The Educator's Notebook

featured articles

Mathematics Is Overlooked In The History Of Ideas
Aeon - 10/11/18

"Taking mathematical ideas seriously might lead to discovering that technical ideas are as important as political or religious ones. Taking mathematics seriously might also, counter to stereotypes, lead thinking away from current preoccupations with culture and power, and back to questions of aesthetics and beauty. Aesthetics and beauty are ever-present concerns in art and in mathematics, though seemingly small matters to historians and humanists today, preoccupied as they are with power.”
“Teens Are Protesting In-Class Presentations.” Not Everyone Agrees.
Atlantic - 9/12/18

“We need to stop preaching to get rid of public speaking and we need to start preaching for better mental health support and more accessibility alternatives for students who are unable to complete presentations/classwork/etc due to health reasons.”

adolescence

Headphones Are Everywhere. What To Do About it?
New Yorker - 7/12/16

athletics

High Schools Partner With University To Study Concussions
Stanford - 10/15/18

character

On The Value Of Idleness: A Summary Of Three Books
Public Books - 10/10/18

“Lightman ends with concrete, practical prescriptions: 10-minute silences during school days, “introspective” college courses that give students more time to reflect, electronics-free rooms at work, unplugged hours at home.”
Is "Find Your Passion” A Fixed Mindset For Careers?
Scientific American - 10/9/18
An Excellent Conversation With Angela Duckworth About Character
ASCD - 10/1/18
Nine Practices For Fostering Empathy
ASCD - 10/1/18
We Need To Rethink Willpower. It May Be An Outmoded Concept.
Nautilus - 2/2/17

“Willpower may simply be a pre-scientific idea—one that was born from social attitudes and philosophical speculation rather than research, and enshrined before rigorous experimental evaluation of it became possible. The term has persisted into modern psychology because it has a strong intuitive hold on our imagination: Seeing willpower as a muscle-like force does seem to match up with some limited examples, such as resisting cravings, and the analogy is reinforced by social expectations stretching back to Victorian moralizing. But these ideas also have a pernicious effect, distracting us from more accurate ways of understanding human psychology and even detracting from our efforts toward meaningful self-control.”

curriculum

Head Of Tech Company: Tech Companies Need More Humanities
Guardian - 10/12/18

"Stem is a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics clearly critical… [But] if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behaviour, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life.”
The Six College Experiences That Shape Whether Students Thrive As Adults
Quartz - 10/2/18

“Taking a course with a professor who makes learning exciting. Working with professors who care about students professionally. Finding a mentor who encourages students to follow personal goals. Working on a project across several semesters. Participating in an internship that applies classroom learning. Being active in extracurricular activities

history of education

Has Teaching Standardized? Larry Cuban Tells The Concise History
Larry Cuban - 10/20/18
Have Schools Standardized? Larry Cuban Tells The Concise History
Larry Cuban - 10/17/18
"The Factory Model” Is A Myth. The Real Problem Is Inequality.
Vice - 10/16/18

“High school is broken in America. Its buildings and classes are old and stodgy. As an institution, it’s unchanging, built to crank out factory workers and thus unsuited for our modern, high-tech era… It’s a popular narrative reflecting the very real fears held by so many young people today when it comes to economic instability, inequality, and their future prospects in the labor market. The thing of it is, it’s just not true.”
“Whatever Happened To Service Learning?”
Larry Cuban - 10/14/18

humanities

“Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?”
Nautilus - 10/18/18

"These examples illustrate Western literature’s gradual progression from narratives that relate actions and events to stories that portray minds in all their meandering, many-layered, self-contradictory complexities. I’d often wondered, when reading older texts: Weren’t people back then interested in what characters thought and felt?”

professional development

“How to Bring Innovation to Campus Without Cheapening Education”
EdSurge - 10/17/18
KQED Is Looking For Teachers To Write About Media Literacy
KQED - 9/10/18

pedagogy

Dungeons & Dragons Continues To Make (Good) Headlines In Schools
KQED - 10/18/18

“Dungeons & Dragons is an innately multidisciplinary and multimodal experience, which is why scholars and educators like Wells tend to describe its learning benefits in terms of lists and inventories. Its implementation as an instructional tool, then, is not only fun, but also becomes a sort of curricular node with the capacity to engage students in a wide array of skills and subjects.”
Audrey Watters On B. F. Skinner And Button Pushing
Hack Education - 10/18/18
"How To Design A Competency-Based Assessment”
Global Online Academy - 10/17/18
On Silence As A Pedagogical Tool
Edutopia - 10/15/18

“Silence offers a structure that encourages internal discipline, and as a result, greater capacity for free thinking. It is an essential element of a pedagogical practice that supports ideas of continual growth, possibility, and fundamental care of students.”
On Developing A Culture Of Thinking By Making Thinking Visible
KQED - 3/31/16

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An Overview Of The Basics Of Good Pedagogy
Art History Teaching Resources - 2/3/14

“We tried to brainstorm what pedagogical foundation new teachers would need before entering the classroom and what was feasible to provide these individuals in a one-day workshop. We knew that one cannot teach someone how to teach in a day; but we realized there are basic principles that every new teacher should understand before entering the classroom.”

reading/writing

Pop-Up Books Were Science Books Before They Were Kids Books
Atlantic - 10/14/18

"Since antiquity, teachers had held that scientific subjects were best learned through pictures and working models. Beginners needed to see, touch, and manipulate the objects of study. Teachers of astronomy and mathematics, for example, had long employed three-dimensional models and instruments in their classrooms.”

safety

MAD Magazine Makes A Gashlycrumb Tinies About School Shootings
New York Times - 10/9/18

““T is for TINA who’s texting her mom,” says one panel showing a girl kneeling under her desk. “V is for VINCENT who’s sheltered in place,” reads another. The strip ends with a drawing of a girl passing the graves of her classmates on the way to the school’s entrance: “Z is for ZOE who won’t be the last.””

stem

MIT Plans A “College For Artificial Intelligence”
New York Times - 10/15/18
A Competition To Bring Ethics Into Undergraduate Computer Science
EdSurge - 10/11/18

tech

On The World Of Kids YouTube
Atlantic - 11/1/18
SNHU Expands To Community-Based Youth In Cities Around The US
SNHU - 10/19/18
Writers Begin Experimenting With AI-Assisted Writing
New York Times - 10/18/18
Four Questions To Replace The SAMR Model Of EdTech Usage
EdSurge - 10/18/18
Empathy & VR: “VR Can Help Make People More Compassionate”
Stanford - 10/17/18

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“The Crisis of Intimacy in the Age of Digital Connectivity”
LA Review of Books - 10/15/18

"The basic contradiction is as simple as it is desperate: the sharing of private experience has never been more widespread while empathy, the ability to recognize the meaning of another’s private experience, has never been more rare.”

other

On The Proliferation Of Low-Cost Private Schools In Poor Countries
Bright - 10/9/18
Long Term Enrollment Trends In Private Schools
Education Next - 9/1/18
Tuition Free, Entrepreneurship-Focused Boarding School For Underserved Kids
Spokesman - 7/16/18

The Educator's Notebook

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Articles on October 21, 2018

featured articles

adolescence

athletics

character

curriculum

diversity/inclusion

early childhood

higher ed

history of education

humanities

professional development

pedagogy

reading/writing

safety

stem

tech

other