I heard Alan November speak tonight and although there were many great ideas, one key idea hit a cord with me. “Students will work harder for an authentic audience than for a grade”…”Students will do more if they leave a legacy beyond a grade.” The technology is there! I remember for a couple weeks after […]
Category: learning
Christopher D. Sessums’ “Competing Paradigms and Educational Reform”
A great article: Competing Paradigms and Educational Reform that asks, What has this dominant paradigm actually done for public education except manufacture a crisis? Not only does it list initiatives and consequences of this paradigm (read the post!), it also suggests a paradigm shift with the following perspective: • Human freedom and empowerment are more […]
Stone Soup
From the introduction of: The Teaching Moment:a learning metaphor by Mia Lobel, Michael Neubauer, Randy Swedburg The Internet is saturated with distance education claims about learning environments, effective pedagogies, teaching modules, skill training techniques and community building models. Typing into Google: “online teaching training distance education” nets one 265,000 hits. Typically, efforts to deliver educational […]
Application of Constructivist Principles to the Practice of Instructional Technology
Application of Constructivist Principles to the Practice of Instructional Technology By Bonnie Skaalid I found this while procrastinating on finishing my masters paper. Disgusted with how this has transformed from a labour of interest and love to one of ‘hoop jumping’ that is just what I Googled… along with ‘education’. This is just what I […]
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Stafford Beer coined the term Cybernetics. He was a brilliant man who, among other things, wrote a novel about a very wise but forgetful wizard. This excerpt tells you what he thinks of our education system. The title alone- referring to the Education Minister- should give you a hint of what is to come. Excerpt […]
Hello world! ‘Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts’ finds a new home!
A few years ago, a friend sent me an invitation to join him on a social network and start something called a blog. I signed up and my first post, “The purpose of a system is what is does” set the metaphoric tone for my ideas and thoughts that will fill this space. Essentially, I […]