"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

The OER Commons exists to help educators "find free-to-use teaching and learning content from around the world." Thousands of primary, secondary and post-secondary activities, labs, lecture notes, assignments and other educational materials are available by searching or browsing the OER site.
posted by cog_nate on Oct 16, 2009 - 7 comments

Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive on Jul 25, 2009 - 48 comments

Comics in the Classroom: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teachers
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jul 7, 2009 - 27 comments

In what has been described as "the American Idol of education" and "a biosphere of educational reform," The Equity Project Charter School will open in NYC this fall, offering $125,000 salaries to a "dream team" of teachers to test the theory that better teacher quality is the key to a better education for students.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 6, 2009 - 71 comments

Howcast shows engaging, useful how-to videos and wiki guides. A few examples include: How to Do Polyphasic Sleeping, How to Make a Fried Onion Blossom, or How to Do a Frontside 180 Ollie. Founded by veterans of Google and Youtube.
posted by netbros on May 26, 2009 - 7 comments

SmARThistory is an edited online art history resource to augment or replace traditional art history texts. For a given artwork, smARThistory brings together podcasts, video clips, images, links to other resources, and commentary, providing a rich context for the work. Indexed by timeline, artistic style, artist and theme.
posted by netbros on Mar 21, 2009 - 8 comments

The Lecture System in Teaching Science "Meanwhile, back at the classroom, the lecture is drawing to a close. Just as the bell rings, the lecturer, if he's a really smooth operator, comes to the end of a sentence, a paragraph, a nice neat unit. He lays down his last piece of chalk — he knows exactly how many pieces the lecture will take — picks up his precious lecture notes, and goes out. The students, tired but happy, rise up and follow after him. Their heads are empty, but their notebooks are full. Their necks are a little tired; it's been like a sort of vertical tennis match: board, notebook, board, notebook. But other than that, everything is all right. Any student will tell you, "I never had any trouble with the course until the first examination."" [via]
posted by dhruva on Feb 6, 2009 - 63 comments

"Conquer English to Make China Stronger!" is the philosophy of Li Yang, founder of the Crazy English school (and style) of language, described by some as "English as a Shouted Language" for its main method of shouting English words in public to overcome shyness. Li Yang has achieved Elvis-like popularity in China, not just through his public lectures but also through the sales of books, media, teaching materials, and a memoir titled "I am Crazy, I Succeed". Li Yang's unorthodox methods - which include encouraging students to "lose face" and cope with embarrassment on the way to success - have earned him fame and fortune, including headlining the 5th Beijing Foreign Language Festival and being the main English teacher for China's Olympic volunteers. Li Yang's secret to success: "... to have them continuously paying—that’s the conclusion I’ve reached."
posted by divabat on Dec 31, 2008 - 10 comments

Many of us have seen or read The Wave, but how many of us have seen A Class Divided? It depicts one third-grade teacher's attempts to teach Midwestern children about the civil rights movement, many of whom had never met a black person before. As part of a daring experiment, she split the class between brown-eyed children and blue-eyed children, and gave the "browneyes" special privileges. The children were told, in no uncertain terms, that the "blueyes" were inferior. What followed was a lesson in discrimination that the kids would remember for the rest of their lives.
posted by Afroblanco on Dec 28, 2008 - 53 comments

GetBodySmart.com is a wonderful and remarkably complete resource to learn about the systems that keep our body running, including the skeletal , nervous and even urinary systems. What's more amazing is that it's all created by one man in his spare time and for no gain of his own. Read his mission statement here.
posted by ignorantguru on Sep 17, 2008 - 19 comments

SoundJunction is all about music. You can take music apart and find out how it works, create music yourself, find out how other people make music and how they perform it, you can learn about musical instruments and voices, and look at the backgrounds of different musical styles. Over 40 musicians talk on film about their experiences. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Aug 21, 2008 - 3 comments

