An excellent week–
This week’s featured articles both focus on teachers and practice. In the first feature, Eric Hudson describes the importance not only of bringing teachers together but also of gathering and sharing what we create. And in the second feature, the Hechinger Report examines whether teachers should customize curriculum they receive from others. The combination of the two features is an excellent reminder of Linda Darling-Hammond’s research that good professional development is collaborative, ongoing, practice-focused, and student centered. Conferences, speakers, and other one-off events are excellent for lighting up inspiration and learning about new ideas, but sharing, iterating, and refining our work over time is what drives system-wide improvement.
Also, I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend the IB conference in Washington, DC. There, the opening keynote by Charles Fadel from the Center for Curriculum Redesign offered a fantastic and fascinating look into the past, present, and future of AI in the curriculum. [Disclaimer: I’m on the advisory board for the CCR.] Find the slides from the talk here and linked below in the Curriculum section — and keep an eye open for further resources in future newsletters.
Also this week, find more on hosting effective discussions in polarized times (in Pedagogy) and on questions about religion in schools that have surfaced since the state superintendent for Oklahoma required that the Bible be taught in all Oklahoma public schools (in Curriculum and General, at the end).
Last, plenty to think about, as ever, in the AI section below.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
PS. I remain grateful to speak with teachers and administrators to learn more about your needs and interests as the new year begins. Thank you to the many of you who have already scheduled a 20 minute zoom call with me.
Browse and search over 13,000 curated articles from past issues:
“In the coming year, we may need to prioritize collaboration over information, constructing knowledge together rather than trying to find it and use it for individual purposes. The time we have spent on searching could be reallocated to time spent on gathering.”
“The research on the value of a scripted curriculum is important — but teachers say so is the reality they face in the classroom every day.”
“About a third of high school seniors who applied to college in the 2023-24 school year acknowledged using an AI tool for help in writing admissions essays, according to research released this month by foundry10, an organization focused on improving learning.”
“Twenty-eight Advanced Placement exams will go digital as early as May 2025 in response to an increased number of cheating attempts this past May, the nonprofit announced on Wednesday.”
“The guidance directs teachers on how to integrate the Bible into their classes. For example, they must describe how the Bible shaped Western concepts of justice and influenced documents like the Declaration of Independence and speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They must also explore biblical references to illustrate literary techniques like allegory and metaphor.”
“Teachers are caught in the middle as they navigate the sensitive issue of how to respond in a responsible manner to the growing number of students who are coming out in school as transgender or nonbinary. They have to balance state and local policies alongside their own personal ethics and weigh the trust of their students against their responsibility to parents—all with little to no training or guidance.”
“The Discussion Project, designed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a professional learning course for middle and high school teachers. It teaches the skills and strategies to manage classroom discussion in a charged educational environment.”
“The Structured Academic Controversy is a scaffolded small-group discussion strategy based on the principles of cooperative learning. By intentional design, it is not a debate. Rather, David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson, both from the University of Minnesota, developed and researched the Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) process to foster critical thinking and understanding of the complexity of issues.”
“We found that the initiative did not significantly improve students’ learning compared to similar non tutored students… Many schools' tutoring practices in 2023 were not fully effective. When this happened, schools' tutoring was not well targeted and not well enough connected to students' classroom learning and their particular learning needs.”
“Americans continue to express complex views about human origins, with a majority believing God played at least some role but also a majority believing humans evolved from less advanced forms of life.”
The features this week include an academic review of what works best for prompting AI. This will inevitably change as models evolve, but it appears to capture the state of the art at the moment. Follow the link from the Twitter post to read the full research. Also in features, learn more about some of the women who are in leadership roles in the AI landscape.
Also, explore the post about Claude Artifacts, and how people with no coding experience can create learning games for students in simple prompts. Have an idea for a game? Claude Artifacts will code and execute it — and enable you to share it from your Claude account.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
“1) more examples are often better, aim for as many as is reasonable 2) randomly order the examples (don’t end with several negatives) 3) aim for balanced data distribution, preferably similar to in-the-wild distribution 4) ensure examples are labeled correctly 5) choose a common format for all examples 6) pick similar examples to your test instances”
“As we first set out to do more generally for executive women leaders (the mission of Wednesday Women is to highlight executive women to celebrate their authentic leadership on more feeds, stages, and podcasts) I wanted to do something similar for women in the field of AI, And so we’re presenting here a list of women – only a few of the many – who are worth following and learning from in the field.”
“Claude AI recently introduced a free feature called Artifacts, which enables users to create standalone content such as interactive games, diagrams, websites, and more using simple prompts. It goes beyond generating code but also allows you to view and interact with what you generate.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson