It has been quite a week.
A Book
I finished reading Cathy Davidson's Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science will Transform Schools and Businesses in the 21st Century.
I'm not sure whether I benefitted more from the discoveries she offered that will inform my teaching, or the knowledge I gained about the brain as it relates to my own life.
She writes:
What better gift could we give our children than to learn to enjoy as they grapple, to aspire higher when they stumble, to find satisfaction as the challenges become ever greater? As the adage goes, the person who loves to work never has to.
I hope that there will continue to be more emphasis placed in our educational systems on cultivating grit in our students and on helping them develop more self control.
Dr. Davidson also emphasized how much it matters what we pay attention to and how much we are capable of missing. She shared about this experiment in which viewers are asked to count how many times a basketball is passed between players wearing white shirts.
The instructions given by the researchers do not mention that there will also be a gorilla coming through the scene, a fact which the majority of people miss when participating in the research.
The gorilla example keeps coming back throughout the book, as Davidson weaves through how technology is impacting the attention of students in schools and the attention of individuals in the professional realm.
Now You See It is absolutely worth a read.
A Mention
My second item of note this past week was that I was mentioned by a couple of my favorite podcasters: The Mac Power Users (David Sparks and Katie Floyd). They aired an entire episode on Tech in Education and asked educators to weigh in with our favorites on Twitter.
I couldn't do the subject justice in 140 characters, so I wrote a page on my top ten tech tools for education that they mentioned on the show. It was exciting to get to be a small part of a show that has taught me so much over the past couple of years, since I started listening.
An Update
In the most recent episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, I told a story about the student who didn't ever want me to use his name in class again and was so full of anger. I wound up seeing him a couple of days ago and it was like encountering an entirely different person.
The anger was no longer apparent, being replaced by a nice smile and a warm greeting. I need to make sure that I remember times like this, so that I never forget how transformative the college years can be for our students.
A Request
I'm excited about the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode that will be airing Thursday. Dr. Stephen Brookfield offers such great insight into how we can all get our students more engaged in discussions.
Would you consider recommending Teaching in Higher Ed to one of your colleagues or friends in higher ed, or writing a review on iTunes/Stitcher, so more people have a chance to discover the show? As the community continues to grow, it makes it more possible to bring on guests like the ones we have had on lately.
Thanks for being a part of Teaching in Higher Ed.
