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Category: Education

EduCon Reflections

EduCon Reflections

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I am attending EduCon 2.2 and just getting ready to start the final day.  Yesterday I had the privilege to facilitate a conversation with Danja Mahoney and Michael Springer, and chat with some of the smartest most thoughtful educators around. Our topic was Subversive PD: Creating a culture of collaboration to bring educators into the 21st century.  Our focus was looking for strategies that work, in the absence of administrative and teacher support and/or awareness, to foster professional growth. Are…

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Do You Debate?

Do You Debate?

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I believe that critical thinking, analysis, and the ability to pull ideas together are essential to learning. However it has been my experience that in the current context of content based testing, time for complex analytical discussions, examination of multiple perspectives and allowing time for students to draw their own conclusions has been limited. I was wondering if its absence in the classroom had been replaced with time outside the classroom.  In my high school and college days debate clubs…

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Is being knowledgeable and being educated the same thing?

Is being knowledgeable and being educated the same thing?

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I have been doing a lot of reading in the past year, or so, on education, learning, schools and teaching.  I believe I am on the verge of a paradigm shift in my thinking.  The constructivist in me tells me this is part of the normal learning process that comes about from gathering new information and analyzing it from different points of view.  You see the conflicts with your old knowledge structures and you need to rebuild them to accommodate…

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A request for a little help from my PLN

A request for a little help from my PLN

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I have been involved in formal schooling as a student and educator for about 40 years, so you would think I know the purpose and goal of education.  But as I became connected to other educators and began investigating technology and the tools that support learning something began to change. I was consumed by learning. In fact I think I have learned more in the last few years of my informal (non-traditional) learning then I did in much of my…

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Scientia Potentia Est

Scientia Potentia Est

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This started out to be a much different post but became ramblings, as an eye injury has made reading and writing a bit of a challenge, but I wanted to get down some of my thoughts anyway – as I get distracted and might forget them. I have been having on-going conversations with some educators about why we educate, what is it that we ultimately want students to be able to do, what do they need for be successful, what…

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On My Soap Box – Rational Discussions

On My Soap Box – Rational Discussions

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I took the kids to get Halloween costumes yesterday and while waiting online at the mall food court, I could not help but over hear a conversation.   The topic debated is not important but one of the statements has caused me to get on my soap box. “Anyone who thinks that way is an a——!” Why do we attack people with whom we do not agree? What happened to discussing ideas and trying to see the other point or points…

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Ben Franklin, Education and the 21st Century, Part 3

Ben Franklin, Education and the 21st Century, Part 3

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Continuing from part 2 Franklin continues in his proposal for the education of youth; But if HISTORY be made a constant Part of their Reading, such as the Translations of the Greek and Roman Historians, and the modern Histories of antient Greece and Rome, &c. may not almost all Kinds of useful Knowledge be that Way introduc’d to Advantage, and with Pleasure to the Student? That old adage ‘those that do not know history are condemned to repeat it’ comes to mine. …

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