I leave in just a few minutes for an event that is quite unique to me. I’ll not say more now, but hope that I will have much to share when it is over. Before I go, however, I’d like to share two items.
- Readers of Edutopia, from the George Lucas Educational Foundation, should skip over to very fine essay by Chris Cross and Milt Goldberg about the issue of time in the education. I almost hesitate to bring up this article, Time Out, right now, during the first days of the school year, because reading this will make you tired. But the ideas are also extremely critical to the future of our students. Of all the factors that we have tried to change in order to improve teaching and learning, time is the one that has changed the least, and it is probably the factor that more encages us than any other.
This statement especially struck me.
No matter how complex or simple the school subject — literature, shop, physics, gym, or algebra — the schedule assigns each an impartial national average of 51 minutes per class period, no matter how well or poorly students comprehend the material.
Goldberg, Milt, and Christopher T. Cross. “Time Out.” Edutopia September 2005: 35-37.
- SFETT is back up and running. The San Fernando Educational Technology Team is a group that I talk about a lot. They help students learn to learn, by making them producers of knowledge, not just consumer.
Each summer, the take down their web site for a redesign. I always receive e-mails from people, wanting to know what happened to the links in my online handouts, and I have to explain about SFETT’s summer schedule. Well, they’re back up and more amazing than ever.
Visit SFETT at http://sfett.com and check out their latest film festival, iCan 6.
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