Hudson HS Learning Commons

I love to follow this blogger; he has all sorts of great ideas for many aspects of life! This is a really good article/podcast about reading. Think about sharing some of these tips with your friends and students!

Fantastic article!

Everyday there is less standardization of information, making it nearly impossible to decide what a tenth-grader should know. Beyond the core literacies of reading, writing, computation, and research, the world-wide culture of innovation, discovery, multi-polarity, interdisciplinary thinking, and rapid change depends on the explosive potential of the human mind, not entombed truths from the past. Increasingly, any standards-based curriculum is at odds with the outside world.

There is only one resolution to the debate. Sooner or later, inquiry-standards will take precedence over content-based standards. Education’s core task is to prepare young people to generate new ideas, filter them through a net of critical analysis and reflection, and move the ideas through a design process to create a quality product, either as an idea or a material object. Students need information, facts, and specific knowledge for a successful outcome. But that information must be gathered during the process of creation, in a usable, just-in-time format not found in “subjects.”

Terrific ideas from a man who has interviewed hundreds of people about how to make education better. 

Will Richardson is one of the most innovative educational thinkers around. We need to listen to him and begin to try out what he suggests.

Wow. This article is about providing students with extended periods of time where they have to pay attention. I'm sure it would go over like a lead balloon! But maybe they would learn something...

VERY cool infographic! Be sure to check it out.

Outstanding article on school libraries! Please read!

"

“I think calling it a library is not accurate—to me it’s become a learning center that has resources,” said one principal. “When I see students in here, they’re doing research, maybe teacher-directed, but you know, I see a lot of them come in just to find out general information, to learn something—maybe not related to school, so to me it goes far beyond what we thought a library was.”

Not only do librarians enable learning, research also shows that they shape how learning takes place by helping teachers push the boundaries and innovate. As one principal said, “We do a lot of interdisciplinary teaching.... I think that our media specialists have enabled us to make that push, to be better at taking risks, and to do things that are normally outside of the box.”

Thought-provoking. Could defintely help student motivation. Besides, Google does it and they are ALWAYS coming up with great new ideas because of it!

Great blog, full of info. Also links to blogs about US history, US government, and World religions.

Terrific site from the New York State Library. Essential questions, student resources, teacher resources, digital ethics, and lots more.

What do you think?

Food for thought.

" If you grew up and went to school in the United States, you were educated in a system that has eight times as many high-school football teams as high schools that teach advanced placement computer-science classes. Things are hardly better in the universities. According to one recent report, in the next decade American colleges will mint 40,000 graduates with a bachelor's degree in computer science, though the U.S. economy is slated to create 120,000 computing jobs that require such degrees. You don't have to be a math major to do the math: That's three times as many jobs as we have people qualified to fill them."

More info about tracking. What do YOU think?

"Grouping students should be done based on what we know about students and how to maximize their learning, not because we were told to group students in a differentiated instruction seminar. We group purposefully. This means we put students into groups when we think students will learn more, or they will find more meaning in their learning, than they would achieve with a one-size-fits-all general approach. Most students can do most things we assign or that we facilitate with the class, but we remain attentive to those who aren't learning with the generalized approach, and we change things so that they are successful."

Argument is a key element of the Common Core. Good ideas here.

THIS is why every school needs a certified, dynamic librarian.

GREAT video! Must watch! She is right on so many counts. Bottom line: it's all about the relationships. Leave a legacy.