Books, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Timeless Learning

I like the title of this book about how to do school right: Timeless Learning. The launch date is August 7th but from what is available – and from the published work of the authors on which it’s based – you just know it’s going to be good. Very good.  The focus is on modern learning, innovative practices, change leadership…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Construction not Instruction

There’s a current craze for teaching coding in schools and computer science classes are back in fashion in a big way. (I don’t know what schools are squeezing out to make room for this but it’s probably the usual suspects).  A 2016 Gallup report found that 40% of American schools now offer coding classes – up from only 25% a few years…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Time to Make it Happen

I did not attend the NAIS Annual Conference this year – first time for many years – so I don’t have any takeaways to report like Grant Lichtman. But I was in Baltimore for an ICG (Independent Curriculum Group) board meeting and I was at the conference center to pick up a set of attractive little enamel badges (see below)…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Learning and Social Media: Option, Opportunity and Obligation

If you’re reading this online then you are engaged in social media. You are consuming. I’ve been thinking about education and social media not so much as an option but as an opportunity and an obligation – something we owe ourselves as learners and something we owe our students as teachers. We all know that we live an era of…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Out and About

We had some glorious fall days last week (as well as some much-needed rain).  It was perfect weather for the soccer and cross-country teams. I took advantage of the sunshine to visit the lower school at recess. Plans were being made, plots hatched, games created and imagination extended. And plenty of opportunity to run, slide, chase, ride, jump, swing, hang and…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Creativity in the Classroom: The Commodore Amiga and PDS

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga computer.  This is apparently the machine that introduced a whole new world of computer gaming for a generation of users. This is a cause of great celebration in the retro computing crowd. Back in 1985 personal computers were primarily either game machines or beige boxes from IBM used for business. Then the…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Three cheers for EdCamp Hudson Valley

There are lots of reasons to be concerned about the digital revolution and its impact on our lives, the lives of our students and schools. And there’s no shortage of voices raising the alarm. Here’s a small flavorsome slice of a particularly entertaining rant that was in the New Statesman a few years back: Take that digital manacle, the BlackBerry. My first…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Future of Employment: Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up; rather ask what problem they want to solve

Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up; rather ask what problem they want to solve. Their careers may not exist yet. Call me bonkers but I’ve been reading The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? It’s a recent working paper from Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford and it focuses on the…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Future of Schools: The Third Revolution and The Great Disruption

“The Great Disruption: Technology and the Future of Schools” The latest issue of Independent School magazine is out and it’s a good one. Among many good articles there is this from retiring NAIS president Pat Bassett: The Third Great American Revolution. It’s a stirring call for action, almost a manifesto – for educators to rise to the challenge of our…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Connecting the Dots: Innovation in the Knowledge Age

Connecting the Dots: Becoming a Knowledge Age Innovator Interesting 2009 short article by Deborah Westphal of Toffler Associates Key points include: Innovation is essential to the long-term success of every organization. But innovation isn’t what it used to be. Discovery doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Innovators have always relied on ideas that have come before or are emerging in parallel. The Knowledge Age provides…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

The IBM Selectric Typewriter and Kenyon House: “You must have been drunk!”

Cross-posted from Josie’s Blog Did you know that Poughkeepsie Day School now has a Fab Lab? It’s short for fabrication laboratory – a place where people tinker, design, code, create, re-purpose, mess about, invent, make  and play with stuff. It’s right off the Chapman Room. It’s in the pilot and prototype stage but we are already seeing results. Do you…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Why School? Why PDS?

We are at the beginning of a period of focused strategic thinking at school and the Board of Trustees has convened a planning group to lead the process. One of the ways I have been preparing for this has been to compile resources that I think might be helpful in framing the discussion and a shortlist of thought leaders who…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

All this change ….

For adults like me who work in schools September means being confronted with a world of change.  There are new faces of course, and names to learn. There are new courses, fresh paint on the walls and sometimes new structures and renovations to get used to. And the familiar is unfamiliar too. Children have grown taller, and they return to…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

T.S.Eliot – the app for that

T.S.Eliot worked for Faber and now they have published an app for The Wasteland. Is this the future of English studies? Imagine what a great project it would be for a class to create the app for a work of literature they loved. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.