3D Education
I am finding Charles Koch’s framework for education more and more useful. If nothing else it helps me place some of the drier research on things like dual-coding and spaced retrieval in the context of a richer, more human approach and what Jeremy Barnes calls “Albert Hall Moments”. I came across Koch’s model...
Old habits
Funny what habits are coming back as I start blogging again. Without thinking about it, I found myself for the first time in quite a few years adding “blog” to my search terms (this one was “knowledge organisers blog”) and being more enthused by the results and the depth of thinking there was there. The […]
Thinking again
I miss my old blogging habit. I miss the intentionality, the slower pace, the thoughtfulness and the openness. Perhaps above all I miss the various unpublished draft posts and what they represented. I’d like to start thinking again. Thanks to two blogging stalwarts Ton and Euan, I might have the momentum to do so and […]
Modern Library’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Reads (with links)
I’ve been on the hunt for some good non-fiction reads for 2019 and realised in the rush with everyone else to read Sapiens or Sleep, I’m probably missing out on some classics. The Modern Library has made a pretty good, if very American, list of its 100 best non-fiction titles. Some of them I’ve read […]
Seneca On Saving Time
Not a bad thing to think about at this time of year. (From Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius. 1. Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your […]
Keeping Children Safe in Education Quiz (and how to make your own)
In September, which seems miles away now, the government’s Keeping Children Safe in Education Part 1 section was changed. It’s the sort of document I diligently read but then, when quizzed go blank. So to help me revise, so to speak, and make reading it into knowing it, I made a quick Google form and […]
Punctuated Equilibrium, Progress and Schools
Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology that seems to fit well with progress in students’ learning. What is Punctuated Equilibrium Punctuated Equilibrium was first proposed in the 1970s by Nile’s Elderedge and Stephen Jay Gould. They argued that while most of us think that evolution happens gradually, the fossil record...
3 Men and a Donkey – Notes on hiking Le Stevenson in the Cevennes
I’ve just got back from hiking Le Stevenson with a donkey and thought I’d jot down some notes while they’re still fresh in case it helps anyone else. What is Le Stevenson? In September 1870, Robert Louis Stevenson was waiting for his American sweetheart to finalise her divorce and to kill time set off with […]
Praxis – The Rarest of the Three
Aristotle divided human activities into three broad categories: thinking (theoria), making (poiesis), and doing (praxis). Put another way, I suppose, they are the why, the what, and the how. In very coarse terms, and trying to link it to rhetoric, I wonder how it matches the various posts I read on Twitter and blogs. The categories...
Life Lessons from Bergson
My dogears from Michael Foley’s excellent “Life Lessons from Bergson” Time “Time” is now the most-used noun in English, whereas many primitive peoples, for instance the Amondawa tribe of the Amazon and the Australian Aborigines do not have a word for it. (p.24) Chance The corollary of predictability as...