Chronically Curious (The Independent Educator)

Monday, April 7, 2014

A recommendation: find this Tumbler (http://ademun.tumblr.com/) and Wordpress (http://ademun.wordpress.com/) to learn about a delightful dog and some vegetables: The art of wandering the 'Net and leaving footprints

Look at this remarkable photo from a wordpress blog

I have been telling my students to look for new sources of information. Here's what I posted on

I have a project called YOURnetIMPACT.com and I encourage my students to spend time using their LIKES, COMMENTS and SUBSCRIBES. So I liked and collected two photos.

Look at this delightful email

Cara Isabella,

The dog "Gilles" visits many places that
he experiences on the ground level.
He is one of the most efficient go-between
and people get to be friends because of him.
In fact, he has an international fan-club
based in the Giudecca (Italy).
He understands three languages and
is very trained at thought transfer.

E spaventoso ma non mi ricordo perchè volessimo l'indirizzo di Steve ne chi è, insomma è sepellito in una piega della mia memoria....si vede che sono concentrata su altro! Grazie comunque, sono sicura che capiro più avanti.

Si, sarebbe bello spendere (!? ma esiste in italiano, mi viene il dubbio, che non sia un inglicismo...) un po di tempo insieme e anche io ti abbraccio forte;

Alexandrine

Alexandrine de MUN

Vice-présidente

Patrimoine sans frontières

+0033 (0) 6 42 36 99 34

+0039 339 20 40 024

www.patrimsf.org

WORD FOR STUDENTS (USE TRANSLATE.GOOGLE.COM)

He is just a dog http://ademun.tumblr.com/

===========

I wonder what those tanks are about?
what do they contain? Where was this photo taken?

Three languages... so cool. And why is the French version
different? "Places with people"? Inhabited worlds?

Instead of waiting for Alexandrine and Isa to figure out why Isabella wanted to connect me with Alexandrine...I'm going to dive into Ademun's blog and tumbler (ademun.tumblr.com)... yes, if you click on a link, you might discover a wonderful photo. A de Mun also writes in three languages... so I'm pushing myself to learn from her.

http://ademun.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/vicenza/comment-page-1/#comment-5

GO HERE AND ALSO HERE (ABOUT FOOD)

Students: This is how you stay young at heart. Several of you have asked me how old I am and you don't believe me when I say I'm 56. "You are 40, no more." Well, part of the secret is to listen to young people and keep an open heart and mind. The AARP recommends the following...

Lifelong learning

Travel a road that is not familiar -- do something unusual. I haven't looked at Italian or French in a while, nor have I clicked on a link about a dog.

http://aarp.positscience.com/brain-resources/everyday-brain-fitness

In my comment about her photo of vegetables, I wrote the following:

I’m a high school teacher in Florida. I take delight in sharing with my students interesting blogs and this photo stunned me. The green, red and purple together… with a hint of orange. I want them to consider that they are leaving high school with their harvest of skills and knowledge. What will they carry, how will they arrange their collection?

I am an advocate of what Tony Wagner calls "Skill and Will." There are 7 survival skills (you can search the link "seven survival skill tony wagner") but there is also the will and passion and energy to get something done. "It is not just showing us that you know something," I tell my students. "Please show us what you have DONE with this information." I hav shown them that Blue tuna is being overfished. Some of my students created videos to announce their end of eating any tunafish until the blue tuna is again safe. At least they reacted to the information.

I invite readers of this blog to contact me with their tips for my students. What should I be teaching them? My 20 years of teaching and visiting interesting schools has led me to conclude
a) the people with the information are not teaching the students
b) Neil Postman was right: Teachers whould listen and students should speak so that they get to practice making presentations. (See also the words of Dennis Littky)https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxOBI_rp54licEo3bDVrSW41S1E/edit?usp=sharing if you want the full ebook, write to me at VisualandActive@gmail.com and I’ll share it with you.

I will end with an invitation. Anyone who reads this blog is welcomed and invited to contact me
steveEnglishTeacher on skype +1 954 646 8246 mobile I look forward to hearing how I can improve the curriculum at a school in St. Malo that I advise. you can read about it athttp://www.ELSLeaders.com

we are here to serve each other

Notice that I included some posters from the work of Dennis Littky. I didn't post the ENTIRE BOOK... I just gave a hint.

If you want the ebook, write to me.
VisualAndActive@gmail.com

I hope when Alexandrine sees the second poster, the list of what Dr. Littky sees as the goals of educaiton, then I will have hooked her attention and she will see, "Ah, I think I know why Isabella wanted to connect me with Steve..."

