Robert Fried says…
There is quite likely no substitute for the experience of feeling empowered . . . if we hope for children to pursue learning enthusiastically within the structure of a classroom or a school. Learning and power are inextricably linked. [The Game of School, p. 65]
Robert Fried says…
We have opted not to create schools as places where children’s curiosity, sensory awareness, power, and communication can flourish, but rather to erect temples of knowledge where we sit them down, tell them a lot of stuff we think is important, try to control their restless curiosity, and test them to see how well they’ve listened to us. [The Game of School, pp. 58–59]
Robert Fried says…
The place we call school or college, which should be our society’s most vital promoter of learning, too often instead creates the field on which we learn to play a game that demoralizes us even when we are winners (and can permanently scar us when we lose). In the daily course of attending school, as they do what their teachers ask and strive to earn good grades, our children unknowingly substitute lesser goals for an invaluable goal they were born with: the pursuit of learning for its own sake. [The Game of School, p. 33]
Robert Fried says…
There is a simple test we can perform to find out whether or not our children are truly learning. We can ask them, not the usual question, “How was school today, Honey?” or “What did she teach you in your math class?” but rather, “Did you learn anything in school today that you really want to know more about?” If the answer is … usually no, you have cause for worry – even if your child brings home a good report card. [The Game of School, p. 7]
Robert Fried says…
[F]ar too much of the time our children spend in school is wasted. . . .
[M]ost of what they experience during school hours passes over them like the shadow of a cloud, or through them like an undigested seed. They may be present in the classroom, but they are not really there. Their pencils may be chugging away on the worksheets or the writing prompts or math problems laid out for them, but their intelligence is running on two cylinders at best. They pay some attention to what their teacher happens to be telling them, but their imagination has moved elsewhere. . . .
And, worst of all, by the time our kids have reached fourth or fifth grade, they think what they are experiencing in school is normal. [The Game of School, p. 1]
Robert Fried says…
[A]mid all the accounts … of kids complaining to each other about how bored they are with many of their classes, why do we accept this so passively, without arguing for the right to be learning something of value? [The Game of School, p. xii]
[Download this file: png ppt pptx]
[from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Letter to My Colleagues]
[Download this file: png ppt pptx]
[from Clarence Fisher, Literacy as Battleground (and Miguel Guhlin!)]
My latest roundup of links and tools…
When did the IT staff get promoted above the superintendent?
[A] school superintendent I spoke with … lamented the fact that his IT staff wouldn’t give him access to YouTube and even Wikipedia.
See also my older post: Principal blogging not allowed.
Math and motocross
Check out this sweet series of motocross math videos at HotChalk. The brains behind the math? Former guest blogger Jason Dyer!
“I didn’t know Sasquatch was real.”
Fun with the Pacific Tree Octopus!
Maybe we should do this for teachers and administrators too
"Seventy-one-year-old Peggy McIntyre needs to learn as much as she can about Windows before 8 a.m. Or else."
Post-Gutenberg economics
It’s now a publish-then-filter world. Clay Shirky notes that “we’re clocking a singularity a week at this point.”
We need to educate our educators
It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.
Open your brain, open your model of education
The Education Innovation blog has an interesting post on closed v. open models of education. [Note to self: this might be the world’s longest URL]
Some good thinking going on here
Thanks to Mike Sansone, I recently discovered the Union Square Ventures blog. In Power to the People, they state:
[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.
In Why the Flow of Innovation Has Reversed, they note:
[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.
Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture
The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a ‘big picture’ sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.
Disempowered today = disempowered tomorrow
I left this comment at Jim Gates’ Tipline blog:
Students who aren’t fluid technology users today will be the low-wage workers and disempowered citizens of tomorrow.
I want it right THERE
Finally, if you’re anal-retentive about your Windows taskbar like I am, check out Taskbar Shuffle.
Three great questions
I especially like the last of these three questions from Rodney Trice. We should be asking teachers and principals that question more often (and just that directly).
This just in: Teenagers play video games!
All kidding aside, the latest report from the amazing Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that kids – even girls! – are up to their eyeballs in video games.
We’ll stick to the tried and (not) true
Nope, sorry. iPods are not allowed. Back to the old way. Too bad it doesn’t work as well. Gotta do it anyway. Oh, and I love how the music players are categorically, by definition, a ‘distraction’ (if not in actuality). Who needs reality when we have these little educational policy fantasy worlds that we can create for ourselves?
Throw da bums out!
After attempts to bring in turnaround experts didn’t work, the state of Maryland is increasingly leaning toward completely restructuring schools that are academically unsuccessful. State schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick says:
We are very comfortable being more aggressive about this. We have seen much better results [when the staff is replaced].
Blog like a farmer
I ran across an old post by Mike Sansone, one of my Iowa blogging buddies. I really like his metaphor that blogging should be like farming.
Scorecards
I bet parents and community members would really like to see scorecards like this one (maybe with different data) for their local schools. I know some schools and districts already do this. Hopefully they use line graphs rather than tables of numbers. Could you tell the essential story of a school district with 10 key, well-done graphs? I bet you could!
No writing in journalism class?
Check out this excellent article about the NYU journalism student who got in trouble for blogging about her class. [hat tip to Tim Stahmer]
I got no money, honey
Did you catch Edutopia’s advice on how to innovate without extra money or support?
Spend hours on content you can find with Google in 3 seconds!
One of my favorite things about Wes Fryer is his ability to highlight the ridiculous. I also enjoy his irreverance (“Behold! I hold aloft the holy words!”), particularly when I have the same experience at my kids’ school.
Speaking of Google…
Finally, I’m digging Google Chrome. it’s now my default browser and I’m using Firefox less and less (and I love Firefox). Chrome is much faster. I also like that each tab is a separate process; I have yet to have a browser hang…
