The Educator's Notebook

7 Themes After Reviewing 25 Years Of Education Technology
EdTechie - 9/5/18

“Cycles of interest – there are some ideas that keep recurring in ed tech: the intelligent tutor, personalised learning, the end of universities. Audrey Watters refers to zombie ideas, which just won’t die. Partly this is a result of the aforementioned historical amnesia, and partly it is a result of techno-optimism (“This time it really will work”).”
“The Business Case For Curiosity”
Harvard Business Review - 9/1/18

“By making small changes to the design of their organizations and the ways they manage their employees, leaders can encourage curiosity—and improve their companies. This is true in every industry and for creative and routine work alike.”

“The Kids Who Still Need Football”
New York Times - 9/8/18

“America is moving away from this dangerous sport. But some families will decide the risks are worth it…”
Helpful Instructional Videos: NFL Wrestles With No-Helmet-Hits Rule.
New York Times - 9/6/18
On How A Cycling-Before-School Program Helps Middle School Kids
Spokesman - 9/3/18

Dungeons & Dragons: A (Literal) Character Builder
KQED - 9/4/18

"D&D gives us a powerful tool to explore new realities and how those realities are built: through action, choices, community, negotiation, resilience and responsibility… It’s not a novelty that stories change the world, but by exercising all those characteristics in a game, it becomes an obvious lesson: If you want to make any change, change the narrative first. Changing your own narrative as a character affects not only you, but your group. Group narratives affect community narratives and it all becomes an empowering cycle.”

"Warner Media Unveils Diversity Protocols For Movies and TV Shows”
New York Times - 9/5/18

"WarnerMedia said it would issue an annual public report on its progress, which it said would also take into account the L.G.B.T. community and those with disabilities.”
Recommended Gender Non-Binary Words
Teen Vogue - 8/27/18

Reflections On Two Cycles Of A High School Digital Humanities Course
Medium - 9/6/18

“And yet, in all these examples, after identifying passages via distant reading techniques, close reading those passages is where the nuanced meaning-making happens. This is a model one increasingly hears to describe the digital humanities: it’s the telescope that helps find where to point the microscope.”
John Quincy Adams Wrote An Epic Poem
Lapham’s Quarterly - 9/6/18

Can The Parenting Metaphor—Gardener v. Carpenter—Work For Teachers?
Quartz - 9/6/18
On Using Makerspaces Throughout The Curriculum
THE Journal - 9/4/18

"I don't think that it would be wise, necessarily, to not have disciplines where kids can go deeply into the mastery of those disciplinary ways of thinking, but I don't think that it should stop there. History class should not necessarily just be about learning to think like a historian, it should also now include the juxtaposition of the historical way of thinking with other ways of solving problems.”

Have We Passed Peak Reading?
The Paris Review - 8/27/18

“John Milton could still pride himself without exaggeration on having read every book then available, the entire history of written thought accessible to a single mind. When I was in college, a friend and I worked on a short film, never finished, in which Milton somehow found himself brought forward in time to lower Manhattan’s Strand bookstore, where the sheer volume of titles (“18 Miles of Books” is the store’s slogan) provoked a kind of mental overload, causing him to run screaming from the store out into Broadway, only to be struck down by a New York City bus.”

Some Thoughts On Managing Fortnite, And Does It Belong In Class?
NBC News - 9/2/18

“What I would encourage is the idea that we need to love what our kids love, and the idea we can teach through what they love is really valuable.”

“A Few Principles For Thinking Clearly”
Medium - 9/1/18
Dress Code Controversies Continuing Across The Country
EdWeek - 8/31/18

“Schools with strict dress codes often claim that such regulations prevent in-class distractions, create a workplace-like environment, reduce pressures based on socioeconomic status, and deter gang activity. However, in an age of #MeToo and easy internet access, controversy is increasingly cropping up over whether excluding students from the classroom for violating dress codes is worthwhile, and whether such rules are disproportionately enforced against girls, and especially those of color.”
"Why Do We Work So Hard?”
1843 Magazine - 4/1/16

“The problem is not that overworked professionals are all miserable. The problem is that they are not.”

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