If you're like me, you probably wish that you could scan all the news headlines in a single visual glance and then decide what interests you. Most traditional news sites seem to have designed their online editions to map to their printed versions. Although this may insure a sense of familiarity, it's a model that bears exploration. A few years ago I fell in love with Google News, and that's been my home page since. Newsmap presents an interesting twist to the way we might consume news. Give it a shot.
We spent a nice Thanksgiving evening at our friends Gus and Shaz's - drinking, eating, laughing and talking. Surprisingly one of the most interesting topics of conversation was about education. Since Helen and I don't have children, we were fascinated by the discussions about how math is taught in grade school today.
Unlike the traditional algorithms our generation learned, today's math includes some new alternative methods and attempts to blend in foundational problem solving approaches. Concepts like clustering, lattice method, and partial quotients are being touted as new ways to teach basic math skills and comprehension. Among the revelers were a teaching assistant (and mother of 3) and a school librarian, so we got first hand insight to the new thinking and strategies for education.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with teaching problem solving skills, something bothered me about the fact that they don't teach rote methods like the multiplication table anymore. Granted that students benefit from understanding that problems can be solved in many ways and that thinking about how to solve a problem is a valuable skill, it seems to me that there's an equal benefit to following that up with teaching the most efficient methods. After all, there are times you need answers, and times when you need answers quickly.
It's certainly a ripe topic for debate, and I found a conflicting viewpoint offered by MJ McDermott:
All in all, an interesting evening of topical discussion, and certainly an appreciation of how much innovation and progress have come to education over the past 20 years.
We've all watched the Discovery Channel specials about the mysterious origins of Stonehenge and how inexplicable it is that druids could build it without complex tools or huge numbers of laborers. Here's a video that shows how it could have been done with some simple ingenuity.
