Fund For Public School is having their 2nd Annual Madison Ave Gallery Walk!
Here is the event's details:
What: 2nd Annual Madison Avenue Gallery Walk, including guided tours of participating art galleries, a children’s art scavenger hunt and artist talks
Admission: Free!
When: 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday May 16, 2009
Where: Walking tours will depart from two event Information Centers, one located at East 57 Street & Madison Avenue, and the other at East 78 Street & Madison Avenue
Contact: Matthew Bauer, President of the Madison Avenue BID at 212-861-2055 or via e-mail at mbauer@madisonavenuebid.org for more information
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sharing of Inspiration
I found this information on Thriving blog and wanted to share this with my readers because there is so much food for thought, it's so insightful. Enjoy!!!
In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:"
1. Pull, don’t push. Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer.
2. Create from relevance. Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.
3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.
4. Allow for variation. Evolve past a one-size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.
5. No more sage onstage. Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”
6. Teachers are designers. Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.
7. Build a learning community. Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.
8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.
9. Incubate the future. What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.
10. Change the discourse. If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.
In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:"
1. Pull, don’t push. Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer.
2. Create from relevance. Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.
3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.
4. Allow for variation. Evolve past a one-size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.
5. No more sage onstage. Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”
6. Teachers are designers. Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.
7. Build a learning community. Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.
8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist. An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.
9. Incubate the future. What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.
10. Change the discourse. If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Quote for the Week!
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not preparation for life; education is life itself.
-John Dewey
Child Interviews
For my Dance in Foundation class at the 92nd Street Y, we had to conduct Child Interviews.
I just wanted to share a little bit with you and what I got out of it
Me: Do you dance?
Child: Sometimes like a fish!
Child: I move my arm like this, (Does an arm movement up and down like a fish).
Me: Like a fish dance?
Child: Yes!
The child in this interview was 2, almost 3. Or as she says 2 and 3/4 years old. Yes it may seem like a silly conversation to an adult. But the child was making sense of the world around them. And through an art form like dance. If this is not enough proof that the arts are important at every stage even at 2 and 3/4 years old then you must be crazy.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
The question posed by "Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?" is such a loaded question. What I have to say about it may not be new however I feel this dialogue needs to be on going until the problem is solved. With the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are killing creativity asking teachers to just fill kids heads with answers and not allowing them to think for their selves. However what I see a ray of hope is in Early Childhood. Early Childhood seems to be moving towards a practice of are much freedom in creativity within a school structure. They are calling this "new concept": Preschool Alternative. To be this is a step in the right direction, we start with the young and plant the seed. But as we know our Education system has a ways to go and Sir Ken Robinson talk added volumes to the conversation! Enjoy!
What do you have to say on the matter?
What do you have to say on the matter?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
