Problem Based Learning - Alan November TED

Alan November at TEDxNYED

A fifteen minute presentation format is a very short time to try to build a case for a big idea. My Ted Talk is about how the current culture of school typically underestimates the contribution that many students would make to solve real problems and to make a contribution to help classmates learn. Of course, a model of teaching to the test does not promote the kind of higher order problem solving that I try to outline in the talk. I am hopeful that authentic work and a culture of student contribution can support the current obsession with test scores.

http://novemberlearning.com/alan-november-at-tedxnyed-2/

How do assess Problem Based Learning

ASCD Blog by Suzie Boss:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/assessing-project-based-learning-how-to-suzie-boss

Maintaining Motivation

Good reflections @ how we get better at dance and at school...

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/03/16/tln_rigsbee_dance.html?tkn=UNCCuZrksDcNlFyQl8u4xnY2sHTJMVsmvCvy&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

David Brooks on TED

David Brooks: “People learn from those people they love.”

Here's Brooks' TED link. Thanks, Jan, for sending this along!

I had a friend in college – wise for his age – who defined love (we were cynical young bucks at the time, wearing all black and smoking clove cigarettes) as “time spent well together”. This was in response to some transcendental notion of love… “soul mates”, etc.

And I think of that now when I think of good teaching – you really do need to have “caritas” for your students to make an impact. Learning can happen in other ways, but the learning that happens when a teacher DRAWS OUT a student, there is that kind of love.

Top 10 Web Resources for Teachers - Harvard Educational Letter

http://www.hepg.org/hel/article/495

UK education chief says "Kids should read 50 books a year!""

United Kingdom Education chief says kids should read 50 books every year:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8395784/Children-should-read-50-books-a-year-says-Gove.html

PISA says: Raise Teacher Status

Here’s an article that will make you happy: PISA head says that US must raise the status of the teacher profession. Obama says that teachers should be considered “nation builders.” And the irony of Wisconsin… All in one article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/education/16teachers.html?_r=1

60 Minutes episode on TEP school's $125K starting salary

Check out this video from Sixty Minutes; it profiles quite an educational move – one that has many fantastic premises: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7359538n&tag=related;photovideo

shared with me by Jared

Too Dumb for Complex Texts?

Mark Bauerline Article in Educational Leadership:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/Too-Dumb-for-Complex-Texts%C2%A2.aspx

Google's Search for a Leadership Principles

“The Quest to Build a Better Boss” was published yesterday in the NYT about Google’s self-discovered leadership training. Nothing revolutionary… but interesting!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html

Nick Kristof: Pay Teachers More

Teachers will like the headline, but maybe not all the recommendations from this NY Times columnist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof

Teaser:

Recent scholarship suggests that good teachers, even kindergarten teachers, increase their students’ earnings many years later. Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation better than average, or better than 84 percent of teachers) raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is merely average.

A teacher better than 93 percent of other teachers would add $640,000 to lifetime pay of a class of 20, the study found.

What's one thing that I wish I knew when I started teaching...

This is from the Answer page at Washington Post...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/teachers-one-thing-wed-wish-we.html

Teaser:

Here are some of the answers that teachers gave to this question: “What was one thing you wished you’d known when you started teaching?”

The query was posed on the “Whole Child Blog” of ASCD, an educational leadership organization with more than 170,000 educator members in 136 countries.

Some of the responses are below, and you can see more here. The answers -- which are republished below as they appeared on the website -- hit on what ASCD believes are crucial elements in effective teaching and learning.

The New Humanism --attunement, equipoise, limerence

David Brooks on "The New Humanism". Article here.

Interesting passage, related to Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind:

You get a different view of, say, human capital. Over the past few decades, we have tended to define human capital in the narrow way, emphasizing I.Q., degrees, and professional skills. Those are all important, obviously, but this research illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories:

Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.

Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.

Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.

Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.

Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

Plagiarism Costs German Defense Minister

NY Times article about German Defense Minister Karl-Theodorz zu Guttenberg.