Skip to main content

Home/ Vientiane College Cyberspace Learning Community/ Group items tagged comments

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Kristina (Kris) Peachey (AAS/NZAS)

The challenge of responding to off-the-mark comments | Granted, and... - 1 views

  • It’s a crucial moment in teaching: how do you respond to an unhelpful remark in a way that 1) dignifies the attempt while 2) making sure that no one leaves thinking that the remark is true or useful?
  • Here is a famous Saturday Night Live skit, with Jerry Seinfeld as a HS history teacher, that painfully demonstrates the challenge and a less than exemplary response.
  • I immediately made a mental note: always, always dignify the question – even if it means slyly evading the particulars; return the conversation to a certain plane without making a questioner or commenter feel dumb; control your facial expressions to always look appreciative of the contribution.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • one can put the challenge back to the questioner: Well, a minute ago we said EQs are open-ended and thought-provoking. Do you think your example meets those criteria?
  • As I used to say to my English students: no answer is certain or true, but some answers are better than others – and our job this year is to figure out how that is so.
  •  
    This post adds to my thinking about how we can facilitate classroom discussions appropriately.
Kristina (Kris) Peachey (AAS/NZAS)

Better seeing what we don't see as we teach | Granted, and... - 0 views

  •  
    Some practical ideas about finding our 'blind spots' in the classroom. The comment section at the bottom is interesting too, especially the discussion of teacher/student responsibility...
Kristina (Kris) Peachey (AAS/NZAS)

Educating for Intellectual Character - 2 views

  • Intellectual virtues aim at knowledge and understanding. And they express themselves in intellectual actions like listening, interpreting, analyzing, reflecting, judging, and evaluating. Therefore, educating for intellectual virtues naturally lends itself to an active and critical engagement with academic content and skills.
  • n his recent book Character Compass, Boston University professor Scott Seider tells the story of three successful Boston-area charter schools each with a strong but relatively unique commitment to character education. To capture some of the differences between these character education programs, Seider employs a distinction between moral character, civic character, and “performance character.” Moral character can be thought of as the character of a good neighbor. It includes qualities like trustworthiness, kindness, and compassion. Civic character is the character of a good citizen, including traits like tolerance, respect, and community-mindedness.
  •  
    "Again, intellectual virtues are the character traits required for good thinking and learning. They presuppose no controversial moral commitments. " Yes. This. An important distinction to keep in mind. If we come in to the classroom teaching moral or even civic character directly, then we rightly run the risk of being accused of educational imperialism. But, if the moral and civic values we may hold have any real worth, then the inherent value of them should be revealed through the application of intellectually virtuous learning and thinking actions.
  •  
    and if moral/ethical positions are reached (or deconstructed) either in the classroom, or outside, through the sound application of intellectual actions, they have validity. Anything does not go, not all opinions, values etc... are valid unless we can expose the process by which they were reached and allow that process to be scrutinized.
  •  
    I know this is just a bit of redundancy, but this suggests that not all values are created equal, and they are not. The must have good reason. Good might be defined imperialistically as Jeremy stated, in that a unilateral agency imposes them, but a reciprocal communicative action may prevail, especially within the ideal or virtuous framed by intellectual character. I have been accussed of esoteric comments, but I think this warrants a visit from Habermas: "We can only exercise tolerance towards other people's beliefs if we reject them for subjectively good reasons. We do not need to be tolerant if we are indifferent to other opinions and attitudes anyway or even appreciate the value of such 'otherness'. The expectation of tolerance assumes that we can endure a form of ongoing non-concurrence at the level of social interaction, while we accept the persistence of mutually exclusive validity claims at the cognitive level of existentially relevant beliefs." In other words, Habermas believes you can't just say, "I don't care" or "This doesn't matter" or "This doesn't happen here" and claim tolerance. You must engage to be tolerant, and you must engage in a way that presents your ideas or beliefs in contrast to the other, and that contrast must be relatable, or what Habermas means by "relevant" is communicable in the logical sense that rational ideas are modular, and they may be fitted into intellectual chains of rational arguments and "ongoing non-concurrence" in social interactions. Through this lens, intellectual virtues occupy toleration/tolerance because intellectual virtues "naturally" lend themselves or, as Jeremy stated, display the inherent value of the ideas through engagement and action which must be communicable and reciprocal, i.e. function as tolerant.
Kristina (Kris) Peachey (AAS/NZAS)

Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century - 4 views

  •  
    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.
  • ...2 more comments...
  •  
    Oop! *acknowledgment
  •  
    Hi Troy- Good to meet you here. I haven't reread the article recently but wonder if we approach it in different ways. This reminds me of our conversation about Parker Palmer's writings (in the sense of our different approaches). I found the three metaphors useful in thinking about how/where I find places to develop professionally spurred further reflection. I have no idea who Cory Doctorow is nor can I comment on Aristotelian poetics, postmodernity or post-structuralism. However, I like the images of a campfire, a wateringhole, and a cave. Perhaps someone else can engage with you on the level of deeper discussion ...
  •  
    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
Kristina (Kris) Peachey (AAS/NZAS)

Education Week Teacher: Boost Teacher Learning With Video Clubs - 0 views

  • I really thought about my husband's question—and realized my colleagues and I were missing out on opportunities to improve our practice together. I would love the chance to visit my colleagues' classrooms, to observe firsthand how they managed stations or how they taught writing. But how, when school schedules make it nearly impossible?
  • We decided to ask each participating teacher to record two lessons: one that he or she was proud of and wanted to share with the group and one that he or she felt needed improvement. We created a recording sheet to focus the group and guide our discussions. Using the sheet, participants took notes on events they noticed while watching the video, key comments made during our discussion, and takeaways for their own classroom.
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20 items per page