“How can we encourage and support conversations around controversial topics? How can we tie current events to broader topics and past events without . . . you know, setting stuff on fire and throwing desks?”
“We have misfiled the significance of drawing because we see it as a professional skill instead of a personal capacity… This essential confusion has stunted our understanding of drawing and kept it from being seen as a tool for learning above all else… Drawing shouldn’t be about performance, but about process. It’s not just for the “artists,” or even the weekend hobbyists. Think of it as a way of observing the world and learning, something that can be done anytime, like taking notes, jotting down a thought, or sending a text.”
“The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) theorised that ‘collective effervescence’ – moments in which people come together in some form of unifying, excitement-inducing activity – is at the root of what holds groups together. More recently, Bronwyn Tarr, an evolutionary biologist and psychologist at the University of Oxford who is also a dancer, has researched the evolutionary and neurological underpinnings of our innate tendency to bust a move.”
“Goals. Are. Awesome… But your goal shouldn’t be the thing that’s pulling you forward… What’s pulling you forward should be your recognition that what you’re trying to attain is worth it. Motivation should be a side effect of that.”
“There are various components to the process of drawing a picture of a word or concept, each of which seem to cumulatively aid memory. Getting people to trace over an existing drawing (so getting them to make relevant arm and hand movements, but not allowing personal elaboration), or to create a drawing which they were then not allowed to see (so allowing the physical movements and personal elaboration, but depriving them of the visual memory of the end result) both improved memory – but not as much as when all of these stages were allowed.”
“It’s more like I'm having an experience than making a picture.”
After World War II, the Finns realized their human beings are their most valuable resource. Their budget reflects this belief. In spite of having three major political parties, all factions agree that human development is paramount, and the educational program has had consistent attention over decades.”
“CUREs have five defining characteristics. First, they contain an element of discovery: the student scientists are bringing brand-new data to light. Second, the experimentation in which they engage involves “iteration”: repeating a process a number of times, altering a single variable to find out what happens. Third, participants experience a significant degree of collaboration, with their peers and with the expert scientists who are their instructors. Fourth, students learn how to execute professional practices, from using techniques like pipetting to applying meta-theories like the scientific method. And fifth, the subject of their investigations is “broadly relevant”—of interest to people outside the class and perhaps even worthy of publication in a scientific journal.”
“The paper's authors studied 160,000 adults between 2011 and 2015 and found that just having 80 or more books in a home results in adults with significantly higher levels of literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology (ICT) skills… Children from such homes who ended up attaining just a high-school-level education become as literate, numerate and technologically apt in adulthood as university graduates who grew up with only a few books.”
How should you, as an ethical and upstanding user of tech, navigate this misbegotten industry? I offer three new maxims for surviving the next era of tech. I hope you heed them; the world rides on your choices.”
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