- The goal of teaching must be to teach students how to learn. Students need to cultivate the ability to ask questions. This is the cornerstone of critical thinking. It is the exercise to learn to use creativity.
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- Teachers asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry. Socrates, and the Socratic Method of Teaching, is to always answer a question with another well thought out question. Causing the questioner to think through to his or her own answers.
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- Adhere to the idea that our learning is richer for our mistakes. Reframe the question and allow the students to figure things out. Teach them how to learn. My boss would say the problem is we are not making mistakes fast enough.
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- Informal learning environments ( ex: San Francisco Exploratorium ) tolerate “ failure” better than school environments do. Many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions. Too much ground has to be covered in mandated curriculum and standardized presentations and tests. BUT, the students need to acquire the skill somewhere.
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- Our democracy relies on an electorate of critical thinkers. Our society depends on people being able to make critical decisions ….… their own medical treatment, care of a parent, global energy demands, what is the truth, filtering through the lies of mainstream media and politicians and authority. Our environment is flooded with data and starving for knowledge.
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- Learning must not be seen as the ability to retain facts, or to apply prior knowledge to a new situation. Learning in schools must be preparation for future learning. It is a lifelong process. They need to learn how to learn.
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- Of the myriad of courses I have had over nearly 20 years in school curriculum my most important course was in “ Critical Thinking”.
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- Every human brain is different. Every human brain has capabilities the we can not access easily. The left brain offers inhibitors to the right brain to prevent stimulus from overloading its circuits. Savants are people who overcome these inhibitors either by accident or by birth. They learn to accomplish amazing mental feats. Learning can be a process to discover capabilities that you did not know you had.
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- Using Savants as a way to illustrate the amazing potential lying inside every human brain:
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- Kim Peek could read two pages of a book simultaneously, one page with each eye. He could recall over 12,000 books from memory. He could sum up the columns of phone numbers on a page in the telephone book. His story was portrayed in the movie “ Rain Man”
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- Leslie Lemke is blind since birth. He began playing the piano at age 14 on his own. He has performed around the world playing thousands of songs he has memorized. His mind hears the individual notes, not just the melodies. He can memorize them and replay them perfectly.
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- Flo and Kay Lyman are identical twins. They can name the day of the week for any date they are given. They can recall , what they had for dinner, what they wore that day, what the weather was like.
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- Daniel Tammet can recite pi out to 22,514 decimals. He can master a new language in a week. When asked to take 37 to the forth power he instantly said 1,874,161. He ways he perceives the numbers as having distinct colors and emotional tones.
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- Jim Carollo had a severe auto accident at age 14. He achieved perfect scores in Math and Calculus SAT tests while never having taken these math courses.
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- Derek Amato received a severe concussion diving into a swimming pool. He never learned the piano but began playing it. His brain no longer filtered sensory inputs. He could learn and remember individual notes and he began scoring music at a prodigious rate, 2,500 songs a year.
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- Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University. She has a photographic memory. She thinks in pictures. Her brain has been studied by Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Her brain has an unusual neural landscape. The right side of her brain dominates. Different regions of her brain are larger and others smaller that usual. Every brain is different. Some more different that others.
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- Genius within is withheld by inhibitors. Creativity and brilliance man be released to some degree in all of us given the right circumstances. We all need to learn how to make the best of our brains. That is the teacher’s challenge as well. If were easy everybody would be doing it.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email upon request. Some reviews are at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ---- “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, -- 707-536-3272 Saturday, March 9, 2013
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