I came across an index card last week. It must have fallen out one of the books we’ve been carrting around for years and have begun to weed out. It was a reference to a “Hart, J. K.” and a book, Light from the north with the notation, “1926. folk high schools in Denmark” and [...]
Education —
Category Archives: Education
Are our public school students treated as supermarket tomatoes?
This morning Joe Palca, the NPR science reporter, interviewed a U of Florida plant biologist about growing more tastier tomatoes. The biologist, Harvey Klee, noted that tomato growers were rewarded for size of their tomatoes and yield of their crops. “Flavor is irrelevant,” he said. You see size and yield are easily measured and counted, [...]
What does training look like in complex environments?
This morning reading my emails from overnight I found a link to a post by Harold Jarche. He uses David Snowden’s Cynefin Framework as an illustration. I thought I would share it with some of my colleagues and wrote an email about it to them. After I was done, the email look like a blog [...]
Government site lists our work with CSO as part of science stimulus spending
An entry from yesterday’s Slashdot discussions- Accountability of the Scientific Stimulus Funding- tipped me off to hunt for a mention of the NIH grant to the Center for Science Outreach and, tacitly, our work with it.
Sure enough. Just a little while ago, I went the the federal government site mentioned, ScienceWorksForUs, clicked on the [...]
Final Bracey report takes to task push for “high-quality schools,” mayoral control of schools, & higher standards
Just received an email from the Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder announcing the 2009 edition of the Bracey report:
BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (November 9, 2009) — The 2009 edition of the annual “Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education” offers a sober assessment of [...]
A video story of “the boy who harnessed the wind,” William Kamkwamba
is on YouTube. William Kamkwamba was 14-years-old when he built his first windmill from a picture in a library book. Thanks to David Brush and Fast Church for their Tweets on this inspirational story of a young man in Malawi.
“Too many standards, too little time” writes a teacher with
40 years of experience. In a blog by ContraCosta Times education reporter, the teacher, Steven Weinberg writes:
Having written previously about ways education has improved in the 40 years since I began teaching, I would like to address one change that I do not believe has been beneficial: the attempt to make “content standards” the basis [...]
Snowden’s “birthday party” story now on youtube
A version of David Snowden’s birthday party story illustrating the differences among chaotic, ordered and complex systems is on YouTube. It isn’t the most compete rendition of the story but serves as a good introduction to some key terms of complexity theory. For a fuller account listen to one of his podcasts on the Cognitive [...]
Gerald W. Bracey, defender of public education…
This afternoon I returned home from a work session. Had some more forms to fill out and return to Vandy. Then I turned to my email that had accumulated since this morning. Read the notice from the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado that Jerry Bracey died Tuesday night in [...]
Frank Smith’s Learners’ Manifesto
The irritating, provocative Frank Smith included the manifesto on Page 62 of his book, Insult to Intelligence. It struck me as relevant when I first read it and I’ve had a copy posted on my bulletin boards ever since. It is not perfect and there are a couple of points with which I quibble. Nonetheless, [...]