Tag Archives: reading

Spring Break Friday Four

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Friday Four 2/24

Posted on by
Reply

 

The cognitive science of learning and the topic of transfer.

  • The Annenberg Learner is a part of the Annenberberg Foundation dedicated to the use of media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. They have a whole bunch of fantastic videos about teaching and the latest research on the neurobiology of learning. The following links are two of my favorites: Minds of Our Own and Neuroscience and the Classroom.
  • Here are links to two articles that were referenced in a blog post I cam across this week on the topic of “transfer” in the classroom. The ultimate goal of all education is transfer of knowledge, skills and understanding to new and different situations. How do we effectively teach transfer? These articles are good starting points as you think about what transfer really is and how to build it into your lessons/curriculum. Article #1 Article #2
  • Here is a short piece from Valerie Strauss who writes a column for the Washington Post website called “The Answer Sheet.” This piece is titled “Seven misconceptions about how students learn.”
  • Here is a link to part 2 of Grant Wiggins’ series of posts on the topic of transfer. In this piece, he explores the research on transfer.
As an added bonus this week, I am going to include a link to some information about the use of audio books for all readers. A colleague asked me about the topic at lunch one day and I thought that it would be a good item to include in the Friday Four, so here is a link to a piece  by Denise Johnson, an assistant professor of reading education at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Final Friday Four of 2011

Posted on by
Reply

 

Friday Four – December 30, 2011

I like this time of year for a reason that may surprise some of you…I love all of the “year in review” shows and lists of top “whatever” from 2011. I enjoy/appreciate taking time to think back on how the previous year has unfolded and remembering some of the milestones from the past 365 days. I always find something that I had totally forgotten about or missed.

As I ruminated about the past year, I realized that this will be the 16th posting of my Friday Four, each Friday since the beginning of the school year. I have enjoyed sharing some of the interesting items I have run across and hope that you have found at least a few of them intriguing as well. If you have suggestions or thoughts about the Friday Four, I welcome your comments here, e-mails or tweets. Without further ado…

  1.  The NPR Argo network includes a website from KQED in San Francisco called Mindshift: How we will learn that frequently has thought provoking pieces. One that caught my eye this past week was “Three trends that define the future of teaching and learning.” There are 2 other pieces that are part of the series that I recommend looking at as well.
  2. Here is something for my colleagues in the humanities who do a lot of reading and writing in their classes. “The future of reading and writing is collaborative” comes from the Spotlight website. “Spotlight covers the intersections of technology and education, going behind the research to show how digital media is used in and out of classrooms to expand learning.”
  3. Here is an interview with Cathy Davidson, the author of the book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. I plan on ordering a copy of the book for myself and the Kravis Center and will buy a copy for the first two LC faculty members who tweet me their New Year’s resolution for the classroom. (More on the New Year’s Resolution project in future blog post.)
  4. One of my favorite bloggers is Richard Byrne whose blog “Free Technology for Teachers” had a recent post that includes a link to a great resource “The Super Book of Web Tools for Teachers.”