kgould's blog

Know-How and Know-Why

It didn’t seem like many people in our class enjoyed David Shields’ manifesto, “Reality Hunger,” all that much (8). I can’t say that I liked it, but I did find it interesting and what he said, in between the lines as it were, was useful. It’s easy to pretend that what he did in his book was “weird” or “unusual” or even “bad,” but his use of quotes and allusions isn’t really, in the end, all the different from what we see in novels and poetry. Why is it that only fiction gets the O.K. to take what it wants from other books, culture, and other sources outside of itself without having to cite anything? Why did we read Shields as something so different from what we normally see?

 Week Three

Now that we’ve been engaging with new people, instructors outside of the Institute, a kind of recalcitrant xenophobia has developed—if these instructors don’t approach science as storytelling, the teachers seem to become a bit stand-offish.

Luckily, this week we had sessions with three new instructors, all of which were successful.

 Week Two

In the second week of the Institute, I feel like our understanding of the brain and education has improved quite a bit, that people are starting to open up bit by bit. That is, not just revealing more about themselves, but perhaps letting go of some of their hardened preconceptions and misconceptions about the brain.

 Week One

I’ve found that over the course of the week that we are not only a group of diverse individuals seeking to expand our knowledge and understanding of the educational and learning process, but that we are also a group of self-stimulating neurons—making up a working nervous system, a brain, if you will—that is capable of forming new paths for our learning and thoughts to travel. Individually we are all capable of producing, to some degree, small action potentials, little sparks of neuronal activity that have the potential to become something bigger.

Weekly Observations of the Brain, Science, and Inquiry-Based Education Institute from Summer 2010

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3

Regina's Fifth Loop:  Regina's Fifth Loop (?)

Plural Selves

Be Afraid:

She’s huddled in a corner of the room behind a table, locks of brown hair plastered to her moist cheeks and brow, rhythmically sucking her thumb while her eyes are squeezed shut. Knees gripped with one spindly arm to her chest, she rocks slowly making no noise except for the wet sound of the thumb in her mouth.
Minutes earlier she had been dancing for an audience of one, tapping her feet and singing; earlier still, she had been playing the piano: Bach, Mozart, and had been discussing music.

She acts like a child.

Digital art done by me with a Bamboo Fun tablet in Corel Painter Essentials 4.

• Bird Brains
• Plural Selves
• Overmedicated

Teaching Teachers