Worth Reading...

Sharing some articles I enjoyed reviewing this week.

1. The Needle Moves Away From Schools Some More (Richardson)- what messages do we want to send home to parents

In our “Welcome Back!” letters this fall, what if we hammered home the idea that command of facts and figures and knowledge and test scores tell us very little any more as to whether or not their children have the literacies and dispositions to flourish in this “new” world of access? 

2.  Post-Its... Real World Motivators- what types of questions are being considered in the classroom; those that are Googleable or Not Googleable?

Student write boundless questions about what they wanted to know about iconography and religious art. Those students that don’t usually contribute were happy to fill many post-its, as the list were anonyms. Students were motivated by the post-its…it became a competition as to how many questions could be asked. Spelling, punctuation was overlooked for quality concepts in questions.

3. Education: The Past, The Present and The Future #2 (White)- discusses the new pillars of education and existing in a world where expertise is abundant

and in Pillar 3, Assessment, the Pillar is actually Doing–using what you know and what you can learn from the Internet, your network and local and global resources to mix, remix, create content and do something that adds value to our world.

4.  A Public School Teacher and Student Discuss Democratic Education (Cooperative Catalyst):

The days of childhood to explore and learn about the wonder of the world and to see how wonderfully you could fit into it are replaced with school, where learning about the world becomes a burden and where you’re told where you fit into the world. When you’re fifteen, you’re legally stuck in the 9th grade while at the same age, Ben Franklin, for example, was already apprenticing for his brother’s newspaper. The brightest kids of our nation, the would-be Benjamin Franklins, are having their potential strangled by the state, who is setting their goals for them.

5. How to Use Video Game Tactics in the Classroom (Andersen)