Group items tagged

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

Well worth a read and visit to the blog that this one is responding to.

I feel like an idiot because I did not understand much of this. I understand that people misapprehend the Thinking Routines as algorithms that simulate thinking instead of visual representations of the internal process of thinking. Despite the author's insistence that he did support his argument, I merely read quotes from Making Thinking Visible without syllogism, dialectics, or exegesis. I just did not see how the case was made other than believe me because I read the book, and the authors said so.

Hi Troy- I think the point was the Webb didn't read the book and hasn't represented VT accurately.

I thought this article was interesting in relation to the idea of applying a text to yourself. I don't think our students on the whole have the problem of personalizing too much when they read (at the expense of understanding the writer's point) but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

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.

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.

Is it a strategy? A skill? A tactic? Are they interchangable? There is an interesting discussion beginning after the blog too.

Yikes!

This article reminds me of Issac Asimov's famous essay about the Eureka Phenomenon. Check it out: http://newviewoptions.com/The-Eureka-Phenomenon-by-Isaac-Asimov.pdf

Thanks, Troy. I hadn't read it before. I was always doubtful of Eureka moments but classifying them as unnoticed thinking makes sense to me.

I finally got around to reading this, and even though it is short, it outlines what we do internally very well. In AES this last year, we constantly modeled the series of questions they mentioned, especially the consciousness, craftmanship, and flexibility questions. Students often want us to provide them with the answers to these questions, but do not readily realize that the question is the important part. If you can experience conflict, which I tend to label crisis because of the cognitive or cultural gap, by calling it into question, then you can see both the origin and yourself in it. I know this is simplistic, but the courage to question plays a major role in validating the crisis and your stake in it.

integrating citizenship and 'global education' into a school.

This is a good reminder of why we teach. This is exactly what I wrote my Master's thesis on because education has lost it's inherent citizenship component. It seems as though politicians and policy makers think education only exists as a means of market value, or the market feeds off the exchange of knowledge for capital, thereby generating cultural capital, which can be commodified and further traded. I think people forget that the citizen arrived in the nation state only after the French Revolution and the restructuring of Merchantilism, which could be called proto-neoliberalism. The people revolted to create a center in which the citizen held certain entitlements to life and community built on education that challenged the state through reason, or what Immanuel Kant called, "Sapere Aude", that is, the courage to use your own reason. However, this center has been manipulated by education systems to systemize reason without courage, reason with exchange value, and reason for irrational privilege based on ethnocentrism (the creators of the world system) and technocracy (the maintainers of the world system). Finally, to answer your question, I do think this is an appropriate role for our college. I think education must question the possibility of education, and where it fits in the world we choose to live in. We must support our students and ourselves in the continuous investigation of our citizenship; therefore, our education.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future.Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?'The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

An interesting paper summarising a conference held in England in response to the 2011 riots. It emphasises the role of education, specifically citizenship education in creating a more cohesive society.

I just read a quote from H.G Wells- "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." (The Outline of History, 1920). The quote is at the top of a paper dealing with the role of education in 'mending broken Britain' and how education can contribute to a more cohesive society. The paper was a summary of a national conference held in response to the anarchic riots of 2011 in England. The conference concluded that educational contributory factors leading to the riots were a lack of moral education, deficiency in the creative curriculum and an insufficient priority given to citizenship education. A sense of alienation and disenfranchisement amongst the youth of disadvantaged communities and a more general feeling that their voice is not being heard were also cited as major factors. The overarching conclusion of 'Mending Broken Britain- Educations' response' is clear- that schools play a central role in shaping our youth and in creating moral, constructive, rational, responsible and active citizens who feel included in our diverse and interdependent society- and that if education fails in this fundamental role, we can expect more (and worse) riots and social breakdown in the future. Prof. Gus John gves an interesting analysis of how our youth have reached this stage and cites 'the grotesque influence of the culture of the street' which has displaced the respect for self and for others and he asks the question: 'How? How have we failed to guide and assist our children in standing for something and in letting that something reflect the basic human values of respect, fairness, justice, interdependence, compassion and integrity?' The conference recognised that schools are not merely the means of transferring knowledge and content, to be absorbed and regurgitated for assessment purposes, but are the key vehicles for the development of values, skills and attitudes.

Forests and trees

I have the book mentioned in the article (Making Learning Whole) if anyone is interested in reading it. Despite my hatred of baseball, the book captured my attention and fully milks the sports metaphor in a useful way.

I grabbed this after reading the transcript of Donald's post. It seems as though a few Wyatt Earps 'ave rustled inna Dodge City and ain't no lie which kern 'scape their skinwagons.

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

I saw May had this on her laptop and everything typed would be read out. What uses could this have for our students?