"I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly." Physics professor Eric Mazur explains the development and use of the "ConcepTest". [more inside]
posted by inkyroom on Nov 20, 2009 - 17 comments

A People's History for the Classroom [pdf] is a high school history lesson plan/workbook based on Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. The entire 124-page workbook available for free as a downloadable PDF, as part of the Zinn Education Project, supported by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change. You must enter an email and agree to take a later survey to download.
posted by Miko on Aug 20, 2008 - 60 comments

Fun and games with mathematics and mathematical puzzles (e.g. heart basket, Rubik's Cube, Rubik's Magic, hypercubes, and more) in both English and (with yet more content in) German.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Feb 18, 2008 - 6 comments

The Narrow Road : in which a professional mathematician guides you through pure mathematics (and touches on tangential issues).
posted by phrontist on May 1, 2007 - 10 comments

Maria Montessori, the first woman to graduate from an Italian medical school, changed the world of education, although she left her own child in the care of professionals for most of his life. Her work is available online.
Her method is controversial, both for it's rigidity and it's lack of focus on grades and testing, but research points to the positive impact of the method on social and academic skills as well as math skills specifically. This site includes historical photos of Montessori and her schools around the world (site uses frames, sorry no direct links - click EsF/historical photos) A traveling exhibit marks this year as the 100th anniversary of Montessori's birth. A bit more on youtube.
posted by serazin on Mar 2, 2007 - 19 comments

In 1974 Alexander Lipson wrote an excellent Russian language textbook: scanned highlights, complete book. However, its value goes beyond the merely pedagogical. via our very own metafilter udarnik languagehat.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Oct 11, 2006 - 24 comments

Motion Mountain - "The project aims to produce a simple, vivid and up-to-date introduction to modern physics, with emphasis on the fundamental ideas of motion. 'Simple' means that concepts are stressed more than formalism; 'vivid' means that the reader is continuously challenged; 'up-to-date' means that modern research and ideas about unification are included."
posted by Gyan on Aug 17, 2006 - 4 comments

What can video games teach us about learning and literacy? A lot, says James Paul Gee whose recent book approaches the question armed with three different discourses (situated cognition, new literacy studies, and connectionism). [mi]
posted by panoptican on Nov 25, 2005 - 23 comments

Lisa Randall's Theory of Communication about Science
posted by Gyan on Sep 19, 2005 - 27 comments

Easy grades, light reading loads, and above all a professor you can enjoy. Today’s university culture is one of all entertainment all the time.. an essay by Mark Edmunson based on his new book Why Read? about the the "crisis in the humanities", called the most provocative look since Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. (via Arts and Letters Daily)
posted by stbalbach on Oct 1, 2004 - 54 comments

Teaching physics with superheroes...
...and comics in general. Comics are used to teach math, in "The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick". While this flash animation addresses the physics of everyday life. Interesting ways to present basic and sometimes not so basic [~400k jpg] topics in science.
posted by talos on Nov 8, 2002 - 8 comments

Teach dance in prison! "The Federal Bureau of Prisons...intends to issue solicitation RFQ 50507-012-2 for the provision to provide Dance Instructor Services with a variety of beginning and advanced dance classes to the inmate population."
posted by kirkaracha on Apr 25, 2002 - 10 comments

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation The best illustration ever of why friends don't let friends use Powerpoint. Some blame a decline in oratory and rhetoric on the television. I blame the temptation to lean on decorative visual crutches.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Dec 7, 2001 - 25 comments

"Democratic Schools" Just saw this school on 60 Minutes. The kids hang out all day, play video games, go to class if they want to, learn if they want to. There's no principal or teachers, just "staff". I may be an old-school stickler but this strikes me as retarded. They had an eight year old on who couldn't read because he "wasn't ready for it yet"... c'mon.
posted by owillis on Apr 29, 2001 - 70 comments

School's mathematics don't add up! PS 234, a primary school in TriBeCa, is at the forefront of the revolution in math instruction being carried out in more than half of New York City's schools. The district's approach to math instruction follows an egalitarian theory called "constructivist math," which is the idea that children shouldn't learn basic techniques for adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying. Rather, emphasis is placed on "feeling good about numbers" etc. Said one angry parent, "The idea that the home has to be turned into the school because the school is the testing ground for inane programs - that's frightening." And leading university mathematicians have joined parent groups in denouncing the method. All things concidered, is it right for schools to use children as guinea pigs in this manner?
posted by frednorman on Apr 10, 2001 - 53 comments