Education – Derek E. Silva

I Wasn't Taught This in School

May 30, 2015December 21, 2009 by Derek Silva

: Image via Wikipedia

Recently I went through my inbox looking at past issues of the newsletter I receive called Project GiftED. While I don’t always find myself in agreement with everything said in the newsletter or on the blog – mostly because the blog entries aren’t always about education – I do find myself intrigued often enough to keep subscribing. I got really interested when I came across an article that was actually written by the folks at zenhabits entitled “27 Skills Your Child Need to Know That She’s Not Getting in School.”

Recognizing full well that I completed high school over 8 years ago and then entered the Computer Systems Technology program at Fanshawe College, I asked a colleague of mine, James Costa, what he thought about the list. His response below has been edited for brevity and clarity:

The School of One

May 30, 2015December 6, 2009 by Derek Silva

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program […] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

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The Textbook of the Future?

May 30, 2015December 3, 2009 by Derek Silva

I came across a story on TechCrunch early this afternoon about Time Inc’s plans for a digital version of Sports Illustrated. What they’re doing here is really cool and it’s worth a look because a big part of my ideas here are based on what I saw in the video.