“The more tightly the social parts of our brain are connected, the more possible it is that performance will be more moving, more expressive… Brains are social, people are social, and when they’re connected, that has the best effect for creativity.”
“The meetings of these groups aren't talkathons or just opportunities for teachers to spend time together in a group hoping to learn. Each team has a serious, important assignment with deadlines. And each assignment is expected to result in improvements to student performance. Opportunities for teachers to move ahead in their careers depend in significant measure on the contributions they make, as team leaders and members, to the systematic improvement of their school's performance.”
“Here are nine questions we think a lot about. Each links to deeper descriptions and related research we’ve uncovered along the way.”
“Open every piece of snail mail you get from the college, and read all of it!”
“Most kids agree their favorite books are the ones that they have picked out themselves. While we should be talking with students about books, we also have to let them advise how we can better help them find books on their passions and interests.”
“You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.”
“The quantum microphone the group developed consists of a series of supercooled nanomechanical resonators, so small that they are visible only through an electron microscope. The resonators are coupled to a superconducting circuit that contains electron pairs that move around without resistance. The circuit forms a quantum bit, or qubit, that can exist in two states at once and has a natural frequency, which can be read electronically. When the mechanical resonators vibrate like a drumhead, they generate phonons in different states.”
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