Writing cursive, fast, timely? We’re in transition between old ways of communicating by text in printed books and magazine and new ways of mixing it up on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linked In . . . What is lost? What is gained? How do we think about writing in a digital world?
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Last night, I was part of one of the most remarkable conversations about “kids today” ever. And it came with two actual exercises that any parent or teacher can do with a child and, as a bonus, you can do it yourself right now and have a better day!
Everyone benefits from more education. No one benefits from an educational system that defines learning so narrowly that whole swaths of human intelligence, skill, talent, creativity, imagination, and accomplishment do not count. As an educator, I want to change that hierarchy of values in order to support a more abundant form of education that honors the full range of intellectual possibility and potential for everyone, regardless of whether they are college material or not.
A friend recently told me about her child’s inspiring kindergarten teacher, a brilliant woman who had spent most of her life with five-year olds. For a while, she moved up to first grade teaching but, she said, first graders already knew what they couldn’t do. “No kindergarten child says ‘I can’t draw’ or “I can’t sing.’ They think they can do anything. By first grade they already know what they are good and poor at, what they can and what they cannot do.” Think about that. Age 6 and you already have a personal score card.
The answer to the question in my headline title, “Is It Dumb to Give Preschoolers Standardized Tests?” is unequivocal: yes. It’s dumb. Don’t do it. Please don’t do it. It’s a false metric with false goals that simply reinforces the twentieth-century’s interminable confusion of “standards” with “standardization.” We can do so much better.
Reblogged from Bull City Mutterings, the personal blog of Reyn Bowman, President Emeritus of the Durham (N.C.) Convention & Visitors Bureau. Opinions expressed here are those of the author. TUESDAY, JULY 05, 2011… Read more »
Reblogged from Publishers Weekly By Will Boisvert Jul 01, 2011 In Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn , Cathy Davidson shows… Read more »
View video footage of Cathy Davidson’s talk on Digital Literacies and the Future of the Humanities.
Reblogged from Inside Higher Ed ‘Now You See It’ June 24, 2011 by Serena Golden Recent years have seen a flood of media attention devoted to the relationship between the digital age and… Read more »
Reblogged from FastCompany BY: ANYA KAMENETZ July 22, 2011 Davidson is a professor at Duke University, a dyslexic, and a geek: The combination has made her a savvy, realistic, and observant critic of today’s… Read more »