An Overview of the QEP
If students can think better why don’t they?
In an earlier blog post I mentioned an activity I’ve been doing with students lately in which I ask a generative question: Where does knowledge come from? But I didn’t mention my favorite answer: Knowledge comes from asking questions.
My purpose in doing the activity is to present research (broadly conceived) as a learning to learn activity. So I talk about how all the books in the library got there (were created) because somebody looked at the world, got curious, and began asking questions. What resulted was knowledge. This same process works for anyone.
Apr 19 12
The Power of Questions
Students can create their own questions if they're given time and space.
In the Library’s Teaching Collection we have a few periodicals which might be worth the short invigorating walk you’d have to take to browse them.
They’re in print, of course, which seems almost quaint now. But there is a certain kind of joy in the tactile experience of reading real professional journals. We have thousands tucked away in our electronic collection but it’s not quite the same, is it?
I, of course, don’t get much exercise visiting the Teaching Collection. It’s located right next door to my office (L-226).
One of those periodicals in the little room is The Chronicle of Higher Education.
As this semester begins to wind down (can you believe it?) I’m going to do something I’ve been intending to do since January. Today I’m announcing the relaunch of the Teaching and Learning Blog. What’s different? And why now? You may wisely ask.
What’s different is that I”m opening it up to anyone who wants to write a post (short or long) about some aspect of teaching and learning. Or share a valuable link. Or take up an issue you feel strongly about.
Apr 12 12
Conversation in the Classroom
For me one of the saddest things from Sherry Turkle’s Ted video was the young man who said “I’d like to have a conversation one day. Just not now.” FACT CHECK …
It’s sad because it represents the loss of a uniquely human experience. Jacque Barzun said “Conversation is …”
Perhaps even more important to us as educators, it represents the loss of a valuable form of learning, one that connects to “real life” quite directly.
Fortunately it’s also one we can influence at least in the classroom when we’re with students and when we have some control over how the time is spent.
Ron Ritchhart uses a very interesting phrase: “Learning to think by talking.” In his most recent book Making Thinking Visible” he describes how the careful planning of a student conversation around a single powerful idea can draw them in and lead them to deeper levels of thoughtful experience.
The setup and transcript of the elaborated conversation of 7th and 8th graders is fortunately avalable on the web. It’s worth a read.
But would it work at Richland? With our students? I guess we’ll never know. Unless, of course, we were to give it a shot and see what happens.:)
For me one of the saddest things from Sherry Turkle’s Ted video was the young man who said “Someday, but certainly not now,I’d like to learn how to have a real conversation.”
Apr 7 12
Students Want to Learn…Not Be Taught
For the most part students are misunderstood by those who teach. Although, by far, most teachers care about their students’ well-being and education, however, they have assumptions about their students and about teaching that hinder and create frustration for themselves and those they teach. The result is a student who resists learning and a caring, loving teacher who feels they can’t reach their students.
Apr 5 12
A Loss of Human Connection?
A Loss of Human Connection?
Yesterday I watched Sherry Turkle on TED talk about the way in which our devices are reshaping what it means to be human. I urge you to spend the 19 minutes it will take to watch it.
Turkle who probably has studied the psychology of technology more than any other living person says we need to wake up and make sure we really want to go where all this is taking us.
She cites an eighteen year old boy who uses texting for almost everything who said to her in one of her interviews: “Someday, but certainly not now,I’d like to learn how to have a real conversation.”
The capacity for solitude and self-reflection. The ability to have a face to face conversation with another person. Time to think. Listening. The loss of community at work and school. A preference for virtual worlds because they’re so much simpler than real life. Turkle touches on these and other matters that define our era. I hope you’ll watch.
Certainly the college classroom must have some role to play in all of this. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk about this 
Yesterday I watched Sherry Turkle on TED talk about the way in which our devices are reshaping what it means to be human. The title of her presentation is “Connected, But Alone.”I urge you to spend the 19 minutes it will take to watch it.
Apr 1 12
Conversation and Caring
turning to one another
a poem by Margaret Wheatley
There is no power greater than a community discovering
what it cares about
Ask “What’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.
Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Talk to people you know.
Talk to people you don’t know.
Talk to people you never talk to.
Be intrigued by the differences you hear.
Expect to be surprised.
Treasure curiosity more than certainty.
Apr 1 12
Focusing on Questions, Not Answers
This past summer I attended the 30th annual conference of the Foundation for Critical Thinking. It was in many ways a life changing/mind changing event. Because my time has been filled with Learning Frameworks and CORE activity ever since, I’ve not been able to write so much as a summary of the conference. I still plan to. In the mean time, I thought I’d share one activity that really impressed me.
On the second day Gerald Nosich led a brainstorming / questioning activity that knocked my socks off. Nosich is a philosophy professor at Buffalo State College in New York, a very popular speaker at Foundation events and author of Learning to Think Things Through, my favorite book on critical thinking.