If you’re not a reader of Barry Bachenheimer’s blog, A Plethora of Technology, you are missing out. Forceful writing, healthy skepticism, an umpire’s eye for the strike zone - and one hell of a digital storyteller. It doesn’t get much better.
I’m going to embed the three movies he made here to give you the incentive to get to his site and subscribe. These give “Did You Know” more than a run for its money, in my book.
1840: “The school year is 180 days. How many of those days are used for instruction?”
1620: “How many tests does the average student take in the years in school K-12? Are they a true measure of what they know and can do?”
42: “How many readers and audience members does your average student write for in their years in K-12 school? (and what can be done to make that number bigger?)”
Funny how Patrick Higgins was our one degree of separation, but it took me this long to clue in. I’d seen 42 in a professional development wiki Patrick made months ago, but was too caught up in life to follow it to its source.
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6 Comments
Clay,
I’ve been reading Barry for a while now, and as good fortune would have it, he lives and works only about 40 miles from me, so we see each other at least once monthly at meetings.
One of the things I truly admire about his writing and his work is how squarely focused he is on the teaching and learning, regardless of the methodology. His universal skepticism allows neither side to escape his lens.
I am glad you found him.
Hey, where did #42 go? (I’m getting a “this video no longer available” message.)
Poor Clay, all I ever do in comments is whine about technological difficulties. Will try to be better in the New Year.
You know how when your car is acting up, and you take it to the shop, and as soon as you pull into the parking lot, your car acts as if it’s just rolled off the showroom floor, never had any trouble of any kind, can’t imagine what you’re on about?
#42 showed up as soon as I whined about it (see previous comment).
Thought-provoking stuff. When my students are working on their college essays, one of the challenges of enlisting multiple readers is that the students take everything every single reader says to heart, and lose sight of what it was they were trying to do in the first place. But I can also see that in some ideal world I would figure out new ways to help my students write for the unknown (and in many ways unknowable) audience of admissions folks. Hmmmm….
I enjoyed all three videos, but the first one really speaks to me both as a teacher and mother of two boys (11 and 13). My biggest complaint at school has always been the waste of time before the holidays and pointless movies. I try to fill up the time before the holidays with math investigations. My students were really having trouble with the concept of metric weight. They took turns using a digital scale and digital camera to weigh and record results. We’ll be able to work more on that in the new year. I’ll have to check out Barry’s blog. Thanks for pointing it out and the video links as well.
Thanks for sharing these, Clay.
With appreciation,
Miguel
Clay, thanks for pointing me to Barry’s Blog. I enjoyed 180–definitely gotta make the most of the uncluttered time you have!
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