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!

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.

DARnet
Andy’s writing about wiki participation and some connections from the DARwiki to a conversation on a couple of blogs. He’s found people talking about the best ways to encourage wiki facilitation, but doing it on their ‘home turf’ rather than participating in the making of the DARwiki page. The irony isn’t lost on Andy I know that he’s not fully explored his thoughts on all of this yet but it did sort of get me thinking too. There’s a couple of aspects of this that resonate for me.
People who write blog entries pointing to the Classroom Displays Blog often suggest their readers will enjoy it or find it useful. Not once (as far as I’m aware) has someone who has blogged the Classroom Displays Blog or the Flickr group actually joined the group or uploaded images to the wikispace.
I think edubloggers are alerting their audience, saying ‘there’s something over there you might be interested in’, rather than spotting something they themselves would want to get involved with. Often they point out the blog as an example of sharing best practice or using a blog for career development, as if they are saying ‘you too could find a niche and blog about that’ rather than actually encouraging engagement with the subject matter of the blog. They too, like Andy’s examples, are working at a meta level. In a way that’s good for the CD blog. More people are learning about it all the time. It’s being promoted as part of teacher training courses (amazing what you can tell from referer stats!). I suppose where I’m going with this is that the bloggers (in this case) aren’t really participating in a connectivist conversation about the subject matter of the blog but rather in one about the bloggers favourite subject - blogging! I wonder if the people blogging about facilitating wiki are doing a similar sort of thing.
Then there’s the issue of ownership. If a wiki is set up to serve a pre-existing community, like the cider wiki, it is a very different entity than one which may be the ‘property’ of one individual. I’ve noticed my own reluctance to edit ‘other people’s’ wikis, even sometimes DARnet! It can feel like invading someone’s territory if all the edits have been done by one or two people. It’s hard to get a balance. Its’ easy to say don’t do it all yourself but if there have been no edits for months it starts to feel like a dead wiki. Hmm, no idea where I’m going with all of this. I suppose it’s partly because I’m contemplating starting a new project, possibly based on a wiki and I’m wondering how I’m going to populate it. I’ve been thinking that I’d have to do some F2F workshops to build a seed community. I think I may need a crash course in community building & wiki facilitation, so it’s back to the DARwiki page for me then!
Meanwhile on the CD blog there are few comments these days, even though the number of visiters is far higher than it was this time last year. The best bit of interaction recently has been a poll about the point of displays which has attracted 42 replies so far, (and the current winning answer was added by a reader!).

Howard Thurman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

I don’t often quote preachers but Thurman is a bit special and this advice went straight to the nub of my thinking today.
I’d applied for a job and convinced myself it was perfect for me - to cut a long story short I didn’t get it. It was worthwhile and interesting but I’m not at all sure I would have been doing that which makes me ‘come alive’.
Thurman had a lot to say about the importance of community and for me that’s one area that makes me come alive. Too much of my life has been standing on the brink watching slightly baffled by others’ ease in communities. On-line and off over the last 3 years I finally learned how to take part, contribute and even nurture communities. More of that has to be part of where I’m going next and what little there would have been in that job wouldn’t have been enough for me.

Tell me a story
The Lakes

Debbie sat on the grey stone wall, lit a cigarette and looked into the sheep pen.
“It’s supposed to be art, right? All those leaves and twigs woven into a wreath and balanced on here? I don’t get it.”
Richard sighed. She was becoming a real pain. She’d done nothing but moan all week. The hills were too steep, the sun was too hot, the pubs were boring. Nothing was to her taste.

I decided to start publishing my short stories hosted on a wordpress.com blog. Am I bored this weekend? You think?!!!! Anyway it’s about time I started to do more with these stories than just leave them on my computer. I’m very impressed with the wordpress.com blog service. Slick and easy to use with several customisable themes.