Dan Meyer hits various nails on various heads. And reading his blog I’ve remembered a) how much talent there is out there and b) how useful it is to be able to access it. Thanks Dan.

This is one of the most cheering stories I have heard for a long, long time.

Charlie, who is now 7, has decided that he needs to raise some money to help those affected by the disaster. In order to do this he has decided to do a Sponsored Bicycle ride around our local park – South Park in Fulham. He is aiming to complete 7 laps (about 5 miles) of South Park this weekend and is hoping that you will sponsor him so that he can raise money for UNICEF to help with their HAITI disaster appeal.

I love this.

[source here]

The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research.

And it’s rather beautiful too. [thanks Nat]

Look to have a healthy view to me [via Phil McKinney]

Not a bad video to show some of the children. 

Same old same old, but nicely done…

Don’t know how true this is but it’s a nice idea – maybe next year might invite some Chelsea Pensioners to open the doors to the playground (rather than do the desks thing).

“A lesson that should be taught in all schools . . And colleges

Back in September, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School , did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.

When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

‘Ms.. Cothren, where’re our desks?’

She replied, ‘You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.’

They thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s our grades.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’

She told them, ‘No, it’s not even your behavior.’

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms.Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, ‘Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.’

At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) War Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall… By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned..

Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’ ”

Hmm.  As interested in the non song and dance lessons as the promo bits.  And made very aware how important it is to teachers to teach in the way they want.  Would dread being asked to teach like this.

Still, healthy to see different approaches happening. [thanks Scott]

This (old) talk by Matt Jones is really very, very good.

On the wonderful Letters of Note blog, this caught my fancy.  It is an excerpt from a letter from Charles Darwin.  It was not approach to collecting and generalisation especially.  How many smatterers and wandering collectors are there online who make the loose speculations Mr D abhors?  Well, one here …

I must be allowed to put my own interpretation on what you say of “not being a good arranger of extended views”  which is, that you do not indulge in the loose speculations so easily started by every smatterer & wandering collector. I look at a strong tendency to generalize as an entire evil.

[via Kottke]

September 14th 2009 | Comments(1) | Notes on CharlesDarwin collecting English evolution generalism letters

Wise words from Euan.  The secret of Enterprise 2.0 success.

.. isn’t to try to make people change … it is to do something that can’t already be done.

Don’t try to get your powerful people to behave differently – they have everything to lose. Don’t try to improve your existing processes – you will be seen to be breaking something.

Focus instead on the things that are desperately trying to happen but aren’t and the people who are desperately trying to connect but can’t. Do things that make the impossible possible and your success rate will soar.

Seems to be more and more to the point with the 21st Century skills approach to education.  There’s loads of technical solutions to possible problems.  But there are far fewer problems that people have isolated and said “Actually, that needs to be fixed and we could do it like so.”

If anyone knows of any educational “I had this problem and I fixed it with this tool” sort of list, I’d love to hear about it. 

I like the idea of these desks.   Thanks Tom

I’m biased, but this is brilliant.

[via 3QD]

There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school;
A man severe he was and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day’s disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
‘Twas certain he could write and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing too, the parson owned his skill,
For even though vanquished, he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around,
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.

via jabbot

I like this post by Darren.  He’s going through the 10 commandments for teachers that George Polya suggested  one by one with some tentative, interesting thoughts.

The commandments are:

1. Be interested in your subject.

2. Know your subject.

3. Know about the ways of learning: The best way to learn anything is to discover it by yourself.

4. Try to read the faces of your students, try to see their expectations and difficulties, put yourself in their place.

5. Give them not only information, but "know-how," attitudes of mind, the habit of methodical work.

6. Let them learn guessing.

7. Let them learn proving.

8. Look out for such features of the problem at hand as may be useful in solving the problems to come — try to disclose the general pattern that lies behind the present concrete situation.

9. Do not give away your whole secret at once — let the students guess before you tell it — let them find out by themselves as much as is feasible.

10. Suggest it, do not force it down their throats.

All good sense.  On the first, though, how, if at all do you help teachers teach something they aren’t interested in?

Just stumbled across this rather good presentation by Sacha:

Thinking more and more that teachers, parents and children should be outlining a list of problems and inviting technologists, education 2.0 or whatever wonks to suggest some solutions

That teachers are having to be taught grammar is vaguely depressing.

I’m not a huge fan of grammar fascists.  Correcting things like split infinitives drives me up the wall.  It seems like the worst sort of combination of holier than thou preaching and ignorance. Victorian grammarians wanted to make English more like Greek or Latin (where you physically can’t split infinitives) so they imposed the same straightjacket on English.  Unfortunately, in English it is very possible, and sometimes even necessary, to boldly, brashly or just healthily split the infinitive.

That said, I do think it is important to be able to write well, and grammar is part of that.  To be fair to the 19th Century Grammarians, this Victorian poem looks like a useful aide for children.

Sentences start with a capital letter,
so as to make your writing better.
Use a full stop to mark the end.
It closes every sentence penned.
Insert a comma for short pauses and breaks,
And also for lists the writer makes.
Dashes – like these – are for thoughts.
They provide additional information (so do brackets, of course).
These two dots are colons: they pause to compare.
They also do this: list, explain and prepare.
The semicolon makes a break; followed by a clause.
It does the job of words that link; it’s also a short pause.
An apostrophe shows the owner of anyone’s things,
It’s quite useful for shortenings.
I’m glad! He’s mad! Don’t walk on the grass!
To show strong feelings use an exclamation mark!
A question mark follows Where? When? Why? What? and How?
Can I? Do you? Shall We? Tell us now!
"Quotation marks" enclose what is said.
Which is why they are often called "speech marks" instead.

Perhaps it might come in handy for teachers too?