MetaFilter posts tagged with teaching and pedagogy

Confessions of a Converted Lecturer

inkyroom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:15:54 -0800

"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". Appendix: Math professor Mark Schlatter has categorized five different types of ConcepTests he has written and used in class. (pdf) For those of use of who can't afford clicker systems, one researcher concluded that flash cards work just as well . (pdf)

Video Games & Education

panoptican — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:04:09 -0800

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]

Entertainment U

stbalbach — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 23:41:30 -0800

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)

talos — Fri, 08 Nov 2002 06:30:17 -0800

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.

kirkaracha — Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:51:27 -0800

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."

i_am_joe's_spleen — Fri, 07 Dec 2001 23:30:30 -0800

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.