Providing the right kind of feedback to students can make a significant difference in their achievement. There are two key considerations. First, feedback that improves learning is responsive to specific aspects of student work, such as test or homework answers, and provides specific and related suggestions. There needs to be a strong link between the teacher comment and the student's answer, and it must be instructive. This kind of feedback extends the opportunity to teach by alleviating misunderstanding and reinforcing learning. Second, the feedback must be timely. If students receive feedback no more than a day after a test or homework assignment has been turned in, it will increase the window of opportunity for learning. Feedback is a research-based strategy that teachers, and students, can practice to improve their success.
The challenge is in providing timely feedback spread across 3-4 courses with 25+ students each. Nearly impossible with writing intensive programs, which is a majority of doctoral programs. Sink or swim!
"2012 : What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true." WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION? Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena. [Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]"
"'The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.'"
"The quest to find one’s purpose and live the creative life boldly is neither simple nor easy, especially for a young person trying to make sense of the world and his place in it.
In the spring of 1926, Sherwood Anderson sent his seventeen-year-old son John a beautiful addition to history’smost moving and timeless letters of fatherly advice. Found in Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children (UK; public library), the missive offers insight on everything from knowing whose advice not to take to thefalse allure of money to the joy of making things with your hands:
'The best thing, I dare say, is first to learn something well so you can always make a living. Bob seems to be catching on at the newspaper business and has had another raise. He is getting a good training by working in a smaller city. As for the scientific fields, any of them require a long schooling and intense application. If you are made for it nothing could be better. In the long run you will have to come to your own conclusion.'
'The arts, which probably offer a man more satisfaction, are uncertain. It is difficult to make a living.'
'If I had my own life to lead over I presume I would still be a writer but I am sure I would give my first attention to learning how to do things directly with my hands. Nothing gives quite the satisfaction that doing things brings.'"
Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. It offers a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait for...
This post lists 100 world changing documentaires with short explanations. The website has over 1150 films listed so if you are searching for a documentary this is one site to check out.
I am interested in this post and post on critical thinking. Is critical thinking a skill? Can one teach critical thinking? Stephen has delivered the course on Critical Literacies MOOC in the past....
Robert H. Ennis, Author of The Cornell Critical Thinking Tests “Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe and do.”
Assuming that critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do, a critical thinker:
1. Is open-minded and mindful of alternatives 2. Tries to be well-informed 3. Judges well the credibility of sources 4. Identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions 5. Judges well the quality of an argument, including the acceptability of its reasons, assumptions, and evidence 6. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position 7. Asks appropriate clarifying questions 8. Formulates plausible hypotheses; plans experiments well 9. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context 10. Draws conclusions when warranted, but with caution 11. Integrates all items in this list when deciding what to believe or do
What are the principles of critical thinking?
- Knowledge is acquired only through thinking, reasoning, and questioning. Knowledge is based on facts.
- It is only from learning how to think that you learn what to think.
- Critical thinking is an organized and systematic process used to judge the effectiveness of an argument.
- Critical thinking is a search for meaning.
- Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned.
- Do the above principles hold true and won’t change from one domain to the next?
Hello David, I agree with you, to be a critical thinker sometimes can be even dangerous, buttheyare the people who move the world...thanks a lot for your comment!
Good design is everywhere: on websites, in objects you use in your home, the car you drive every day. But often, design is missing from the modern classroom, and we think that’s a big mistake.
Educators have a lot to learn from the principles of design, bringing strategic thought and creativity to today’s classrooms. Well-designed classrooms and educational plans can have a positive impact on educational outcomes, and it all starts with educators.
Read on to find out about the 25 design principles that we think are important for educators to use and understand.
In a conversation with James Estrin, Mickey H. Osterreicher, a lawyer for the National Press Photographers Association, discusses a troubling trend of arrests for photography in public spaces.
Try one or all of these seven apps if you have students that prefer to handwrite their notes or if you prefer to handwrite your notes, but you're worried about those notes getting lost.
"Flex, Zap, Roll: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover performs a series of firsts this week -- flexing its arm, laser-zapping a rock and rolling on its wheels. See the rover's landing site, named for author Ray Bradbury on the day that would have been his 92nd birthday."
The greatest pleasure in science comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way.
Forvo: the largest word pronunciation dictionary in the world, now with translations. All the words in all the languages pronounced by native speakers
"Forvo is the largest pronunciation guide in the world, the place where you´ll find millions of words pronounced in their original languages. Cool, isn´t it? Be a part of this cultural phenomenon now!
Who makes Forvo?
Forvo was born as an idea in 2007, and is online since January 2008. Just a year later Forvo became the largest pronunciation guide in the world with audio pronunciations in more than 200 languages.
The owner of this site is Forvo Media SL, from San Sebastián (Spain). If you want more information about Forvo contact us here."
"Forget the small stuff, for now. What's your big objective?" "As ... we bid another year adieu, our thoughts turn to making resolutions: this year I will lose that extra weight, drink less alcohol, give up sugar, get out of debt. All worthy goals, but why do we perennially return to resolutions that seem based on the idea of fixing all the things we're doing "wrong?"
