Comments for Classroots.org

Comment on Run, Sandwich, Run!: the javascript text-generator by Bethany Nowviskie

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:41:54 +0000

Baby, I can help you with that. As long as you do two things: provide the art, & solemnly swear never, ever to bring a sandwich like this into our happy home.

Comment on Run, Sandwich, Run! by Classroots.org - Run, Sandwich, Run!: the javascript text-generator

Classroots.org - Run, Sandwich, Run!: the javascript text-generator — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:08:39 +0000

[...] I can be useful to students interested in making their own web pages and programs. I’m using Run, Sandwich, Run! as an excuse to make a random sandwich, sandwich death, and sandwich distance-traveled generator as [...]

Comment on We are the impossible boss battle by Mary Ann Reilly

Mary Ann Reilly — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:27:57 +0000

I’m not sure it is a matter of lower or higher, but perhaps agency and appropriateness might be considered. In building reading muscle, it isn’t simply a matter of reading with ease (although that does matter), but also choice in text and management of reading need to remain in the hands of the child and supported by the teacher. “grade appropriate text” is a measure of some interest, perhaps, but should not be mistaken for reality. A steady diet of frustrational level texts or texts that do not interest, or texts without choice–may well harm.

How we assist the child is a question we need to ask often and isn’t teaching largely a matter of such things? To what end do we help the child develop methods to select and manage texts? What text forms do we afford the child? What authority does the child have in determining what composing (as reader, etc.) means? Is there a naturalness about reading that most of us who read often come to know: intense times followed by less intense reading? And so on.

I think the battles are really important–but the right ones, not the insurmountable or the ones that become battles because we are being managed by epic constructs of school. Learning how to meet the challenge (perhaps some trial and error, failed strategies) and succeed in safe environments can help the child.

Comment on We are the impossible boss battle by Chad

Chad — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:36:37 +0000

A great insight – and one much appreciated. Do we empower kids to lower the difficulty of work in class so they can feel the discovery of the bigger ideas behind the work? Do we empower them to skip over us in our learning? Do we at all provide for kids the features we take for granted in the games and other systems in which we feel powerful and included?

Very broadly, ow do we get battles out of schools?

Best,
C

Comment on We are the impossible boss battle by Mary Ann Reilly

Mary Ann Reilly — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:24:01 +0000

When you needed to revise your game play, you did so with and within a particular history. Darwin tells us “Survival depends on the organism remaking itself…Variation and novelty are not chaotic or unrelated to the organism’s past, but express degrees of freedom characteristic of a particular organization as it stands at one moment in its history” (Gruber, 1974, p. 54 and 249). You carried with you previous successes and flexible roles so even though your boss battle was disturbing, it could be encased, contained.

All humans carry such history that (in)forms our ways with others, with words, intentions. It is this less than obvious history that we so often fail to account for in epic teaching (when someone other than the teacher and the learners make grand plans for others to enact). I think it is through such methods that boss battles become ongoing for many. Survival would have any of us looking out many a window, given that we often deny children the occasion and permission to actually move.

Comment on Hacking Admissions Standards by Portfolios – one alternative to suppressive, depressive, and oppressive testing « Free-range Thoughts

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:31:04 +0000

[...] then we’ll see kids in entirely new and amazing light. Chad in a reply comment to his post on Hacking Admissions Standards. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]

Comment on #DML2012: I am the teacher underground. by Portfolios – one alternative to suppressive, depressive, and oppressive testing « Free-range Thoughts

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:28:13 +0000

[...] March 13, 2012 Portfolios – one alternative to suppressive, depressive, and oppressive testing For the love of thorny, unambiguous good, demand that kids submit portfolios of interdisciplinary, arts-infused work that oozes passion. Chad at classroots.org [...]

Comment on #DML2012: I am the teacher underground. by Special DML Edition: What’s Buzzing? 3.7.12 |

Special DML Edition: What’s Buzzing? 3.7.12 | — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:35:07 +0000

[...] humanities teacher Chad Sansing raises important questions about education conference models. [...]

Comment on #DML2012: I am the teacher underground. by Kelley

Kelley — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:02:27 +0000

Dang – I wished I had the chance to connect more with the participants (and not just via Twitter, though the hashtag comments were amazing!) I can’t figure out how to link with non-presenters as these things, but huzzah to all this thinking! You inspired me to create a page on my personal working-wiki called ‘true disruption!’ Yay!

Comment on #DML2012: I am the teacher underground. by DML2012′s Twitter Backchannel and Ad Hoc Solidarity « Join the Conversation

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:17:19 +0000

[...] Brown’s keynote, several ignite talks, and Chad Sansing’s provocative post-conference blog post), and tried as always to keep my head above water in the sea of Twitter backchannel that has become [...]