The Innovation Unit - It’s not 1996 - this century is a different place - The Innovation Unit Forums
It’s not 1996 - this century is a different place -

These people want to know what you think - now’s your chance

Stephen Heppell describes a world that is collaborative, peer-to-peer and mobile; where process is more important than practice. How would you measure success in this world - more joy, more smiling … ? What can you do to make it happen?

Interesting conversation? It should be but it hasn’t happened yet. The (ex-DFES) Innovation unit have made a public forum to try to start some discussions about the future of education in the UK but there’s not much going on there yet. One clue to the problem might be that you have to register to participate. If this is the case then it is a shame. It only took me a few minutes to register and it’s a nice, fairly user-friendly interface. You can quickly create a profile and upload an avatar. So come on why not join in the discussions?
(For the techie amongst you I think the web site is Joomla, and I think they’d be better with blogs and comments but hey what do I know?)

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Eide Neurolearning Blog: Finding the Right Ways to Praise Kids

From Carol Dweck and her team, here’s research that shows that providing generic or trait-related praise to kids (”You are a good drawer”) is more likely to induce feelings and behaviors of helplessness when negative criticism about drawing is later received. Children who received more situation praise (”You did a good job drawing”), had fewer strong emotional feelings and were more likely to persist with drawing activities.

Yikes! This may catch a lot of us. When trying to foster positive self-esteem, it’s possible we may be discouraging resiliency.

I agree - specific rather than general praise is the most powerful kind. It’s much better to say “I like the way you did x..” especially if you are pointing out something they’ve made progress with. Schemes like Better Reading Partners use this theory to re-enforce children’s positive self image of themselves as learners. It’s interesting to see a quantitative study backing up something I’ve seen and used extensively.
As an aside of particular interest to Action Researchers the bloggers children were shocked:

that the teachers criticized the preschoolers’ artwork just to see what the effects of different praise were. They wondered whether the parents really knew what the study was going to be like - and they thought it was unethical!

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Classroom Displays » Rules of Display
Urgent
A few months ago I was sent a copy of Rules of Display to review on the Classroom Displays Blog.
I’ve decided to give the book away in a prize draw If you want it you have until June 1st to read the review and leave a comment. I will then put all the e-mail addresses in a hat (note the technical selection method!!) and choose one at random.

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xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe (Comic may contain language unsuitable for those of a delicate disposition)
I love this

I’m waiting for the day when you tell someone”I’m from the internet” and instead of laughing they say “Oh, what part?”

Via Thinking in Pictures

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BBC Radio 4 | Planet Earth Under Threat |

The highlights of this blog will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 9pm Monday 28th May and at 11am Tuesday 29th May, so tell us about the spring things happening near you - post a comment below.

You can also e-mail us your spring photos to add to our Flickr site: nhuradio@bbc.co.uk

Well this is an interesting idea! A radio programme made from the highlights of a blog conversation!
I’ve only one quibble really - why not start a Flickr group with cc licenced photos so the BBC could blog the photos? Instead they are asking people to email them the images so that they can be added to a BBC Flickr stream (and it isn’t even a pro account!).
Maybe I’ll start a group for them

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