Guest post by Harold Jarche We are in the midst of a ‘nano-bio-info-techno-cogno’ revolution. We are entering the network era, and change is coming fast. That may sound like a cliché, but not when you consider the last major shifts we went through and the time our institutions had to adapt. When markets came about,
How Can Educators Prepare for the Networked Era? Read More »
When a teacher assigns homework, she makes some big assumptions about students’ home lives. Do they have the requisite supplies? A quiet place to study? Supportive parents or guardians who will motivate them to work? Knowledgable guardians who can assist with challenging problems? But even these questions have significant assumptions underlying them. Do students have
Homework is a Social Justice Issue Read More »
“The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.” ~ bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress Digital pedagogy is not equivalent to teachers using digital tools. Rather, digital pedagogy demands that we think critically about our tools, and demands that we reflect actively upon our own practice. So, digital pedagogy means not just drinking
Learning is Not a Mechanism Read More »
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein I spend much of my free time with 3 year-old twins, and the questions that spill out of them are awe-inspiring. The sheer volume, the pivots they make in reasoning, the deepening of complexity all leave me
The pioneers of the American west moved into a wilderness they didn’t understand, building their homes with new materials and wrangling a landscape full of promise and peril. From their efforts sprang the infrastructure to create communities and towns and cities. They laid the groundwork for the great migration west so that others needn’t be
The Benefits of Coding for the Whole Learner Read More »
Duolingo for Schools. Each week, Educating Modern Learners picks one interesting current event – whether it’s news about education, technology, politics, business, science, or culture – and helps put it in context for school leaders, explaining why the news matters and how it might affect teaching and learning (in the short or in the long
What You Should Know This Week Read More »
A few reflections on the end of the year… When Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon first told me about their plans to launch a new publication that would focus on a different narrative about the future of schools, I was excited. There is such a huge need to tell a different story. I think (particularly
Telling a Different Story about Education Read More »
The song says that this is the most wonderful time of the year. But for teachers, it can be exhausting. The kids are wound up because of the approaching holidays, complete with potential trips, gifts, visits, and events (or, even worse, if they have none of those things to look forward to). There is the
Encouraging Self Care Read More »
I am a college professor, but I was raised in a family of teachers. My father taught English for many years at my DC Public High School. My mother is a nursery school teacher. My wife has taught English for speakers of other languages and social studies to children of all ages. While my primary
Beyond Academic Freedom and Dignity Read More »
Inspired by the title of Lee Skallerup Bessette’s article last week, Listening and Hearing I’m a faculty developer, so my role often entails conducting assessments of other people’s teaching. This comes sometimes in the form of entering a class and having a confidential discussion with students to get their feedback on a course, and reporting
Are We Really Listening to Our Students Read More »
It’s Computer Science Education Week, and thanks to a major industry-funded initiative, many schools will be participating in an “Hour of Code.” It’s nice to see a growing interest in computer science, of course, as many K-12 schools have been resistant to view computers as more than word-processing or test-taking devices. But I want to
Will an “Hour of Code” Change School? Read More »
The talk about “disruption” in education has been building for quite some time now, but as with much of the rhetoric that surrounds school change and “reform,” the bar for what constitutes real disruption continues to be set relatively low. We’re told that “Massively Open Online Courses” (MOOCs) will disrupt the entire higher education system.
Everything You Think is “Disruptive” Isn’t Read More »
What if we focused less on scalable pedagogy and more on sustainable pedagogy? When someone proposes a new idea in education, that proposal is often followed by the question, “But can you do it at scale?” While “at scale” can mean a variety of things, in this context, it usually means doing it big —
Sustainable Pedagogy Read More »
“Personalization” is certainly one of the most popular and powerful buzzwords in education technology. A lot of hope and hype has been pinned on it. But it took a bit of a hit last week when the National Education Policy Center released a report on “personalized instruction.” Written by UCLA professor Noel Enyedy, the full
Moving Beyond “Personalized Instruction” Read More »
Let’s take a quick quiz of some of the things you probably “learned” in high school: 1. What’s the circumference of a circle with the radius of 4? 2. What Scottish scientist discovered penicillin in 1928? 3. What geologic era are we in right now? 4. In the sentence “The swimming pool is closed today,”
What’s Worth Learning in School? Read More »