I hope that my students will find joy and interest in the word "Patrimony." It is not a word used often in the USA. I have seen it in Cuba and of course in France. So I invite my students to click on Alexandrine's work website and discover something about that word....
http://www.patrimsf.org/projet/index.php

IT'S ABOUT CULTIVATING and CURATING. Can we dig and plant seeds that will blossom, bloom and produce months later?

For example, Flipped Classroom in Italy... and digital portfolios in New Jersey ...

I encourage my students to create digital portfolios to store what they have created. I also want them to blog about what they find interesting in the world. By looking at the titles of their blogs, I learn so much about their minds, much more than by interviewing them (students tell me what they think I want to know about them...)... don't you want to get to know what Moise will do next? Or what Gerald will post?

This is the link to the Neil Postman book from 1969. It's worth looking at Chapter 12.

Can we collect and organize the treasures taht we find? See BrainPickings.org and Maria Popova's essays about curating.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2010/11/02/picked-the-holstee-manifesto/

For students who didn't take time to do the translate.google, here's what I got from Ademun's letter:

Dear Isabella,

And scary but I do not remember why we wanted to address them who Steve is, in short, is buried in a fold of my memory .... you see that are focused on other things! Thanks anyway, I'm sure Capiro later.
It would be nice to spend (!? But exists in Italian, I doubt, that is not a inglicismo ...) a bit of time together and also I will hug;
Alexandrine

Here are my collections from Neil Postman's book. Pages 116 to 119

Twitter

(a brief interruption to thank Isa Greppi... and to ask you to click on LIKE for the ELS School that I advise and cherish in St. Malo. Go ahead, click on the TWITTER account and click on Facebook) .. Our Lives are What We Make of them...

Click here to get the video

I would not have started this blog post if Isa had not come into my life. I'm so grateful and I hope you will hear about her adventure when she was a young woman on a boat near Brest... waiting for rescue... Start at 7:30 in the video

and pieces from Chapter 12 (page 162-164)

Click here

Really, you should click here

Please, go to Neil Postman's book

Pirates of the Caribbean part 5 Click here for Gilles the dog HOLSTEE

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Classe Capovolta: The Flipped Classroom in Parma, Italy 6 March 2014 in La Republica newspaper

The following article appeared in La Republica newspaper on 6 March 2014

Translation by GOOGLE TRANSLATE

Article by Valerio Mammone

PARMA

CLASSROOM A third of high school " - Pacioli D'Annunzio" , in Fidenza , there is no chair . The students are seated around four round tables and are not silent a moment. Yet it is the most innovative classroom of this school in the province of Parma. The institute is pioneering a new method of teaching. "THE Flipped classroom" , in Italian the “class capovolto .”

The method is born in the United States and began to spread to Italy : it has been adopted mainly in middle schools , such as the Institute including Cassino , and in high school, such as the Institute Tosi Busto Arsizio and high school Joy of Piacenza . In a few days , at the University of Padua begin an advanced course devoted to the " Flipped classroom" , which is open to teachers of all levels , from universities to primary schools.

To be " upside down " are two typical moments of the day for each student:

the lecture with an explanation of the topic of the day, with this method you do it yourself at home ; and homework, which instead you do in school along with teachers. This reversal is possible thanks to the internet and new technologies . These days, for example, the third is studying at the Canzoniere of Petrarch. At home, the boys have looked at some sources suggested by the teacher : websites , notes prepared by the teacher , videos on Youtube or on platforms of online courses (such as the Italian Oilproject ) . In one of these videos , for example, the teacher says one of the best-known songs of Petrarch, "Clear, fresh and sweet water " , focusing on its structure (number of rooms, verses and rhymes ) , its figures of speech , and on its meaning . Back in class - after studying these materials - the boys knew already how to recognize some rhetorical figures such as metaphor or distinguish a sonnet from a song based on the structure . And the teacher made them practice : divided them into groups , assigning each a different poem , and gave him an hour to do the analysis of the text. During the exercise , someone would ask advice , someone else raised his hand to say that he did not understand . And the teacher ran between the desks to answer questions of everyone.

So education becomes personalized . Cecchinato Graziano , a researcher at the University of Padua , who coordinates the project of the School of Fidenza , explains the importance of tipping , "When I teach I talk to the whole class , but each student learns in a different way: it may happen that the good students get bored , and that those less able will feel excluded. With this method, the slower learner can see the video several times at home ; others can skip the topics they know and go deeper in others. While in class the teacher has the opportunity to follow them one by one and take action right away if someone did not understand . “

The high school " Pacioli - D'Annunzio " is a public school and began experimenting with funding of EUR 20 thousand with which he bought modular desks, two interactive projectors , 20 netbooks - one per student - and has trained all the teachers of the third A ( also thanks to the contribution of teachers and school Italian ) . The high school principal , Beatrice Aimi , hopes to continue the experiment in the third A and to extend it to other classes. But he warns : " Today the school is still blocked by the rigidity of spaces and times (27 hours a week in two years, 30 in the three years , broken down by subjects) , but to innovate, the teaching of these must become more flexible."

