In July I did a very scary thing and left my beloved position as Program Director at Computers4Kids after 6 years of working with some of the best students, volunteers, and mentors in this community.
This fall I have been continuing my work with the youth of this area, and am ready to announce my new venture, Building Experiences. Continue reading
When my brain is too full of words to process, I must resort to pictures. This week has been so amazingly full, inspiring and life-affirming, I haven’t even been able to begin filing it appropriately. Enjoy these pictures of so many amazing people!
11/10 High school sophomores and juniors receive French tutoring from UVA French major.
Guess what? You’re probably training someone right now! Are you a shift manager at a restaurant, are you a parent, or will you be working alongside a new hire? Yes? Trainer, trainer, trainer!! This is an occasional series to introduce you to important educational constructs.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
or It’s more than just “understanding”
Bloom’s Taxonomy http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/ is “a framework for categorizing educational goals”. When I was beginning education grad student, I thought the goal of every lesson was for learners to “understand” stuff. “You know, I don’t know, students will understand that the civil war was really important, for, you know, everyone in the south after it was over.” That’s some pretty content-free stuff right there, which is pretty much how my first teaching attempts went. Continue reading
I remember happily nodding along with the platitudes about intrinsic and extrinsic motivations during grad school. The information fit within my ideals about learning for learning’s sake. Intrinsic motivation– the motivation to learn and perform for a feeling of internal satisfaction– was in my mind the golden standard. Rewarding students, a form of extrinsic motivation, was detrimental to the health of the learner, would sap their love of learning, and would create generations of lab rat-like students performing their tasks for a stipend of sugar-laden M&Ms.
After all these years, my understanding of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is quite different, Continue reading