Pedagogy – Edunautics

Redefining Academic Rigor

There are two kinds of academic rigor. The standard kind is measured in number of hours spent; in the amount of predetermined information memorized and regurgitated. It involves running fast to jump through the hoops put before you. It involves being handed problems and showing you can follow prescribed pathways to solve them. It involvesContinue reading “Redefining Academic Rigor”

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”

Concentrated Endeavor

I often get asked about the learning environments that support entrepreneurial learning/21st century skills development. There are many practices that weave together to create proper conditions, informed by guiding principles and paradigms such as: Education must be real. Primary focus should be creating advanced learners (see my Teaching Without Knowing post for more on this) We must scaffold our studentsContinue reading “Concentrated Endeavor”

Noticing and Wondering: Kicking off and supporting enquiry

Noticing and Wondering (Special thanks to colleague Sara Soulier who helped me workshop this at a recent conference) Could there be any more important skills than the skills to notice and to wonder? The normal paradigm in school is to train students that what other people notice and wonder about is more important than theirContinue reading “Noticing and Wondering: Kicking off and supporting enquiry”

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”

Reflection on Persuasion

This reflection on persuasion was done by me as part of an exercise in my Communication and Media Literacy class. (You can find the Teacher Edition here). “On Persuasion” When I think about persuasion, I realize that we are always trying to persuade people to either do things or believe things. Often, it is ourselvesContinue reading “Reflection on Persuasion”

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”

Socrates Was Wrong

(Originally posted on the Cooperative Catalyst) Socrates was wrong? I don’t believe that necessarily, but read on and you’ll see why I wrote it (on top of shooting for a subject line controversial enough to increase the open rate of my post 🙂 I attended a workshop this summer at the Right Question Institute in Boston. WeContinue reading “Socrates Was Wrong”