============

Here's the Italian version

=============

Here's what the article looked like in the newspaper, scanned by a reader (thank you, Isa Greppi)

How it works: flips the traditional teaching
method applied in schools

The Objective: training as a measure of student

Traditional class: 1: Lecture
2: The teacher talks to the class (gives a lecture)
3: The students take notes

Traditional School: The student do the homework in the house

Flipped Class:
3: At home you study the material that will be talked about the next day
4: The technology supports the learning

Comment: I'm delighted that the country that gave us Maria Montessori is building on that pioneer's work.

I offer to the reporter and to the teachers who are using the flipped method the free posters and ebooks and other resources of TransformTeaching.org and I hope to visit their schools someday.

=== SEEN IN ANOTHER NEWSPAPER

http://www.gazzettadiparma.it/news/gazzettascuolanews/76087/Fidenza--la-preside-Aimi-.html

N

"I Flip, You Flip and We all Flip": A clever and engaging approach to teachng teachers about the Flipped Classroom

It's nice to see an engaging summary of "how to flip your classroom...."

So you want to flip your class? In this how to video I explain the idea behind flipping, some things to think about as you begin and some concrete steps to getting your first lecture video up on the internets. Special thanks to Ken Halla for the idea.

Check Out Great Content Curators
http://www.knowmia.com
http://www.youtube.com/edu
http://www.curious.com
http://www.backpack.tv

Click below for links to tons of edu content creators sure to make you brain twice its size.

Subscribe to my fellow EDU Gurus!!

AMOR SCIENDI   http://www.youtube.com/AmorSciendi

ASAP SCIENCE   http://www.youtube.com/AsapSCIENCE

BOZEMAN BIOLOGY   http://www.youtube.com/bozemanbiology

KUMESHI CHAN http://www.youtube.com/KemushiChan

BITE-SCIZED SCIENCE http://www.youtube.com/Lexie527

MATH APPITICIAN http://www.youtube.com/mathapptician

MYLES POWER http://www.youtube.com/powerm1985

PROFS POP http://www.youtube.com/profspop

SPANISH IS YOUR AMIGO http://www.youtube.com/SpanishIsYourA...

Subscribe to these geniuses! Smarter Every Day http://www.youtube.com/user/destinws2

History for Music Lovers http://www.youtube.com/user/historyte...

Crash Course w/ the Green Brothershttp://www.youtube.com/crashcourse

Steve Spangler Science: http://www.youtube.com/SteveSpanglerS...

Minute Physics: http://www.youtube.com/minutephysics

PBSIdeaChannel: https://www.youtube.com/pbsideachannel

Numberphile: http://www.youtube.com/numberphile

Deep Sky Videos: http://www.youtube.com/deepskyvideos

Veritasium: http://www.youtube.com/1veritasium

ViHart: http://www.youtube.com/vihart

CGP Grey: http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey

VSauce: http://www.youtube.com/vsauce

TedEd: http://www.youtube.com/TEDEducation

Subscribe to PoliPoppers!

*Check the PoliPop channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/POLIPOP

Love history? Come "like" / follow HipHughes History on Facebook! Play games like "Bad Rhymes" and "Who the Hell am I"? Get you name on the scoreboard and if you're really good win swag prizes like online cred, swag and gansta bragging rights! www.facebook.com/hiphugheshistory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRvmjjeZ9CA

Free Lesson Plan for a multi-day series of activities that will engage complex thinking: a Plan for all Grade Levels (just adjust the amount of work that you ask the students to do)

Click and connect with Robert

This lesson plan was created by Robert Maclachlan. I am in a discussion group with Robert and I learned about his lesson plan, developed as part of his degree program. Readers of this blog might recall that Robert is the creator of the TEACHERMAN acronym for high points about learning how to create a good online course.

click here

Here is a link to his blog (which should give you an idea about how to develop digital portfolios for teachers as well as students). His blog posts are an example of curating to guide students to deeper exploration. It's a form of "connected learning," allowing students to make connections between pieces.

Here is the download for his Sonnet Writing lesson plan.

Here is a link to his use of xtranormal...

I found his post about a visit to John Keat's deathplace particularly engaging and helpful in showing students how to quickly get to the point.

I'll close this post with a look at "The Impossible Dream." Those words still make my skin crawl, send shivers up my spine and bring tears to my eyes. I choke when I try to recite parts of the song. Go ahead, try to say "to run where the brave dare not go" and try to not be inspired to do more than what's adequate... This is what the transformation of education is about: going farther on a quest.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

"Automatic Knowledge" is what teachers should aim for: teach to make the information automatic (beyond understanding)... make the processes unconscious.

