When schools try to innovate, they often take a traditional top-down approach: devise a strategy, roll it out to teachers and support a high-fidelity implementation. The end result is often one that lacks teacher support or genuine enthusiasm — initiatives putter along and change is sporadic or modest.In education and beyond, innovation is usually the result of iteration rather than central planning. In schools that succeed in implementing real instructional improvements, teachers figure out how to improve teaching and learning by journeying through multiple passes of a cycle of experiment, reflection and adjustment.
Number one on their list is, what I feel, an important and overlooked aspect of education. Research and development is all too often replaced with, “the research says we should be doing this, so let’s implement this across the building or district, without doing any R&D”.
Once a month, this column will examine the insights that science offers about the way people learn, and how such findings could influence schools. Most of us can remember a moment like this from our school years: the teacher poses a question – maybe it’s math, maybe history. You raise your hand, you give your…
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda may be talking about the dark side of the force here, but his Jedi wisdom is just as applicable to the dark side of social media and technology. Like the force, these tools provide…
Since we all use technology to learn, communicate, and create every day outside of classrooms, our students need opportunities to practice while they are still in our schools. Whether you are a parent or a teacher, look for a few key opportunities for your learners to use technology as an integral part of their educational…
The French military wants to figure out what its armed forces might face in the future. To help, it’s bringing on a group of people who are well-versed in imagining the future: science fiction writers. The UK’s Telegraph reports that France’s Defence Innovation Agency is hiring between four and five writers to form a “Red Team” that will come…
Forest is a free Google Chrome extension designed to help you focus and not get distracted by Internet sites. Once installed, you can click on the icon to plant a tree and have it start to grow. Under the options you can blacklist and whitelist websites. The blacklist is to list sites that will distract you….
“A number of studies have shown that mindfulness can improve cognitive abilities, including certain verbal abilities. However, little research has examined how mindfulness can affect verbal learning and memory. Furthermore, no research has examined the mechanism by which mindfulness may improve learning and memory,” said study author Adam Lueke, an assistant teaching professor at Ball…
