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Thinking about thinking to think about learning . The PRACTICAL purposes of learning or ACTIVE outcomes of learning are worth noticing

Useful thinking about thinking resouece

Thinking about unit / lesson planning.... I have a book about Understanding by Design if anyone is interested in seeing it.

Although written about English language learners in a middle school environment, this article has a lot of practical ideas about teaching morphology (word forms) that could apply to our students as well. Plus, on the first page there are quotes from Jebediah Springfield and George W. Bush.

Yo, Jeremy! This requires a login. What gives?

I enjoyed how he started, but he lost me when he used Newton under an apple tree and Moses in the wilderness to point out integrated learning. It may have been an homage to myth, but it missed the mark. Also, he conflates the oral tradition with Aristotelian poetics. In general, his interpretation of myth and narrative denies any acknowledge of postmodernity and post-structuralism. It is like he never left his cave after reading Levi-Strauss. I think you could learn more about 21st C. metaphors of cyberspace by skimming a Cory Doctorow novel.

No worries, Kris. I did enjoy his metaphors, but I think he took a bit of license with his appropriation of Native American oral stories. I get heated about this because it is what I have dedicated my life to, especially narrative theory. I have spent hours upon days with people fighting for their narratives - poststructural/postcolonial movement - and who believe a narrative, and all it tropes or figures of speech, unbinds truth, which allows for not just malleability but multiplicity. Cory Doctorow is the new William Gibson or Ursula Le Guin, so might put him in the same league as Philip K. Dick, but all in all, he is a cyberpunk writer cultivating a community neocyberpunks. His literary website is craphound.com, and he is the co-founder of the tech blog boingboing. He has help redefine narrative fiction in the cyber age.

Oop! *has helped

Last year about this time in an AAS/NZAS meeting an article about 10 short assessments was looked at. The team then created some suggested applications of these. This article has extended that list and has some good ideas for wrapping up the term. PS If anyone wants a copy of the concrete ideas from last year, let me know.

Interesting discussion about the evolution of the concept of a fact. I think we all probably claim the authority of a 'fact' sometimes, so it's relevant to understand how they are changing. The psychology behind wanting to believe facts is fascinating.

This has some interesting perspectives, but it does little to address belief. The people interviewed seem frustrated by belief, so they take a negative stance. I would like to know more about the experiment where participants had a more open-minded response to climate change after writing an essay about a time they fought for something they believe in. In that case, belief played a constructive role because of their lateral entry. There is a greater thinking level to this issue.

Another interesting avenue my mind took while reading this was toward Owen Barfield's early 20th century investigation of history in English words. He shows how thinking develops through language. It is a good read if you can get past some of the antiquated language he uses to categorize his thoughts. It is titled, History in English Words. I have a copy if anyone wants to check it out.

What do you think of this website which is to help with speed reading? Is it relevant for second language learners? You can adjust the speed and the chunking but the chunking is random, not natural chunks that might occur. When I tried it I could really see how if I didn't use my 'inner voice' I could read so much faster. Of course our students tend to be vocalizing, not only using their inner voice and maybe this is necessary for word recognition?

I think your right about not using the inner voice helping with speed. What about the odd chunking though? It caused me one or two problems and one thing I like about speed reading is that it helps students to see more natural chunks like noun phrases, verbs and infinitives and things like that. It might be a good resource we can recommend for SDL.

This is Ron Ritchhart's website that has some good links to readings about Making Thinking Visible.

This TED talk is about the question formation technique which we experimented with on ADS/NZ this year.

This makes it a bit more clear. You did this as an orientation activity, right? I think we should do it earlier and more often.

This blog has some important ideas about close reading of a text.

A nice little essay by a university professor about what he sees as the goals of teaching.

This post adds to my thinking about how we can facilitate classroom discussions appropriately.

What do you think of these three pillars of Web literacy? I wonder if this year we can do even better at highlighting the importance of these in IL. The section about the use of Diigo is interesting. We exploited last year as an information sharing site but perhaps we need to approach it more as a personal library???

I only got 6/10. How about you?

Me too, Leon

Common wisdom holds that we learn best from our mistakes. But researchers at Michigan State University have published a new study that suggests something more is needed: We must be conscious of our mistakes to reap the benefits of improved performance. "Those with traumatic brain injury or other brain injuries that result in impairments in self-awareness suggest that your level of awareness of your own symptoms, for example, actually correlates with the probability that you'll recover from them," he says. "But there is still quite a bit we need to learn about conscious awareness and the role it plays in performance and judgment before we can say for certain." Hmmm. what does this mean in relation to the errors our students make?

Still thinking about our daytime programs and our expectations of out of class work. Are we killing the desire and ability to learn?

This article is aimed at parents of young children, but there are some interesting ideas for educators about putting grades into perspective.

This is the blog of the Understanding by Design guy, Grant Wiggins.

Interesting TED Talk about how we don't need a teacher, but we need interest and collaboration to learn.