April 2012
111 posts
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Real Clever Science: 366 Days of Words in Science →
scienceon:
Blog: 366inscience.tumblr.com
Fields Discussed: General Science, Nomenclature.
Extra Information: I post one scientific term every day. Each post contains a photograph, a definition, an etymology, and a short personal exposition. It’s a little bit idiosyncratic, but I…
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Opting Out of NJ ASK →
It’s still a tiny minority but a small group of parents — themselves educators — are keeping their kids home during the state’s assessment tests
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Reilly said it was a growing sense that enough was enough that led her and her husband — a Franklin Lakes English teacher — to keep their 13-year-old son at home for this week’s NJ Assessment of Skills and...
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Brain Power: Five Ways Neuroscience Will Change... →
Neuroscience isn’t just for scientists anymore. The way experts study how children’s brains develop over time is influencing classrooms and education overall, and here are the five ways education will begin to change because of it.
Read more…
by Doug Thompson for Our Kids.
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Why Floundering Is Good: Trying to figure... →
Call it the “learning paradox”: the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later. Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/25/why-floundering-is-good/#ixzz1tBjaXaGt
By Annie Murphy Paul | @anniemurphypaul | April 25, 2012
for Time
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Curiosity and Care: the Core Necessity for... →
We humans love to learn. We are endlessly curious and eager gatherers of new knowledge. But we do need motivation to learn new things, and that motivation comes from our enlivening experiences and our ability to care. Most people have no reason to get excited or care about vernal pools and their ecology or conservation, because vernal pools mean nothing to them. Even if they stumbled upon a...
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Why Aren't There More Female Scientists,... →
When I got my BS in Chem. Bio, there was a 1:6 ratio, women:men at my school. I got to be the only woman in calculus and was told many times that I was only there for the quota. You got assertive or you got pushed to the back. I was a shy girl who was lucky enough to find my voice and speak up, thanks to some great, supportive mentors. Even to get to the point of making it to an engineering and...
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“In our springtime, every day has its hidden growth in the mind,
As it has in...”
– George Eliot
World-Shaker: The No Pie Rule for Dropbox Services →
I use Dropbox and Google services, and it can feel like a minefield with it comes to privacy and intellectual property. Here are some thoughtful tips.
world-shaker:
This post on Google Drive’s Terms of Service caused a bit of a stir yesterday, as well as some thoughtful replies. The best reply (in my mind) came from tiffanyb. I’ve quoted her response below because it was that good:
These two...
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“People will forget what you said; People will forget what you did.
But people...”
– Maya Angelou
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“We all need someone who understands.”
– Magda Gerber
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The Key to Your Child's Heart (7 Ways It Works) →
Write this word on your hand. It’s a magical way to connect with a child of any age, can ease tears and tantrums and even prevent them. It’s a simple but surprisingly challenging thing to do, particularly tough to remember in the heat the moment…
Acknowledge.
Before you tell your child that it’s time to leave the park, or remind him that the really cool truck he’s examining has to stay at...
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10 Reasons Why Innovation Isn't the Answer →
I have come to the conclusion that creativity and innovation work only when I am not deliberately trying to be either. In my own experience, innovation happens because of true relevance and relevance happens because of meaning. If I am consumed by meaning, I will find creative ways to get there.
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Killing Creativity: When I try hard to be creative, I fail to be creative. However, when I...
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ASTEROID THE 'SIZE OF A MINIVAN' EXPLODED OVER... →
The source of loud “booms” accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: it was a meteor. A big one.
It is thought to have been a small asteroid that slammed into the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometers per second (33,500 mph), turning into a fireball, delivering an energy of 3.8 kilotons of TNT as it...
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Should teachers and students be Facebook friends? →
Using social media with students could have a lot of great applications and uses for the classroom, but it’s still a new thing and needs to be implemented carefully and thoughtfully.
Should students and teachers ever be friends on Facebook? School districts across the country, including the nation’s largest, are weighing that question as they seek to balance the risks of...
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Teaching A Play Based Curriculum →
Every day, I strive to make sure we have some way for kids to build stuff. Usually that means some sort of blocks. I also want there to be a sensory exploration going on, an art project, a couple fine motor activities, something over which to puzzle, and at least a few conversation starters. I try to make sure there’s a place to learn with one’s whole body, a way to get messy, and...
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Is free play ‘teaching’ ? →
Conversations with friends, after I have taken my workshops often go along the lines of ‘If children are allowed to explore on their own, how do you teach them?’ Another common question is ‘what is the learning intention behind your outdoor workshops?’and ‘what do you tell your children that they should be learning from your workshops?’
