In Duke professor Dr. Cathy Davidson's Book "Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn" she stresses a concept of Learning to Unlearn. The idea is simple, but in practice very difficult: we need to break away from old methods of education and explore the new.
Davidson argues that this is a necessary process to move education into the Information Age. She stresses that old paradigms we've relied on since the turn of the century aren't going to work going forward; we must be aware of how young students, immersed in technology from the very beginning, are building their cognition. In many ways, they are learning in ways very alien to what pre-Internet students experienced.
How has educational conditioning biased your reasoning abilities? See how long this takes you. It may take longer than you'd think.
Video of the electric force pushing charged water droplets into cylindrical spiral paths around a charged teflon/nylon knitting needle in zero gravity. See if the path looks like what you would have predicted. Very cool!
Clip about how students can be taught scientific/mathematic/nutritional topics using items they are already familiar with. Ditching pure theoretical framework with this cross-curricular focus not only makes the individual topics more relevant and exciting, it has potential to spark student interest to investigate further.
A very interesting video discussing the independent derivations of Calculus by Newton and Leibniz in the 1670s. Gives fascinating historical perspective to the now archaic circle method of finding tangents.
This may perhaps be a better solution to Apple's iBooks mentality for textbooks. Although more expensive, the Biology text created by Nature not only is a lifetime subscription, it includes free updates — and since it's a web app, no need to redownload the book.
Love listening to Dr. Kaku. I've always held that the Internet/technology is a huge game changer, especially in education. Here's Michio's broader interpretation of the technological paradigm shift through a more cosmic lens.
How will society make the transition from type zero to a type one civilization? Will we make it?
Now I guess I have to upgrade to Lion. iBooks Author looks awesome. Any chance Apple will let us distribute books ourselves – or will we be tethered to the iTunes store?
#education
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Apple – iBooks Author
Give your book a great beginning with templates. No need to let the blank page scare you. Just start with an Apple-designed templates. Each template has a variety of page layouts to choose from — or c…
I got Mathematica 8 as a gift this year. Are there any awesome tutorials for this software I should be aware of? I'm hoping to break some ground by creating demos like the ones on http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/.
A radically new model for higher ed, where educational technology is being used in smart ways. Curious to see how the aptitudes/outcomes of these students compare to traditional students.
#education
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Inventing a New Kind of College
In the past 30 years, scientists have discovered a lot about how people learn. But traditional universities are slow to change their ways. So a group of educators in Minnesota decided to build a brand…
Dane DeSutter is a Purdue Alumnus, with a degree in Physics, Chemistry & specialties in Mathematics and German Language and Literature.
He is an advocate of digital and open source education. He currently teaches with a popular online instruction service. DeSutter is also an avid pianist and a dabbling chef.
