Kids don't learn from people they don't like

Rita Pearson was a teacher most of her life. She said that kids don't learn from people they don't like. What do you think? How important are the relationships between teachers and students? In this amazing TED talk we remember the educator Rita Pearson:

Duolingo: learn a language for free and translate the web

Imagine a good free program to learn a language. Imagine that this good program is free because when you are using it you are working for them: they use the answers of your exercises to translate the web. That's Duolingo, one of the best web pages to learn a language. You can use Duolingo in your browser or in your smartphone, because there are versions for iPhone and Android. So let's recommend Duolingo to our students!

In this TED talk the founder of Duolingo, a mathematician from Guatemala called Luis von Ahn, tells us about how he invented Duolingo and Captcha:

Coursera: free university courses, everywhere

Do you want to take a course from Stanford University for free? Do you prefer Princeton? You can! How it works? Watch short video lectures, take interactive quizzes, complete peer graded assessments, and interact live with your new classmates and teachers. These courses are called massive open online courses (MOOCs). Today there are 335 courses, about Mathematics, Arts, Humanities, Economics... Take a look!
https://www.coursera.org/

The Marshmallow Challenge

The "Marshmallow Challenge" is an easy, fun and interesting activity to study how we work in groups.  This exercise involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape, string and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?

The puzzle of motivation

We need to motivate our students and we usually think that traditional rewards are the solution: extra points, punishments, prizes...  But social scientists have demonstrated that they aren't always as effective as we think.  In the following talk, Dan Pink explains why:


What do you think?  Do you need your students to be creative?  I recommend you this Spanish article, too:
La sorprendente verdad sobre lo que motiva a tus alumnos

Some Study That I Used to Know

I'm sure you know Gotye's popular song "Somebody That I Used to Know".  There are a lot of versions of this song.  My favourite is this one called "Some Study That I Used to Know":



The lyrics are here.

There is also a lesson about this video in TED-Ed: What Do You Remember from High School?  It is an interesting activity to think about the importance of what we teach.

TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

A new initiative from TED: TED-Ed.  Their mission: create the best video lessons in the world.  Here you have the presentation and a lesson called "Just How Small is an Atom?":





You can suggest lesson ideas!

The Future of Technology

This 1995 Newsweek article dismisses the idea that the internet would fundamentally change the way we do things.

"Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities . . . Baloney[*] . . .The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

*Baloney = nonsense

How have we gotten so far? Which of the articles' predictions have come true, or totally missed the mark? Going into the future, what do you predict?

Check out this TED talk for a glance at the direction we might be heading.

Do schools kill creativity?

Back in November, we discussed this TED talk by Ken Robinson. What do you think--do schools kill creativity? Are we educating the whole student?

(courtesy of Juanjo)