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Brian C. Smith

Brian C. Smith's Public Library

07 Dec 09

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  • Chris talked about how they have made the entire learning experience different at Science Leadership Academy and on every point I thought, “why can’t we do that?” It wasn’t that he’s a magnet school and we’re not. It’s that they have a vision and goals and a plan–a system of student learning to which  every member of the organization is committed, focused on, and working.
  • Inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection. Exactly what I hope my own kids will  do well as adults. Empower my kid and give him meaningful work. He isn’t going to get anywhere in life by being a good test taker. Better yet, empower our kindergarten students and first graders and let’s give them those experiences all the way through–let’s make their education relevant and a part of their lives that they can’t wait to get to each day.
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06 Dec 09

NASSP - Shifting Ground

  • Despite investing billions of dollars in hardware, wiring, and professional development, too many schools are the same as ever, only with some computers, when they should be whole new schools where kids are accomplishing things that no one ever dreamed possible.
  • Those of us who work in education talk a lot about student engagement, but I don’t think that goes far enough. Engagement is certainly better than boredom, but schools should set the bar for themselves is much higher. What schools should strive for is student empowerment.
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01 Nov 09

Morning Mourning : Stager-to-Go

  • It is so valuable to read not ABOUT Maria Montessori or Jean Piaget or Herb Kohl or Ted Sizer, etc., but to read what they actually wrote themselves.

creativity : Stager-to-Go

  • I get dismissed as an old crank if I suggest that colleagues read texts longer than 140 characters, attend conferences or think more deeply about fads. There isn’t a single discovery of an edublogger that Seymour Papert didn’t write in his 1996 book, The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap, but who wants to read books by experts when our PLN applauds our laziness?
  • Seymour Papert and I used to talk at length about how the edtech community needs to know more about learning and how the progressive education community needs to understand how computers can amplify their ideas and offer learners unprecedented opportunities. Unfortunately, Dr. Papert was in a terrible accident and the summit we envisioned never came to pass. I do my small part by writing, speaking, recommending books and organizing events, but there is still much more work to be done.

Who Moved my Stalag? : Stager-to-Go

  • Many school children have to overcome all sorts of personal, economic and societal challenges in their everyday lives. The last thing a child needs is to battle teachers or an inflexible one-size-fits-all curriculum. Kids need allies when they are in school, not an axis of evil. They are dependent on you to do the right thing on their behalf. School needs to be an oasis that nurtures the body, mind and soul.
  • Your position of authority is ordained based on an assumption of trust and an expectation that your efforts will benefit children. It is immoral and educationally ineffective to blindly enforce arbitrary regulations when we know that in many cases the opposite approach is required to benefit children.
29 Oct 09

Reggio Emilia approach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • Their resistance to the American use of the term model to describe their program reflects the continuing evolution of their ideas and practices.
  • Teachers' long-term commitment to enhancing their understanding of children is at the crux of the Reggio Emilia approach.
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25 Oct 09

Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal - O'Reilly Radar

  • Having the public write code may seem like a security risk, but it's just the opposite, experts inside and outside the government argued. Because programmers collaborate to find errors or opportunities to exploit Web code, the final product is therefore more secure.
  • Of course, it's easy to imagine that the use of open source software will slash the government's IT budget. After all, this software is freely downloadable. I have a feeling it's quite a bit more complicated than that.
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13 Oct 09

Social networking sites can be mine fields for teachers - Salt Lake Tribune

  • Should teachers be friends with their students on Facebook? Can they use curse words on their personal pages? Should they post political views?
  • "You just do the same things on social networks as you would do in real life,"
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10 Oct 09

The Truth About Homework

  • Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view
    themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and
    then respond to the learning activities and situation.” 
  • Alongside an overemphasis on time is the widely held
    belief that homework “reinforces” the skills that students have learned – or,
    rather, have been taught -- in class.  But what exactly does this
    mean?  It wouldn’t make sense to say “Keep practicing until you
    understand” because practicing doesn’t create understanding – just as giving
    kids a deadline doesn’t teach time-management skills.  What might make
    sense is to say “Keep practicing until what you’re doing becomes automatic.” 
    But what kinds of proficiencies lend themselves to this sort of improvement?
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A Letter from a Child by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online

  • The mindset that sees children in school as an opportunity for teachers to impose their own notions, instead of developing the child’s ability to think for himself or herself, is a dangerous distortion of education.
26 Sep 09

Don’t Get Mad, Ask Questions « JohnCr8on’s Snapshots

  • In the social media sphere it is not uncommon to see anger filled political comments sprinkled among the updates on newborn nieces, vacation photos and business updates.  Perhaps we share some of the anger we read in our respective news feeds.  Perhaps some posts make us angrier still because we disagree – especially if we have not carefully filtered out all those who think differently.
  • It has become a habit when we read, hear or see something which we don’t like to immediately express anger without thought or care for the consequences.  We don’t consider how we might be stirring the cauldron of toxic public discourse.
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