Greenhaus Education and Other "Effects"

(I cannot believe I haven't posted for a week! My goal of at least 2 posts a week, preferably more, seems to be getting more difficult, especially as my travel schedule picks up.  I will have to be more diligent.  The good thing about the travel though is I am out and about talking with teachers, teaching myself, and so getting some fodder for my posts.  This should get the creative juices going). I wanted to reflection on another talk from the Learning without Frontiers 2012 because I find them quite thought provoking, especially as I go back and re-listen to them.  (See my previous 2 reflections, "Technology Is Neutral" and Mobile Devices In Education ). The talk I want to focus on this post is from Francis Gilbert , a teacher in the UK. Francis gave a great talk called Escaping the Education Matrix , which I have posted below. I agree with all Francis' points, and, even though he was speaking from a UK perspective, I found what he said about assessment a...

UPDATE T O POST 2/19/12:  Michael O'hara's talk can be viewed at http://bit.ly/w7nQcS or via iTunes http://bit.ly/LWFiTunes    Thanks Graham Brown-Martin for the updated links!) It's been a few weeks since I attended the Learning Without Frontiers conference in Olympia, UK.  I wrote a previous reflection piece on Noam Chomsky' s talk right after I returned.  I was revisiting my notes on other speakers and re-watching some of the talks at the LWF website trying to come up with my blog post for the day.  In my notes, the one that stuck out as relevant to me this week was Michael O'hara's talk about the mobile industry and education called " Learning While Mobile ".  Imagine my disappointment when I went to re-watch the talk to find that it had been blocked due to potential copyright issues, apparently because of some materials mentioned in his talk.  Sigh. I have decided to still focus on O'hara's talk, even though I can't share the vi...

Well, I am feeling slightly vindicated now that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is agreeing with my opinion that we need to be teaching financial literacy in our schools. Could the government actually be making a connection to the current world-wide financial crisis and what is being taught (or not taught I should say) in schools? Here is a posting by Kennith Corbin entitled "Education Secretary Appeals for Financial Literacy, Planning Instruction in Schools"  that sums up the comments of Mr. Duncan. And, in case you want to 'revisit' some of my previous postings on the topic, here are some quick links to them: 1) Math Curriculum - What Should We Be Teaching 2)  Financial Literacy - Bring It Back to School!  and  3) Financial Literacy - Real-World Math, Really!

Clearly, the loss of Steve Jobs has many people wondering where are the next innovative technology ideas going to come from, what's going to happen to Apple, who is the NEXT Steve Jobs?  There are articles galore on Jobs impact, so I was not surprised to run across one connecting Steve Jobs to education entitled " If we don't let our children play, who will be the next Steve Jobs?" by Darell Hammond . I really loved the idea of this article - that schools need to let kids PLAY in order to foster their creativity, curiosity, and imagination.  It's something we have lost with the emphasis on standardized testing and assessment.  Time is short in schools, so the play (i.e. recess, music, art, etc.) is being eliminated for more time spent on practicing, testing, reviewing, and memorizing.  Check out the article - there are some great anecdotes  from Steve Jobs about the value of playing and creating.  The message here - let kids get out there, play, tinker, ...

Listening to NPR again on the way home from the gym this morning and another story related to education.  John Ydstie's report, Why Some Men Earn Less Than They Did 40 Years Ago , basically talks about how blue collar working men earn less now than in 1973, in part because they have the same level of education as they had back then - no college, just high school diploma.  What startled me was the statistic that just over 30% of men attend college.  Really? That's pretty low, and surprising to me with all the push you hear for college readiness.  I may have to find actual research and data related to this... Anyway, interesting story - yet more evidence we need to change something about WHAT we teach in our educational system.

My blog yesterday regarding math curriculum being too abstract got a comment from Milo's Mama , who passed along an article on the racial wealth gap.  Her point was that there were more practical things we could be teaching in math, such as finance, taxes, etc. that might address this problem.  So we are back to the relevancy of what we teach.  And as I drove home from the gym this morning, I hear yet another story on NPR about the racial wealth gap (turns out it's a two parter!).  I took this as a sign that I should perhaps do a follow up! This second part of the story talked about breaking the cycle of poverty, and mentions several programs designed to help low-income families save money, invest and basically teach them about using money wisely.  One of these programs starts with kindergarten because, as the City Treasure Jose Cisnero's says  '"It's all about building aspirations in that child's mind." I am not going to go into details about th...