If I were to print Langwitches Twitter Timeline…

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Let’s Ask the Kids: 2nd Grade Bloggers

I was inspired by Aviva Dunsinger who posted a video of her second grader talking about his blog.

Here are a few of our second graders talking about their classroom blog (not individual blogs). If you are blogging with your students, take a few moments to record them. Our recording was completely impromptu. No prep… no rehearsal… just a few questions and a flip camera. It is so important to start asking the kids, let’s hear their voices…

Kindle Clippings

I am enjoying my Kindle tremendously. I am also trying ot be aware how the Kindle is changing (or not) my use, reading, storing, buying habits and general attitude towards books.

My reading habit is not necessarily linear and sequential, at least not for non-fiction books.  I do not read one book straight through. I have usually 5-6 books on my nightstand and/or now on the Kindle, that I am reading a little here and a little there. The Kindle allows me to highlight and copy quotes as I am reading into a “Clipping” file, that I can save later to my computer. I copied and pasted this file below. I find it a nice bread crumb trail of my reading and useful if I need/want to go back to read the context of the quote.

Anna Karenina (Leo Nikoleyevich, 1828-1910 Tolstoy)
- Highlight Loc. 661-62 | Added on Saturday, October 31, 2009, 04:19 PM

it’s very much like that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer.

Anna Karenina (Leo Nikoleyevich, 1828-1910 Tolstoy)
- Highlight Loc. 2 | Added on Saturday, October 31, 2009, 04:20 PM

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Henry Jenkins)
- Highlight Loc. 24-25 | Added on Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 08:47 PM

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg)
- Highlight Loc. 46-47 | Added on Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 09:09 PM

the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that change. Technology, we insist, is not what constitutes the revolutionary nature of this exciting moment. It is, rather, the potential for shared and interactive learning

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 121-22 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 09:20 AM

the study of books need not be limited to a particular technology.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 137-38 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 09:25 AM

The staying power of the old-fashioned codex illustrates a general principle in the history of communication: one medium does not displace another, at least not in the short run.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 141-43 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 09:27 AM

The explosion of electronic modes of communication is as revolutionary as the invention of printing with movable type, and we are having as much difficulty in assimilating it as readers did in the fifteenth century, when they confronted printed texts.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 160-62 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 05:20 PM

Yet its past bodes well for its future, because libraries were never warehouses of books. They have always been and always will be centers of learning. Their central position in the world of learning makes them ideally suited to mediate between the printed and the digital modes of communication.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 166-67 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 05:21 PM

Publishers are gatekeepers, who control the flow of knowledge. From the boundless variety of matter susceptible to being made public, they select what they think will sell or should be sold, according to their professional expertise and their personal convictions.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 192-94 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 09:41 PM

correspondence of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson—each filling about fifty volumes—and you can watch the Republic of Letters in operation. All four writers debated all the issues of their day in a steady stream of letters, which crisscrossed Europe and America in a transatlantic information network.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 279-80 | Added on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 10:10 PM

When businesses like Google look at libraries, they do not merely see temples of learning. They see potential assets or what they call “content,” ready to be mined.

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 237 | Added on Thursday, December 31, 2009, 12:29 AM

In 1790, the first copyright act—also dedicated to “the encouragement of learning”—followed

The Case for Books (Robert Darnton)
- Highlight Loc. 282-83 | Added on Thursday, December 31, 2009, 12:32 AM

Libraries exist to promote a public good: “the encouragement of learning,” learning “Free to All.”

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 613-18 | Added on Friday, January 08, 2010, 05:44 PM

Most of us intuitively know that we all learn differently from each other—through different methods, with different styles, and at different paces. We remember not being able to pick up a concept at the same time someone else grasped it instinctively. And we remember that occasionally a teacher or parent or another student would explain it in a different way, and it clicked. Or perhaps it just took more time. Other times we figured things out faster than our classmates. We grew bored when the class repeatedly drilled a concept for those who struggled to get it. And most of us had friends who excelled in certain classes but struggled in others. Our experience is that we learn differently.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 645-47 | Added on Saturday, January 09, 2010, 12:10 AM

Gardner defines intelligence: The ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life. The ability to generate new problems to solve. The ability to make something or offer a service that is valued within one’s culture.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 856-57 | Added on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 06:00 PM

computer-based learning is emerging as a disruptive force and a promising opportunity. The proper use of technology as a platform for learning offers a chance to modularize the system and thereby customize learning.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 858-60 | Added on Sunday, January 17, 2010, 11:16 PM

Student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 860-61 | Added on Sunday, January 17, 2010, 11:16 PM

teachers can serve as professional learning coaches and content architects to help individual students progress—and they can be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1263-65 | Added on Monday, January 18, 2010, 04:04 PM

while people have spent billions of dollars putting computers into U.S. schools, it has resulted in little change in how students learn. And most products that the fragmented and marginally profitable educational software industry has produced attempt to teach students in the same ways that subjects have been taught in the classroom.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1401-4 | Added on Monday, January 18, 2010, 04:10 PM

Despite the widespread presence of computers, Maria’s school experience isn’t too much different from her mother’s experience a little over two decades earlier. Whereas her mother did the research through reference books, Maria now does it online; and whereas her mother typed out her project on a typewriter, Maria types it using a word processor. Why haven’t computers brought about a transformation in schools the way they have in other areas of life?

