Category: Education Reform

#makeschooldifferent

Reposted from Scott MacLeod’s Blog – http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/ When it comes to education, we have to stop pretending… that short-term memorization equals long-term learning that students find meaning in what we’re covering in class that low-level facts and procedures are a prerequisite to deeper learning that analog learning environments prepare kids for a digital world that what…


Tags:


2015 NESSC High School Redesign Conference – Presentation on Political Literacy

Dear CSC Students and Parents, I wanted to send a big thank you to my current and former students for their recent participation in the High School Redesign Conference in Boston this past week.  The conference was sponsored by the New England Secondary School Consortium (NESSC) and the Great Schools Partnership (GSP).  These organizations both…




Great Framework for Creating Engaging Student Work

  Qualities of Engaging Student Work A critical factor for improving learning lies in providing high-quality work for students- work that engages students, work that enables students to learn what they need in order to succeed in the world. The traits of engaging student work listed below evolved from Dr. Phillip Schlechty’s book, Working on…



Hackschooling?

Hackschooling is a term used to describe the process by which a student takes control of his or her education and makes it work for them.  In this amazing TEDx talk 13 year old Logan LaPlante discusses how he has accomplished this – with a lot of help from many mentors in his community.  Wouldn’t…




A Tale of Two Films – The Debate Over Education Reform

Diane Ravitch vs. Michelle Rhee – Where do you stand? Great Articles: From the New York Review of Books – http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/10/rhee-ravitch-two-faces-american-education/ From the Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-weiss/ravitchs-reign-rhee-radical_b_4079732.html   Diane Ravitch Michelle Rhee Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch Knopf, 396 pp., $27.95…



Rethinking the Common Core or “I was a satisfied pig before Twitter!”

Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill once argued, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinions, it is because they only know their side of the question.” I hate to…



A Big Thank You to My Students from Last Year!

I just finished my presentation at Vermont Fest and it seemed to go very well.  I owe a great deal of gratitude to my students from last year -it was their work that made the presentation effective.  Below is the presentation I gave with some student videos embedded…




Vox Pops in the Classroom

What is a Vox Pop? Vox Pop means ‘Voice of the People’.  It is a style of journalistic interview where various people are asked the same question.  “The aim is to get a variety of answers and opinions on any given subject. Journalists are usually instructed to approach a wide range of people to get…