The Educator's Notebook

featured articles

The Current Opportunity Of Generative A.I.
e-Literate - 4/23/23

“To get this result, I had to draw on considerable prior knowledge. More importantly, I had to draw on significant language and critical thinking skills. Anyone who ever said that a philosophy degree like mine isn’t practical can eat my dust. Socrates was a prompt engineer. Most Western philosophers engage in some form of chain-of-thought prompting as a way of structuring their arguments. Skills and knowledge aren’t dead. Writing and thinking skills most certainly aren’t. Far from it. If you doubt me, ask ChatGPT, “How might teaching students about Socrates’ philosophy and method help them learn to become better prompt engineers?” See what it has to say.”
“Your Email Does Not Constitute My Emergency”
New York Times - 4/13/23

“When we place too high a priority on the speed of our email replies, we destroy our ability to focus. Interruptions derail our train of thought and wreak havoc on our progress. When you know you don’t have to reply to emails right away, you can actually find flow and dedicate your full attention where you wish.”

diversity/inclusion

We Should Pay Attention To Fear Speech As Much As Hate Speech
New York Times - 5/6/23
Social Belonging Intervention Shows Incremental Gains In Retention
Stanford - 5/4/23

“Overall, the scholars found that when the intervention was administered in a supportive environment, first-year full-time completion rates for students in groups that had been persisting at lower rates rose by two percentage points, an impressive impact for an online exercise that took less than 30 minutes to complete (the average time students spent on a key aspect of the exercise – sharing their story – was just 7½ minutes).”

early childhood

On Child-Guided Play Time Every Day
KQED - 10/17/22

health

On The Importance Of Consistent Sleep For Heart Health
New York Times - 2/27/23

higher ed

Community College Enrollment Is Declining
AP News - 4/4/23

humanities

On The Decorative Book Business (See: Gatsby)
New York Times - 4/28/23
Shakespeare Integrated Contemporary Mathematics Into His Work
The Conversation - 4/20/23
Jill Lepore On Data, Mysteries, Facts, and Numbers
New Yorker - 3/27/23

leadership

“5 Ways Principals Can De-Stress Teachers’ Work Lives”
EdWeek - 5/11/23
Help Your Teachers Do Less
MIT Sloan Management Review - 5/11/23

“Companies that reduce and simplify workload on the front lines find that they can position employees to deliver a better customer experience.”
“5 Types Of Emails Managers Should Never Send”
Fast Company - 5/11/23
Leaders Should Visit Classes (Via The CEO Of Airbnb Staying In Rentals)
Yahoo Finance - 5/4/23
4 Developmental Stages Of Leadership: Quiet, Front-Line, Organizational, Cultural/Strategic
Training Folks - 5/3/23

View remaining articles (2)

On The Leadership Benefits Of Role Playing Games (And D&D)
Inc. - 4/18/23
“What It Takes To Coach Your People”
Center for Creative Leadership - 1/31/23

professional development

A Model For Ongoing Formative Feedback For Teachers (3 Parts)
SmartBrief - 5/4/23

pedagogy

“Questioning For Retrieval: Five Mistakes To Avoid”
Improving Teaching - 4/23/23
Give More Feedback. People (Including Peers) Want It.
Behavioral Scientist - 4/17/23

“We tested the desire to give and receive feedback in all sorts of situations—with strangers and close friends; when the feedback was less consequential (like mispronouncing a word) and more consequential (like making an egregious error during an interview). We found that, in almost all of the situations we tested, people underestimated how much others wanted to receive their feedback.”
“How Much Can Duolingo [Plus A.I.] Teach Us?”
New Yorker - 4/17/23

reading/writing

Handwriting Or Computers: Which Is Better For Learning To Write?
Fordham Institute - 4/25/23

“All in all, the researchers suggest that the data represent an even outcome, with both learning modalities proving successful at increasing student growth and achievement in writing.”
Reading Instruction Continues To Evolve Rapidly
New York Times - 4/16/23
Teaching Content Matters. More Knowledge Increases Reading Fluency.
Reading Research Quarterly - 10/22/22

“The results showed that the relation between domain knowledge and reading is bidirectional and positive throughout the elementary years, providing empirical evidence that domain knowledge and reading may mutually enhance with each other.”

