Spring Break Friday Four

Who said vacation was a time to relax?

It was not until this past Sunday night that I realized that I had missed posting my Friday Four last week. OOPS! In my defense, we had grades and comments due marking the end of the term on Friday morning and vacation waiting upon completion of advisor comments so I was a little distracted. Since I was remiss, I will try and make up for it by posting a couple of extra “finds” this week. Enjoy!

  • Recent blog post from Daniel Willingham, the author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” about school time, knowledge and reading comprehension.
  • TedTalks have created a YouTube channel just for education that just launched this week. Ted-Ed Lessons worth sharing.
  •  Here is a recent post from Tom Whitby, an influential figure in the education world, who can be found on Twitter @tomwhitby. In this post, Tom makes the case for connecting with fellow educators via social media in order to “know what we don’t know.”
  • A nice series of posts by Dr. Judy Willis about How the Brain Thinks from the Edutopia website.
  • An acronym that I stole from somewhere recently is one I like to say to my students “FAIL simply stands for First Attempt In Learning” How glad was I to run across this article: “Want Students to Succeed? Let Them Fail.
  • The 2011 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher is out and can be found here. This MetLife survey examines the views of teachers, parents and students about the teaching profession, parent and community engagement, and effects of the current economy on families and schools.
  • Vacation has given me some time to catch up on my personal reading which is always the first thing to go once things get busy at school. I am about halfway through a book I would highly recommend if you are interested in the brain science of distraction and multitasking called Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. Here is a link to the book on Amazon.

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