Re-post from Free Technology for Teachers

This post is from one of my favorite blogs:

Nobel Prize Games for Learning About Science & Literature

from Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne)

This afternoon I Stumbled Upon an old blog post of mine that I wrote when President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. That post got me to take another look at some of the education aspects of the Nobel Prize website.

The Nobel Prize website has an educational games site designed to help students learn about subjects in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economics. In all there are twenty-nine interactive games for students to play. Each of the science-related games and the economics game is based upon the research of Nobel Prize winners. The literature and peace games are based upon concepts central to the work of Nobel Prize winners in those fields.

FDR Day by Day

Free Technology of Teachers by Richard Byrne is one of the best resources for educators that I have come across.  Each day Byrne highlights a new resource.   FDR: Day by Day is another one of those resources.  This site, originating in the FDR library, combines primary documents of FDR's presidency with a timeline.  One can follow all of the events of the Great Depression and World War II as seen through the eyes of FDR.  Included are a variety of lesson plans.

WE ALL LEARN

Shared from The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education (Wiley Desktop Editio
kindle.amazon.com
As the WE-ALL-LEARN framework indicates, we are no longer participants in Aristotle’s world where one could conceivably read from every book or document written. In the twenty-first century, no one can know all. However, we all can learn. And the vital signs of intelligence in this century are related to access and use of knowledge when needed. Knowing where to look, how to access, and what to focus on are the powerful strategies of today.

A Google a Day

Here's a new site I may use in library media classes next year.  A Google a Day poses a research question for students to look up, as well as an interesting Google app.

Seth Godin on the Future of the Library

Via Stephen's Lighthouse.  This is great food for thought:

Yep, gotta love Seth:  The future of the library

“The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user servicable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many web terminals there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight–it’s the entire point.

Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousands things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.”

Read it. Re-post it.

Reinventing the research library (from MIT)

This video via Stephen's Lighthouse was produced by the MIT library.  It is also a good vision to consider for our school libraries, as we prepare children for work and education in this century.  Note the emphasis on collaboration in learning.

"What's the Use Case" from Seth Godin's Blog

This is a re-blog from Seth Godin's Blog. He's absolutely right. How often have I approached a teacher with a software tool, an idea or a project without actually describing what the use is?

What's the use case?

Visit an architect. On the first visit, right after shaking your hand, she unrolls plans for a house. "Here are some sketches..."

Wait. That's backward.


Sketches for what? How do you know if I want a house or an office building? How am I to judge these plans? Is it a mind reading exercise?


The most effective way to sell the execution of an idea is to describe the use case first. And before you can do that, you need to have both the trust of your client and enough information to figure out what would delight them.


Then, describe what a great solution would do. "If we could use 10,000 square feet of space to profitably service 100 customers an hour..." or "If we built a website that could convert x percent of ..." or "If we could blend a wine that would appeal to this type of diner..."


After the use case is agreed on, then feel free to share your sketches, brainstorms and mockups. At that point, the only question is, "does this execution support the use case we agreed on?"


Don't show me a project, a website, an ad buy or an essay without first telling me what it's supposed to do when it works properly. First, because I might not want that result. And second, how else am I supposed to judge if it's good or not without knowing what you're trying to do...


Too often, we're in such a hurry to show off what we'd like to build we forget to sell the notion of what we built it for."

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability

This is another excellent presentation from TED.  Well worth watching.

How do we do the right thing.

Three Good Resolutions for the New Year from Daniel Pink

Here are Three Good Resolutions for the New Year from Daniel Pink:  The resolutions are from a new book Practically Radical: Not-so-crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself,  by William C. Taylor.
1. I resolve to help my organization (and me personally) become “the most of something” in my field. It’s not good enough to be “pretty good” at everything. The most successful organizations (and people) are the most of something—the most elite, the most affordable, the most elaborate, the most approachable. For so long, companies were content operating in the middle of the road. Today, with so much change, so much pressure, so many new ways to do everything, the middle of the road has become to road to nowhere. What are you the most of?
2. I resolve to embrace a sense of vuja dé. We’ve all experienced déjà vu—looking at an unfamiliar situation and feeling like you’ve seen it before. Vuja dé is the flip side of that—looking at a familiar situation (an industry you’ve worked in for decades, problems you’ve worked on for years) as if you’ve never seen it before, and, with that fresh line of sight, developing a distinctive point of view on the future. The challenge for all of us is that too often, we let what we know limit what we can imagine. This is the year to face that challenge head-on.
3. I resolve to look for new ideas in new places. The more I study innovation, the less enamored I become of “benchmarking” the competition. What good is it to compare yourself against “best practice” in your field, especially if “best practice” isn’t that great to begin with? The most creative leaders aspire to learn from people and organizations far outside their field as a way to shake things up and make real change. Strategies and practices that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another field. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?

Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together

Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer. An excellent biography of her can be found on the blog Amazing Women Rock. I agree with her as she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one -- to create bold thinker. This presentation from May 2009 is worth watching.

Great math resource

Geogebra  is a great math resource with plenty of free downloads: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/

5 Amazing Lessons from Sir Isaac newton

Below is a great  article on Sir Isaac Newton reprinted in the blog Dumb Little Man  by Mr. Self Development who is a motivational author; his blog is mrselfdevelopment.com:
5 Amazing Lessons from Isaac Newton:


1.Patiently Think
“If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.”
We don’t spend enough time patiently thinking! Albert Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” If you would just block out some time daily to “think,” you could solve many of your problems. …You could even solve some of the world’s problems.
2.Labor to be Tactful
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
Solomon said, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” We can all polish up on our tact, our diplomacy, our discretion, our delicacy, and our gracefulness. Solomon went on to say, “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances,” labor to be tactful in all you do.
3.Build Bridges
“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
Tony Robbins said, “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.” This is why you must spend your time building bridges instead of walls. When we “build bridges” we are literally building a better life. When we build walls, we are stagnating our own growth. Joseph F. Newton said, “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.”
4.Chase after Knowledge
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
There’s no need to recreate the wheel. To make progress all you must do is to build on what others have already done. Commence by learning what others know.
When you chase after knowledge, you strategically position yourself on the shoulders of giants; you are then able to see what others can’t see.
5.Pursue Truth
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.”
We must pursue “truth!” There’s an anonymous quote that goes, “The truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.” Be one of those few who pursue truth both night and day. Blaise Pascal said, “Once your soul has been enlarged by truth, it can never return to its original size.”
Thank you for reading and be sure to pass this article along

Coach Wooden and Winning

Here is a great blog entry by Vern Gambetta from Elite Track:

"Steve Odgers send me an email yesterday reminding me that it was John Woodens birthday and that Coach Wooden never spoke to his teams about winning. Never speaks volumes when you think of the championships and wins his teams accumulated. The message here, a message I have seen in everyone that are consistent winners, is that they focus on the process, not the outcome. If you pay attention to details, have a plan and get absorbed in the process then the winning is an outcome. Conversely think of the losing teams and organizations you see. They are always talking about winning. There are banners and slogans everywhere, but bottom line they are focused on the outcome and they make losing a self-fulfilling prophecy. They seem to find a way to lose. Winners find ways to win to because they have paid attention to the process. If they do lose there are no excuses, just learning, then back to the process."

This just re-enforces what so many others say about the importance of the process. It's what you do every day that defines you, not the short term results of winning or losing. If you focus on each day and get the best you can out of it, then the wins and losses will take care of themselves.

Responsibility in education

Students in Finland are at the top of the world in student performance.  One thing they teach there is personal responsibility.  Teachers are responsible for their curriculum.  Students are responsible for their learning. What does this mean for us?

Don't Eat the Marshmellows

What matters now

Here is an interesting use of Scribd by Seth Godin. "What Matters Now" presents a series of ideas using one page per idea.
What Matters Now

Collaboration

 I am becoming more and more convinced that collaboration is the key not only to learning, but to the professional future of our students.  Guy Kawasaki  provides a great post about an article in Psychology Today by Carlin Flora called "Dream Teams," which is a study of collaboration in architecture, music, fashion, robotics. I spend a lot of time teaching collaboration to my students using Web 2.0 tools. 

For example, students in our school have collaborated on a wiki about the Inauguration.  Last year our 4th students, collaborated on a wiki about New York State.  That same group of students scored very well on this year's State Social Studies Assessment. 

I've learned a few techniques regarding wikis in the classroom. The most important is to establish a rule that students not add personal identification to wiki posts.  The emphasis is on the group's product, not the individual's product.  Students still gain satisfaction from recognizing their individual contributions on a wiki, and it's always possible to identify the editors through the history. That, of course, prevents bad behavior in the project.  The wiki method offers the ability for student's to learn individual responsibility and group learning.

Students get excited about a wiki.  One student, who often appears bored in my classes, got very excited after taking the state test.  She informed me that the DBQ portion of the exam had focused on Peter Stuyvesant, and she had written an entire piece on him for our wiki project.