social media

“Is There Life After Influencing?”
New York Times - 4/11/23

stem

Is There A Science Of Math? A Discussion Is Beginning.
Hechinger Report - 5/8/23

“In its most extreme version, this new math movement revives an old fight between advocates of teacher-led instruction of step-by-step procedures against those who favor student discovery and a conceptual understanding of math. It also raises new questions about what makes for good evidence in math education and pits well-designed quantitative studies of achievement gains against qualitative studies of people’s attitudes about math and why more women and people of color don’t enter STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.”
“What Is Math ‘Fact Fluency’ And How Does It Develop?”
EdWeek - 5/1/23

“The basic reason why math fact fluency matters, cognitive scientists say, is that it frees up brainpower or working memory to do more complex mathematical work—like figuring out how to structure a multistep word problem, model a solution, or puzzle out systems of equations. It’s harder for students to do those things when they’re simply trying to work through basic arithmetic.”
“A.I. Is Getting Better At Mind Reading”
New York Times - 5/1/23
How One HBCU Created Its Own Tech Pipeline
New York Times - 4/5/23
Hobbyist Develops New Aperiodic Monotile “Einstein" Shape
New York Times - 3/28/23

sustainability

Lake Or Battery? A New Kind Of Hydropower Is Spreading Fast
New York Times - 5/2/23
Switch To Electric School Buses
Flowing Data - 4/27/23

tech

On Orwell, Huxley, Postman, And The Problem With Techno-Convenience
Intrepid News - 5/9/23
Coursera Releases Its Own Principles Of Responsible A.I. Use
Coursera - 5/8/23
New AI Chatbots Are More Likely To Realize The Promise Of 1:1 Tutoring
74 Million - 5/4/23
AI Is Writing Programs To Answer Questions
One Useful Thing - 5/2/23

“I will offer my usual advice: embrace these systems. They offer both exciting opportunities and the possibility of worrying change, but they are going to be ubiquitous regardless of how we feel about them. So, the best way to adjust to a world of AI is to start using it whenever you can, for whatever tasks you can. It is the only way to learn what these systems do well, what they do badly, and how you will fit into the world of AI that is already here. I think you will find many ways in which they expand your capabilities and relieve you of your most annoying work, so that you can focus on the things that make you unique as a human being in a world of rapidly advancing AI.”
Schools Are Experimenting With Hybrid Tutoring
KQED - 5/1/23

View remaining articles (1)

How Generate A.I. Is Affecting The Voice Over And Audiobook Industry
The Walrus - 4/5/23

workplace

A.I. May Help Unskilled Workers The Most
NPR - 5/2/23
A Model Of School Run By Teachers
Hechinger Report - 4/25/23

““It feels different not having a principal,” said Ella, a fifth grader with long blond hair who’d transferred to Boston Teachers Union Pilot School three years earlier. “At the school I was at before this, ‘principal’ is a word teachers would use, not to threaten you, but to make you listen to them,” she said, noting that a principal served primarily as an authority figure rather than someone who had relationships with students. “Having co-leads is just much better.””
How The Absence Of Proximity Penalizes (Young) Remote Workers
New York Times - 4/24/23
When Is It Ok To Break Policy?
Harvard Business Review - 4/13/23
Adam Grant: On Building A Culture Of Generosity At Work
Adam Grant - 4/9/23

View remaining articles (1)

On Working In Edtech After Working In The Classroom
EdWeek - 3/24/23

“I’m happy to sing the praises of what I do, but let’s have an honest conversation here: Leaving the classroom isn’t a total solution. I’m still in education and I still have to respond to its problems, albeit in a different form. So why am I writing this? My goal here is not to deter my fellow educators from coming over to ed tech but to clarify what my life is like on the other side.”

other

On The Fate Of Low-Cost Private Schools In America
New York Times - 5/1/23
“14 Fun Facts About Dungeons And Dragons” (A History)
Smithsonian - 3/31/23

The Educator's Notebook

Search thousands of curated articles from all back issues

Articles on April 14, 2023

featured articles

adolescence

athletics

creativity

curriculum

diversity/inclusion

early childhood

health

higher ed

humanities

leadership

professional development

pedagogy

reading/writing

social media

stem

sustainability

tech

workplace

other