So I’ve added a lot more to the Whirligig map since last time. It turned out to be an awesome choice for this project. Talk about a project that requires a close reading! I spent more time with this short book than I care to admit to. Almost everything in the Whirligig was accurate. It’s […]
Category: Reflections
What Education Should Be Like
IMG_5978.JPG Originally uploaded by woodward98 Two semi-philosophical posts in a row. I’m very sorry. I’ll get back on track soon, I promise. I took this picture of my son a while back. We found what a Flickr commenter tells me is a luna moth caterpillar. To me it embodies everything education should be. It was […]
Yet Another Reason Your Filter is Useless (or neat trick to post to jaiku, wordpress or twitter)
The first part of this post is actually useful. The second part is just me venting about the wrong application of time and energy that is, all too often, school filtering. So I started using Jaiku (like Twitter but with the ability to aggregate all your feeds and a few other neat tricks). Jaiku was […]
Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia – Quotes for Education
I listened to Net@Nite today. They interviewed Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and it was pretty interesting but had nothing to do with education. That did not stop me from applying some of these quotes directly to what we do. “This idea of- it’s not really about the software, it’s about the people. It’s about helping […]
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A Moment of Zen
I’m watching the Grammys and was moved to tears by Ludacris and Mary J’s performance of Runaway Love. It was about the hard life for girls in the ghetto. There was so much truth in the lyrics. I see it in my classroom. Their performance was followed immediately by James Blunt singing You’re Beautiful. Blunt’s […]
Organization in a MetaData World (Part 1)
Jim’s finally found a home for his kind of organization I am a swine. I can say this because my mother regularly told me I was “living in a pig sty.” I have struggled to reform myself. Dayrunner (in the bottom of a dusty box). Elaborate Note-Taking Systems (codes never seemed intuitive enough to stick). […]
1:1 Programs and Expectations
Mr. Guhlin asked “How have laptop programs helped?” and the responses depressed me. Maybe, I’m over analyzing but quote like “Imagine anything one could do on an overhead projector. You can do the same on a tablet if you have an LCD.” brought me close to tears. Clearly, replacing an overhead and pen with several […]
Communication- Evidence the World is Changing
I wrote a post about Swivel the other day (a really interesting data sharing/graphing site) at about 11:40 at night. By the next morning I had two comments from the co-founders (Mr. Dimov and Mr. Mulloy). To me this demonstrates how the world has fundamentally changed. It really is about conversation and the people who […]
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Clarence Fisher on Classroom Studios
Clarence Fisher of Remote Access has been kind enough to work through some thoughts on creating a classroom studio on his blog. I find his insights and questions helpful as I try to more fully realize my goal of making my classroom more construtivist and less legalistic. I can’t help but pine for what he […]
Assembly Line Education
Six and a half hours a day. Nine months a year. Thirteen years. March, children, march. Take your diploma and drive thru. This is, as Jim Grant puts it, the American Lock-Step, Time-Bound, Grade School Structure. Do you have any idea where this model for education comes from in our history? The Kingdom of Prussia […]