Education ∪ Math ∪ Technology

Tag: TEDxDirigo (page 1 of 1)

Alan Lishness – Indigenous Innovation: How Small Places can Change the World

I’ve read about this information about the Finnish schools before, but it is nice to have it all collected into one talk. My thanks to Adam Burk for sharing it.

How does Finland do so much better than the US in education? They do everything differently.

Almost no standardized testing, well prepared teachers, huge respect for the teaching profession, professional autonomy for teachers, competitive entry system for teachers, a system controlled from the bottom up, and a much reduced emphasis on competitiveness in their education system.

The World Becomes What You Teach

This is an amazing presentation by Zoe Weil.

What’s interesting about it for me is that what she suggests is nearly exactly what I recommended in my last blog post, but she specifies the part of the real world we need to bring into schools much better than I do. Rather than some vague "here are some real questions we have" which is the problem with my post, she says that we should start with the problems we see in society and engage kids in finding solutions to those problems. This type of approach would automatically help kids become critical thinkers, since the primary focus of the curriculum would be on finding solutions and thinking about the world, rather than a single-minded focus on content.