Today, April 22, is Earthday — a day to celebrate, appreciate, and advocate for our planet. This holiday seeks to build and sustain an international environmental awareness and ethos that reshapes how we conserve, preserve and manage the resources of our planet. Now celebrated or observed the world over, there is at least growing awareness about the challenges our planet … Read More
Transforming Batch and Queue
Kim Carter, the Executive Director of our parent organization, Q.E.D. Foundation, was recently interviewed by the the good folks over at KQED’s Mindshift blog for a piece on competency-based learning. As a leading expert in the field, she had a number of insights into both the benefits of competency-based learning and critiques of the traditional “batch and queue” model. Among … Read More
Brief Review of L. Todd Rose’s “Square Peg”
“Behavior isn’t something someone ‘has.’ Rather, it emerges from the interaction of a person’s biology, past experiences, and immediate context.” L. Todd Rose, from his book, Square Peg For students with learning differences schools can be (and often are) incredibly trying places. Imagine being a kid who wants to do well — motivated, eager to please, and enjoys interacting with … Read More
John Cleese Explains the Brain
Below is a video from John Cleese’s very “informative” brain podcast (actual content begins around 35 seconds). You’ll notice, of course, that nearly every sentence is almost entirely gibberish. It is humorous to us in large part because . . . John Cleese is a masterful humorist who can make gobbledygook sound sensical, and . . . It is a low stakes … Read More
Dyslexia doesn’t define me
Video source missing
One Story About Embracing Diversity and Empowering Students
In this powerful and inspiring TEDxManhattan talk, teacher Stephen Ritz shares a program he started with his students called Green Bronx Machine. More important than the program itself, though, is how the experiences have transformed and empowered his students — their present and their future. Jackie Gerstein describes his work in her post “Learners as Entrepreneurs,” Stephen Ritz’s Bronx classroom features … Read More
Resources for Improving Your Long Term Memory
The following is a guest post by Dr. Craig Pohlman, Director of Mind Matters at Southeast Psych. You can view the original post here. These days, it seems like there are no limits to what our genius gadgets (like computers, iPhones, tablets, calculators, etc.) can do. So, is human memory even as important anymore? The short answer to this is yes. … Read More
Oh, The Places You’ll Find Yourself — Spatially Speaking
Below is a TED Talk by Neil Burgess, a neuroscientist at the University College in London, who researches, as described on the TED website, “how patterns of electrical activity in brain cells guide us through space.” [ted id=1349] Supplemental to the grid cells Dr. Burgess discusses are additional neurological systems that give us a sense of our surroundings. Dan Peterson, … Read More
15 Things About the (Human) Brain
As we get excited for Brain Awareness Week next week, we thought it might be fun to take a quick look at our amazing brain. Below is an info-graphic from onlineschools with 15 facts you may or may not have known. Number 9 is a great reminder for parents, educators, and health conscious people — we think what we eat.
7 C’s of Resilience
A recent piece at KQED’s MindShift blog titled, “How Free Play Can Define Kids’ Success,” explores some of the ideas from Kenneth Ginsburg book Building Resilience in Children and Teens. It is part of a growing trend of research and theories related to student efficacy, tenacity, and persistence. These are important ideas for anyone working with students and kids in today’s … Read More
