Worth Reading...

A few posts to read while on the plane, at the beach or sitting in front of the fire this holiday season.


1. How a Teen Knew She Was Ready to Teach Computer Coding Skills (Sung)-  Ming Horn was debating her sense of readiness earlier this year when she set out on an ambitious plan to teach code to teens at the Future Light Orphanage in Cambodia. Horn, then a junior at Berkeley High School in California, had never taught a classroom of students, nor did she have any fluency in Khmer. What she did have, however, was her experience as a learner.

“I don’t know how computer science classes are taught, but I know how I learn — project-based, experimental, asking people in the community,” she told an audience this week at the Big Ideas Fest hosted by ISKME. “My time was spent writing pitches, emailing people, developing the curriculum and learning on the fly.” Pulling off this project “was not about your coding skills, but really about your organization.”

2. How Deprogramming Kids From How To Do School could Improve Learning (Schwartz)- shares the story of how one teacher changed his class.  The article reminds of others teachers who have come to a similar realization that by a certain point students have mastered the art of playing the game of school and that there is a need to create an environment where learning, empowerment, creativity, and even failure are rewarded and not compliance.

“It wasn’t perfect and it didn’t turn my kids into all physics majors, but for the kids who were on the border, it made a difference,” Holman said. Discussing their learning with them, switching grading policies and assigning more inquiry-based, hands on lessons all helped Holman’s students feel he trusted and respected them. And they rose to the challenge. “I think the kids were just waiting to be let loose and to be treated like adults,” Holman said.

3. We Need Schools to be Different (McLeod)- the impact the digital revolution / information age has on the way schools are structured and what is expected of students- points to the fact that schools cannot exist in a bubble isolated / immune from larger societal shifts

Essentially, we now have the ability to learn about whatever we want, from whomever we want, whenever and wherever we want, and we also can contribute to this learning environment for the benefit of others. The possibilities for learning and teaching in this information space are both amazing and nearly limitless, but right now this learning often is disconnected from our formal education institutions.

4. The Gift of Education (Kristof)- a poignant reminder of what education means from a global perspective

A few days ago, we saw the news of the horrific Pakistani Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar. The Taliban attacks schools because it understands that education corrodes extremism; I wish we would absorb that lesson as well. In his first presidential campaign, President Obama spoke of starting a global education fund, but he seems to have forgotten the idea. I wish he would revive it!

5. 10-year-old tells school board: I love to read..I love to do math.  But I do not love PARCC.  Why?  Because it stinks (Strauss)- standardized testing from the perspective of a elementary school student

6. Learning From What Doesn't Work: The Power of Embracing a Prototyping Mindset (Carroll)- what is gained by having students, tinker, experiment, fail, rebuild...

7. The Random Events That Sparked 8 of the World's Biggest Startups (Fast Company)- Light-bulb moments don’t happen on command, and brainstorming sessions rarely produce extraordinary results. More often it’s a random remark, event, or memory that sends an entrepreneur down the rabbit hole of innovation. From Airbnbto Yelp, here are the surprising origin stories to eight of today’s hottest companies.

Worth Reading

Passing along a few interesting posts from the past couple of weeks

1. A Miami School Goes From Blank Canvas to Mural-Covered (Allen)- large art installation project to change the appearance of a school to better reflect changes in the neighborhood

In a school courtyard, an artist who goes by the name Leza One paused in his work on a wall that has a floodlight in the center. On the wall, he painted a young woman who appears to be illuminated by the floodlight. "I play with the light actually. My mural is about darkness and light. So, the light here is a metaphor that represents hope," he said.

2. Twenty-Five District Worth Visiting (Vander Ark)- review of district and schools across the country that are supporting innovative educational programs

Leading a public school district is difficult and complicated work but done well, there is no other job where you can change how a community thinks about itself, its children, and its future. Following are 25 districts that are changing the trajectory by working on blended, personalized and competency-based learning. Most are making career preparation--including communications, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration--a priority. They are big and small, urban and rural, east and west--representative of the American education challenge.

3. How Dissecting A Pencil Can Ignite Curiosity and Wonderment (Schwartz)- developing creativity, inventive thinking, and problem-solving skills through establishing thinking routines in the classroom

One big emphasis in the project so far has been on looking deeply at even the simplest of objects. In a thinking routine called “parts, purpose, complexity” students are asked to carefully observe the individual parts that make up an object. When each part has been thoroughly explored they start discussing and wondering about the purpose of each part. Then they think about how even a simple object can be complicated when broken down into its component parts.

