Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning
Two random events that converged for me today: A tweet from Mike Caulfield that reminded me that the people who don’t know are often the ones who believe otherwise: "Uh, did you realize GASLIGHT was a FILM from the 40s lol" What do we call this Dunning-Kruger-like pattern where people think the fact they've recently […]
Read More “Certainty’s a Drug”I was a visitor in a school today where it was time to transition from a paper and pencil warm up to a computer assisted practice session. The class was moving well. The students were alternating between partner talk and whole class instruction. The teacher was attentive to the needs of the room. But when […]
Read More An Easy Win for Educational IT PeopleI’ve been quiet in this space these last several months. I’m still finding my space and place as a consultant and library person. It’s a great transition – but there are many moments of my work of late that aren’t bloggable, and I’ve remembered that it’s easier, often, to keep quiet than to thread the […]
Read More Losing My PigeonI was helping a teammate at the library today think through how to help a student. The student, a middle schooler, was doing a report on illness and needed some sources for their “research report.” The student rejected my teammate’s help out of hand because the student needed a “print source,” and my teammate pointed […]
Read More “Print” Sources in the 21st CenturyI’m speaking tomorrow with my wife’s college course for preservice teachers on the teaching of writing. I’m the featured expert on “digital writing.” Whatever that is. Over the last week, the students in the course have been jotting some questions and thoughts down on a Google doc in preparation for the session. I basically asked […]
Read More What’s This Digital Writing Stuff, Anyway?I’m working this weekend with the Compose Our World project, and we’re digging in hard to the curricular units that we proposed we’d develop in that work. As we do so, we’re struggling with notions of when to allow for choice and when to constrain it. Constraints aren’t evil – they can be quite helpful […]
Read More On Constraints, Road Maps, and Driving DirectionsEarlier this evening, I had a conversation with a colleague who is thinking hard, very hard, about how to teach and perpetuate SEL ((That’s Social Emotional Learning, of course. )) principles in classrooms in deep and meaningful ways for children. We ended up talking because I pushed a bit to ask that, as she creates resources […]
Read More On Agency, and #whyIwriteThe other day, I pulled up to a fast-food joint, trying to grab a quick bite. ((Okay. It was a Sonic. I really, really like breakfast burritos, and I can get one there pretty much any hour of the day. Eggs and bacon is the “fast food” I eat these days.)) I ordered the value […]
Read More “The System Won’t Let Me”The number of people who believe that education is simply pouring facts into children, whether those children like it or not, is astounding to me. We won’t serve children better by buying better funnels for those facts, or better shovels for those facts, or better containers for those facts once we get them into the […]
Read More Stop Filling PailsEarlier this week, I had the honor of giving a talk in the CSU Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life speaker series. With my time, shared below, I talked about some of our work around professional learning and agency, as well as some of my thinking on the essential actions/literacies/habits that should be in our schools. […]
Read More Let’s Hack School: A Recent Talk at CSU