Lydia Page

Photo

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:20:33 -0600

How productive have I been today? This productive:

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 11:58:11 -0600

world-shaker: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success For starters,...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:05:58 -0600

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what’s called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

Instead, the public school system’s teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. “There’s no word for accountability in Finnish,” he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. “Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master’s degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal’s responsibility to notice and deal with it.

Raise your hand...

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:42:53 -0600

heymissat:

and whimper if school starts for you tomorrow and you’re SO not ready.

What's Up With "Eponyms"?

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 08:49:46 -0600

theyuniversity:

"The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 08:30:18 -0600

“

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.

My tone is not meant to be obnoxious. I am in a state of shock.

”

- Flannery O’Connor responds to a school teacher’s odd take on A Good Man Is Hard to Find, offering some timeless broader insight on storytelling and interpretation in the process.

Susan Sontag put it even more forcefully: “Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling… Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world.”

(via explore-blog)

GWALP adds: Yet another quote that flies in the face of Common Core.
(via girlwithalessonplan)

"Memories are becoming hyperlinks to information triggered by keywords and URLs. We are becoming..."

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:25:22 -0600

“Memories are becoming hyperlinks to information triggered by keywords and URLs. We are becoming ‘persistent paleontologists’ of our own external memories, as our brains are storing the keywords to get back to those memories and not the full memories themselves.”

- Amber Case, cyberanthropologist and CEO of Geoloqi, in our report on the future of millennials’ hyperconnected lives. (via pewinternet)

What can education reflect this?
(via adventuresinlearning)

What's Up With "Beg the Question"?

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:25:06 -0600

theyuniversity:

"Chimpanzees, while they are very smart and interesting creatures, cannot tell each other stories..."

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:00:14 -0600

““Chimpanzees, while they are very smart and interesting creatures, cannot tell each other stories about war heroes fighting sirens and a cyclops to get home. They cannot use such stories to shape their values and their relationships and their worldviews. We can, and do, and this engagement with constructed narrative is (imho) a big part of what makes us human.””

- John Green (via quietlyc0nfident)

bookmania: Meanwhile, in London. The promenade of art projects...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:15:24 -0600

bookmania:

Meanwhile, in London. The promenade of art projects doesn’t stop in 2012 London’s Olympic arena, as an art project entitled aMAZEme continues today highlighting a book-maze masterpiece created by Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo. The “stacked” and “twisting” 250,000-piece book labyrinth is based on writer’s Jorge Luis Borges’ fingerprint. The huge art installation will be on display in the Clore Ballroom until August 25th. (via thisiscolossal)

classroomcollective: How to change the Reading Level of Your...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:04:42 -0600

classroomcollective:

How to change the Reading Level of Your Google Results

rhetcompryangosling: Submitted by Erin Brock at Transylvania...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:20:42 -0600

rhetcompryangosling:

Submitted by Erin Brock at Transylvania University

Because the copy is insanely difficult to read: ”Sonja K. Foss says that communication creates reality, but the only reality I’m interested in is you communicating your digits to me.”

My grad school application essays were about how much I passionately believe language constructs reality. That’s gotten me so many dates.