Can design help children learn? That’s the cover story of in the February Metropolis Magazine lent to me last week by parent-trustee Stan Lichens. It’s worth a look. And the magazine also includes design firm IDEO’s 10 Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom Experience. It’s a quick must-read. This is thinking to guide designers and architects when it comes…
At a recent conference a speaker suggested that choosing a school was akin to choosing a cell phone* – as soon as you’ve made the decision another brand seems to offer appealing options and you worry: Did I make the right choice? So – to cut through the confusion when it comes to school it’s helpful to ask: What matters…
A wave of the future: College lectures available online for free. Academic Earth: Free access to thousands of world class academic video lectures. Search for a favorite topic and learn something new.
We are experimenting with an additional way to help people keep in touch with what’s going on at PDS. If you twitter (twitter.com) consider following @PoughkeepsieDay. We are linking it to our Facebook account as another way to keep up with what’s happening. Let us know what you think. And of course we appreciate your follows retweets and tagging (we…
Seth Godin is a marketeer and prolific generator of ideas. His blog often has interesting nuggets about education. The purpose of school is to….here’s his first ten of 27 answers. Any you would like to add? Remove? (My personal favorite is number 23 – sandwiched in between the sublimely lofty and the tongue-in-cheek – Minimize public spelling mistakes So, here’s …
School recess improves behavior – from the NYTimes. Anyone surprised?
There’s another of those scary science stories in today’s NYTimes: Split Outcome in Texas Battle in Teaching Evolution. The real scary part is such ignorance is still alive and kicking, and not just in Texas. And when it comes to textbooks – as Texas goes, there goes the nation. Meanwhile next month we celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth.…
What’s the difference between a metaphor and lying? With a president who reads Derek Walcott and quotes June Jordan it’s good to have comedians at home with T.S.Eliot. This week inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander explained metaphor to Stephen on The Colbert Report. Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows Meanwhile at PDS English teachers had a quick email conversation that…
PDS has new science laboratories. Time for a poem from the Czech poet-scientist Miroslav Holub. In the Microscope Here too are the dreaming landscapes, lunar, derelict. Here too are the masses, tillers of the soil. And cells, fighters who lay down their lives for a song. Here too are cemeteries, fame and snow. And I hear the murmuring, the revolt…
Question: What do you need to be creative and succeed in the future? Point number one: We want less formality in schools and more creativity in the classroom Here’s an interesting story from the UK: students from schools all over the country met at the Tate Modern to plan and design a manifesto for creativity. The kick-off for this 18…
In a new book, The Venturesome Economy Amar Bhidé challenges The World is Flat notion proposed by Thomas Friedman in his book of that name. Bhidé concludes that: a.) the world is not flat and b.) that the people he calls the “techno-nationalists”— have got it wrong. (At the very least we could agree that the world is spiky) Read…
Take Paul Barnwell’s “test” in this article from NEA Today. How do your answers compare? Did he miss any questions? What’s in an ‘A’? Take this test and compare your answers with mine. By Paul Barnwell Fill in the blank: 1. Grades are a great way to ___ (a) provide meaningful feedback; (b) sort students by ability; (c) get…
… I was always interested in trying to communicate, to have a feeling from someone to make me feel that I was worthwhile. So when my teacher, Mrs. Bishop — I will never forget her, beautiful, brown-skinned lady at P.S. 136 in Harlem — she gave me a poem because she realized I was having a problem with myself. And…
Teachers often take a jaundiced eye to films that claim to depict the classroom experience. It’s akin to being skeptical about the newspapers because every time they present a story with which you have actual familiarity they rarely seem to get it right. I saw two excellent films last week. One was Entre les Murs – renamed The Class in…
First the music and the record stores closed. And then the books – Posman’s on Broadway, Ivy’s and too many others across Manhattan. And then it was the international news and magazine shop – Global Ink – on the corner of 112th street where it was possible to browse obscure journals, pick up yesterday’s Guardian and newspaper from all over…