I’m wondering about how to reintroduce self-directed learning to students doing an excellent job of directing themselves to the work I’m designing for them.
To wit, here are the questions going through my mind this week.
Is it possible for reading and writing to get in the way of learning?
Do struggling readers and writers get rich, authentic [...]
“Games are not fun because they’re games, but when they are well designed.”
- Sebastian Deterding, “Pawned”
Games futurist Jesse Schell of Gamepocalypse Now recently pointed towards two presentations by “gamification” researcher Sebastian Deterding: “Just add points?” and “Pawned.” Taken together Deterding’s presentations offer useful insight into contemporary game design and the elements, like fun, that we [...]
“…we are attempting to operate our society on obsolete code…. They are completely inappropriate to what it is we want to get done.”
- Douglas Rushkoff, Program or be Programmed
A few hours after I caught sight of RSA’s take on Sir Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms”, I watched Douglas Rushkoff’s SXSW talk, “
[Author's note: last night's #edchat gave me the opportunity to frame my beliefs about #edreform, so I thought I would compile and share them here.]
#edchat #edreform suspects that happy edu-entrepreneurs & innovators will stick around & benefit stdnts; unhappy ones will go & be shunned
#edchat #edreform asks why we don’t embrace structures & create jobs [...]
My brain itches.
I’m hitting the wall separating what I saw and what I see. I need to pull an Inception and start dreaming the wall and walking on it instead of familiar ground.
I’m looping with our school’s inaugural class for the third straight year. I feel a desperate need to get it right. I [...]
So, the whole pitch idea and citizen-artist project a moving along okay. We’ve started with lots of interactive-notebook-like visualizations of concepts and terms related to citizenship and some initial analysis of Jacob Lawrence’s life and work. I think maybe this project will take longer than I thought and become more episodic. For example, every Friday [...]
After looking back at previous posts about community engagement, curriculum, teaching, and grading and assessment, I want to publish a short to do list for myself this year as a way of holding myself accountable for continued change in my classroom practice. To complement the list, I’ll maintain a Google Doc score card shared with [...]
This week I read around the Washington Post’s “Top Secret America” portal. You can read about its methodology and see the project’s credits here.
I started with this article: “National Security Inc.” On page 10, the article describes the work of Ken Pohill, an employee of General Dynamics, a defense contractor serving multiple roles in the [...]
I do seem to remember a process where you people ask me questions and I give you answers, and then I ask you questions and you give me answers, and that’s the way we find out things. I think I read that in a manual somewhere.
-Dr. Heywood Floyd,
My wife, Bethany Nowviskie (@nowviskie), has posted on the University of California’s moves to boycott Nature Publishing Group. Essentially, the publishing group takes the work of professors – authors and peer reviewers – and then sells subscriptions back to the professors’ institutions at exorbitant rates that force further cuts in library systems already savaged by [...]
Chad teaches humanities at a charter school and blogs on reforming classroom practice and democratic education.