4. Self-Directed Learning: Lessons From the Maker Movement (Flores)- the impact and potential of the maker movement in education

For students who learn through the making of things, the reward shifts from the successful demonstration of learned facts (i.e., tests, essays, lab reports) to the joy and earned wisdom experienced through exploration and discovery. Growing evidence indicates that this process provides students with a deeper understanding of the way things work, as well as a stronger sense of purpose and autonomy. It builds confidence, fosters creativity, and sparks a deep interest in learning.

5. How Game Theory Helped Improve New York City's High School Application Process (Tullis)- 
Students list their favorite schools, in order of preference (they can now list up to 12). The algorithm allows students to “propose” to their favorite school, which accepts or rejects the proposal. In the case of rejection, the algorithm looks to make a match with a student’s second-choice school, and so on. Like the brides and grooms of Professors Gale and Shapley, students and schools connect only tentatively until the very end of the process.

6. Kid Inventors Come Up With Creative Environmental Solutions (Pilon)- solutions that came out of the Global Children's Designathon; an event took place on Nov. 15 in five cities around the world, and encouraged children to spend the day designing solutions to improve food, waste, or mobility issues in their hometowns.

The De-Waster 5000 is a helicopter that scoops plastic out of landfills and the ocean then uses a flamethrower to melt the trash into beds for homeless people. It’s not a real product. But it is a creative prototype that was thought up by a 10-year-old as part of the Global Childrens’ Designathon.

7. Teachers Take Student Data to the Micro Level In One NYC School (Collette)- examines how one school approaches data analysis

Worth Reading

Passing along a few highlights from the past couple of weeks....


1. 1,021 Reasons Why This Family Built A Computer to Play Minecraft (New Tech City)- dad builds a computer with his two daughters so they can play Minecraft.

Keefe got to spend time with his daughters (and got his other computer back) and they got all the Minecraft they could ever want. The girls also got a useful lesson in building hardware in case they want to put together another computer for the next big video game that comes along.

2. Investigating Authentic Questions (Vincent)- discusses the need to create "driving questions" in the classroom as well as the need to provide space for students to develop their own investigative questions.

Albert Einstein is quoted, “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.".... Remember, the idea is that your students work harder than you. Admittedly, it is a lot of work to put in place contracts, establish procedures, check in with students, model search techniques, and manage resources. While you may not be busy spoon feeding your students, providing the conditions in which they can learn through investigation is a big job.

3. Center For Innovation Wows Board With Design Thinking and Game-Based Learning (Hellman)- updates from Scarsdale's Center for Innovation.  Teachers experiment with Design Thinking  as well as middle school teachers who use games and simulations to extend student thinking.

Games give players permission to take risks that would not be permitted in a traditional academic setting, and inspire students to create, share, mix, modify, curate, critique, and comment on content to which they might otherwise be indifferent. Game-based learning includes group work, interaction and a high degree of student engagement. 

4. Teachers "Showing Up" As Students (Richardson/Stommel)- developing trust through teachers  learning next to their students.

 work extremely hard to keep my own expectations from being the fuel that makes everything go. My only real expectation as a teacher in a learning environment is that students don’t look to me for approval but take full ownership of their own learning. And I work to develop trust by showing up as a student myself. 

5. The Hundred Face Challenge- examining the different ways students went about solving a problem

6. On Hope (Hunt)- making a case for providing an environment where hope, the chance to think, dream big is what is important and that it is OK for plans to fail.

So what of all the talk of what might happen, of mistakes that could be made, of errors and missteps and failures imagined?  It might be, just might be, that when we give folks opportunity to do well, to dream big, to step forward and offer something big, bigger than we knew we could, to dream hard for something better and more beautiful than we knew we could be, well, maybe we can.

7. RISD, Brown Students Employ Design To Help Health-Care Workers Fight Ebola (Ziner)- students and faculty joined together to design a suit to for health-care workers.  The task was launched by USAID in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense to help frontline health-care workers “provide better care and stop the spread of Ebola.” The challenge seeks “ingenious,” bold and brave ideas.

Technology as an either or proposition

Recently I have been part of several meeting where participants tried to paint the integration of technology in schools/classrooms as an either or proposition.  The use of technology was seen as an agent to end to face-to-face interactions and furthermore, that important personal connections would dissipate as access became widespread.

I never understood this caustic view of technology.  I'm not sure if this view stems from fear of change or results from a lack of  understanding on how technology and physical exchanges can coexist in the same learning environment.  Leveraging technology in classrooms and even outside of schools by students does not signal the end of interpersonal skills.  Instead, for example, physical collaboration in the classroom and sharing ideas via an online learning network both hold a place of importance as one constructs knowledge.  The more important and productive discussion should center on how both the physical and virtual worlds can serve as tools students organically access to help construct meaning.

