Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community
Season 2
Avoiding the Calculator Problem Millions of Western adults had this sentiment drubbed into them as schoolkids. Well-meaning teachers implored pupils to practice long division not knowing how cheap, powerful, and ubiquitous calculating devices would soon become. Of course, learning those rote skills may still have been best for the students, just not for the reasons …
Continue reading “Back Into the Meatgrinder: Using A.I. to QA Itself”
If we make a commitment, especially in public, we’re significantly more likely to be congruent with it
In the first-year critical thinking course I teach, I set the stage with a point about rhetoric: persuasion is everywhere, and awareness is the first step in thwarting undesired manipulation. So it was with great interest that I listened to the most recent 2-part episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, called simply Persuasion. Over 98 …
Continue reading “Persuasion: an interview with psychologist Robert Cialdini”
The Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community began during a simpler, less harried time. Oh there were crises, mind you, but nothing prepared us for what was to come: a pandemic, campus closures, an unemployment spike, racial reckoning, remote-learning-at-gunpoint, and an insurrection: tragedies with which you, dear reader, are all too familiar. In spite of incessant turmoil …
This post was inspired by the book How Learning Works. “It is not what students do not know that hurts them but rather what they do know” Ambrose, S. A., Lovett, M., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works : seven research-based principles for smart teaching (First, Ser. The …
I began blogging about Hacking Project-Based Learning a few weeks ago. Specifically the first chapter: Encourage Risk-Taking. In it, the authors explained how building relationships, showing empathy, and inciting curiosity help foster perseverance and intellectual growth. The second chapter, or “hack”, described in the book is Teach Collaboration Skills. A successful project depends on fruitful …
Continue reading “Hacking Project-Based Learning: Teach Collaboration Skills”
I’m in the middle of Hacking Project-Based Learning by Ross Cooper and Erin Murphy, a concise, practical guide for teachers wishing to deploy PBL in their courses. Cooper and Murphy are primary school teachers, so their examples are often calibrated to the elementary grades. But, as they remind readers, instructors can scale and adapt PBL …
Meaningful Connections I began reading Creating Wicked Students by Paul Hanstedt (2018) some time ago. While my progress has been slower than I’d hoped, a passage inspired me to think of a novel idea for class discussion: Consider the following: Three students are assigned a book chapter. The first one reads the chapter carefully then …
Continue reading “Creating Wicked Students: An Idea for Class Discussion”
“These Habits are lifelong pursuits, and proclaiming success is likely to let your guard down.” Nowhere in the US Constitution is there an express right to privacy. Wouldn’t it just be bonkers if the government could intrude in your personal affairs as long as it technically didn’t violate any clauses of the text? Thankfully, it …
Reason is the slave of the passions. David Hume I wrote the title of this post in the style of a personals ad not (only) to showcase my bottomless wit, but because, like a good personals ad, it suggests there’s a match which, once made, makes the world just a bit happier and more fulfilled. …
Continue reading “Righteous Mind Seeks Integrated Perspective”
