Archives for the ‘school reform’ Category

How Squeamish Schools and Parents Let P0rn Teach the Young

Watching Cindy Gallop’s “Make Love, Not P0rn”  TED Talk (see bottom of post),  I winced at some jackasses in the audience laughing at the speaker’s message. She wasn’t trying to be funny, and for good reason: that our youths are learning about sexuality from bad online p0rn is no laughing matter. Gallop uses the 5-minute [...]

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On Student Genius, How Not to Grade a Wiki, and Making the World a Stage

Scot Aldred asks how I assessed projects like the Broken World Wiki textbook, and I tell him I haven’t the foggiest idea. It was too long ago. More to the point, he notes that since I said in my Australia keynote that whatever I did at that time led to burnout, the better question is, [...]

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Students with Eyes, Let Them See: 27-Year-Old Chinese Blogs His Way to Fame

An example worth sharing to students of a kid who figured out the power of simple blogging — combined, of course, with quality thinking and writing — and blogged his way to stardom by age 27. In China. From the excellent China Digital Times, with emphasis added: Han Han was named as the ‘Person of [...]

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How Modern People Read

Nothing like seeing a friend from three decades ago, when you were a new and very green adult in the world, to stir up the mind. John and I also talked a bit about Gilgamesh today. Me talking about Gilgamesh is nothing new. I do that with anybody and everybody who’ll listen. But talking about [...]

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On the Art of Being Boring

I’ll have more to say soon about how I’ve been trying to teach the wisdom in this “napkin philosopher” piece in my classroom all year. It’s going to get center stage on my classroom door window first day back to school. Maybe even tattooed on students’ hands. But right now, it’s off to the airport [...]

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Barbarians with Laptops: An Unreasonable Fear?

I expect to be soundly whipped for this post, but in this age of “failure being free,” I don’t mind. I hope to learn from teachers who can offer specific examples, or research, that give evidence that digital learning is superior to traditional. (Or who can contest my framing of the issue, and improve on [...]

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Videos: Mental Poverty, Collaboration, “Recession Skills 101″

Watch the two videos below — I even took notes of highlights to prod the attention-deficient — and then show them to your students. 1. Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University, on Collaboration and what I’ve been calling Social Intelligence in the Workplace. Key concepts: Making co-workers look good, not bad; “plussing” your partners; wanting [...]

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On Using Technology Without Understanding It

This editorial from our high school student newspaper is a must-read for its criticism of the school-wide technology integration initiative. It’s a must-read for other reasons too — and other readers — but read it first, and we’ll get to that very different party afterward. The first thing I did when I read this was [...]

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Godin Sees It Too: “Recession Skills 101″?

It’s in the air — and in this economy, it’s no surprise. I felt it here, noticed Paul Krugman touching it here, and now Seth Godin here: [W]hen we ask you to look people in the eye, be creative, brainstorm, be generous, find a way to satisfy an angry customer, work with a bully, learn [...]

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Please Visit My Second Blog at Change.Org. It’s Up!

They pulled a fast one on me, for a very good reason, and launched the new blogs – including the education blog I’m partnering with – on Change.org. I really, really, really beg you to come. (And I’m going to be begging some of you to guest-blog from time to time, to bridge the ed-geek [...]

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