I thought this recent article from the New York Times "At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool" opened with the interesting quote on search strategies.   Faced with writing a school report on an Australian animal, Tyler Kennedy began where many student begin these days: by searching the Internet. But Tyler didn’t use Google [...]

There's an interesting piece in the New York Times "At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard" (1/13/09) that details an effort by the MIT physics department to move to a more student-centered, interactive approach to instruction. Physics is not simply a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, asking questions [...]

I've been conducting walk-through training for principals and teachers. It's a great way to help a school forge a shared vision for teaching and learning. The walk throughs foster a great dialogue about instruction – what kinds of thinking are students being asked to do? How does information move around the classroom? For more on [...]

Actually millions of students are learning to think and work creatively, it’s just not in school. They do that stuff at home on their own time. Meanwhile much of their class time is now mandated on mind-numbing test prep on those “19th-century skills.” Teachers who want to have a more engaging classroom have to sneak it into the curriculum – project-based learning has been pushed to the back of the class. What can schools do to support learning in the digital age? Monitor the information flow and and thinking in the classroom. This changes the role of teacher from dispensing information to instructional designer. Students can’t simply give information back to their teacher. They need a chance to to create a product that asks them to communicate their thinking to a more authentic audience.