Student Guide Corner

I just checked the statistics for this teaching blog.   Sometime over the next day or so, it will likely reach a total of 200,000 page views.   I am always amazed and pleased that so many teachers read these essays.   Since there is no publicity, the word only spreads because readers like you pass along the URL.   Thanks for doing that!!  Whenever you read an idea that you like, I hope you will share it with your colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even your enemies.   I love it when people send me teaching ideas.  Likewise, I appreciate your sharing my thoughts with others.  Teaching ideas should be shared and not hoarded. ** If you have read this blog for long, you know that I am always thinking of possible ways that I can improve my teaching.   I am a big believer that the more ideas you have then the more ideas you will have.  If you have one idea, a second idea may be difficult to produce. ...

Education is highly criticized these days for (a) costing too much and (b) achieving too little.    And, if we are perfectly honest, those criticisms are not just idle chatter.    I have long argued that much of college education is not radically different than what I experienced when I started as a college freshman 47 1/2 years ago.    (Okay, we do have PowerPoint now and teachers did not have that back in 1966, but I am not sure if that is progress or regression.)    The world has changed radically over those decades but a lot of education has barely flinched. I believe that there is not enough innovation in education.    Think of the sheer number of teachers working in the United States.    Why are there not more innovative ideas flowing from those minds?     If each teacher came up with one innovative idea, the world of education would be radically transformed almost immediately.    We would be fl...