“To get this result, I had to draw on considerable prior knowledge. More importantly, I had to draw on significant language and critical thinking skills. Anyone who ever said that a philosophy degree like mine isn’t practical can eat my dust. Socrates was a prompt engineer. Most Western philosophers engage in some form of chain-of-thought prompting as a way of structuring their arguments. Skills and knowledge aren’t dead. Writing and thinking skills most certainly aren’t. Far from it. If you doubt me, ask ChatGPT, “How might teaching students about Socrates’ philosophy and method help them learn to become better prompt engineers?” See what it has to say.”
“When we place too high a priority on the speed of our email replies, we destroy our ability to focus. Interruptions derail our train of thought and wreak havoc on our progress. When you know you don’t have to reply to emails right away, you can actually find flow and dedicate your full attention where you wish.”
“Overall, the scholars found that when the intervention was administered in a supportive environment, first-year full-time completion rates for students in groups that had been persisting at lower rates rose by two percentage points, an impressive impact for an online exercise that took less than 30 minutes to complete (the average time students spent on a key aspect of the exercise – sharing their story – was just 7½ minutes).”
“Companies that reduce and simplify workload on the front lines find that they can position employees to deliver a better customer experience.”
“We tested the desire to give and receive feedback in all sorts of situations—with strangers and close friends; when the feedback was less consequential (like mispronouncing a word) and more consequential (like making an egregious error during an interview). We found that, in almost all of the situations we tested, people underestimated how much others wanted to receive their feedback.”
“All in all, the researchers suggest that the data represent an even outcome, with both learning modalities proving successful at increasing student growth and achievement in writing.”
“The results showed that the relation between domain knowledge and reading is bidirectional and positive throughout the elementary years, providing empirical evidence that domain knowledge and reading may mutually enhance with each other.”
“In its most extreme version, this new math movement revives an old fight between advocates of teacher-led instruction of step-by-step procedures against those who favor student discovery and a conceptual understanding of math. It also raises new questions about what makes for good evidence in math education and pits well-designed quantitative studies of achievement gains against qualitative studies of people’s attitudes about math and why more women and people of color don’t enter STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.”
“The basic reason why math fact fluency matters, cognitive scientists say, is that it frees up brainpower or working memory to do more complex mathematical work—like figuring out how to structure a multistep word problem, model a solution, or puzzle out systems of equations. It’s harder for students to do those things when they’re simply trying to work through basic arithmetic.”
“I will offer my usual advice: embrace these systems. They offer both exciting opportunities and the possibility of worrying change, but they are going to be ubiquitous regardless of how we feel about them. So, the best way to adjust to a world of AI is to start using it whenever you can, for whatever tasks you can. It is the only way to learn what these systems do well, what they do badly, and how you will fit into the world of AI that is already here. I think you will find many ways in which they expand your capabilities and relieve you of your most annoying work, so that you can focus on the things that make you unique as a human being in a world of rapidly advancing AI.”
““It feels different not having a principal,” said Ella, a fifth grader with long blond hair who’d transferred to Boston Teachers Union Pilot School three years earlier. “At the school I was at before this, ‘principal’ is a word teachers would use, not to threaten you, but to make you listen to them,” she said, noting that a principal served primarily as an authority figure rather than someone who had relationships with students. “Having co-leads is just much better.””
“I’m happy to sing the praises of what I do, but let’s have an honest conversation here: Leaving the classroom isn’t a total solution. I’m still in education and I still have to respond to its problems, albeit in a different form. So why am I writing this? My goal here is not to deter my fellow educators from coming over to ed tech but to clarify what my life is like on the other side.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson