Achievement and Innovation

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Textbooks are History

Things for Pioneer Teachers to Consider:

Kids are wired differently these days. They're digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose, and extrapolate, and they think knowledge is infinite. They don't engage with textbooks that are finite, linear, and rote.

If I ask a student about a topic and listen to his answer, especially if I'm interested in the topic and the student, I'm learning a lot, but the rest of the class is sitting passively. Do you see something wrong with this picture?

We can create curiosity by presenting students with puzzling phenomena, surprising facts, challenges to accepted opinions, appeals to imagination, playful situations with manipulatives, connections among seemingly disparate concepts, moral dilemmas, and personal drama when facing struggle.

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