While listening to the either or proposition I thought about NCTE's Framework for 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment (benchmarks provided below).  What it means to be literate has been reshaped by the ways in which technology is applied by a community of global users to communicate, collaborate, create and develop.  If we want students to embody NCTE's definition of literacy (personally, I cannot see why not) than the use of technology needs to be embraced.  The conversation should no longer focus on what is lost or at worst doomsday predictions in regards to technology.  The conversation should encourage educators and students to think about what is possible when access and the ability to connect is readily available to all.

Context for NCTE’s 21st Century Literacies Framework

The NCTE definition of 21st century literacies makes it clear that the continued evolution of curriculum, assessment, and teaching practice itself is necessary:

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the 21st century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to

• Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;
• Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information;
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts;
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.

Worth Reading...

Sharing a few personal favorites from the past few weeks.

1. Why The Best Teachers Don't Give Tests (Kohn)- discusses why testing is flawed and shares more effective ways to gather valuable information about student progress

The most impressive classrooms and curricula are designed to help the teacher know as much as possible about how students are making sense of things. When kids are engaged in meaningful, active learning -- for example, designing extended, interdisciplinary projects -- teachers who watch and listen as those projects are being planned and carried out have access to, and actively interpret, a continuous stream of information about what each student is able to do and where he or she requires help. It would be superfluous to give students a test after the learning is done. We might even say that the more a teacher is inclined to use a test to gauge student progress, the more that tells us something is wrong -- perhaps with the extent of the teacher's informal and informed observation, perhaps with the quality of the tasks, perhaps with the whole model of learning. If, for example, the teacher favors direct instruction, he or she probably won't have much idea what's going on in the students' minds. That will lead naturally to the conclusion that a test is "necessary" to gauge how they're doing.

2. Testing As A Silo/Solo Act:  We Can Do Much Better (Reilly)- points out the disconnect between how we learn and create knowledge compared to the solitary act of testing

Our myopic attention to testing children individually renders them less college and career ready. Our methods are antiquated. Our attention on the individual is at best, romantic. In 2014, we isolate each child and remove the full power of connectivity even as we make the child sit at a computer/tablet in order to read/view the test and record his/her answers. 

Could we be anymore 19th century like?

3. Does Child-Like Thinking Produce Innovative Design (Peterson)- eighty of the fifth through eighth grade students from Nalanda Public School in Mumbai (part of the Clinton Global Initiative), India and sixty experienced design professionals from Seoul, Hong Kong and Copenhagen were brought together to create innovative concepts. The students were asked to design backpacks for students living in Copenhagen, Denmark and their designs were then compared with that of the designers, who had been asked to design a wide range of consumer products.

Judging from the energy and enthusiasm the Mumbai students displayed during their two-hour long design session - children thrive on design challenges. They love to learn new things and translate them into ideas of their own. Their sketches exuded passion and joy, something that can only help them in the future at becoming the very best that they can be in their chosen fields of endeavor.

4. Educators and Entrepreneurs: Get Thee to a Classroom and Observe Students (Hernandez)-  Alexis Wiggins, a veteran high school teacher, shadowed students for two days and recently wrote about her experiences on her father Grant Wiggins’blog. Her headlines: Being a high school student is “exhausting” and “you feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.” The post was read over 800,000 times since it was first published on October 10th and went viral among educators.

5. Eight New Attributes of Modern Educational Leaders (Richardson)- qualities educational leaders show embody/exhibit in the modern age

6. How Students Lead the Learning Experience at Democratic Schools (Vangelova)- insight into how a democratic school such as the Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland functions

The most significant responsibility at the school is that “you are responsible for what you make of your life,” McCaig says. To graduate, students write and defend a thesis that they have “prepared themselves to become effective adults in the larger community.”

Worth Reading

1. Why the Kids Who Most Need Arts Education Are Not Getting It (Strauss)- what are we losing at as the intensity over standardized testing increases.  How can the arts serve as a important vehicle for students to access complex materials as well as leverage as tool for communicating knowledge.  Excerpts from Michael Sokolove's new book Drama High.  

The anecdotal evidence of how arts education benefits children is every bit as powerful as the stories of how participation in scholastic sports “saves” certain kids. When I was researching a book on an elite high school theater program in the blue-collar town of Levittown, Pa., I met a student who was taking special education courses – remedial math and English, life skills – because high doses of chemotherapy she received to treat childhood leukemia were thought to have damaged her ability to retain and sort large batches of information. But she was able to memorize long scripts – and win statewide awards for her acting — because the narrative through line of plays came clear to her. Theater animated her as nothing else ever had.

