Gates Foundation to Start Web Site for Teachers

In his first "annual letter" Bill Gates has stated that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is planning on creating videos of exemplary teachers and then uploading them online in the hopes of inspiring other teachers and helping students learn.

In his letter he describes his motivation for creating this site:

"Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students."

I think this site can have a great impact on not just teachers but parents who help their kids with home work and those who are homeschooling their children as well. While many homeschoolers do attend conferences and actively participate in forums online I believe watching a great teacher in action can be even more illuminating. It’s the whole Albert Bandura thing, you know.

Good on you, Gates Foundation. Now when can we see this website?

Will Right Brainers Rule the Future?

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink Of all the non-fiction books I read last year (and I’m a geek so I tend to read many!) this one ‘stayed’ with me enough to tell others about it. It is a provocative little book and it uses the metaphor of the two sides of our brain to make some very compelling arguments. “Lawyers. Accountants. Computer programmers. That's what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities - inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate.” Pink talks about 6 kinds of “senses” that will predicate our professional and personal success - design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. He sees these skills as essential in the new economy. I won’t go into what each of them are here, but I believe the ideas are definitely worth exploring. While I can see many disagreeing with some of his premises, there is no denying some of the research that he cites in the book. While I believe this was probably aimed at a business audience initially, I believe teachers and parents can find some valuable insights in this book. For parents who are homeschooling their children or who have children who are gifted and/or just don’t ‘fit’ the current classroom and are having behavioral issues, I urge you to add this to your reading list.

Shift Happens

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a billion…

Here’s a video that every student, teacher or education-in-training should watch.

The video makes a compelling argument as to how the world is changing by pointing out some startling facts about children, education by making comparisons with countries like India and China. The video is visually delightful way and while it is rather long (for a YouTube video!) it DOES hold your attention.

I showed this recently to a class of undergraduates – freshmen who have grown up with technology but also some older adult students who are looking for a change in vocation. I think the few minutes it took to show the video made more of an impact than the whole hour I took explaining why educational technology is going to be an integral part of educating digital natives.

I just found a comment from a student to a similar video (there are actually tons of derivative works from the original Shift Happens video) that said something to the effect that “my teacher showed this in history class about the only thing worth while that i learned in hs”

I often like to read about the inspiration for things so for those of you who are interested here is a post to Karl Fisch’s blog - the fischbowl (the original creator of the powerpoint called Shift Happens

So as we witnessed last week, Shift IS happening – the question is how are we getting ready for it?

I'm back...

My friend says I'm like a crab in a barrel...going in so many different directions and yet going no where. So one of my resolutions this year is to just focus on a few things. One of them is writing. And that includes updating my blogs. Of course in an effort to write something meaningful, which I realize is impossible if you're trying to update many blogs I'm only going to update the ones I truly care about. It's hard to pick but this one was 'it'. Let's see how long I can stick with it!