Richard E. Clark describes why students need to practice new material until the ifnormation is AUTOMATIC. Understanding is not enough.

This video is a segment of a 68-minute video located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR6IJr...

You can see the full interview with Dr. Richard E. Clark (from University of Southern California) at youtube DOT c o m / turbombom (the channel by Ki Bong Song).

here is the transcription

Automated knowledge. Most of human knowledge is automated and unconscious. Most of what we know is unconscious. We have to learn more about implicit knowledge or expertise, there are a lot of names for it. When you ask an expert to do something, they are not going to tell us about 70% of the mental operations that they have to perform to succeed in their areas of expertise. They use these operations to match patterns and when they find a problem that needs solving... to know what kind of steps to take in order to solve it. When they do this over and over again, they start to automate (John Anderson). It is not well understood generally, despite the popular books about it.

Such as Blink and other books about advanced expertise... education completely rejects the idea

they have not understood that your job in schools if you are going to promote learning you have to quickly teach people to automate so they don't have to think about it anymore. Their minds are then free to learn new things. Thats the purpose of working memory. Most of knowledge is so automated that we are not aware of it. Who teaches? Experts.

They know math, but they don't know anything about teaching. they don't even know what they know about math or any other field.

[COMMENT: IN OTHER WORDS, a math teacher is not aware of how much of his knowledge is automated. He doesn't take time to identify steps that he takes because he is unaware of his automated or hidden processes...]

Look at insights in Social Psychology.

In Social Psychology automated knowledge is not just HOW to do things, but it SHOULD you do things. It's goals and intentions. We are not in control of much of what we do, but [worse] we think we know.

That view is validated in Neuroscience. [You start by telling a person that we will ask them to make a decision, but don' t make the decision yet.] We know that if we ask a person to put up two fingers and "in a second I'm going to ask you to move one finger, but don't decide which one to move until later."....[pause] NOW, [choose the finger and] move it." They do so and when we ask the person to tell us when they decided to move which finger, they tell us "just a moment before I moved it," and we can see in the MRI scan that in fact they had decided [which finger to move] the moment they understood what the task was. They had made the decision several seconds before the moment that they had said [they made the decision.] You beleive that you didn't make the decision until just before you moved it. [They don't know.]

That's a simple task. Why get all excited about that?

It turns out that almost all decisions are the same way. most of the decisions we make, we are not aware that we are making them.

We can have very cool goals and values about what we want to accomplish and something can happen in our environment that completely changes our goals and we are NOT aware of what it was. If we do reflect on it, we believe that WE changed our minds when in fact we didn't. there is a lot of literature now on something called priming. Not so obvious features in our environment when we scan them have a huge impact on our intentions and what we do cognitively (automated).

[Minute 55 NEED HELP TRANSCRIBING]

John Bard the myth of intentionality, it made a huge splash and then nobody paid any attention to it. =========== FOR ADDITIONAL READING ++++++++++++++++

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjP0V...

Shankar Vedantam www.hiddenbrain.org

MAYBE? need help in transcribing

The Hidden Brain - Chapter 1 - The Myth of Intention.mov - YouTube

http://cogtech.usc.edu/recent_publications.php

Get the papers by Dr. Clark.

► 1:52► 1:52

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjP0VL9V1YJan 22, 2010 - 2 min - Uploaded by ShankarVedantamUploaded by ShankarVedantam on Jan 22, 2010. A video summary of The Hidden Brain, a book by Shankar ...

More videos for myth of intention »

[i explore the paradox that we feel that our actions have clear reasons behind them. the chapter explores experiments that show that these intuitions we have are often flawed.]

-- from the Vedantam video

============ back to the transcript ============== Unless we take in account in education that most of what CONTROLS learning is automated and unconscious, and most of what people learn is primarily valuable to them if they can turn it into an automated and cognitive motor routine. Can we do this in such a way that it can be generalizable? It's not so tied to the specific context where you learned it. That will be the biggest challenge in the next decades...

Look for www.Youtube.com/turbombom "Dr. Richard Clark" for the full interview

http://cogtech.usc.edu/recent_publications.php
Papers by Dr. Richard E. Clark

Friday, April 4, 2014

"The Student is the Class" is the central theme at Miami Arts Charter School, where "Time is a Variable," using Dr. Fischler's principles. Students in Math Class make movies about their projects

In August 2013, Alfredo de la Rosa declared that "Time is a variable and we at Miami Arts Charter will allow students to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj4GztDUtVo

properties of the 30-60-90 triangle

Here is a list of the first few links of students’ videos from the Math classes of Jaime Torres.
Please keep in mind that this is the first time they have done these videos… Let me know what you think!!!