The Educator's Notebook

“Don’t Mistake Training for Education”
Inside Higher Ed - 4/29/21

“Training has its uses. It can even save lives. (See CPR above.) But training is woefully inadequate when it comes to confronting social problems such as poverty, discrimination and racism. These are long-standing, knotty and complex issues that defy ready-made solutions. Any serious effort to address them must start with education, a process for which there are no shortcuts.”
Adam Grant On Confident Humility In Leaders
TED - 4/1/21

“It's being secure enough in your strengths to acknowledge your weaknesses. Having enough faith in your knowledge to recognize your ignorance. Being so determined to get it right that you're willing to admit when you're wrong.”

Rubrics Decrease Racial Bias In Assessments
Education Next - 11/2/20

“When teachers evaluated student writing using a general grade-level scale, they were 4.7 percentage points more likely to consider the white child’s writing at or above grade level compared to the identical writing from a Black child. However, when teachers used a grading rubric with specific criteria, the grades were essentially the same.”
“How To Turn Rubric Scores Into Grades”
Cult of Pedagogy - 8/19/15

On Milman Parry, The Young Scholar Who Realized Homer Was Singing, Not Writing
Literary Hub - 4/28/21
“Five Perspectives On Race And Shakespeare” Via The Public Theater
Literary Hub - 8/14/20

“On August 14th, PBS is running an encore national broadcast of the Public Theater’s Much Ado About Nothing from last summer. It features an all-Black cast in New York City’s Central Park doing Shakespeare’s romantic comedy under a Stacey Abrams 2020 banner—starring Danielle Brooks and Grantham Coleman, directed by Kenny Leon. This American resetting radically changes the Shakespearean precursor to the modern rom coms in which two people who can’t stand each other end up falling in love. We studied this performance as first-year college students, this March, around the time our campus closed due to coronavirus.”
The Astor Place “Macbeth” Clashes In NYC: 22 People Died
Literary Hub - 5/10/16

“The Computers Are Getting Better At Writing”
New Yorker - 4/30/21

“When I pressed the button asking Sudowrite to continue “Kubla Khan” in an “ominous” style, it generated the following… I find this beautiful, memorable. If you told me that Coleridge wrote it, I would believe you. The machine even put in the indents.”
40 Figures Of Speech To Improve Writing, Illustrated In A Periodic Table
Visual Capitalist - 4/30/21
NC Elementary Teachers Find Relief In The Science Of Reading
EdNC - 4/7/21

On The Benefits Of Video Lectures Supplementing Class
Behavioral Scientist - 4/26/21

“The implications of this new meta-analysis demonstrate a clear benefit of instructional videos in higher education courses. The authors interpret the finings through the lens of multimode learning theory in that teaching in a more dynamic way that includes varied modes of information delivery is more effective than monomodal information delivery. This is a basic principle of learning experience design.”
“From Admissions To… Grading, AI Is Infiltrating Higher Ed”
Hechinger Report - 4/26/21

Scott Galloway On The Economics Of Higher Ed
Professor Galloway - 4/30/21
Maybe Taking Notes By Hand Doesn’t Make Much Of A Difference After All
EdSurge - 4/27/21

“Miller is quick to note that the authors of the original study did nothing wrong, and that it is typical for small studies to have findings that turn out to be “fragile” when submitted to follow-up studies. As she notes: “All this back and forth is good social science, but from a practical standpoint it leads to one fairly glaring conclusion: If the supposed advantage of handwriting is flaky enough, or simply small enough, not to reliably show up across studies, we probably shouldn't be remaking our classroom policies because of it.””
“I’m Not Languishing, I’m Dormant”
Austin Kleon - 4/26/21
Visual Arts Students Design Post-Pandemic New Yorker Covers
Kottke - 4/26/21
“Alternative Teaching Modalities In Hell” [Humor]
McSweeney’s - 4/19/21

“In addition to synchronous, asynchronous, blended, and hybrid online courses, faculty are encouraged to adapt the following face-to-face modalities to promote student retention, community cohesion, and the joyful spirit of learning in Hell.”

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