by edtosavetheworld | Sep 17, 2013 | Stage 4: Disciplinary Thinking
What are you teaching tomorrow? Causes of the Civil War? Photosynthesis? Exponents? Huck Finn? Now think about this – what was the source of the understanding you want students to walk away with? Contrary to popular belief, knowledge doesn’t just fall out...
by edtosavetheworld | Jul 24, 2013 | Stage 4: Disciplinary Thinking
What do we hope students would say if we asked them why we study different academic disciplines? Asking students during the summer is a great exercise to get baseline data for what they think. Questions to help us analyze their responses: Are we teaching the...
by edtosavetheworld | Jul 23, 2013 | Stage 4: Disciplinary Thinking
“The best way to understand circles is to reinvent the wheel.” Nicholas Negroponte, Founder MIT Media Lab My thinking about the purpose of academic subjects has evolved quite a bit over the last decade. Even the use of the word...
by edtosavetheworld | May 20, 2013 | Stage 4: Disciplinary Thinking
Imagine the following classroom assignment: Explain the causes and impacts of the Great Influenza outbreak of 1918 If we want to save the world, we need to learn to prevent (or at least very effectively treat) pandemics like this, right? We can imagine that studying...