The only response I can give is that the children learn...
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“Creativity is the act of making obvious things that aren’t yet obvious.”
– LukeW | UX London: Long Nose of Innovation (via slantback)
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Myth, busted: You only use 10 percent of brain →
Good news for all those who ever had a teacher or a parent say “If you would just apply yourself you could learn anything! You’re only using 10 percent of your brain!”
All those people were wrong. If we did use only 10 percent of our brains we’d be close to dead, according to Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, who maintains...
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What if Schools Weren't Schools Anymore? →
Everybody has big ideas about how to fix education in the United States, but it seems like the reform conversation eventually comes back to one thing: How can we make schools better so we can churn out a more highly educated workforce that will ensure our global economic dominance continues? No one wants the American economy to fail, but what if the point of school isn’t cranking out degreed...
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Study Weighs Benefits of Organizing Recess:... →
Especially in traditional schools, organizing games and fun activities during recess seems a no-brainer. But it may also have benefits during classroom time.
The most significant finding shows students who participate in a Playworks-structured recess transition from that to schoolwork more quickly than students in traditional recess, said Susanne James-Burdumy, an associate director of research...
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Does our approach to teaching math fail even the... →
We need to rethink how we teach math and give kids the problem solving skills they really need.
Indeed, traditional math curriculum is to teach discrete algorithms, a set of rules that elicit a correct answer, like how to do long division, say, or how to use the Pythagorean theorem. Then students “learn” the material by doing a large quantity of similar problems. The result, says Rusczyk, is...
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Greening School Facilities →
A lot of ideas for greening schools.
Our students learn what they live. If they spend all their school days in sterile classrooms, prison-like buildings and lifeless playgrounds, they will not become creative and critical thinkers, and they will not learn that human beings are a part of the beautiful web of life. Why should schools, by their very design, be allowed to kill the wonderful spirit...
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Attention Alert: A Study on Distraction Reveals... →
Ahem. I might experience some of this type of distraction when I try to work…
First, these students were only able to focus and stay on task for an average of three minutes at a time and nearly all of their distractions came from technology. [By the way, other researchers have found similar attention spans with computer programmers and medical students.] The major culprit: their smartphone...
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Seven Brain Based Learning Principles →
A good summary and some great resources…
From Elementary Matters
I’m teaching a workshop on Brain Based Learning this week, and I wanted to review my materials and ideas. You get to take part in my review.
The more I learn about how the brain works, the more fascinated I am!
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Life lessons in open-air classrooms →
The aim is to show school-aged children how easy it is to grow and harvest food, as well as teaching them how to recycle waste.
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The transformation is nothing short of amazing, with the once bare, sandy parcel of land now brimming with 13 herb and vegetable garden beds set up through the centre, an urban orchard comprising several fruit trees dotted around the garden border, a chicken...
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Playground builder keeping it natural →
Adam Bienenstock takes child’s play very seriously.
He thinks younger generations are headed down a dark road of inactivity, obesity and isolation, thanks to too much time in front of TVs, computer screens and video game consoles and not enough time outside exploring nature.
Bienenstock, owner of Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds, has made it his mission to bring the fun of nature to parks,...
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Hastings School Playground Design: An outdoor... →
Outdoor classroom ideas…
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“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
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The Onion: More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With... →
Just too funny, really…
Youthful Tendency Disorder (YTD), a poorly understood neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 20 million U.S. children, is characterized by a variety of senseless, unproductive physical and mental exercises, often lasting hours at a time. In the thrall of YTD, sufferers run, jump, climb, twirl, shout, dance, do cartwheels, and enter unreal, unexplainable...
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Five Free Screen Recording Apps and Services →
Screen Recording is a very handy tool to have. You can use it to create presentations, help sessions, and more. I’ve used them to create review sessions for students, as well as presentation videos and even live, remote presentations. Here are five, free screen recording apps and services.
Thanks to revolutionizeed
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Spreading Success: The Expanded Learning and... →
A new initiative backed by several of the nation’s leading foundations holds great promise for applying such knowledge. It’s theExpanded Learning and Afterschool Project, and its backers include the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Noyce Foundation and the Open Society Foundations. Its purpose is to gather and share research and best...
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“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”
– Mark Twain (via lifeofaneducationmajor)
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Do Students Really Have Different Learning Styles? →
Learning styles—the notion that each student has a particular mode by which he or she learns best, whether it’s visual, auditory or some other sense—is enormously popular. It’s also been thoroughly debunked.
The scientific research on learning styles is “so weak and unconvincing,” concluded a group of distinguished psychologists in a 2008 review, that it is not possible “to justify...