A new study in Science claims that teaching math is better done by teaching the abstract concepts rather than using concrete examples. From an article by the study authors in Science Mag (requires subscription): If a goal of teaching mathematics is to produce knowledge that students can apply to multiple situations, then presenting mathematical concepts through generic instantiations, such as traditional symbolic notation, may be more effective than a series of "good examples." This is not to say that educational design should not incorporate contextualized examples. What we are suggesting is that grounding mathematics deeply in concrete contexts can potentially limit its applicability. Students might be better able to generalize mathematical concepts to various situations if the concepts have been introduced with the use of generic instantiations.
posted by peacheater on Apr 26, 2008 - 27 comments

“…if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.” [more inside]
posted by blasdelf on Apr 10, 2008 - 79 comments

Polyglot Michel Thomas came to prominence through his work for the French resistance and the successful interrogation of Nazis (who had formerly imprisoned him). After the war he started to develop (and eventually patent) a method for teaching languages that eschewed notes, books, writing, memorisation and homework. Instead, words and phrases would be built up in lego-like constructions to provide “confidence in hours not years”. He gave private lessons to a long list of A-list celebrities including Woody Allen, Natasha Kinsky, Tony Curtis and Grace Kelly. A BBC documentary from 1997 told his story and tested him out with the less exalted audience of 16 year old London school kids pre-selected to be “incapable of learning a foreign language” by their teachers [YT pt 1, 2, 3, 4]. He was secretive about how his methods worked until the end of his life when he finally made his courses available as audiobooks. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo on Mar 20, 2008 - 24 comments

Open Culture's "10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube" features "intellectually redeemable" channels from UC Berkeley, @GoogleTalks, TheNobelPrize, TED Talks, FORA.tv, the European Graduate School, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, PBS, UChannel, MIT, Vanderbilt, and USC.
posted by Soup on Dec 27, 2007 - 21 comments

Over the years millions of children have been introduced to a foreign language by Big Muzzy ^[wiki], a friendly, green, clock-eating monster. Here's the complete British English version of Muzzy in Gondoland on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
posted by sveskemus on Dec 16, 2007 - 12 comments

Junior General is intended to promote the use of historical simulations as a tool for teaching history by providing free resources that anyone can use. To go with their teaching scenarios they make available thousands of paper solders for download and printing. Everything from stone age primatives thru Myceneans, Confederate gunboats to US Iraq infantry and futuristic Cyber Assault Droids. Also available are accessories like castles, houses, trenches, battering rams and hangers.
posted by Mitheral on Oct 31, 2007 - 10 comments

Want to teach the youngsters (or parents, or yourself) how to avoid phishing scams? Anti-Phishing Phil is an online-game that uses Phil the fish to teach just that. Apparently it's more successful than a tutorial with the same information.
posted by dr. moot on Sep 27, 2007 - 8 comments

Richard P. Feynman { Information Junkie → PhD → Atomic Bomber → Professor/Lecturer on Physics + Mathematical Artist [DIY] + Nanotech Knowledgist → 33.3% Nobel laureate + QEDynamic Speaker + Tiny Machinist + Challenger of Conclusions + Best-Selling Writer –X– Busted [outside Tuva] → Star Trek TNG Shuttlecraft ↓ Pepsi Black/Blue ↑ U.S. Postage Stamp } ∞
posted by Poolio on Sep 16, 2007 - 51 comments

"The Create a Comic Project (CCP) is an activity that teaches children creative writing through comics." In New Haven, CT, John Baird works with children to teach writing, art, and creativity in an afterschool program. The results are often surreal, and frequently entertaining. His inspiration? The Penny Arcade Remix Project. (from today's QC newspost)
posted by Eideteker on Mar 26, 2007 - 18 comments

Students are now using the internet to criticise their teachers behind their backs by using a popular new site called Rate My Teachers. While some 'feedback' left at the site is relatively tame, many teachers are not spared from a flood of insults (which isn't surprising when a group of venting teenagers are involved). The owners of the site are calling it a useful teaching critique tool, but teachers groups are labelling it "a vengeful smear campaign." The site is available in a host of international flavours, such as the UK and Australia, to name but two. Hmmph. Back in my day, we used to just write our 'critiques' on the blackboard while the teacher wasn't in the room...
posted by Effigy2000 on Mar 18, 2007 - 67 comments

