2007

Monolingualism can be cured

by

El externado de Poughkeepsie desarrolla a ciudadanos educados con una pasión para aprender y vivir. Nuestra comunidad exige integridad, responsabilidad y respecto mutuo. Poughkeepsieの昼間学校は学び、生存のための情熱の教育がある市民を開発する。 私達のコミュニティは完全性、責任および相互点を要求する。 Пугхкеепсие Day School разрабатывает образованных граждан, имеющих страсть к обучению и жизни. Наше сообщество требует честности, ответственности и взаимного уважения. A former colleague – a wonderful Spanish teacher – has … Read more

Everything’s Cool

by

It was a great day in the James Earl Jones theater at PDS yesterday. Dan Gold – a member of the PDS class of 1978 – was there for the first public screening in the Hudson valley of the film he co-directed: Everything’s Cool – a hot documentary about global warming. This is a film … Read more

Earth

by

Earth…a poem by the the children in the Pre- K. These are their words – the places they know, the animals they know and their request to us. Their words and pictures became a book that they made together. It is now back in their classroom. Outstanding.

The Machine Stops

by

In an earlier post, I mentioned the prescient Marshall McLuhan who saw decades ago that we were living in an era of connectivity and communications In that interview, he commented that most of us think in the past. For artists, he says, it is different. They live in the present, they think in the present, … Read more

The Machine is Us/ing Us: The Machine Will Not Stop

by

Take a look at this fascinating video about web 2.0 from Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. The machine is us. The machine is using us. The machine will not stop. According to Professor Wesch we’ll need to rethink a few things including: copyright authorship identity ethics aesthetics rhetorics governance … Read more

The Age of Industry

by

The Age of Industry – that is what Mary Ellen calls kindergarten and this industry was certainly on display in the playground today. There was a potentially poisonous bug to be investigated in the playhouse, milk crates and logs to be hauled uphill in defiance of gravity and surface friction on the snow, and tree … Read more

What’s the matter with kids today?*

by

Why can’t they be like we were? Perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today?* BYE BYE BIRDIE (The Musical) (Music by Charles Strouse / Lyrics by Lee Adams) Technology Literacy and the MySpace Generation That’s the title of an article by Susan Mclester in Technology and Education (March 15, 2007) It includes … Read more

The Joy of Learning and the Expensive English Toy

by

The Indian National Curriculum Framework opens with this most telling childhood anecdote from the poet Rabindranath Tagore: When I was a child I had the freedom to make my own toys out of trifles and create my own games from imagination…One day in this paradise of our childhood, entered a temptation from the market world … Read more

“We are always living ahead of our thinking”

by

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 … Read more

Does Science Matter?

by

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 … Read more

Press Interview

by

In a recent interview with the PDS media I was asked for my opinion of some of the pressing issues of the day. The journalists arrived well prepared with questions and then posed for my camera.