Tag: students

Over the years, I’ve collected tidbits of information related to learning. There really isn’t a connection between any of what I share today – only short vignettes about learning and related subjects that seemed interesting to me at the time. Here’s another edition of “A Little About a Lot.” For reference, I’ve included the year…

If you’ve read most of what I’ve written in this column about AI, social media, smartphones, and traditional schools trying to ban all of these recently, you know that I’m not convinced schools know what they are doing, whether it be banning these potential learning tools or using them more effectively in the learning process.…

Earlier this month, I read with interest a story about “Flexible Futures,” a public school program in Germany focused on connecting work with learning. The story, originally published by The Hechinger Report, was re-published by Reasons to be Cheerful. The story begins, “Neriman Raim, a 16-year-old student in Cologne, Germany, thought that after finishing school…

Traditional school districts have always taken a narrow view of what student success really means. During most of my K-12 career, if a young learner passed a high-stakes test, then that student was judged a success. I can’t tell you how many young learners, in my career at least, were poor readers, writers, and problem-solvers,…

I tend to stray away from pedagogical themes in this column, but we need to confront an inconvenient truth when it comes to making our young learners smarter and stronger – most of what we work on inside classrooms is a royal waste of time. For example, take the long-honored practice of finding the “main…

Change management experts will tell you that sometimes it’s more important to stop doing what doesn’t work than starting anything that might. Our present K-12 educational system would be wise to take the change management experts’ advice. Recently, Edutopia online published an article titled “5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren’t Backed by Research.” Here are…

The solar eclipse here in Vermont was spectacular! Who would have thought the Green Mountains would host perfect weather, 60 and sunny, in early April? Go figure. A few weeks ago, I read an interesting article written by the folks at the BIG Questions Institute titled “Dopamine Culture.” In the article, BQI writes, “In our…

Artificial intelligence is going to do remarkably well when it comes to making learners smarter and stronger. Traditional K-12 leadership, trying to ban AI from their schools, will lose. AI is just too powerful a force for us not to figure out how to use it to improve learning – for everyone. I recently read…