Worth Reading....

Passing along a few interesting reads.

1. The Confidence Gap (Kay and Shipman)- Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. The article states why and what to do about it.

A growing body of evidence shows just how devastating this lack of confidence can be. Success, it turns out, correlates just as closely with confidence as it does with competence. No wonder that women, despite all our progress, are still woefully underrepresented at the highest levels. All of that is the bad news. The good news is that with work, confidence can be acquired. Which means that the confidence gap, in turn, can be closed.

2. How Failure In the Classroom Is More Instructive Than Success (Sobel)- giving students permission to fail while maintaining a high standard in the classroom

There is a popular meme called "Famous Failures," featuring quotations on overcoming rejection, failure, and loss from Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, the Beatles, Oprah, and Albert Einstein. The message is familiar: Abundant success lies on the other end of failure. Could guiding our students through their own failures inspire the next groundbreaking physicist, talk-show star, or iPhone inventor? Possible … but not likely. Even if the results end up being a little less grandiose, I think they are just as important. Learning to fail could help our students become more resilient, self-aware, innovative, and compassionate. Not bad for a bunch of "failures."

3. My First Shot At Perplexity- crafting truly meaningful math activities for primary elementary students

I found myself on Google Earth, using the measuring tool to see how far away my house is from my school in a straight line (I was bored…). It dawned on me that I could measure anything from the perimeter of Fenway Park, to the radius of Madison Square Garden. What if the students were shown a picture of something they knew with lines and no numbers. Could they ask the right questions for us to figure out the area of their school’s gym? How about the handball courts in the back of the school? Why would we need to do this?

4. Inside Google X: The New Bell Labs (WNYC)- look at the conditions Google is creating to spur invention

• How Google X Employees Deal With Failure

5. Empathy In Education (Gray)- occasioning empathy in our classrooms

It was a very grim day, when I began to notice the profound lack of empathy in education, particularly in public education. That story can be found here: Educational trauma is a term I coined to capture the lack of empathy I was noticing. It is the inadvertent perpetration and perpetuation of victimization by educational systems against consumers and producers of the system.

6. Made In The Future- explanation of how things will be made

Made in the Future is an effort to capture our musings about what a not-so-distant tomorrow might look like. Our tools—faster, cheaper, and more out of control than ever—have triggered seismic shifts in how we design, manufacture, and distribute. And that has us asking lots of questions: What new tools or technologies will we create? How will they change the way we behave and learn? How will they shape our world?

7. How To Do One thing Really Well (Renwick)- a principal pushes the envelope in his school

While the two of us were becoming more learners than teachers, we also wanted to move our students to become teachers for each other. Our learning environment needed more balance. We kicked off our new week by showing students how to create tutorials using Screencast-o-matic, a free web-based tool.

Worth Reading....

Passing along some personal favorites from the past few weeks.


1. The Missing Link In School Reform (Leanna)- the article makes a case for investing social capital and challenges to long held belief that improving human (teacher) capital is the way to increase student performance.

Social capital, by comparison, is not a characteristic of the individual teacher but instead resides in the relationships among teachers. In response to the question “Why are some teachers better than others?” a human capital perspective would answer that some teachers are just better trained, more gifted, or more motivated. A social capital perspective would answer the same question by looking not just at what a teacher knows, but also where she gets that knowledge. If she has a problem with a particular student, where does the teacher go for information and advice? Who does she use to sound out her own ideas or assumptions about teaching? Who does she confide in about the gaps in her understanding of her subject knowledge?

2. Why Teaching Mindfulness Benefits Students’ Learning (Barseghian)- another reminder about the need to focus on the development of non-cognitive skills.

Mindfulness has the potential to be a very useful component in prevention and treatment efforts because of its effectiveness in reducing emotional distress and promoting emotional balance, improving attention, and contributing to motivated learning.

3. In Pursuit of Passion... not Carrots or Sticks (Moran)-fostering passion-based opportunities in the classroom.  The post also touches on the concept of student motivation and in particular, the connection between motivation and following one's passion.

It’s the sweet spot that comes with how humanity has learned best for millennia, through play, storytelling, movement, creation, performance, authentic problem-solving, and purposeful projects. We are incorporating what we’ve learned from these and other “test-bed” settings and innovation zones across all of our district’s schools with the idea that transforming, not reforming, contemporary learning environments creates pathways for our learners that are vastly different from those of 20th century factory schools. In doing so, we move from a Gutenberg teaching model of write, print, read, listen, and recall to a post-Gutenberg learning model of search, connect, communicate, and make. 

4. When Complexity Is Free (Friedman)- more stories about the "new" industrial revolution and how concepts such as crowdsourcing and 3d printing radically alter the way business is conducted.

In the old days, explained Iorio, when G.E. wanted to build a jet engine part, a designer would have to design the product, then G.E. would have to build the machine tools to make a prototype of that part, which could take up to a year, and then it would manufacture the part and test it, with each test iteration taking a few months. The whole process, said Iorio, often took “two years from when you first had the idea for some of our complex components.”

Today, said Iorio, engineers using three-dimensional, computer-aided design software now design the part on a computer screen. Then they transmit it to a 3-D printer, which is filled with a fine metal powder and a laser device that literally builds or “prints,” the piece out of the metal powder before your eyes, to the exact specifications. Then, you immediately test it — four, five, six times in a day — and when it is just right you have your new part. To be sure, some complex parts require more time, but this is the future. That’s what she means by complexity is free.

5. Creativity Rules from Master Builder, Master Designer Thomas Heatherwick (McIntosh)- interview with London bus and Olympic flame designer, Thomas Heatherwick. 

 "Making is a way to do practical analysis. Anyone can relate to models. But it's not a tool for others, it's to show yourself, to make sure you're not fooling yourself." (Kids who 'prototype' one or two versions of their work aren't prototyping at all. Kids whose early prototypes are graded, assessed too early by their peers or teachers, don't have a chance to show themselves whether their ideas stand up. They need more than a few goes at getting things right, and several of those attempts have to be made for the purposes of self-assessment above all.)

6. A Trip Into the Field: Collecting Stories of Design, Learning and Place (Kahl)- importance of field trips and getting students out of the classroom or rather their normal environment.

We make excuses to go on field trips because what we take from "the field" is immeasurably valuable to us as people and designers alike. It's so important that it grounds each of our projects. We go in the field during the discovery phase to live with our schools during an "insight week" and on "inspiration trips" to places and spaces we admire. Occasionally, we will reserve time to debrief or get "heads down" work done at the museum, cafe, or new co-working space. We find that these immersive journeys illuminate more insights than desk research alone... they are energizing and inspiring for every one.