Using the social brain in schools
Thought this was interesting, via Annie Murphy Paul “Think about how amazing the brain is, and then consider that a huge portion of that amazing brain focuses on making us social. Yet, for a large part of our day, whether we are at work or at school, this extraordinary social machinery in our heads is […]
Toffler, The Trivium & The Holy Trinity
I’ve been having an interesting conversation on Twitter with Martin Robinson and Carl Gombrich (a big thank you to both). Two things had been bouncing around recently: Toffler’s ubiquitous “Learn, unlearn, relearn” and the Trivium, in no small part thanks to Martin’s excellent Trivium 21C. I wondered,...
I wasn’t always dyslexic
From Cathy N Davidson’s book, Now You See It I wasn’t always dyslexic. I’m old enough that “learning disabilities” didn’t exist as a category when i was a kid. Back then, there wasn’t any particular diagnosis for my unusual way of seeing the world. I was already a twenty-seven-year-old professor...
Oxford, Chainsaws and Trampolines
I found out on Saturday that a friend of my mother’s is in hospital at the moment with numerous cracked ribs and a punctured lung. How she got there is, somehow, wonderfully “Oxford”. Her husband has been very ill and is now in a wheelchair. He felt that a tree needed pruning in their back […]
The Photocopier Challenge
Enjoying The Lazy Teachers’s Handbook at the moment. Love this idea – will try it in the New Year. “may I suggest something I like to call the Photocopier Challenge, an easy and straightforward way of finding out the extent to which you are wasting your own time, let alone letting others waste it for […]
A few quick, purposeful homework ideas
I liked these homework hater’s tips. They’re a little science biased but the following could be done or repurposed for any subject Explain what you have learnt to your parentsAsk students to write a short explanation of their task for parents to sign and comment on – a great way to engage them in their […]
Wittgenstein, Popper and Education
A little bit of history goes a long way – and certainly puts some of the 21st Century Learning rhetoric in perspective. “The Pedagogic Institute had been established to further the Austrian educational reform program. This attempted to steer education away from a ‘drill school’ approach, in which schoolchildren...
The Effects of School Are Overplayed
John Hattie’s book Visible Learning is a (dense) treasure trove of statistically backed educational research. He looks at 800 meta-analyses of school research and then analyses them for effect. The idea is essentially to try to come up with a way of measuring how much good various initiatives as compared to, say, a child’s...
Workspace, Learnspace, Brainspace
I’ve just been watching Channel 4’s The Secret Life of Buildings. The presenter’s an acquired taste but there are some fascinating bits to it. The main take-aways for me are : buildings and spaces actually change the way the human brain works. (more complex, interactive spaces make for more engaged brains. Fred...