Curriculum Development

Pedagogy vs. Curriculum – The How is the What

The How is the What What (content) and how (pedagogy) cannot be separated. How we teach also teaches a what. Example 1: Coercion has no place in education. If we use coercion to get students to study what we want when we want, we are teaching them that how you get people to do theContinue reading “Pedagogy vs. Curriculum – The How is the What”

Reflection on Persuasion – Teacher Edition

This post relates to an exercise we did in the Communication and Media Literacy course I offer to new students at my high school. We are beginning to look explicitly at persuasion, and began by discussing persuasion in general, using these prompts: Why do we try to persuade people? Who do we want it for?Continue reading “Reflection on Persuasion – Teacher Edition”

Physical Orientation Predicts Team Performance (concise version)

(This is the relatively concise version of this post, relatively light on the preaching. To see the full post, with more preaching and more details about the challenge, click here). I’m sure this has been written about in a thousand other places, but I have some recent evidence to support the idea that small teams thatContinue reading “Physical Orientation Predicts Team Performance (concise version)”

Physical Orientation Predicts Team Performance

(This is the more detailed and slightly more preachy version of this missive. For the relatively more concise and less preachy version, click here). Assertions: Small teams that orient themselves in physical shapes conducive to communication will outperform teams that do not. This law of Team Orientation is best learned through doing, and not fromContinue reading “Physical Orientation Predicts Team Performance”

Don’t Build Your Teaching Around Technology

We in education have spent far too many years trying to integrate technology tools into the classroom. By that I do not mean that technology should be avoided in teaching. Far from it. However, the approach in the past has been to pick the tool, and then try to figure out how to wrap instructionContinue reading “Don’t Build Your Teaching Around Technology”