Archive | Learning RSS feed for this section
Ed Reformers: Champions of the Wrong Theory of Learning
In alphabetical order: Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City. Eli Broad, financier and philanthropist. Jeb Bush, ex-Florida governor and possible 2012 presidential contender. Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education. Bill Gates, business magnate and philanthropist. Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools. In education issues, mainstream media sometimes call these gentlemen, “The New [...]
Continue reading...Pros & Cons of Summertime Daddy Day Care
15. July 2010
Here are some (hopefully amusing) Pros & Cons of spending summer break as a full-time daddy.
Continue reading...Spill Happens: Education Reform & the Gulf of Mexico
22. June 2010
There are a number of things we could arguably learn from the on-going Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico: These things are NOT fail safe. We should get off oil. MMS’s regulators are too lax. BP took too many chances. Corporations are to blame. Lobbyists are to blame. Politicians are to blame. We are [...]
Continue reading...The Acronym’s Missing a Letter: W(riting)
28. May 2010
I’m proposing something radical. I’m recommending we consider something that may not fit into a nifty acronym. For some time, educators and those interested in influencing schools’ curricular foci, have suggested significant instructional redirection, often with an acronym that supposedly creates education’s needed compass. The most famous of these, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), has [...]
Continue reading...Creating the Optimal Learning Environment
24. May 2010
This article was originally posted by George Couros on May 21, 2010 at his site, “The Principal of Change“. As I have talked about effective practices for teachers and administrators, I really wanted to shift the focus on what the best environment is for student learning. If we are to have students become leaders and [...]
Continue reading...Winning: the ultimate distraction
24. May 2010
I was reffing basketball again this morning and I had a game where a player placed another in a headlock and took him to the floor as hard as he could. So I promptly gave him a disqualifying foul and he was removed from the game. The disqualifying foul was a no brainer – the [...]
Continue reading...Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed
12. May 2010
Corporate America has given us Big Banks (banks too big to fail) & Big Pharma (a pharmaceutical industry too big to fight). Coming soon to a school near you, courtesy of corporate America: Big Ed
Continue reading...What Makes a Master Teacher?
10. May 2010
This post was originally written by myself, George Couros, on my blog, “The Principal of Change”, on April 24, 2010. I am honored to have been asked to cross-post this to the Ecology of Education blog. Hope you enjoy it! The term “master teacher” seems to get thrown around a lot, but is something that [...]
Continue reading...People’s Republic of Standardization
29. April 2010
Yong Zhao’s recently released book Catching Up or Leading the Way is a must read for educators and policy makers who want to see where our current high stakes testing regimes will take us. Zhao does a masterful job of showing how China has long had an obsession with standardized testing.
Continue reading...Destructive Grading Schemes
15. March 2010
Teachers have what seems like an infinite number of assessment schemes at their disposal, and unfortunately most of these schemes revolve more around managing grades than encouraging learning. Today, I wish to debunk a certain kind of scheme. Have you ever heard of a teacher who subscribes to this kind of assessment practice? Good morning [...]
Continue reading...The Folly of Rubrics and Grades
11. March 2010
Before I abolished grades, I went through my rubrics stage. I was convinced I could solve my assessment problems if I could just fine-tune my rubric production. I struggled for months trying to create ‘student-proof’ rubrics that would allow me to consistantly assess their learning. I can’t say that the time I spent on rubrics was a waste – because I learned a lot – but what I learned is that rubrics have little to no place in the classroom…
Continue reading...Critical Transformations: 15 Tools
10. March 2010
Major seismic shifts can transform educators, and by proxy, instruction. However, more often than not, it’s just the opposite. Here are 15 implementable small steps that lead to transformation.
Continue reading...Engaging Your Stakeholders with Podcasting
7. March 2010
Educators feast on hope. We hope to make a difference. We hope students will become life-long learners. We hope it won’t take too long to grade that stack of assignments we’ve been neglecting all week. We hope the students bring us our favorite candy the day after Halloween. Mostly, though, we hope to find curricular [...]
Continue reading...Vision + Persistence = Critical Transformations
6. March 2010
Critical Transformations, an apt theme against the backdrop of the River Walk in San Antonio. 80 years ago, the San Antonio River, coursed through the city, pulsing with the rhythms rivers are prone to — mainly intermittent flooding. The 1924 flood proved especially devastating, taking over 50 lives. As the adage goes, “Necessity is the [...]
Continue reading...Learning Cycle. For Kids Only?
11. February 2010
As part of a professional development workshop on Inquiry in the Classroom (which is a part of our school’s yearlong investigation), my fellow teachers and I were (re)-introduced to the Learning Cycle model. The basic model, initially developed in 1984 by David Kolb, looks something like this: This is nothing new. Many teachers already know [...]
Continue reading...Maybe We Should Just Go Back Outside and Teach
9. February 2010
In the 500 years since Columbus’s Big Misunderstanding in the “West Indies”, our education system has come a long way. After manhandling the country away from the natives (who’s “schools” probably consisted of ridiculously worthless lessons like feeding your family, shelters that last, and building fires without zippos, anyway) we’ve managed to construct an institution that has [...]
Continue reading...Student Created Video Promoting Haiti Fundraiser
26. January 2010
Haiti Earthquake Fundraiser Student Video from Jason Flom on Vimeo. Several of my 5th grade students created this moving video to promote our upcoming fundraiser, “Haitian Food for Haitian Lives”. Students in 4th, 5th, and 8th grades will be making, selling and serving a traditional Haitian meal followed by a bake sale to raise money [...]
Continue reading...Oh, The Tinkering You Will Do
25. January 2010
TED Talks describes Gever Tulley this way: A software engineer, Gever Tulley is the co-founder of the Tinkering School, a weeklong camp where lucky kids get to play with their very own power tools. He’s interested in helping kids learn how to build, solve problems, use new materials and hack old ones for new purposes. [...]
Continue reading...Plate Tectonics Power Point
20. January 2010
With the recent Earthquakes (and ensuing devastation in Haiti), a number of teachers are working to help their students make sense of the events — both from humanitarian and geographical perspectives. A good friend of mine, Dr. Todd Albert, a climatologist and geography professor, created this power point presentation on Plate Tectonics a few years [...]
Continue reading...Recent Videos 
-
Oil Spill Estimate
Pick your level of gush: NOAA’s super-conservative-we-just-publish-what-BP-tells-us or the Dr. Doom expert analysis. Either way, it’s not looking good. It’s looking goo.
- Open Letter to the Teacher Who Said "I Hate Technology."
- The Folly of Rubrics and Grades
- A Teacher's Field Guide to Parents
- Reviewing Cathy Vatterott's "Rethinking Homework"
- Shift Happens. (Even in Schools?)
- Marion Brady: Thank YOU. I hope I didn't leave the impression th...
- Marion Brady: I've done consulting work twice for the Gates Foun...
- Sharon Elin: One important parent type that could be added, in ...
- Jessica Horton: Marion, I love this piece, but I don't know if I a...
- Adam Burk: Thanks for this post, making the necessary highlig...
© 2010 Ecology of Education. Powered by Wordpress.
26. August 2010
View Comments