by Sean McHugh on 26 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Finland follows the basic formula that has been performed by math teachers for centuries: The teachers go over homework, they present a lesson (some of the kids listen and some don’t), and then they assign homework.
  • What if we didn’t force students who know that their talents reside outside of the world of formal academics to take three years of high school classes that they found boring and useless?  What if we allowed them to train in and explore vocations they found fascinating and in which they were gifted?
  • This system allows the Finnish teacher more time to plan and think about each lesson.  It allows them to create great, thought provoking lessons.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Elementary students in Finland often have the SAME teacher for up to SIX YEARS of their education.
  • Finland understands that the ability to teach isn’t something that can be gained from studying. It is usually a gift and passion.  Some have it, some don’t.
  • They do not try to interfere or usurp their authority and decisions.
  • Study after study
  • Imagine all of the exciting things you could do with your students if there wasn’t a giant state test looming over your head every year.  Imagine the freedom you could have if your pay wasn’t connected to your student’s test scores.  Imagine how much more fun and engaging your lessons would be!
  • teachers take their time.  They look deeper into the topic and don’t panic if they are a little behind or don’t cover every topic in the existence of mathematics in a single year.
  • math ONCE a week
  • The students get to actually understand the material before they are forced on to a new topic.
  • Finnish students have the least amount of homework in the world.  They average under half an hour of homework a night.  Finnish students typically do not have outside tutors or lessons either.
  • I won’t give you homework if you work on this while you are in my classroom.”
  • Trust is key
  • Sean McHugh on 26 Apr 15
     
    ...why are Finnish students succeeding and ours are failing?  The difference is not the instruction. Good teaching is good teaching and it can be found in both Finland and in the US.   (The same can be said for bad teaching.)  The difference is less tangible and more fundamental.  Finland truly believes "Less is More."  This national mantra is deeply engrained into the Finnish mindset and is the guiding principal to Finland's educational philosophy.
Katie Day

Space Time Travel - Relativity Visualized - 0 views

www.spacetimetravel.org

science secondary_school physics teaching visualizations education

shared by Katie Day on 05 May 12 - Cached
  • Katie Day on 05 May 12
     
    Summary via the Scout Report (May 2012): "This site was created by two German physicists (Ute Kraus and Corvin Zahn) and it offers a "visual and intuitive approach to the theory of relativity." The site does not offer the basics dealing with the theory of relativity, but rather a novel approach to understanding what an object might look like while moving near the speed of light or what it might be like to "travel to the vicinity of a black hole and take a look-around." As the site notes, "Part of the difficulties in understanding relativity are due to the fact that relativistic effects contradict everyday experience." On the homepage, visitors can learn more in the Content area. Here they can watch remarkable visualizations such as Rolling Wheels, Sights that Einstein Could Not Yet See, and Accelerated Motion. The site also offers brief explanations of each visualization, along with links to additional resources. Finally, the site also includes a gallery of images and an FAQ area. [KMG]"
Katie Day

Nature Outlook : Malaria - 0 views

www.nature.com/...malaria_2012

nature science malaria disease secondary_school global_concerns

shared by Katie Day on 05 May 12 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 05 May 12
     
    Summary via The Scout Report (May 2012): "The journal Nature provides a range of peer-reviewed scientific works on a weekly basis, along with science updates and materials aimed at the general public. This particular feature on malaria is available at no charge to the curious public, and as the homepage asks, "What will it take to finally subdue this deadly disease?" Visitors will find a collection of recent articles in the Outlook area, such as "The Numbers Game" and "Vaccines: The Take Home Lesson." Moving on, the Collection area brings together peer-reviewed pieces on the story behind the efforts to eradicate the disease, along with some nice pieces about how the disease is transmitted. It's easy to see how this collection could be used in a public health course, or in another classroom setting. Finally, the site also includes links to popular articles from Nature, along with other open access materials. [KMG]"
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