The ungrading community has been busy on Twitter this fall. These folks have taken grades (in the traditional sense) out of their courses, and (according to this posts) have generally been happy with the results. Students are doing work; they are learning. Some suggest students are more engaged and learning more. I have not taken Read More
It may seem unnecessary to state it, but schools are places where children are present. Lots of children. Seriously, they are everywhere. They reflect the social, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, and other characteristics of the local population. They affect every decision made in schools. Whether those decisions are in the best interest of those children Read More
One of the earliest psychological theories to be applied to schooling was behaviorism. According to this idea, humans learn by associating rewards with actions; we tend to continue to do (learn) that which is positively rewarded and avoid that which is negatively rewarded. The type of learning associated with behaviorism is called conditioning. Conditioning is Read More
A discussion with a colleague about “the death of email” led me to think about why he is wrong… here is the argument I presented to him: The first tool for technology-mediated interaction to gain widespread use among educators was electronic mail (email); and the number of messages (along with attachments) sent between accounts is Read More
Technology problems are tame because: we can all easily recognize them as problems (for example, the network doesn’t respond, so we can’t do our work); we have known methods of restoring it (we know how to isolate malfunctioning parts of the system and there are known processes for fixing them) we all agree when they are resolved (we get back Read More
When I was an undergraduate student studying to become an educator, my peers and I took great pride in our lesson planning. When I was a graduate student (I completed my masters degree at the end of my 12th year as a teacher), my peers who had yet to teach wrote lesson plans with great care. When I was teaching Read More
Stop reading this sentence and imagine a school. In your mind, enter a classroom where students and teacher are present, and class is in session. Look around. See the teacher in the room, see the students, and see what they are doing. If you didn’t play along with the preceding sentence, recall a movie or television program in which a classroom, teaching, and learning was portrayed. It doesn’t Read More
Unfortunately for me (and all other educators and those interested in education), humans are variable creatures; cause and effect relationships do not exist in education. We cannot be assured “if I do this, then my students will learn that.” (Those who make their living selling “the next big thing” to educators will be disappointed to Read More
In the 2003 book Creating Significant Learning Experiences, L. Dee Fink described conversations with faculty that were focused by the question, “In your deepest, fondest dreams, what kind of impact would you most like to have on your students?” Faculty answers to this question did not mention remembering information. Faculty’s answers did include what they hoped students would do with their new knowledge, how they would solve problems, how they would interact Read More
The concept of the “blank slate” has been discredited among philosophers, psychologist, and other scientists for several decades, but many educators continue to assume students arrive in classrooms with no relevant experiences and that students need only pay sufficient attention to learn the information teachers tell them. Educators with a more sophisticated understanding of learning Read More