Music makes you smarter if you get an early start. Certainly debatable given the incredibly small sample, but perhaps it's a prelude to an emerging 21st-century collaborative scientific suite or symphony that can explain why we love music so much.
posted by persona non grata on Sep 20, 2006 - 22 comments

He describes how the birds’ wings flutter, the small black eyes blink, and the head pops off in your palm... A riveting inside look at the Exotic Animal Training program at Moorpark College, which offers America's only college degree in animal training.
posted by By The Grace of God on Aug 12, 2006 - 15 comments

[T]his pattern, grade for the sake of a grade, work for the sake of work, can be found everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit of intellectual thought is lost. I speak today not to rant, complain or cause trouble, and certainly not to draw attention to myself. I have accomplished nothing and I am nothing. I know that. Rather, I was moved by the countless hours wasted in those halls. Today, you should focus on your child or loved one. This is meant to be a day of celebration, and if I’ve taken away from that, I’m sorry. But I know how highly this community values learning, and I urge you all to re-evaluate what it means to be educated.

- from a graduation speech by the valedictorian of Mainland Regional High School, Kareem Elnahal, critiquing his school's education process.

The principal's reaction? “My hope was they did not hear or understand what he was saying. ... He was belittling the diplomas of every one of those kids.”.
posted by divabat on Jul 5, 2006 - 156 comments

Science sites of all kinds for kids. Archeology. Entomology. Natural Symphony. Baseball in Space. Philosophy. Process or Content. Science songs. Physics songs, relativity. String theory. Science and Art.
posted by nickyskye on Jun 26, 2006 - 9 comments

"I am under censure for mentioning numbers...." "I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD... but I am NOT to say that these Ordovician rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old."

Essentially, they are not allowing Bob to teach a certain set of scientific data in order to protect their ability to provide students the good science curriculum they do teach. The directors... have heard from them more than enough times that teaching evolution would be "political suicide".

In Arkansas, even supporters of teaching evolution feel they must hide, obfuscate, and water-down evolution.
posted by orthogonality on Mar 23, 2006 - 111 comments

The Scottish Qualifications Authority has recently produced a new qualification on blogging [PDF] and used a wiki to produce teaching and learning material. Wikis look well-suited to this purpose. Could this be the future of curriculum development?
posted by bobbyelliott on Feb 9, 2006 - 6 comments

The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling Transcript of an intriguing experiment to teach binary arithmetic to third graders using the Socratic Method - only asking questions. See also a demonstration of the socratic method with a man who procrastinates. Some background, Who Was Socrates?
posted by MetaMonkey on Feb 5, 2006 - 55 comments

"Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire?" "Minds of Our Own shows that many of the things we assume about how children learn are simply not true." Three one hour streaming video programs on teaching science. (low hassle reg. required, or try login:metafilter@mailinator.com, password:metafilter)
posted by Chuckles on Jan 8, 2006 - 39 comments

The Kids are Alright, Dammit. Reason's Nick Gillespie weighs-in on the 2005 Modern Language Association annual convention. "...faced with a choice between a sort of bitter righteousness and increasing irrelevance on the one hand and engaging students with more fair-minded argumentation and open-ended discussion, some academics are choosing the latter. That's certainly good news for kids stuck in freshman composition classes, those dreary required classes which are often little more than clumsy attempts at political indoctrination."
posted by ZenMasterThis on Dec 28, 2005 - 42 comments

Learn SQL by playing inside a galaxy of stars.
posted by Rothko on Dec 9, 2005 - 31 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

How to learn about difficult things
posted by iffley on Oct 26, 2005 - 26 comments

One of the most fascinating species in Bangkok are surely the ex-pat Teaching English as A Foreign Language (TEFL) teachers, as this diary will attest. Englishdroid is a similarly bleak look at TEFL dealing with those everyday aspects aspects of teaching like shagging students, and the cringe inducing The Satanic Units - The Course Book From Hell. If blogs are more your bag, just check out the Tefl Daily Grind, with gloomy reports inside the frontlines of hopeless Thai school beaurocracy. If you still fancy trying your hand at teaching in Thailand, why not check the place that offered you 300 dollars a month isn't on THIS list. Could it be unscrupulous agencies are raking in millions of baht sending fly-by-night foreigners to teach English at public schools, or the certificate forger shops setup next to police stations. ...and if Bangkok's not your bag there's always the restive South, where teachers are in great demand.
posted by ldma on Oct 16, 2005 - 30 comments

