By Allan Alach
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come
across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz
8 digital skills we must teach our children
‘Moreover, there is the digital age gap. The way children use
technology is very different from adults. This gap makes it difficult for
parents and educators to fully understand the risks and threats
So how can we, as parents, educators and leaders, prepare our
children for the digital age? Without a doubt, it is critical for us to equip
them with digital intelligence.’
Information Literacy and Document Learning
‘Information literacy consists in the ability to identify, search
effectively for information, locate, filter, discern the quality of
information, evaluate, analyze, tag, categorize, re-mix, create new types
of information and effectively use and communicate the findings well for an
issue or problem at hand.’
The Critical Thinking Skills Cheatsheet
‘Critical thinking skills truly matter in learning. Why? Because
they are life skills we use every day of our lives. Everything from our work to
our recreational pursuits, and all that’s in between, employs these unique and
valuable abilities. Consciously developing them takes thought-provoking
discussion and equally thought-provoking questions to get it going.’
Can constructivism avoid our children turning into Stormtroopers?
‘Seymour Papert, who I had the opportunity to spend time with in
those years, had developed a learning theory he called “Constructionism”.
Papert had been a student of Piaget and Vygotsky who had developed philosophies
about the nature of knowledge called Constructivism and Social Constructivism
respectively.’
Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab
Following on, here’s more about Seymour Papert’s
constructionism.
‘The first big idea is learning by doing. We all learn better when
learning is part of doing something we find really interesting. We learn best
of all when we use what we learn to make something we really want.’
Why Spatial Reasoning Is Crucial For Early
Math Education
‘There’s a well-known rift between those who believe the only type
of developmentally appropriate early childhood education is a play-based one,
and those concerned that relying solely on any learning that comes out of play
could put students coming from impoverished backgrounds at a disadvantage.
Research has shown that students from lower socioeconomic groups enter school
with significantly less mathematical knowledge, and it is difficult to overcome
that gap without intentional mathematics programming. But, at the same time,
traditional teacher-led instruction often isn’t developmentally appropriate for
five-year-olds.’
Contributed by Bruce Hammonds:
What Do We
Really Mean When We Say 'Personalized Learning’?
‘The idea of
personalized learning is seductive — it implies moving away from the
industrialized form of education that pumps out cookie-cutter students with the
same knowledge and skills. After decades of this approach, it is clear that all
children don't learn the same way and personalization seems to honor those
differences. However, that term has taken on several different meanings.’
Die in the
Ditch - Non-negotiable Principles for Learning Design
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| Marie Abraham - Principal Principal Hobsonville Point School NZ |
‘An important
and very rewarding part of our development journey has been sharing our
thinking with the hundreds of visitors that we have hosted. This has reminded
me of the passion and openness that so many teachers have to make schooling as
engaging and relevant as possible for learners. Almost all have agreed that
students are struggling to engage and find learning stressful. They also
recognise that teaching has become a hard slog with reduced rewards. Many also
acknowledge that schools are becoming more like centres of assessment rather
than centres of learning.All of the visiting schools want answers to the
question of what can be done at their school and, in some cases, believe that
after a visit they will discover a model they can transplant into their own
environment. Of course, they soon realise this is unlikely.’
Sir Ken
Robinson: How to Create a Culture For Valuable Learning
“If you design
a system to do something, don’t be surprised if it does it,” Robinson said at
the annual Big Picture Learning conference called Big Bang. He went on to
describe the two pillars of the current system — conformity and compliance —
which undermine the sincere efforts of educators and parents to equip children
with the confidence to enter the world on their own terms.”
How One
Teacher Let Go of Control To Focus On Student-Centered Approaches
‘When Kristine
Riley saw a colleague she admired and teachers she followed on social media
extol the learning advantages of letting go of control in the classroom, she
decided to give it a try. "I started out small," said Riley, who
teaches in Edison, New Jersey public schools. It took about a year, maybe a
year and a half, to abandon her top-down approach to teaching and replace it
with what she calls "structured chaos.”'
From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:
Creative Schools – an impossible dream?
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| Education for conformity |
‘Educators who believe that education is more of a process of
creating stimulating environments to allow students to begin the process of
helping the young explore what it is that they are best suited for have always
been in the minority. Most teachers have little choice to put programmes into
place that have been defined by their school, by those distant 'experts' that
determine the curriculum and, most invasive of all, by those who determine the
means of assessing students learning. When the latter is in the hands of the
politicians supported by compliant principals then the possibility of
creativity is all but lost.’
The artistry of teaching and future learning attributes
The future of learning depends on the artistry
of the teacher
‘The future of education will be substantially determined by the
shared perception of the purpose of learning, and that this is best expressed
in terms of the needs of the learner. A focus on deep and profound learning
would determine the qualities of a learner of the future. This in turn has
implications for the quality of the teaching provided.’
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| The artistry of the teacher |
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