Tag: learning
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What’s your most valuable mindset?
Mine is inquiry. We prize decisiveness, creativity, empathy, and plenty of others. And they’re all important! But I think approaching situations with questions has served me best. In the classroom, it looks like asking how a student got to their result, or why their problem-solving approach was successful. Approaching with inquiry, even when the student…
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A day of school vs. an experience to remember 🌙😎
Think back to your school days. What do you remember learning? Not the subjects or topics you know you learned, but what learning activities do you actually remember? My memories don’t include most of my time in classes. I remember the fact of taking courses, but would be hard-pressed to tell you what I learned…
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Gen AI is a TI-30, and the Humanities are having their “slide rule moment.”
(I haven’t lost my mind. Allow me to explain.) Math and math-adjacent fields faced a crisis in the 1970s when digital calculators arrived in students’ hands. These were just basic versions, nothing close to scientific or graphing calculators (just go look up the TI-30!), but they were a quantum leap ahead of the slide rule…
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Given AI, do we know whether our children are learning? 👩🎓
That question was at the heart of the professional development session I ran last week for Horace Mann School‘s History Department. I think the teachers left a little less certain about the answer. (Which was one of my goals. Sorrynotsorry.) I showed them how, with just a few minutes of prompting, Generative AI can create…
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We should feel stress at work. (Hear me out.)
Psychologically safe working environments should include stress (meaning pressure to perform and grow). They shouldn’t be overly stressFUL (meaning an overload of nerves). Too much stress reduces productivity and becomes counter-productive. So how do we productively leverage stress? We take a lesson from great teachers! 👩🎓 Students don’t learn by doing easy work, and they…
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Are your employees afraid of being wrong? 🙅♀️
One of my earliest supervisors berated us when things went wrong. I found myself constantly watching my back, afraid to make a mistake and get yelled at. Sure, there were benefits. I still think of her when I diligently follow up on my tasks. But she also taught me that trying unfamiliar things carried the…
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AI is the biggest EdTech disruption since the chalkboard. 🦾🎓
Yet 60% of teachers still don’t use it. 🤔Spoiler alert: it’s not their fault. Plenty of past EdTechs have claimed they will revolutionize teaching. Most have failed. Remember filmstrips? Interactive whiteboards? The list goes on and on. The difference with AI, as I’ve argued in past posts, is that no other EdTech can replace thinking.…
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Teach what’s NEEDED, not what’s NEXT (3/3)
But… what if you can’t use AI? 😰 My last few posts used AI assists to illuminate what your learners need to learn next.🦾 First we predicted learning gaps with AI to help build your lesson plans.🦾 Then we built individualized assessment using AI to show exactly what each person needs to learn next. Now…
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Teach what’s NEEDED, not what’s NEXT (2/3)
You’ll learn best if the learning is targeted to your personal needs. 😎 (This isn’t about learning styles. Don’t get me started on learning styles.) What if, every time you learned something, it started at exactly the right place for you based on what you already know? There would be no need for background research…
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Teach what’s NEEDED, not what’s NEXT. (1/3)
But… how do you know what’s needed? 🧐 I had high school classes where the teacher said “We were on page 87 yesterday, so today we’ll start at the top of page 88”? I’m sure you’ve had the same. Wait. Why is that wrong? Page 88 is the next page, after all! Here’s the problem:…