You can't know what resolution you need until you know what your objective is. In photography, the resolution of the image is entirely dependent on the output you want. If you're looking at an image on your computer monitor, 72 dpi (dots per inch) is fine, but if you want to print that image, you'll need a much higher resolution, say 240 dpi. If you then want to make that image into a billboard, you actually need a relatively lower dpi, because the further away you are from it, the more your eyes will blend the colors for you (think of a Georges Seurat painting).
And that is why I believe we've got it backwards when it comes to making New Year's resolutions. Instead of starting January trying to "fix" all the wrongs, let's take some time to figure out what our objectives really are.
"Maker spaces in libraries are the latest step in the evolving debate over what public libraries’ core mission is or should be. From collecting in an era of scarce resources to curation in an era of overabundant ones, some libraries are moving to incorporate cocreation: providing the tools to help patrons produce their own works of art or information and sometimes also collecting the results to share with other members of the community.
Maker spaces promote learning through play; have the potential to demystify science, math, technology, and engineering; and encourage women and underrepresented minorities to seek careers in those fields.
They also tie in to the growing trend of indie artists in every medium—including books—who are bypassing traditional gatekeepers, taking advantage of new tools to produce professionally polished products, and going direct to the web to seek an audience.
Maker spaces also acknowledge green concerns by reconnecting consumers to the labor involved in producing what they use. While 3-D printers are perhaps the signature offering of Maker spaces, libraries find that low-tech and low-cost opportunities are just as popular."
When creating a timeline for a project or important event, it is best to use helpful tools or templates so that the timeline can be created accurately without any kind of miscalculations or flaws...
Timelines are a fantastic way to get language students to express themselves without the need to write long and laborious sentences or paragraphs. Short, simple and precise!
"The Little Red Schoolhouse writing course for graduate students and advanced undergraduates has been a staple offering at the University of Chicago for decades. Over the years, Lawrence McEnerney (Director of the University of Chicago Writing Program) and the late Professor Joseph M. Williams worked together to craft this fine guide to college writing. The guide was created with first and second year students at the University of Chicago in mind, but it can be used effectively with a wide range of students who wish to write clearly and concisely. The guide is divided into five sections, including "Some crucial differences between high school and college writing," "Preparing to write and drafting the paper," and "Revising the introduction and conclusion." An important section here is: "But what if you get stuck? A good solution and terrible solution," which discusses, among other things, how to avoid plagiarism. Throughout this work, the advice is sage, lucid, and well-intentioned. It is an indispensable resource for any and all persons who wish to succeed in becoming better writers in college."
"Hear the first song from Bob Dylan's 35th studio album, Tempest."
"'Duquesne Whistle,' begins in the middle of a scene, like the fade-in in a classic Western. It's the first song we get to hear from Bob Dylan's Tempest, the album he will release on September 11, 50 years and six months after the commencement of his recoding career. The music starts faintly, as if in a vintage pleasure palace, with the band — the stalwarts who've played with Dylan for a while and join him on the Never-Ending Tour — playing rock and roll ragtime off in the corner. The electric guitars sound almost like clarinets. Everybody's swinging! But what's that in the distance? Dylan himself unleashes the rubbery guitar chord change that repeats for the rest of the song, sounding just like a locomotive blast. Is he hopping that thing? Is somebody he loves on it? Both are possible."
"Accused of straying far from orthodoxy and of needing to be 'reformed,” the Leadership Conference of Women Religious chooses its course with Rome.'"
"'Both sides in the standoff speak of ‘dialogue,’ but they seem to mean different things,” said R. Scott Appleby, a historian at Notre Dame. Leading bishops 'understand dialogue as a conversation about how best to implement the pope’s vision of religious life and witness. The sisters mean an open-ended give-and-take that is more of a mutual discernment of where the Spirit is leading the Church at a given moment in history.'
"But leading bishops said nuns have no right to question official teachings of the pope.
'How in the world can these consecrated religious who have professed to follow Christ more closely . . . be opposed to what the Vicar of Christ is asking? This is a contradiction,' Cardinal Raymond Burke, leader of the Vatican’s Supreme Court, told Catholic TV station EWTN. 'If it can’t be reformed, then it doesn’t have a right to continue.'"
I found these cartograms from an article in the Telegraph and was immediately impressed. The cartograms originated here and use data from the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project as to create the int...
This series of cartograms shows some imbalanced populations (such as the pictured Australia) by highlighting countries that have established forward capitals. Question to ponder: Do forward capitals change the demographic regions of a country significantly enough to justify moving the capital?
This is from 'worldmapper' - it is a great sight to help you understand using technology the most densely populated areas of various countries. What do you think they are?
This is site doesn't just find educational videos, but it can find specific words or phrases within the script of the video and help you find them in context. Very useful tool.
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True at all levels. My goal is to try to do this.