Wasatch

"All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten * Mitchel Resnick MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA 02139 USA +1 617 253 9783 mres@media.mit.edu ABSTRACT This paper argues that the "kindergarten approach to learning" - characterized by a spiraling cycle of Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect, and back to Imagine - is ideally suited to the needs of the 21 st century, helping learners develop the creative-thinking skills that are critical to success and satisfaction in today's society. The paper discusses strategies for designing new technologies that encourage and support kindergarten-style learning, building on the success of traditional kindergarten materials and activities, but extending to learners of all ages, helping them continue to develop as creative thinkers. "

"Having a tiring end to the year after dealing with some tough personal events in my life, I have decided to take some time and enjoy things outside work. Although people get on my case about blogging, I find writing to be soothing and a release for my mind that seems to be all over the place on most days. As I sat on a plane heading to The Avett Brothers concert, I thought about the next year (year in teacher language is usually August until June in many countries) and what are some of the things that I am going to focus on that will make next year great. Hopefully some of these thoughts will help others as well."

The 4th of July: a great time to think about independence. No, not yours or mine; the students' independence. What curricular plan do you have for giving students increasing intellectual autonomy next year? Rate This In my previous post on transfer, I discussed what it is and isn't. Here, I draw from the research and highlight the key teacher 'take-aways' in terms of what the research suggests for practice. Most of the quotes come from Chapter 3 in How People Learn. Other sources are referenced at the end."

"Daniel H. Pink, author of "To Sell is Human" and "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" talks about the microeconomic fallacy that more pay begets more work and argues that humans are truly motivated by Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose, and why most of us spend a large portion of our day engaging in "non-sales selling" as we persuade, convince, and influence others to give up something in exchange for what we have. http://www.danpink.com/ http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc"

"The new building blocks for learning in a complex world This important resource introduces a framework for 21st Century learning that maps out the skills needed to survive and thrive in a complex and connected world. 21st Century content includes the basic core subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic-but also emphasizes global awareness, financial/economic literacy, and health issues. The skills fall into three categories: learning and innovations skills; digital literacy skills; and life and career skills. This book is filled with vignettes, international examples, and classroom samples that help illustrate the framework and provide an exciting view of twenty-first century teaching and learning. Explores the three main categories of 21st Century Skills: learning and innovations skills; digital literacy skills; and life and career skills Addresses timely issues such as the rapid advance of technology and increased economic competition Based on a framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) The book contains a DVD with video clips of classroom teaching. For more information on the book visit www.21stcenturyskillsbook.com."

"Knowledge often comes to us via transcribed content or artifacts, which is derived from other's knowledge. These are facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles (Clark & Chopeta, 2004). Thus, artifacts are used in the learning process for creating knowledge, while in turn, knowledge creates new artifacts. Content There are five primary types of content (artifacts of knowledge): facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles (Clark, Mayer, 2007): "

I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenge we face as educators when well-intentioned learners make incorrect, inscrutable, thoughtless, or otherwise off-the-mark comments. 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? Summer is a great time to think about the challenge of developing new routines and habits in class, and this is a vital issue that gets precious little attention in training and staff development. 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. Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that we are always correct in our judgment about participant remarks. Sometimes a seemingly dumb comment turns out to be quite insightful. Nor am I talking about merely inchoate or poorly-worded contributions. That is a separate teaching challenge: how to unpack or invite others to unpack a potentially-useful but poorly articulated idea. No, I am talking about those comments that are just clunkers in some way; seemingly dead-end offerings that tempt us to drop our jaws or make some snarky remark back. My favorite example of the challenge and how to meet it comes from watching my old mentor Ted Sizer in action in front of 360 educators in Louisville 25 years ago. We had travelled as the staff of the Coalition of Essential Schools from Providence to Louisville to pitch the emerging Coalition reform effort locally. Ted gave a rousing speech about the need to transform the American high school. After a long round of applause, Ted took questions. The first questioner asked, and I quote: "Mr Sizer, what do you think about these girls and their skimpy halter tops in school?" (You have to also imagine the voice: very good-ol'-boy). Without missing a beat or making a face, Ted said "Deco

Ramsey Musallam, a high school chemistry teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area, has been creatively using digital tools in his classroom for several years as a way to drive students to deeper inquiry. In a recent TED talk, Musallam says that a teacher's strongest tool - the force that draws students deeper into learning - is piquing students' curiosity. In his classroom, Musallam follows three rules: curiosity comes first, embrace the mess, and reflect and revise.

"I want to suggest that we've made professional development learning way too complicated. Partly because as leaders we want to be helpful, partly because teachers have little experience in owning their own learning and partly because we don't trust them."

"In the process of writing and finalizing the chapter on "Visual Notetaking" for my forthcoming eBook, "Mapping Media to the Common Core," I found Giulia Forsythe's blog page "Visual Practice" and her WONDERFUL presentation a year ago for the 2012 University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy. Her presentation slides are available on SlideShare, and the entire 68 minute, recorded presentation is on Vimeo. I highly recommend you watch this entire presentation if you're interested (as you should be) in learning more about visual notes."

"For all of the books (thousands) written on leadership, individuals (millions) who have participated in leadership seminars and dollars (billions) invested in leadership development, too many leadership experts still fail to distinguish between the practice of leadership and the exercise of bureaucratic power. "

"Once I was alerted to the concept of "hard fun" I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. But they have to be the right things matched to the individual and to the culture of the times. These rapidly changing times challenge educators to find areas of work that are hard in the right way: they must connect with the kids and also with the areas of knowledge, skills and (don't let us forget) ethic adults will need for the future world. "

Explains how the book is self-published with on-demand printing. Mentions that the seminar class taught by Thomas "proves that it can work."

The authors answer ten questions about the book. Not much that was not already in the book, but a bit more about implementation. Good news: It only takes 12 hours to transform your classroom into one that follows their principles, and it will be your best class of the semester!

An ethnography of World of Warcraft players. The first chapter is a free download.

Fascinating site about MMORPG psychology and statistics. I was particularly interested in the comments about how MMORPG are specifically engineered to encourage addictive behaviors.

Almost 20 years ago, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, a teacher in a small town in Iowa tried a daring classroom experiment. She decided to treat children with blue eyes as superior to children with brown eyes. Frontline explores what those children learned about discrimination and how it still affects them today.

quick video