TED Talk Videos

I spent time watching several TED Talk videos of different topics.  One was about redefining the dictionary.  To be honest I wasn't really sure what message the speaker was trying to get across.  She was very funny.  She poked fun at the way dictionaries are set up, both in print and online.  Dictionaries have looked the same for centuries, and she feels it's time for some revamping.  She feels people are missing in the learning of some valuable words simply based on the way dictionaries are organized.

Another video was about a project done in Portland at Casco Bay High School.  It looked very cool!  It was a research project about the homeless in Portland.  Kids designed questions and talked to people who are and were homeless, spent time working in shelters, and designed a multi-media presentation that explores the homeless problem in Portland and ideas on how to help fix it.  The kids were engaged, excited and learning using a variety of resources. 

The third video was about how education opportunities are so vastly different in third world countries that are beyond very poor.  Most kids were dropping out and getting involved in illegal businesses to make money and help take care of their families.  The saw education as boring and useless to them.  When some computers and mobile phones were brought in this began to change the way these poor students viewed education.  Technology brought fun and purpose to what they were learning.  The speaker went on to say there are three things we all need to do to improve education.  We need to reinvent the way schools are structured.  Learning should start from questions and not curriculum.  Second, we need to supplement what we already have in place.  We need new radical thinking about education and how to get kids engaged.  Last, we need to transform education.  Students need to learn in new innovative ways.  All of these things need to happen in all schools, but especially in those that are in poor countries and inner cities.  The education system is not fair in  those environments.

Two Strategies from Anne Davies Blog

I spent some time reading Anne Davies blog.  I chose hers because she's been to Yarmouth before and we've used many of her strategies in the past.  She wrote about "Stop and Say Something".  Partners begin reading reading some sort of text, be it informational or not.  They stop at an agreed upon place, maybe at each new heading or every other paragraph, and say something to each other about what was read.  It could be a text to self connection, a new learning, an observation, etc.  It makes both readers interact with the text.  I know we've used this in faculty meetings before, but I've never used it in the classroom.  I will now.  It's a strategy that can work in any content area.

Anne also writes about being asked over and over by teachers at what point do you accept a piece of work as finished, after how many revisions should we consider it done.  Her short answer is, there's no magic number.  But she does offer some advice; the student must be able to articulate how the work was changed based on our feedback.  The student should be able to prove how their work is better or better aligned with the feedback/rubrics we've given them.  Now that my students will have their own laptop, I can see this being done electronically.  Using stickies on Google Docs they can highlight the text they improved and write a sentence or two about why it's better. 

Two simple strategies that can be very powerful to student learning.