My husband gets a kick out of me.
I'm glad he still finds my quirks funny and not annoying.
The problem is that I love talking about how we learn, which, of course, involves how we teach. Whether it's a Tweet from The Washington Post about homework
Kids, Parents and Teachers Disagree on How Much Homework Is Too Much – washingtonpost.com
Researcher Cooper says studies show that up until fifth grade, homework should be very limited. Kids in middle school shouldn't be spending more than 90 minutes a night on homework. In high school, the limit is two hours, Cooper says.
or a link via a colleague about an open, free online international university, I immediately click, read, and start chatting with him.
"I don't remember," he says.
"WELL, this says we should limit high schools students to two hours," I say, mulling over how much I assign, whether our students really have two hours of homework a night, and how we know whether our homework assignments truly help students learn.
Suddenly, I'm wondering if learning is possible without homework, or if our new schedule means they have less. Then I flip my brain to Alfie Kohn, or John Medina, or Carol Sweck, remembering what I've read recently about brain research and learning.
The other night I kept him at the table arguing about Shirky's book, telling him that the ease of collaboration and sharing had changed the way many people view institutions, authority, and structure. I shared this from a recent post on The Chronicle Review:
Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology
One of my students put it this way: "It is imperative that someone studying this generation realize that we have the world at our fingertips — and the world has been at our fingertips for our entire lives. I think this access to information seriously undermines this generation's view of authority, especially traditional scholastic authority." Today's students know full well that authorities can be found for every position and any knowledge claim, and consequently the students are dubious (privately, that is) about anything we claim to be true or important.
Contrast that with 50 years ago, when students would arrive in awe of the institution and its faculty.
He just sat there and smiled.
He's not there yet, but he lets me go on and on.
My RSS reader has more than 300 blogs, feeds from four major news organizations, various shared items,and feeds from my students' blogs and wikis.
Sigh. No wonder I can't sleep.
I find it all fascinating, and the more I read, the more I think. People wonder how I have the time to keep up with all this, but I tell them it's what I do. I don't like to cook or garden, paint or watch television. I do run and workout everyday, but… learning about learning is what I enjoy.
So, on our first snow day of the year, I look forward to catching up with this and this today. I will also create a screencast about wikispaces for our teachers. There are also several podcasts I haven't had a chance to listen to yet.
Someone once said to me, "Get a life."
My response? Thank you. I like my life just fine!
