A must read article from the Times of London. Playing Games Makes Your Child Clever
Everyone is cranky
A school in May is like a two year old deprived of a nap. That’s how my colleague Liz describes it. Everyone is stressed out, too busy and cranky. The weather is unpredictable with storms and frost one moment and sunshine and blossoms the next. The calendar is stuffed with culminating events, showcases, performances, final assessments, report writing deadlines and…
Finland and Education Success
A video from BBC News about the world’s latest favorite education destination: Finland
Digital literacy across the curriculum
It’s not about the tools and the testing, it’s about the learning and the thinking. Digital literacy is an important entitlement for all young people in an increasingly digital culture. Every school should have an organized policy for language across the curriculum… Two documents, two eras. The first from FutureLab (UK) – a wonderful introduction to, and handbook for, digital…
Scoundrels alive! High school play streamed to the world
April 23rd 2010 – Shakespeare’s birthday and Poughkeepsie Day School begins live streaming Diary of a Scoundrel – Alexander Ostrovsky’s cynical play about hypocrisy and the trouble with literacy! You can see it here. Thank you David Held- for the live streaming and the videography. David assures me that it only takes half an hour or so to learn how…
The fire within
“To succeed…it’s the fire within that must be lit.” Purpose, mastery, autonomy (mission not money as motivation.) Watch the video and then think of the implications for school. What do we reward students for doing?
Math Curriculum Makeover: Be less helpful
Math makes sense of the world: Here’s math teacher Dan Meyer speaking at the TEDxNYED conference in March.
The wild front ear
If blogging is supposed to have an element of timeliness then I have given up on that ideal. After all – I am still writing about stuff from the NAIS annual conference in February. Fess Parker died in March and while my mind went instantly to the Davy Crockett craze of my childhood, it’s only now that I have found…
Failing is essential
The ratio between success and failure remains pretty constant. To succeed means we must fail. And the more often we fail the more we succeed. The key is to fail frequently and fail fast. Then move on and try something else. That was the message of Tina Seelig who works at the entrepreneurship center at Stanford. The focus of her…
Childhood has Changed: Playtime is Over
Here’s an article to read by David Elkind in the NYTimes Playtime is Over It’s an important topic. It’s an interesting article. And it’s one well worth reading and talking about. There is one piece though, that I have to comment on right away: For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They…
“The death of education as we know it may be the birth of learning as we need it”
I’m more than a bit late with my NAIS annual conference round up but then …excuses, excuses…what with returning to Poughkeepsie with a rotten cold, the remaining effects of a mega storm that closed school for three days (ably dealt with by Steve Mallet and the division heads) and then all the catching up…. So – a few random and…
Here they come…National Standards
National Standards kindergarten through 12th grade are on their way. At PDS we are looking forward to taking a good look at all the standards and at where we converge, and diverge, in the choices we make. And also, at where we exceed and expand national (and international) expectations. As an accredited independent school we have the ability to think…
“If a school fulfills its mission there must be constant evolution…”
It is quite possible that the assigning of grades to school children and college students as a kind of reward or punishment is useless or worse… I’ve discovered an absolute treasure trove of fascinating material: Popular Science has put its entire 137 year archive on line. The quotation above is from Examinations, Grades and Credits by Professor J.McKeen Cattell of…
Transformation: Diane Ravitch and School Reform
“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ ” I’ve always respected Diane Ravitch even as I have often disagreed with her. And her on-line and ongoing exchanges with Deborah Meier Bridging Differences have been a model of intelligent debate conducted with an informed civility conspicuously absent from most…
The Ruben’s Tube: Dancing Fire
Click for an UPDATED version of this experiment and with a great new video. It’s always great when a student or a teacher sends along a report, picture or a video of something cool going on in the classroom. Or, as in this case, a cool experiment during vacation. This is a first attempt at creating a Ruben’s standing wave…