Today's Reads, Views, and Links

Here is a great infograph illustrating the risks of posting info on social media.  In July I have the opportunity to present on this to a local community.  I'm going to use this info graph to help get my point across.

Source: edudemic.com via Kurt on Pinterest

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This story goes right along with my previous entry about students inventing and creating new (and much needed) businesses.  Peter Thiel (inventor of PayPal) has been offering select graduating seniors money to come work for him instead of go to college.

As you can imagine, this has caused quite a stir.  In fact, one of my students applied.  While he didn't get money from Thiel to not go to college, he did get an invite to the meeting discussed in this article.  Marcus, though, couldn't attend because he was participating in the national science fair.

Still, it's very interesting what Thiel is trying to do.  Given the massive cost of college, maybe it's the right way to go.

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The title says it all here: How do Finnish kids excel without rote learning and standardized testing?

Here is why - they not only build innovation into their schools, but they also structure their schools around the way innovation and creativity actually happen (and for the most part it doesn't happen by sitting quietly in rows listening to a teacher drone on).

The other way: One of the ways the Finnish education system accomplishes this is by giving individual teachers greater autonomy in teaching to the needs of their classes, rather than a top-down, test-based system.


How nice would that be to have back in our schools?

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Since I delved into Pinterest less than a year ago, I find myself using it daily.  Here is a link illustrating how teachers can use it in their classes.

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Teacher "accountability"

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This, I believe, is going to be proven true next year.  The best 1:1 device is good teaching.

Now, I'm as strong of a supporter of technology as anyone, but it should be used to support great teaching.  But 'great teaching' I believe is vastly different that what it was when I was in high school.

For my money, great teaching is giving up some control to allow students to teach themselves and then share that knowledge with the class.

It also means - more than ever- modeling what it means to be intellectually curious and adaptive.  That means we can't just hand out 25 copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and then hand out the same study guides that we've done for the past 15 years.

It means changing, evolving, and adapting.

And I can't wait to get started.

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