tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post6275185227687972015..comments2024-03-27T08:53:29.267-04:00Comments on CURMUDGUCATION: Instructional GooglingPeter Greenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511193640285760299noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-44195004599102118052016-05-09T22:53:47.451-04:002016-05-09T22:53:47.451-04:00Peter, everything you say is exactly my experience...Peter, everything you say is exactly my experience, too.Rebecca deCocahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13168718846105012814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-35378826554411147142016-05-09T22:51:56.360-04:002016-05-09T22:51:56.360-04:00Exactly, the most challenging part is having the t...Exactly, the most challenging part is having the time.Rebecca deCocahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13168718846105012814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-19051017072121425252016-05-08T22:10:25.229-04:002016-05-08T22:10:25.229-04:00"Expecting teachers to be expert pedagogues a..."Expecting teachers to be expert pedagogues and instructional designers is one of the ways in which we push the job far beyond the capabilities of mere mortals."<br /><br />Really Rob? <br /><br />I think you have been breathing that rarefied air in your ivory tower for too long. Not enough oxygen perhaps, causing you to forget just how simple teaching really is. <br /><br />Teaching "skills" requires practice and feedback and correction.<br /><br />Teaching "new ideas" simply requires that they are presented in an interesting format that requires students to think about them. We do this by asking questions in a wide variety of ways. Questions that demand student thought, combined with feedback and correction.<br /><br />We best teach the "vocabulary" of our disciplines the way sports coaches teach theirs. The meaning of a bunt, a pick and roll, or blitz never requires the copying of definitions. We just use the language naturally and appropriately and expect our students to do the same.<br /><br />However, teaching is always the easy part. The learning is often beyond our control when students are amotivated, distracted, defiant, under-skilled, or frequently absent.<br /><br />NY Teacherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06584135103498426410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-43171846184485705032016-05-08T12:42:21.476-04:002016-05-08T12:42:21.476-04:00"Google and Pinterest (and few dozen other si..."Google and Pinterest (and few dozen other sites) make it possible to walk across thousands of other halls and ask millions of other fellow professionals what professional advice and materials they might have to offer. This is not a bad thing."<br /><br />So many times this. In an era of standardized "content delivery" to non-standardized kids, when relevant useful PD is rare and when the opportunity to collaborate with other teachers (especially if you're the school's ONLY music teacher, for example) is hard to come by, we either make it up as we go along, we rely on by-the-book "content delivery," or we use resources like this to help us along.<br /><br />Robert, didn't your ideal school use tech to make life easier for teachers too? There are uses for tech other than tests that grade themselves and essays that score themselves. This is one such application, and your criticism of it is contradictory, to say the least, unless teachers are supposed to passively let the tech do the teaching, I mean deliver the content, too. That would, IMO, be tantamount to educational malpractice, though.CrunchyMamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14434606158400653601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-40188413242857236352016-05-08T08:39:20.454-04:002016-05-08T08:39:20.454-04:00My response as a college instructor to overpriced ...My response as a college instructor to overpriced textbooks that don't give my students all the readings that I want has been to use free, online resources. I can easily put together a high-quality reading list for a philosophy course by just using the internet. Most of the classic texts are there and so are many famous, contemporary articles. <br /><br />I pick readings using my education in the field and my 20 years of experience teaching philosophy to undergraduates. <br /><br />This is more difficult to do in some fields, but there is typically no need to rely solely on a textbook. The math textbooks that my children have been using in the K-12 system the last few years are truly awful. They don't explain anything. I've found myself using Purple Math quite a bit. That website has excellent explanations of concepts along with detail examples of problems and the various strategies for solving them. I imagine that many K-12 math teachers could put together a great course just using internet materials if they only had the time. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07228908566250306699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-54423800846508405552016-05-08T08:29:15.976-04:002016-05-08T08:29:15.976-04:00Pondiscio is talking about "good" and &q...Pondiscio is talking about "good" and "great" and "crappy" without defining what those words mean. Obviously, materials that contain blatant errors or misinformation would be "crappy", but you'll find most of that in the mass produced materials created by "experts" (sic) rather than teachers. But otherwise, materials are "good" to the extent they help kids learn. If Chris understands working with mixed fractions better, then the materials were good - for him. If not, they weren't good, again, for him.Diennehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04570040547158789834noreply@blogger.com