Category: Education
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Why study higher mathematics and other stuff most people don’t use in everyday life?
This video was posted in a Facebook group of mine here: I find it ironic that some of the most listened-to speakers about education explain that the cure to our educational ills is to point out that education is unnecessary. I call this educational anti-intellectualism. Here’s another representative sample and another. It is possible to make the argument,…
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Teaching reading — two suggestions
America’s literacy problems could be solved if parents, preschool teachers, and daycare workers did just two simple things. One is obvious. One is not. First, we should read a lot more to our babies, toddlers, and preschoolers — say, at least an hour per day. That means picking up a good old-fashioned book, putting a kid in…
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Against language arts and social studies textbooks
Here’s a little argument against language arts and social studies (e.g., history and geography) textbooks. We need to get rid of them. Period. Prima facie, we don’t need textbooks to teach a subject. Other pedagogical methods include chapter (trade, library) books, short readings, computer software, videos, lectures, worksheets, projects, etc. So what are textbooks for? Well, consider what they are:…
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All my presentations zipped together
I finally took a few hours and prepped all my educational preK-4 presentations for easy download. Here they are in one ginormous 862MB zip file. If you want to download them individually, here’s the link.
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Update about the boys, March 2016
I have given a report about H. last Jan. 2, and now I have a little time to write about what’s going on with E., who is now 5, and not quite old enough to be in Kindergarten this year. First of all, E’s Mama is homeschooling him, which means I know what’s going on with him…
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Fund me to make 50 educational videos for kids!
I have a Kickstarter project that will close in two days! Unless I get a bunch of pledges in that time, I won’t raise the money. I haven’t tried very hard (actually, almost not at all)—been busy with other things. Some salient points: • I’ve made 26 educational videos for kids in my spare time (put on…
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Wake up, people! Minecraft sucks as an educational tool.
<rant> You don’t have to cite studies to me. I already know that various kinds of video games can have some positive educational effects. As somebody who has wasted way too many hours on video games since 1977 or so, this isn’t surprising to me. The notions that it might help train kids to think ahead, improve reaction time…
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Report about the boys, January 2016
I’ll dive right into H’s schooling. He’s now age 9. The new tasklist orientation. This past year the biggest problem has been motivating him to study enough. Until November, it was a struggle. Although Mama’s helping quite a bit more, especially with E., H. still requires management and I still have to work full-time. While he…
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Infobitt’s Future, and Mine
I’ve just posted the following announcement to the big Infobitt mailing list. ======= Friends, I have some unfortunate news. While I don’t wish to give up on Infobitt, we have run out of money. I’ve let the programmers go, and I’m looking for a job myself. But I’ll still be contributing, and I hope you…