Debbie recommended this new book of essays by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues.  Called Powerful Learning: What we Know About Teaching for Understanding, it pulls together thinking about what 21st students should know and be able to do as well as what teachers need to do to get students there.

I only got to page 3 before I had to get a pencil and start scribbling in the margins.  It all seemed so familiar to me — so …. LIBRARY-LIKE.  Another voice in the choir of 21st century visioning.

Darling-Hammond refers to the National Academy of Science publication How Students Learn (Donovan and Bransford 2005).  The NAS work identified three core principles about student learning that impact teaching.   Notice how closely these three key principles align with the AASL Standadrs:

1.  “Students come to the classroom with prior knowledge that must be addressed if teaching is to be effective.” (p. 3)  Call it prior knowledge, schema, or the “K” of K-W-L, they all get at the same idea: that when we can tap into what students  know, we activate a powerful scaffold onto which new learning can grow.  Identifying prior knowledge also helps us identify misconceptions that, if not corrected, are reinforced.

AASL Standards Connection:
1.1.1 “Follow an inquiry-based process in seeking knowledge in curricular subjects, and make the real-world connection for using this process in own life.”
1.1.2 “Use prior and background knowledge as context for new learning.”
4.1.2 “Read widely and fluently to make connections with self, the world, and previous reading.”
4.1.5 “Connect ideas to own interests and previous knowledge and experience.”
4.2.2 “Demonstrate motivation by seeking information to answer personal questions and interests …”

2.  “Students need to organize and use knowledge conceptually if they are to apply it beyond the classroom.” (p. 4)  This means going beyond putting facts on a graphic organizer and copying it out for an animal report, but recognizing that organizing, structuring, or ordering information are all strategies that help us make meaning and conceptual knowledge of those facts.  Inquiry is a key method for putting conceptual knowledge to the test.  (I now refer to those animal reports graphic organizers as “dump and go,” as in, “Oh, you’ve got five facts? OK, you’re done.  You can go back to class.”) 

AASL Standards Connection:
Common Belief 2: “Inquiry provides a framework for learning.”
Standard 1: “Learners use skills, tools, and resources to inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge.”
1.1.6 “Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format … in order to make inferences and gather meaning.”
2.1.2 “Organize knowledge so that it is useful.”
2.1.3 “Use strategies to draw conclusino from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real-world situations, and further investigations.”
2.2.1 “Connect understanding to the real world.”
3.1.4 “Use technology and othe rinformation tools to organize and display knowledge and understanding …”
3.1.5 “Connect learning to community issues.”

3.  “Students learn more effectively if they understand how they learn and how to manage their own learning.” (p.4)  This encompasses the concepts of metacognition, reflection and self-assessment, self-directed learning, and project planning by students. 

AASL Standards Connection:
Common Belief 6: The contuining expansion of information demands that all individuals acquire the thinking skills that will enable them to learn on their own.�
1.4.1 “Monitor own information-seeking processes for effectiveness and progress, and adapt as necessary.”
1.4.2 “Use interaction with and feedback from teachers and peers to guide own inquiry process.”
1.4.3 “…Assess for gaps or weaknesses.”
2.4.1 “Determine how to act on information.”
2.4.2 “Reflect on systematic process, and assess for completeness of investigation.”
2.4.4 “Develop directions for future investigations.”
3.4.1 “Assess the processes by which learning was achieved in order to revise strategies and learn more effectively in the future.”
3.4.2 “Assess the quality and effectiveness of the learning product.”
3.4.3 “Assess own abilit to work with others in a group setting …”
4.4.2 “Recognize the limits of own personal knowledge.”
4.4.3 “Recognize how to focus efforts in personal learning.”
4.4.5 “Develop personal criteria for agauging how effectively own ideas are expressed.”
4.4.6 “Evaluate own ability to select resources that are engaging and appropriate for personal interests and needs.”

Whew – the AASL Standards cover each of those three key principles not once, but over and over, in different permutations.  We are in good shape.

More on Darling-Hammond’s book in the next Standards post …

Book cover from Amazon.com

Both the New York Times and Joyce Valenza’s blog are talking about the new search engine Cuil (“cool”).  Cuil, in Irish, means “knowledge.”

It claims to have three times the number of Web sites in its index compared to Google and to search a site not only for your keywords but for the relevancy.  And unlike Google, the site does not collect data about your searches, which keeps privacy anxieties at bay.

Results are displayed in paragraph format in columns.  I’m so used to Google’s short bursts of results that it is hard for my eyes to skim the paragraphs and columns quickly for the result I want. 

I found that search results were a little more sluggish than on Google, perhaps because the Cuil result will put an image from the page result next to the excerpt (in my searches, the image was rarely relevant to the search terms). 

I would love to hear what you think!

Image: cuil.com

Continuing the conversation from my last post, which linked to a New York Times article on print vs. online reading, here’s another New York Times article about college students who pirate scanned copies of very expensive textbooks.

Logo from nytimes.com