The Daily Riff - BE SMARTER. ABOUT EDUCATION.

The 3 Myths about Competition: How it affects student motivation

"When 85% of school is built around competition . . " Read more

Learning Math: The Symbol Barrier

Street Math, School Math, and Video Games Read more

Ten To-Do's for Young People to Consider

#1 - Build a "Personal Board of Directors" Read more

Is Learning a Sport?

Students should not go to school to win - students should go to school to learn. Read more

Do students and teachers get feedback or measurement?

"And haven't we yet learned that any measure or reward only works as an incentive in the short term, if at all?" Feedback is self-generated. An individual or system notices whatever they determine is important for them. They ignore everything else. Read more

What is the "right" kind of parent?

"It is sad to me when I hear parents feeling bad that they aren't doing "x", or feeling bad or embarrassed that they are doing "y"or doing too much of "x", or reluctant to ask questions and convey their concerns." Read more

Harry Potter Dissed by Oscars. Video - Humor.

Videos: Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes : How It Should Have Ended Read more

Passion-Based High School vs. High School Boredom: Choose

"We cannot afford to tweak around the edges" ----Dennis Littky, co-founder Big Picture Learning, New TedxNY Talk Read more

Is Math Art? Dream or Nightmare?

"A Mathematician's Lament"
Every parent & educator should check out this book excerpt Read more

New Literacies? Why?

"Relevancy is not an option." Read more

Say 'No' to the Greek Chorus

"The mess, the mess! . . . an engraved invitation to transformation. . . Certainty is dead. . ." Read more

Educational Testing: Where conservatives & liberals agree? Sigh.

"And if the point of education really is the production of abstractly and measurably skillful people who don't necessarily know anything in particular, it's a vision (maybe a chilling one) that, at least, should be articulated for parents - and voters - to decide on." Read more

"It's Disengagement, Stupid"

The 10 Essential Rules for Engagement Read more

Noam Chomsky: The Purpose of Education

"Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own. . . " Read more

A "rising global army of freelancers." Are students equipped for this world?

The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead. Read more

A Wild Conversation with Maurice Sendak

"There's something in this country that is so opposed to understandingthe complexity of children."-Maurice Sendak, author, Where the Wild Things AreStephen Colbert and Maurice Sendak sit down for a interview.  Not for children. Humor.            ... Read more

What Color is My World? by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

African-American Inventors & Innovators: MSNBC Morning Joe video Read more

Student and Teacher Evaluations: Drowning in Data?

"The "articulated instruction module" or AIM program would require teachers to evaluate each student on 100 different skills. This means for a class with 30 students, the teacher would need to assign 3000 separate grades every quarter." Read more