Storytime… About 20 years ago, I was looking to refocus my career. I had an interest in library science, so I found an online program and singed up for two courses with the intent of matriculating in the master’s program before the deadline during which I was to study. The two courses were interesting. I Read More
Historian and philosopher Theodore Roszak (1994) minimizes the role of information in human cognition, and he even observes “humans think with ideas, not with information” [emphasis in the original] and affords ideas a central place in the human cognition by continuing, “Information may helpfully illustrate or decorate an idea; it may, where it works under the guidance of a contrasting idea, help to call other Read More
Much of the 20th century recitation script for education, in particular the articulation of measurable goals and the focus on efficiency, was based on the assumption that becoming educated was a tame problem. So that curriculum goals could be achieved efficiently, the problems that became learner tasks were de-contextualized; the context of rich information and Read More
So, we know the brain is (literally) a network of neurons; our cells are interconnected and it is patterns of communication among those cells that determine “what we know.” (Yeah, I know… oversimplified… but bear with me.) Culture is also a network. Patterns of communication and interaction among “things” (some living and some not). Increasingly, Read More
Accounting is a technology that accompanied the creation of writing, and counting changed when “we” decided accurate records we needed. Whereas many cultures with primary orality do not differentiate numbers (many unwritten languages quantify using words for “one,” “two,” and “many”). Accounting necessitated accurate calculation of numbers including decimal places. The familiar base 10 and Read More
The culture (comprising beliefs, attitudes, symbols, and similar concepts) that learners experience when they are young contributes to their views and perspectives. These influence what behaviors in schools that learners value, how they define learning, and ideas about how learning occurs. These all affect how individual interact with curriculum, teachers, and peers in school. Differences Read More
Renninger, Ren, and Kern (2018) observe “it is possible for a person to be motivated and engaged, but not interested, whereas, when something is of interest to a person, it is always motivating and engaging. In general, interest can be defined as the tendency to continue engaging with the materials or with a situation. It would appear that educators who capture the interest of students are Read More
My afternoon walks have been spent listening to some audio books… Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale has been my most recent selection. Listening to Dawkins describe the confusion that can happen when we expect continuous variation to be discontinuous, I heard much that was familiar and much that explains some of our difficulties in education Read More
John Seeley Brown (2000) concluded that in the 21st century, the amount of information that humans access is overwhelming. Information is no longer the essential aspect of knowing. The sense we make of information is the essential aspect of knowing. Brown observed, “The forces that shape the background [of human knowledge] are the social forces, Read More
It is through emotional reaction that humans make decisions about what deserves attention and which does not. The author of How People Learn 2 observed, “Quite literally, it is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about or remember information about which one has had no emotion because the healthy brain does not waste energy processing information Read More