Beware the Kancho! The ongoing adventures and cultural insights of an American English teacher in Japan.
posted by John of Michigan on Jun 12, 2005 - 47 comments

According to Stanley Fish , "Students can't write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are." The solution: make them invent their own language. After a generation that privileged content to the exclusion of form, is the pendulum swinging back the other way?
posted by myl on May 31, 2005 - 134 comments

Mad Physics dot com has experiments and demonstrations that teach physics principles in strange and more interesting ways. Examples: demonstating Hooke's law with a 13 year-old kid and explaining efficient light emission with Glowsticks! Great for geeks.
posted by afrooz on May 1, 2005 - 8 comments

Piano Chords One would think that searching for such a pedantic string via Google would not net much in this post-adwords age, however Chord House's (apparently HTML-based) Chord Generator app is suprisingly nifty, with visualizations and audio samples of both each of the notes and and chord itself. Now don't go hogging all the bandwidth -- I aim to plunk down "People Just Ain't No Good" from available chord tablature for the next half hour or so...
posted by Ogre Lawless on Feb 11, 2005 - 8 comments

DeMint: Gays should not teach US Congressional candidate opposes gays teaching in schools. He's dancing with them whut brung him, as they say in certain circles. Yet another reason I'm proud of my home state of South Carolina. (Not.)
posted by alumshubby on Oct 4, 2004 - 28 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

Just found this one. The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a Berkeley website for supporting science teachers teaching evolution. The project was built with a grant from the National Science Foundation and has received an additional grant to expand the site to develop content for students and adults. More coverage from The Daily Bruin at UCLA and a brief clip from Science News.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Apr 15, 2004 - 5 comments

Go to school and do nothing. The Sudbury approach to learning is one in which the kids can do whatever they want. Literally. Want to play games all day? Fine. Want to read comics all day? Fine. Want to watch movies? Fine. From the FAQ: What happens if a student doesn't do anything? It is actually impossible to do nothing. I think what most people are concerned about is students doing what looks like nothing; for example playing video games, playing magic cards, reading all day, etc. The truth is that everything the students do has value. Take video games for example; this "teaches" reading skills, social skills, the ability to concentrate and focus, and, depending on the game, history, strategy, math or science. Is this a good way to educate kids?
posted by Atom12 on Mar 4, 2004 - 71 comments

Maggot Art. "A fantastic new teaching tool for use in the elementary school setting. Children get hands-on experience with insects that most people find truly disgusting -- maggots -- while creating a beautiful piece of artwork to share with others."
posted by lola on Oct 15, 2003 - 10 comments

Ms. Gonick is a dooshe bag. Unfortunate experiences with a gaggle of teenagers in an enclosed space.
posted by kozad on Sep 3, 2003 - 43 comments

Imagine drifting off to dreamy anaesthesia -induced sleep for some such surgery and having some medical student cram a digit up one of your holes. Apparently, it happens all the time in the name of "learning".
posted by vito90 on Jun 10, 2003 - 28 comments

Miguk - A film documentary on the life of an expat English teacher in Korea. If you've done it, this will bring back memories. If you're thinking of doing it, this is worth watching. If, like me, you're in Korea now, watching it on 'film' somehow dignifies the experience. Two thumbs up. [.wmv format, 16 segments]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Apr 18, 2003 - 21 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

"Racist" teacher reinstated A follow up to this earlier mefi discussion. A copy of the e-mail enclosed. I'm curious as to if after reading the actual e-mail in question, anyone changes their opinion from the previous thread.
posted by Ynoxas on Nov 1, 2002 - 88 comments

Testimony of Teens Kidnapped w/ authorization of parents and taken to overseas "behavior modification" schools. After researching these schools almost 5 years ago I am horrified that most of them are still running and whose teachings are even showing up in the form of seminars in kindergarten. Has anyone else had experience with schools like this, whether directly or through a family member or friend ?
posted by bkdelong on Sep 30, 2002 - 17 comments