opening up

Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

the blinders of convergent problem solving

In edumication on 10 October 2008 tagged constructionism, convergent, divergent, epistemology, iteration, learning, mindstorms, seymour-papert, teaching with 3 comments

In 19801 Mindstorms, Seymour Papert wrote:

I have seen [a resistance to "debugging"] in many children’s first sessions in a LOGO environment. The child plans to make the Turtle draw a certain figure, such as a house or stick man. A program is quickly written and tried. It doesn’t work. Instead of being debugged, it is [...]

erring on the side of duplicity

In edumication on 24 March 2008 tagged authenticity, coffee-spoons, duplicity, education, fixing-things, honesty, learning, teacher-student-relations, teaching with no comments

When most teachers walk into a classroom, they’ve already put in hours of work preparing for the next forty minutes. What they say, what they do, what materials are made available, how they organize students—to some extent, all the teacher’s moves have been orchestrated ahead of time. For many teachers, careful orchestration is [...]

data visualization as pedagogy

In edumication, technology on 5 December 2007 tagged big-ideas, curriculum, data-visualization, economics, education, information-visualization, learning, pedagogy, school, social-science, socioeconomics, teaching, visualization with no comments

There is a misperception of science/math as “the way” to teach rational, critical thinking. Unfortunately, that puts the cart before the horse: math and science can provide fantastic contexts for rigorous, critical thinking. There’s no doubt that a strong education in the hard sciences can be a straightforward contribution to a student’s ability [...]

ironic juxtaposition

In slush on 9 October 2007 tagged activism, college, college rankings, education, funny, humor, irony, neil postman, postman, subversion, teaching, teaching activism with no comments

If you’re familiar with Neil Postman’s work, you’ll find the following as hilarious as I do:

If you’re not familiar with his work, take a look at the cover of this book: Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The juxtaposition of stubbornly radical and fawningly mainstream is pretty amusing.