It was University of Toronto English professor Marshall McLuhan who predicted universal connectivity. Listen to this archival interview from April 1965 where he predicts a future for education saying that: “in the future people will no longer only gather in classrooms to learn but will also be moved by “electronic circuitry.” How far are we along on this path? McLuhan…
“It is easier to change the course of history than to change a history course”. “Proposals for change in schools are often met with a thousand points of no“ Liz, Julie and I are at the NAIS annual conference in Denver. We were joined by Trace who gave a great presentation yesterday. (On that, more later). The theme of the…
Educators are fond of commenting that children are natural scientists. Children, they say, are born investigators. Discovery, speculation, questioning, trying things out, testing their senses, trial and error, and exploration – that’s what small children do all day. It’s how they learn and how they play. Curious then that these natural scientists are so often turned off by science as…
Last night in his State of the Union address President Bush outlined proposals to extend the NCLB (“No Child Left Behind”) law. These ideas are outlined in this White House policy memo. There has been a growing chorus of concern about NCLB and this proposed extension of its impact does nothing to allay those fears. Here are two alternative sources…
At the recent Board Strategic Planning session we were encouraged to think forward to the year 2020. Of course, none of us can predict that future world but it seems prudent to consider current trends and think through what we already know about the ways in which our world is changing at an ever increasing pace. 2020 is a mere…
The Climate for Learning A follow-up to Passionate Learning Part 1 and Part 2 Stained Glass Dr. Robert L. Fried is a leading American educator and teacher of teachers. He is an advocate for passionate learning and passionate teaching. Rob spent the day working with PDS faculty last week. In Rob’s view the climate for learning is changing here in…
The impulse toward pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them. This is the essence of what the moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick in the The Methods of Ethics called the paradox of hedonism. This came to mind as I was considering the necessity for all of us to be resourceful, self-sustaining learners for life. Learning doesn’t…
“What have you planned for professional development day?” The starting point was this question from Andrea Archer – head of school at Duchess Day School. The outcome was Robert Fried who came to PDS yesterday and worked with the faculty from the two schools. Am I in a room with Passionate Teachers? That was how Rob began his presentation yesterday.…
The Welsh have one word for it: dysgeidliaeth. It means teaching and it means learning. And of course that is what good teaching is: learning. But how to pronounce it? Any speakers of Welsh out there who can help out?
Over on the other side of the world at Leading and Learning in New Zealand, Bruce Hammonds has posted this picture of a starfish on the beach for his end of year post. It refers to the story of the person who made a difference by throwing a single starfish from among many back into the ocean – a small…
Packages and parcels get delivered, learning does not. Consider the two Time magazine covers in the previous post. The one from 1965 shows a funnel through which all manner of things are being poured into the school. Much like the notion of the education that sees the child as the empty vessel into which must be poured the knowledge. Learning…
The one thing about which all educators are in agreement is that yesterday’s education no longer suffices for today. The rate of technological change and the development of new information is so great that educators scarcely know what to make of it all, let alone how to get it taught; next week’s scientific discovery can make last week’s textbook obsolete.…
Who is the leader? Is it the driver in the car held up by the flock? The shepherd with his stick? The border collies with their sharp teeth? Somewhere, just out of sight, are the lead sheep – heading for higher ground and pastures new. I took this on vacation in the Yorkshire Dales. I like to show it when…
I learnt to use paint, calculator, see various places through the Internet, solve puzzles, play games, listen interesting sounds and songs. (T.R. Ravi, age 12, Kalludevanahalli kiosk, Karnataka, India) Back at the dawn of time (well, 1993) Seymour Papert* named the computer the “children’s machine”. India’s “hole in the wall” experiment goes a long way toward showing just how easily…
A child was working diligently on a drawing in art class. The teacher asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.” This is just one of…