2. Paper versus Laptop (Quidwai)- the article points towards a larger outcome of building the capacity with students to independently select the proper tool for the task at hand

The authors correctly point out that the more deeply information is processed, the greater the encoding benefits.  In today's world where we are making a commitment to prepare students for the future where they will have to act as problem solvers, collaborators, critical thinkers, communicators and innovators, it becomes even more essential for them to be competent enough to process and encode information so that they can not only store it in their short term memory also be able to utilize strategies to create connections in their brain that advance information to their long term memory.  

3. A Walk Through the Funky Stretch of the High Line (WNYC)- other than the High Line being one of my favorite places to walk in the city, the piece captures all that has to be considered during the design process.  I would share this with students to discuss the concept of human-centered design.

“It has really been designed with a sense of constant connection with the city,” he said. “It’s a new model for a park. It’s a park about engagement, not separation; removal from the urban environment, but connection to it.”

4. Think Challenge Aims to Solve Big Problems- Students were asked to use the design thinking process to come up with ways to tackle issues during a 24 Think Big challenge in Boise, Idaho.

“We think we have creative ideas to share,” Simonds said. “High school students tend to be a little more open minded and idea filled.”

4. Teachers: A Day In The Life- Teachers around the world begin their day being parents, partners, energetically charged, ignoring how the coming day will be... The stories intersect in this narrative are equal and differ, with criticism, with reflection, with optimism. Looking for an ideal each day, renewing that commitment each morning. And the collective dream brings us a world in which education is a right and everyone has equal opportunities to participate in quality education.

5. Kids Take Charge (Sethi)- Kiran Bir Sethi shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life's most valuable lesson: "I can." Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents.

Worth Reading

Sharing a few intriguing posts from the past couple of weeks.

1. Teacher Reflects On The Perfect Storm For Learning- A high school class, encouraged by a STEM contest, turned an idea to help the community into a prototype

For our project, the convergence of the right components on a focused objective created the potential for a "perfect storm" of learning to take place: curiosity among the students, a potentially daunting data gathering and number crunching component, and the use of math, science, and technology.

2.  John Dewey on the True Purpose of Education and How to Harness the Power of Our Natural Curiosity (Popova)- Dewey distills the purpose and ideals of education

While it is not the business of education to prove every statement made, any more than to teach every possible item of information, it is its business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly grounded, and to ingrain into the individual’s working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves. No matter how much an individual knows as a matter of hearsay and information, if he has not attitudes and habits of this sort, he is not intellectually educated. He lacks the rudiments of mental discipline. And since these habits are not a gift of nature (no matter how strong the aptitude for acquiring them); since, moreover, the casual circumstances of the natural and social environment are not enough to compel their acquisition, the main office of education is to supply conditions that make for their cultivation. The formation of these habits is the Training of Mind.

3. Why Don't We Truly Embrace Failure (Couros)- the need to fail and have conversations around moments of failure

The part of this process  which is imperative is resiliency and grit.  Resiliency, in this case, being the ability to come back after a defeat or unsuccessful attempt, and grit meaning a “resolve or strength of character.”  These are characteristics that are important in the innovative process as we need to continuously develop new and better ways to serve our students.

4. Maker Movement Reinvents Education (Stewart)- how giving students the chance to create and make reshapes the work we do with kids

“I finally decided I could take on much bigger and more ambitious projects if I got one for myself,” he says. So he sold his laptop on eBay, added to those proceeds all of the birthday money and allowance he had saved over the years, and took out a loan from the Bank of Dad to buy the cheapest 3-D printer he could find online. By the end of seventh grade, he had paid his father back entirely—all from the sales of his customized iPhone cases and little cone toys that he’d designed to flip around like benign butterfly knives. Once his debt was paid, he could finally begin the more ambitious project he’d had in mind: “the zero point energy field manipulator,” or gravity gun, from the video game Half-Life 2. He designed and built a full-size model of it—3 feet long and 2 feet high—“which was pretty difficult,” he explains, “because the actual platform of the machine is 10 inches by 10 inches,” so he had to get creative.

5. The Art and Science of Engagement (Blakley)- Johanna Blakley examines the best ways to understand how documentaries affect our lives. Her talk focuses on the need to balance the filmmaker's creative vision with a nuanced understanding of audience as key to measuring the true impact of media.  Another resource to consider or even share with students in examining what it means to compose.

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In honor of the Captain's last game at the stadium here are some favorite moments from the past 20 years

“This kid is not going to college. He’s going to Cooperstown.”

Where Have You Gone Derek Jeter (Henninger)- Jeter's public life was exemplary. Was he the exception?

Jeter's Iconic Flip

Jeter's Jump Throw

Dive Into the Stands Against Boston




Mr. November