May 2013
1 post
“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no...”
– Richard Feynman, born on May 11, 1918, on the role of scientific culture in modern society – timeless, remarkably timely read.
Pair with how ignorance drives science. (via explore-blog)
Wisdom.
April 2013
1 post
“One century after the invention of the telephone, we still know the difference...”
– Digital Dualism and Lived Experience: Everyday Ontology Produces Everyday Ethics » Cyborgology (via thisistheverge)
March 2013
8 posts
4 tags
Working memory: consider the limits
Working memory is very limited but highly flexible. A good approaching using it is to identify a small number of key elements to “work” with. For example, we need to know the subject, object, and verb for a sentence (three things), or the cause and the effect for an explanation (two things). Success depends on defining small numbers of central elements in any experience, rather than...
“The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex...”
– (via nola-diary)
1 tag
1 tag
When the teaching brain meets the learning brain
Inevitably the teacher’s response is an effort to move towards a connected social system. The response is about reaching synchrony of action and thought. This is similar to how the learning brain works, but the most significant difference is that teaching, unlike learning, cannot be carried out independently. Teaching requires human interaction and it requires a feedback loop between teacher and...
February 2013
3 posts
“In the present age the five great degenerations seem to totally dominate life on...”
– Prescient words of warning from the 13th Dalai Lama, 1932. (via explore-blog)
Steven Pinker would disagree with His Holiness. In his book, “The Better Angels of our Nature — Why Violence Has Decreased,” Pinker argues persuasively that humans may be living in the most peaceful and...
“1. Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to express what’s on...”
– Howard Gardner’s seminal Theory of Multiple Intelligences, originally published in 1983, which revolutionized psychology and education by offering a more dimensional conception of intelligence than the narrow measures traditional standardized tests had long applied. (via explore-blog)
And...
Respect. Women. Full Stop.
csessums:
January 2013
10 posts
3 tags
Learning outcomes are corrosive →
Four compelling arguments against the use of learning outcomes in higher education.
thelearningbrain:
So say you command a ship in Star Fleet and you shoot photon torpedoes in a battle and they don’t hit the other ship, aren’t they still governed by Newton’s laws of physics? Don’t they just keep beaming through space until they finally hit something and most likely destroy it? Why do we never hear about this kind of collateral damage?
The easy answer is that it’s called...
“When public schools are judged by how much art and music they have, by how many...”
– Mark Naison, Fordham professor and social justice activist (via socialismartnature)
“My colleague from Hybrid Pedagogy, Jesse Stommel recently had a discussion on...”
– Lee Bessette, Sustainable Teaching Fail
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing/sustainable-teaching-fail#ixzz2H71h6K7R
Inside Higher Ed
“To anthropologists of the future, however, the gym boom may look as much like a...”
– The Cult of the Gym: The New Puritans
Via The Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/1487649
December 2012
12 posts
“I fear one day I’ll meet God, he’ll sneeze and I won’t know what to say.”
– Ronnie Shakes (via zenhumanism)
3 tags
Sent in response to my boss's "Merry Christmas"...
I work online teaching new faculty to teach online for a public college in a part of the Midwest with deep Bible Belt roots. My boss sent a “Merry Christmas” email to all of our online faculty who are scattered across the country, and even a few outside the country. This was my response.
Dear —
Your cheerful holiday wishes — while undoubtedly well-intentioned —...
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which...”
– Alan Watts (via youthandmansinthe)
5 tags
School Prayer
Poem by Diane Ackerman
from I Praise My Destroyer.
© Vintage Books.
School Prayer
In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of...
4 tags
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere,...”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
5 tags
Watchexplore-blog:
New Orleans cellist and banjo player Leyla McCalla is setting Langston Hughes’s poetry to song, blending it with Haitian folk music and original compositions – absolutely amazing. Best thing since Langston Hughes’s little-known vintage children’s book about jazz.
2 tags
1 tag
“The planet does not need more ‘successful people’. The planet desperately needs...”
– (via mysticmementos)
1 tag
“Unique is a word that cannot be qualified. It does not mean rare or uncommon; it...”
– (via nola-diary)
“The chances of an American student completing a four-year degree within six...”
– American higher education appears to be in rude health. But the country’s universities represent declining value for money to their students. (via theeconomist)
We need to stop referring to universities as four-year institutions, and community colleges as two-year institutions, when the majority...
November 2012
16 posts
2 tags
“Subsequently, professional development for staff also needed to change...”
– Tom Murray, director of technology and cybereducation for the Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County, Pa.
via smartblogs.com
“Repetition, broadly construed, is in everything. It’s in our breath, and our...”
– Elizabeth Giddens on the value of repetition (via wnycradiolab)
4 tags
4 tags
“We encountered the term “theory of mind” in passing in the previous chapter in...”
– Ramachandran, V.S. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. (via carvalhais) Thanks wildcat2030. (via inwrdbound)
“There are certain cities and certain areas of certain cities where the official...”
– (via nola-diary)
7 tags
Watch“Mindful Schools has been in 40-plus schools in the last four years, reaching 11,000 kids. Generally the results we are seeing are increased focus and concentration, so, the ability to pay attention in class — improved self-awareness, the ability of just recognizing how you’re feeling, when you’re feeling it — which leads to impulse control, which I think is probably...
4 tags
How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning →
jtotheizzoe:
Jim Stigler is a psychologist who studies the differences in how Eastern and Western cultures approach learning. After watching a Japanese student try and fail and try again, for a whole period, to draw a geometric shape in front of the entire class, and then enjoy the experience … he knew something was different about the philosophy of struggle in Eastern classrooms. A key bit from...
6 tags
“In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into...”
– » Napster, Udacity, and the Academy Clay Shirky (via infoneer-pulse)
3 tags
“Thoughtful educators are not simply interested in achieving known effects; they...”
– Elliott W. Eisner (via jonportfolio)
“When I die I want to be buried in Louisiana so I can stay active in politics.”...”
– (via nola-diary)
5 tags
4 tags