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1412-13 | Added on Monday, January 18, 2010, 04:12 PM

the billions schools have spent on computers have had little effect on how teachers teach and students learn—save possibly to increase costs and draw resources away from other school priorities.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1453-56 | Added on Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 10:17 PM

In the language of disruption, here is what this means: unless top managers actively manage this process, their organization will shape every disruptive innovation into a sustaining innovation—one that fits the processes, values, and economic model of the existing business—because organizations cannot naturally disrupt themselves.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1559-63 | Added on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 05:30 PM

Larry Cuban, who has conducted highly regarded studies on this topic, reports that in early-grade elementary school classrooms, computers serve to sustain the traditional early childhood school model. Computers have become just another activity center for children that they can opt to use in the course of the day. At the computer, they can play such games as “Franklin Learns Math” or “Math Rabbit.” While these games are popular with the children, they do not supplant traditional teaching; instead, teachers use them to supplement and reinforce the existing teaching model.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1564-67 | Added on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 05:44 PM

In middle and high school core academic classes in particular, students report that computers have had little to no impact on the way they learn. Teachers still deliver the instruction. Students use computers primarily for word processing, to search the Internet for research papers, and to play games.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1569-72 | Added on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 05:45 PM

“In the end, both supporters and critics of school technology (including researchers) have claimed that powerful software and hardware often get used in limited ways to simply maintain rather than transform prevailing instructional practices.”

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1588-95 | Added on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 05:49 PM

The sum of these assessments is that traditional instructional practices have changed little despite the introduction of computers and other modern technologies. A class does not look all that different from the way it did a couple of decades earlier, with the exception that banks of computers line the walls of many classrooms. Lecturing, group discussions, small-group assignments and projects, and the occasional video or overhead are still the norms. Computers have not increased student-centered learning and project-based teaching practices. The implementation of computers has not caused any measurable improvements in achievement scores.8 And, most importantly for the purposes of this book, computers have made almost no dent in the most important challenge that they have the potential to crack: allowing students to learn in ways that correspond with how their brains are wired to learn, thereby migrating to a student-centric

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1597-98 | Added on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 05:49 PM

Teachers have implemented computers in the most common-sense way—to sustain their existing practices and pedagogies rather than to displace them.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 1962-64 | Added on Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 10:16 PM

Instead of spending most of their time delivering one-size-fits-all lessons year after year, teachers can spend much more of their time traveling from student to student to help individuals with individual problems. Teachers will act more as learning coaches and tutors to help students find the learning approach that makes the most sense for them.

Disrupting Class : How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Michael B. Horn)
- Highlight Loc. 2043-44 | Added on Saturday, February 13, 2010, 10:22 PM

If we indeed want to begin teaching subjects to students in ways that correspond to how their minds are wired to learn, it means that the science of assessment will need to evolve significantly.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 306-11 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 03:06 PM

the world has changed so fundamentally in the last few decades that the roles of learning and education in day-to-day living have also changed forever. Though many of the skills needed in centuries past, such as critical thinking and problem solving, are even more relevant today, how these skills are learned and practiced in everyday life in the 21st century is rapidly shifting. And there are some new skills to master, such as digital media literacy, that weren’t even imagined fifty years ago.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 516-20 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 07:24 PM

What is certain is that two essential skill sets will remain at the top of the list of job requirements for 21st century work: • The ability to quickly acquire and apply new knowledge • The know-how to apply essential 21st century skills—problem solving, communication, teamwork, technology use, innovation, and the rest—to each and every project, the primary unit of 21st century work

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 541-43 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 07:26 PM

Education plays four universal roles on society’s evolving stage. It empowers us to contribute to work and society, exercise and develop our personal talents, fulfill our civic responsibilities, and carry our traditions and values forward.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 611-12 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 07:33 PM

Our historic shift to a 21st century Knowledge Age, decades in the making, has forever tilted the balance of what is needed and valued in our work, our learning, and our life. In the 21st century, lifelong learning is here to stay.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 611-12 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 07:33 PM

Our historic shift to a 21st century Knowledge Age, decades in the making, has forever tilted the balance of what is needed and valued in our work, our learning, and our life. In the 21st century, lifelong learning is here to stay.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 611-12 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 07:34 PM

Our historic shift to a 21st century Knowledge Age, decades in the making, has forever tilted the balance of what is needed and valued in our work, our learning, and our life. In the 21st century, lifelong learning is here to

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 622-26 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 10:06 PM

four powerful forces are converging and leading us toward new ways of learning for life in the 21st century: • Knowledge work • Thinking tools • Digital lifestyles • Learning research

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 685-89 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 10:16 PM

With these waves of information and knowledge crashing all around them, how are today’s students going to manage and learn from this deluge? In the past, memorizing the tidy set of known facts, rules, figures, and dates of any school subject was a challenging but necessary part of learning. Today, attempting to memorize the overflowing storerooms of facts and knowledge in any field is clearly impossible. But an immense number of facts can be “remembered” or accessed as needed with a quick Internet search.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 690-92 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 10:16 PM

Yet knowing a field’s core ideas, understanding its fundamental principles, and applying this knowledge to solve new problems and answer new questions are evergreen learning tasks that will never become outdated. These learning skills need to move to the heart of what our schools teach.

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 757-61 | Added on Sunday, February 14, 2010, 10:22 PM

five key findings from research in the science of learning can be used to direct and guide our efforts to reshape learning to meet our times:10 • Authentic learning • Mental model building • Internal motivation • Multiple intelligences • Social learning

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (Charles Fadel)
- Highlight Loc. 818-19 | Added on Sunday, February 21, 2010, 10:02 PM

• Industrial Age education policies designed to deliver mass education as efficiently as possible