What a joy it was this past week to join Nat Damon for a conversation about creativity and education on his podcast “Reach. Teach. Talk.” Nat is the author of Time to Teach: Time to Reach, and his work explores the centrality of relationships in student development and learning. In our chat, we dove into the creative lives of teachers, creativity in the curriculum, and more. Find our conversation on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
In this issue, find a feature on the ever-useful think-pair-share. The post posits that varying the T-P-S activity can keep it fresh for students while still leaning into its pedagogical utility for teachers. Find 16 approaches in the post. Also featured this week is an excellent series of vignettes by research assistant Billy Oppenheimer on people who changed the trajectory of their lives by surrounding themselves with different peers. It’s an excellent and inspiring look at the peer effect, which we think about often in relation to students and how the classmates around them shape so much of who they become.
Also this week, find posts on social media, close reading, collaborative grading and even, for the surprising delight of it, the latest Microsoft Excel World Championship, in which people create interactive games solely from spreadsheets.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Browse and search over 14,000 curated articles from past issues online:
“Then one day at school, Jim [Henson] was holding one of his puppets when a teacher said to him, “You [are] wasting your time with those puppets.” Jim began to think that she might be right… Not long after he chucked the dream of being a puppeteer, Jim “wandered over to Europe” without a plan. It turned out to be a turning point in his life. To his surprise, in Europe, puppetry was a highly regarded art form. “That was the first time I’d ever met any other puppeteers,” Jim said. “They were very serious about their work. It was at that point I realized puppetry was an art form, a valid way to do really interesting things.” After being in a different place where there were different puppetry norms, Jim said, “I came back from that trip all fired up to do wonderful puppetry.”
“Perhaps TPS’s longevity stems from its effectiveness in increasing in-class participation, reinforcing key concepts, aiding in recall of information, developing the communication skills of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, and giving voice to quieter students who might hesitate to contribute their thoughts in a larger group… But even the most engaging learning strategies can become boring for students if they’re overused, so teachers might want to try some of these 16 variations on TPS, arranged by different learning priorities: collaborative exploration of ideas, visualization of ideas, presentation and defense of a position, and evaluation and application of ideas.”
“As the above list should make abundantly clear… rote memorization of isolated facts is not the goal. Rather, teachers should strive to cultivate deep understanding by helping students build interconnected networks of knowledge that empower them to think critically, solve problems, and make meaning of the world around them. Curriculum ought to be brimming with a wide range of specific knowledge, providing depth and ample opportunities for students to grapple with and engage in the material.”
“Fact checking works, if imperfectly, in traditional publishing because it’s conducted by a small set of people who share similar values and goals. They may have different views about any number of matters, but they hold a common belief in the standards of journalism, a belief that the accuracy of information is a public good… Take fact checking out of that intimate, human setting, turn it into an industrial program of outsourcing, crowdsourcing, or automation, and it falls apart. It becomes a parody of itself. The desire to “scale” fact checking, to mechanize the arbitration of truth, is just another example of the tragic misunderstanding that lies at the core of Silicon Valley’s entire, grandiose attempt to remake society in its own image: that human relations get better as they get more efficient. A community, we seem fated to learn over and over again, is not a network.”
“To set students up for success, structure their feedback using a rubric or checklist to guide their critical thinking and feedback delivery. Keep in mind what it is that most of us want out of feedback: to know what we did well, what and how to improve, and advice for next time.”
“TikTok is especially popular among young Americans, who tend to be more passive consumers of news overall.”
“YouTube tops the list of the online platforms we asked about in our survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022. TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among teens. Roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% say the same for Snapchat.”
“The “LeBron James of Excel,” as he was introduced in Vegas, was Diarmuid Early, 39, an Irish financial consultant who lives in New York, who entered the arena in jeans, sandals and a jersey patterned to resemble abdominal muscles. The Kobe Bryant was Andrew Ngai, 37, a soft-spoken actuary from Australia known as the Annihilator, who began the world championship as its reigning three-time champion.”
“The authors introduce a framework leaders can use to better focus their sustainability strategies. It consists of four lenses: the business value lens (What affects our bottom line?), the stakeholder influence lens (What are people trying to tell us?), the science and technology lens (What does the data tell us about our impact and future?), and the purpose lens (What do we stand for?).”
“The inequities surrounding recess also persist into adulthood. Recess is disproportionately withheld from poor, urban, and minority children due to academic interventions, punishment for incomplete schoolwork, or a lack of safe play spaces. Similarly, blue-collar and gig-economy workers often face irregular schedules and limited or no breaks. While most states regulate meal breaks, nearly half of all workers forgo them, facing the same pressures that push children to work without pause.”
“Here is a list of things I believe about education. I couldn’t get to ninety-five. Taken collectively there is a perspective here, one that I sometimes find myself wanting to share with others. It would be fun and interesting to discuss and debate these.”
Now over two years since the arrival of ChatGPT, studies are beginning to gain a critical mass of insight into the effect of AI on student learning. It isn’t earth shattering: so far, AI helps some kinds of learning and jeopardizes others. How effective it is depends on how it is used. This is ever the case with a new technology. The lessons to be learned from these studies are in the details: what is helpful? what isn’t? These are the details we will continue to work out in the years ahead, just as we have with other technologies in schools. Find a number of these recent studies in Dr. Philippa Hardman’s post in features.
Also in the features, find OpenAI’s announcement of their first AI agent. It’s designed to be able to control your computer and take action on your behalf. This is either the true beginning of everyone having an assistant, or it is the beginning of an AI-takeover dystopia. Or both!
Also this week, use cases of AI continue to expand. See the post in education on GenAI use cases for historians — and also, later on, the post about how the CIA is exploring use of AI.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
“Current research overwhelmingly suggests that generic Gen AI tools do not just fail to advance human learning—they often actively hinder it. Across all five of the most recent studies on the topic, while tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini improve immediate task performance, they also reduce cognitive engagement, critical thinking, and self-regulated learning (SRL). However, the potential of AI to transform education remains huge if we shift toward structured and pedagogically optimised systems. To unlock AI’s transformative potential, we must prioritise learning processes over efficiency and outputs. This requires rethinking AI tools through a pedagogy-first lens, with a focus on fostering deeper learning and critical thinking. “
“Today we’re releasing Operator, an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you. Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling. It is currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on user feedback. Operator is one of our first agents, which are AIs capable of doing work for you independently—you give it a task and it will execute it.”
“The headaches that LLMs have caused in the classroom are (I believe) more than counterbalanced by what they can offer as tools for research and self-directed learning. For this reason, I’m now even more optimistic about the long-term impact and utility of AI tools for historical research — and, by extension, for other forms of text or image-based research.”
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