Do schools today kill creativity? part deux
I should have waited a bit before blogging my earlier entry, until I’d seen this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (a fellow Brit I’d never heard of). Makes a similar point to Michael Rosen but with a lot more power and in less than half the time (20 minutes). (See Ken’s Wikipedia entry and [...]
The end of school as we know it? Or will it be just more of the same?
This caught my eye: Knowsley Council in Merseyside, has abolished the use of the word school to describe secondary education in the borough. It is taking the dramatic step of closing all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009. As part of a £150m government-backed rebuilding programme, they will reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, [...]
Phonics or… creativity?
I just re-discovered teachers.tv, a British website (and actual TV programme?) that hosts a host of information about teachers and teaching in British schools. Obviously most of the content is going to be of more interest to people who actually live and teach in Britain, than to people who don’t (like me), but I enjoyed [...]
Map of future forces affecting education
Via Information Aesthetics (a mesmerizing blog, a visual feast), comes this link to an interesting map at Knowledgeworks Foundation & The Institute for the Future Powered by ScribeFire.
Learning styles? Rubbish!
Harold Jarche shares his scepticism of the learning-styles theory, and I must say I tend to agree. Simple logistics is one objection I have. It sounds great, benevolent and taking into account students’ individual differences and needs, but read this and see if you still agree with it. The list he offers, tho, has much [...]
"Attendance" and "instructional objectives" connection
Last year I blogged about taking attendance in Japanese university classes, particularly about the tendency by so many people in higher education in Japan to use attendance as a measure of achievement, or at least as a factor when calculating final grades. I’ve been thinking about it again more recently, after reading Mager’s Preparing Instructional [...]
"They just want to be taught"
In a previous, long-winded post, I blathered rather incoherently about teacher-led classes versus student-led or some form of negotiated curriculum. I have one language class where for part of the time, students work in pairs or threes, each group with their own CD player, textbook and text CDs. They practise a combination of listen-and-repeat exercises, [...]
Cede control to students? Revisited
Dan asks how I’d respond to this solution: Cede instructional control to the student. Let her direct her own learning. Curriculum and student desire will align. I teach university students, not high school; uni students are less easy to convince that they absolutely need what I’m teaching; they are IN (the uni) – the major [...]
How aggregate displays change user behavior
Here’s something that I thought might have valuable implications for teaching, particularly teaching using web2.0 tools (and particularly after reading Dan’s post about being engaging). Aggregate displays are everywhere, from the book ratings at Amazon.com to the most-emailed articles at the New York Times to the number of diggs at Digg.com. They’re a primary element [...]
Bloggy thinking?
Harold Jarche points out that blogs are good for conversations, but not so good for longer, more sustained thought, and his own entry is a good example. Homework is only one activity that lacks evidence to support its continuance. Subject-based curriculum, age-based cohorts and reliance on unsound models like Bloom’s Taxonomy to measure learning outcomes [...]
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