Skip to main content

Home/ Writing Across the Curriculum/ Group items tagged ambiguity

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Keith Hamon

Every Child Is A Scientist | Wired Science | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...le-kids-are-natural-scientists

Jonah Lehrer learning ambiguity research problem-based learning problem solving Education 2.0 critical thinking

shared by Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The lesson of the research is that even little kids react to ambiguity in a systematic and specific fashion. Their mode of playing is really a form of learning, a way of figuring out how the world works. While kids in the unambiguous condition engaged in just as much play as kids in the ambiguous condition, their play was just play. It wasn’t designed to decipher the causal mechanisms of the toy.
    • Keith Hamon
      Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11
       
      The drive for the "correct answer" undermines the role of ambiguity in promoting creativity and critical thinking in students.
  • According to the psychologists, the different reactions were caused by the act of instruction. When students are given explicit instructions, when they are told what they need to know, they become less likely to explore on their own. Curiosity is a fragile thing.
    • Keith Hamon
      Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11
       
      In our drive to "cover the material," we too often destroy the very curiosity of our students that we so much want to encourage. And public ed has done such a fine job of destroying curiosity with its battery of standardized tests (one correct answer only), that even if we college profs try, we have to work against the learned behaviors and attitudes of our students, esp. our best students who have thoroughly learned & mastered the rote learning game. Free writing can help us create a space in our classes for experimentation and risk-taking, for creativity and critical thinking.
  • Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11
     
    Pablo Picasso once declared: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Well, something similar can be said about scientists. According to a new study in Cognition led by Claire Cook at MIT, every child is a natural scientist. The problem is how to remain a scientist once we grow up.
Keith Hamon

The Necessity of Funding Failure | Wired Science | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...e-necessity-of-funding-failure

Jonah Lehrer risk ambiguity failure Education 2.0 education critical thinking

shared by Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The moral is that these scientists weren’t producing better research because they were smarter or more creative or had more money. Instead, they had more success because they were more willing to fail.
    • Keith Hamon
      Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11
       
      These scientists both failed and succeeded at a higher rate than the other group because they were given space to play in. How do we create those spaces in our classrooms? I think games and free, non-graded writing help.
  • Keith Hamon on 05 Oct 11
     
    A few years ago, a team of economists at MIT and UCSD analyzed the data from NIH and HHMI funded labs to see which funding strategy was more effective. … The data was clear: In every biomedical field, the risky HHMI grants were generating the most important, innovative and influential research.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20▼ items per page