In 18 minutes, San Diego State History professor David Christian gives an engaging talk with amazing graphics that describes the big history of our planet from Big Bang to today in terms of complexity and Goldilocks moments (just-right conditions). He also announces the intention to create for high school students, with Bill Gates and his own Humanities colleagues, a free online syllabus of our beautiful planet's history to protect the planet for their grandchildren . Be sure to check this out ...
... and share with Science department colleagues.
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thinking About 21st C Learning
The amazing things we can know more about in our technology-enhanced teaching and learning environment via email, TED, tweets, and feeds compell the inquiring mind. Thanks to the gleaners whose deep inquiries and reflections have brought me to this body of work and this platform from which to expound my views on the value of a real and liberal education for young British Columbians:
TL Extraordinaire Mark Roberts sent me an article by George Petsko, noted American structural biologist, in defence of teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities. Here is a blog post that links to everything you need to know about this amazing "mind" who surely must drink coffee ... follow the link to Petsko's letter to the President of UAlbany. The letter uses a humanistic lens to deliver a masterful, elegant, powerful, yet humourous cautionary statement about the eroded capacity of science and global politics when these are severed, as in the President's "Faustian bargain," from the Humanities. See also Petsko's 4-minute TED talk (2008) about the impact of the pending epidemic of neurologic disease on society.
Sir Ken Robinson's youtube response yesterday to a TwitterQ8 [#askSKR] about creativity in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines makes exactly the same point in K-12 terms ... it is a catastrophe that, during times of economic recession, the Arts suffer and the real purpose of education is defined by the economic imperative and described as a focus on Math and Science.
Snipped out of Linda Hof's Webbits for today is this article from The Guardian, "Get Creative in School With Digital Media" (Julie Nightingale, Jan 11, 2011): The highly valued skill of creativity is increasingly scarce among job applicants. But it needn't be if more schools promote creative media technology across the curriculum.
This week's Globe & Mail editorial comment by Jeffrey Simpson, "The good, the bad, and the ugly education facts," (Jan 12, 2011) discusses Canada's PISA results, notes the relative success, but identifies the declining results as a problem; Simpson offers the following commentary:
Make sure you have a cup of coffee when you do this reading. (If you followed Petsko's TED talk, you will agree this is important.) The binary terms that pit the education of the young against the health of the aging would suggest that a healthy school system would invest in simply keeping more senior teachers' caffeine levels up, training barristas, and perhaps including coffee as a retirement benefit and incentive, kind of like Starbucks does with its employees. Perhaps, now that there is no junk food allowed, we should be offering coffee to our students along with this healthy education as a preventitive offset to their later neurologic detrioration to enable us now to continue to invest in their education.
What's this got to do with libraries? It's amazing what we librarians come across in a day of research, don't you think? It`s important to make and build on connections. There need to be those whose critical questions keep them searching for the relationship between real and important goals and questionable means. People need time and space to read and reflect. Some libraries serve coffee and ponder barrista training.
TL Extraordinaire Mark Roberts sent me an article by George Petsko, noted American structural biologist, in defence of teaching and learning in the Arts and Humanities. Here is a blog post that links to everything you need to know about this amazing "mind" who surely must drink coffee ... follow the link to Petsko's letter to the President of UAlbany. The letter uses a humanistic lens to deliver a masterful, elegant, powerful, yet humourous cautionary statement about the eroded capacity of science and global politics when these are severed, as in the President's "Faustian bargain," from the Humanities. See also Petsko's 4-minute TED talk (2008) about the impact of the pending epidemic of neurologic disease on society.
Sir Ken Robinson's youtube response yesterday to a TwitterQ8 [#askSKR] about creativity in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines makes exactly the same point in K-12 terms ... it is a catastrophe that, during times of economic recession, the Arts suffer and the real purpose of education is defined by the economic imperative and described as a focus on Math and Science.
Snipped out of Linda Hof's Webbits for today is this article from The Guardian, "Get Creative in School With Digital Media" (Julie Nightingale, Jan 11, 2011): The highly valued skill of creativity is increasingly scarce among job applicants. But it needn't be if more schools promote creative media technology across the curriculum.
This week's Globe & Mail editorial comment by Jeffrey Simpson, "The good, the bad, and the ugly education facts," (Jan 12, 2011) discusses Canada's PISA results, notes the relative success, but identifies the declining results as a problem; Simpson offers the following commentary:
Canada spends more on health care than on all levels of education combined. And it’s education, not health care, that will light a path to a more productive future. As Canada ages, however, the public pressure to spend even more on health and less on education will intensify. The consequences of that shift for a more productive future are bad, and will get worse.And for us in schools, consider carefully the directions we will pursue for 21st Century learning and ask the critical questions: when are economic arguments for cost-efficiencies, down-sizing, and a skilled workforce as the impetus for educational change enacted at the expense of our children's quality of life? How do we break down the silos that segment our work in secondary schools and take a stand that we are stronger when all parts work to shape the whole child who becomes the whole adult whose life and work must carry on where those like Petsko leave off? How do we add value to the Arts and Humanities as they are essential to understandings in life as well as the sciences, such that any re-visioning of learning in our schools is framed only on such a broad and firm foundation? How do we argue, in this political and economic climate, for continued and sustained investment in education with the increased needs for investment in health care? After all, aren't our children entitled to the same full 13-year educational package which encouraged the aging baby-boomers, with educator support, to discover and explore a wide range of human learning experiences until graduation? Let's stand and be counted as opposed strongly to anything that proposes to strip young British Columbians of their full entitlement to the rich range of opportunities for learning in our real schools. See this as short-sightedness and as short-term savings, with the potential for long-term loss -- or in Robinson's terms, catastrophe.
Make sure you have a cup of coffee when you do this reading. (If you followed Petsko's TED talk, you will agree this is important.) The binary terms that pit the education of the young against the health of the aging would suggest that a healthy school system would invest in simply keeping more senior teachers' caffeine levels up, training barristas, and perhaps including coffee as a retirement benefit and incentive, kind of like Starbucks does with its employees. Perhaps, now that there is no junk food allowed, we should be offering coffee to our students along with this healthy education as a preventitive offset to their later neurologic detrioration to enable us now to continue to invest in their education.
What's this got to do with libraries? It's amazing what we librarians come across in a day of research, don't you think? It`s important to make and build on connections. There need to be those whose critical questions keep them searching for the relationship between real and important goals and questionable means. People need time and space to read and reflect. Some libraries serve coffee and ponder barrista training.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Another Look at PISA + Interesting TED Talk
Another Look at PISA
Suspect this response by Dr Diane Ravitch, New York University, is true for BC as well ... it's not simply the erosion of investment in resources and specialist teachers but the persistent failure to remediate the negative effects of poverty for children that so dramatically impacts academic success.
Also, thanks Elly for bringing this this amazing TED talk by Indian educator Sugata Mitra to my attention. It's 17 minutes that will make you laugh AND think:
Mitra begins by noting that the best teachers don't go, and the best schools don't exist, where they are most needed. Further, any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be! Based on the simple concept that children -- regardless of their socio-economic status -- learn what they want to learn, supported by Arthur C. Clarke's thinking that education happens when children have interest, Mitra puts a single computer into a collaborative "discovery" environment and leaves the children to their own devices ... with astounding results. Do take your prep to check this out for the New-Year inspiration you may be looking for. The Future of Learning for 1 billion children, predicts Mitra, will be dramatically reformed with 100 million mediators, like the grannies, 10 million self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs), 180 billion dollars, and 10 years. Bring on The Granny Cloud!
Suspect this response by Dr Diane Ravitch, New York University, is true for BC as well ... it's not simply the erosion of investment in resources and specialist teachers but the persistent failure to remediate the negative effects of poverty for children that so dramatically impacts academic success.
Also, thanks Elly for bringing this this amazing TED talk by Indian educator Sugata Mitra to my attention. It's 17 minutes that will make you laugh AND think:
Mitra begins by noting that the best teachers don't go, and the best schools don't exist, where they are most needed. Further, any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be! Based on the simple concept that children -- regardless of their socio-economic status -- learn what they want to learn, supported by Arthur C. Clarke's thinking that education happens when children have interest, Mitra puts a single computer into a collaborative "discovery" environment and leaves the children to their own devices ... with astounding results. Do take your prep to check this out for the New-Year inspiration you may be looking for. The Future of Learning for 1 billion children, predicts Mitra, will be dramatically reformed with 100 million mediators, like the grannies, 10 million self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs), 180 billion dollars, and 10 years. Bring on The Granny Cloud!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Summer Review: 21st Century Education
Ten Links to Thinking Widely
About 21C Learning and Systemic "Revolution"
A 21st Century Education: 12 leading innovators, including Alan November, Stephen Heppell, and Randall Fielding, use documentary film to explore technology, student-centred learning, and social justice.
The Innovative Educator: Ten 21st Century Education Quotes I Carry With Me. Add Lisa Nielsen's IE blog to your RSS feeds.
Click above to look at this New Brunswick video perspective of 21C learning.
What If? Technology in the 21st Century Classroom: OPSBA (Ontario Public School Boards Assocation) trustees' paper calls for meaningful discussion, shared vision, and classroom strategies that create connected and relevant learning.
21st Century Learner: presentation by Kim Cofino, international school educator and ed tech consultant.
TED Talks: Can I suggest these people whose thinking is outside the box that we know as school?
Schools Kill Creativity (2006), also referred to as Sir Ken 1
Bring on the Learning Revolution! (2010), or Sir Ken 2
OnceUpon a School -- Dave Eggers' Pirate Supply Store
TheFringe Benefits of Failure: J.K. Rowling draws on the ancient wisdom of Plutarch to encourage Harvard graduates to use their unique status to make a difference by imagining and creating a better world; of Seneca, who wrote, "As is a tale, so is life; not how long it is but how good it is is what matters.")
UBC: 1-Day Faculty of Education Conference
So, what were a number of Vancouver's TLs doing out at UBC on Friday, all day? We were part of the Information Literacy Day, "Digging Deeper for Understanding -- Using Information Smarts in a Digital World," for secondary teacher candidates. Keynote speakers included Vancouver's new Superintendent Steve Cardwell and Deputy Superintendent Chris Kennedy from West Van. Presenters include TLs Parungao, North, and Ekdahl from Vancouver, Finlay from Burnaby, and Daly from Coquitlam, as well as UBC librarians Naslund and Giustini.
Here is a link to the Top 20 TED talks recommended in Kennedy's keynote address; these are suggested for busy school administrators. He includes all but Rowling listed above. This list was posted in his conference wiki along with many other 21C-related links that made up his presentation.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
TED and The Advancing-Tech Agenda in Schools
Looking for Some Ideas ...
to Adapt/Adopt for Tech-Seavvy School Libraries?
- A deep-study reading suggestion for those looking for the trends in technology for teaching and learning comes from Michele: it is the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition and if you don't know what "cloud computing" is or where to go online to find "collaborative environments" or where to start now if you want to be up to speed in 2015 ("augmented realities"), then this is just the reading for you. There are articles, tools, and practice-based examples, as well as an Executive Summary for quick and easy scanning and overviewing the topic.
- Have a look at this for some really good ideas about "in-house" technology leadership and being part of the advance team for using technology successfully with teaching and learning:
Teacher Development: Fuelling Teachers To Go High-Tech, from Edutopia (thanks, Jacob, for this link).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)