By Allan Alach
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come
across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz
What Is Your Creative Approach?
John Spencer:
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| A young Einstein |
Art and the Mind’s Eye: How Drawing Trains You to See the World More
Clearly and to Live with a Deeper Sense of Presence
Some Ruskin to challenge your thinking.
“Drawing, indeed, transforms the secret passageway between the eye
and the heart into a two-way
street — while we are wired to miss the vast
majority of what goes on around us, learning to draw rewires us to see the
world differently, to love it more intimately by attending to and coming to
cherish its previously invisible details.”
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| .When you look and /draw you really see and ask questions |
Former schoolteacher wins LEGO® Prize 2016
“Former schoolteacher and current scholar and author, Finnish Pasi
Sahlberg, wins the LEGO Prize 2016 for his work to improve the quality of
children’s education worldwide. Hanne
Rasmussen, CEO of the LEGO Foundation,
presented the prize at the annual LEGO Idea Conference. The prize is
accompanied by a cash award of USD 100,000 to support further development of
quality in children’s learning.”
Children should learn mainly through play until age of eight, says
Lego
“A lack of understanding of the value of play is prompting parents
and schools alike to reduce it
as a priority, says Hanne Rasmussen, head of the
Lego Foundation. If parents and governments push children towards numeracy and
literacy earlier and earlier, it means they miss out on the early play-based
learning that helps to develop creativity, problem-solving and empathy, she
says.”
Why Teachers Are Sometimes Leery Of The Next Big Thing
“We’re simultaneously tired of change, and evaporating as an industry
without it. But that fatigue is important to honor. That so many teachers are
tired of hearing it all isn’t simply proof they need to find new jobs. If a
teacher doesn’t “buy in,” automatically labeling them a non-team player is a problem.
After all, the best teachers often don’t do what they’re told anyway.”
The Best Teachers Don’t Do What They’re Told
“I do realize that, on paper, there’s no reason a teacher can’t do
what they’re told and be amazing, but think for a moment about the best
teachers you know. Do they do what they’re told, or do they simply do what
needs to be done and navigate any fallout better than everyone else? So
how can you get there?”
Contributed by Bruce Hammonds:
What are
Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) or Modern Learning Environments (MLEs)
really about?
Bruce’s very
thoughtful article about this current trend:
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| /???????? |
How can the
learning sciences inform the design of 21st century
learning
environments?
At last something
sensible about Modern Learning Environments: After watching a number of short
video clips about Modern Learning Environments or Innovative Learning
Environments and being less than impressed – all those colourful spaces with
trendy furniture and beanbags and little in depth learning to be seen – it was
great to come across a publication that, if implemented, would add a qualitative
dimension to such environments with its emphasis on problem based teaching.
“Over recent
years, learning has moved increasingly centre stage and for a range of powerful
reasons. A primary driver has been the scale of change in our world the rapid
advances in ICT, the shift to economies based on knowledge, and the emphasis on
the skills required to thrive in them. Schools and education systems around the
world are having to reconsider their design and approach to teaching and
learning. What should schooling, teaching and, most especially, learning look
like in this rapidly changing world?”
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| Time to see beyond the open spaces? |
Attention,
Students: Put Your Laptops Away
“As laptops
become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of
taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing
your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there's a lot of information
to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the
old-fashioned way.”
10 Valuable
Digital Age Skills to Take Beyond School
From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:
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| Range of integrated studies |
“A number of schools are ‘experimenting’ with
providing the curriculum to their students by means of a series of ‘rich topics’.
This is in response to what they have found is an impossible ask, to cover all
the ‘overcrowded’ curriculum requirements that have developed as a result of
the imposition of too many standardized curriculums. This seems a reasonable if
not a very original idea; having been developed by creative primary teachers in
the sixties and seventies.”
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| Wonderful book |
“The book ‘Scientist in the Crib’ comes with high praise from
educationalist. Jerome Bruner who writes, ‘this book is a gem, a really
beautiful combination of scholarship and good sense’.This exciting book
discusses important discoveries about how much babies and young children know
and learn. It argues that evolution designed both adults and children to
naturally teach and learn off each other, and that the drive to learn is our
most important instinct. Very young children, as well as some adults, use much
of the same methods scientists use to learn so much about the world.”
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