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Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
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A Random Walk
Play Chance in Life and the World for a new perspective on randomness and order.
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From A to B?
Thank you for your comments, both in class and on the forum so far! Discussion has been rich and interesting.
Professor, the RSA Animate was such a neat addition to the videos we have experienced in discussion, many thanks. I want to mention a few important things that I drew from it concerning ADHD for further thought. First, it is crucial to understand that out of our culture has sprung this modern epidemic of ADHD. The idea that Robinson presents in the video is that children are being over-medicated in the most intellectually stimulating time ever on planet earth, especially as one moves toward the east in the US (known for vigorous schooling) and as standardized testing increases. In a sense, kids are penalized for being "distracted" or perhaps another way of looking at it is for disrupting conformity/structure (recall our discussions on what is structure and do we need it?). Learning should be aesthetic, in that, all of the senses are awakened and operating at their full peak (when we are fully alive!); medicating kids turns this off, creating an unaesthetic experience, putting the senses to sleep. Does this really make sense? This is obviously a HUGE problem and one that cannot be ameliorated by the school system - I guess this is what you were saying when you projected that we cannot really change education without changing culture. Our culture is stuck in this mindset that all too often disallows aesthetic experience as well as divergent thinking, another point in the video. Divergent thinking is described as being able to see lots of possible answers to a question, a crucial aspect to creativity. Spending all of this time in school being told that "there is one answer, it's in the back, but don't look - and if you do, don't copy for that is cheating" deteriorates our minds. Finally, Ken Robinson points out that our batch-system of education is focused on the age factor. But what makes age so important? I've never even thought of that before! The only excuse I can come up with is maturity level. For example, my nephew is in first grade, and sometimes he deliberately does not do his work, even though he has the ability to do so; he finds his work boring because it's too easy... being assigned addition when he can multiply and divide and what not- he has tested into higher levels, yet many (his school and some in my family) do not want him to skip grade/s because they are worried about his maturity level (yes, he's talking ALL THE TIME and constantly jumps from one thing to the next in conversation)- thinking about this, I am wondering if maturity level is being mistaken for creativity or even awakened senses (aesthetic learning)? In Frost-terms, he takes the road less traveled in every sense... and often he is asked to calm down and obey.
As much as I am fascinated by Robinson - you're right - he doesn't provide solutions on how to get from A to B. But maybe by eliminating batch education based on age is an interesting place to start. Another curious possibility to explore would be to merge classes together (why do we have so many separate subjects?). One great example of this is a class I am taking, merging English and Ecology, called Native Land, American Literature. There is a beauty in cross-listed classes, especially when they are in fields one would normally assume to be not related.
kgould, I definitely think our material plays into your kaleidoscope presentation, in that we can learn different ways individually - activating the senses - one thing we should explore is that senses are activated differently for everyone. It would be interesting to look at how we suppress/express certain ones and if it is based on personal prerogatives or education?