As a high school senior, I was encouraged to enroll in one of two classes to fill a mid-day opening in my schedule. Either a “build your vocabulary” course or an “improve your writing” course. Both had been added to the catalog out of concern that students from my high school were unprepared for college. Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
A Rant on One-Size Fits All Education
I believe that schools are becoming irrelevant in the lives of young people. Adults are trying to improve schools by looking towards their past; “what worked for me will work for them,” is their misguided reasoning. We (and this pronoun includes educators and all other adults who care about our children’s future) must reinvent our Read More
Another Explanation of Cognitive Load Theory
Cognitive load theory is an idea I have been integrating into my presentations and workshops for a few years. (It has been addressed in this blog previously.) This is a version I have been including this summer: While technology acceptance is a theory that can explain and predict the decision to use a technology, cognitive Read More
An Elevator Pitch on Integration as Learning
Eric Mauzer, a Harvard physics educator, is well-known for developing the concept of integration as an aspect of deeper learning. Mauzer found that after a long course in which students were taught information and solutions without context, the course had “taught them ‘next to nothing.’ After a semester of physics, they still held the same Read More
Business and Politics are Not Teaching and Learning
Business and politics are human endeavors that are easily measured; the results of business and politics are generally objective and unequivocal. Business measures success by profits, if the profits are sufficient for the owner or shareholders, then the business is judged a success. In politics, success is measured in votes. The individual who receives more Read More
Wikis: A Different Form of Interaction in Online Courses
In education, interaction matters. If you want your students to remember what they are supposed to learn and if you want them to be able to use what you teach them in other situation, then they must think about it with you and with other students. This idea has been featured in this blog previously. Read More
Two Types of Tests
Tests can be understood in one of two ways; they are either culminating events or they are gateway events. Most tests administered in classrooms are likely culminating events. At the end of a unit of study, tests are administered to determine the degree to which the information was retained. After the test, the students can Read More
A Field Guide to Lies
When I was an undergraduate student studying to be a science teacher, one of my goals was to develop scientific literacy in my students. One of my journals from the time records. “I want my students to be able to use science to make decisions.” While I am not exactly sure what I meant by Read More
Creating Things that Matter
Creating Things that Matter is the 2018 work by David Edwards; on the dust jacket Edwards is identified as a creator, writer, and educator. Until this book, I was unfamiliar with the man or his works, and the many examples of his creative endeavors introduced me to field in which I have no experience. Edwards Read More
Teaching in 2020: “Just what should one do as a teacher?”
This seems a reasonable question. One who is entering the field of education should expect that someone who has expertise in education can give a clear and complete answer to that question. Ask any real expert in teaching and learning that question, and you will get an answer that begins with “it depends.” “What exactly Read More