Exhibiting and sharing a genuine enthusiasm for your topic, for education in general, is amongst the most powerful tools an educator has to bring students along on the journey towards some small sliver of understanding.
Teaching Fundamentals
At its best, teaching must be a dynamic process. Just like storytelling, even in the written form, is a dialogue between author and reader, teaching is a dialogue between teacher and student, instructor and learner.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education Review
Given my interest in education, his Some Thoughts Concerning Education stood out for reading, and I finally picked it up as one of my inter-Wheel of Time reads, fully expecting it to be as insightful on the topic of education as Two Treatises were on governance. Instead, I barely convinced myself it was worthwhile to finish skimming it.
The Autodidact’s Greatest Gift
I hear people say that the internet is making them less intelligent, and I don’t understand, because the internet is to me a reminder of just how much there is to learn.
Teaching Thinking, not Thoughts
Surely, it is no wonder that logic is not commonly implemented if we do not even prioritize or value it sufficiently to dedicate a single course to it.
Writing Resource: Uncle Orson’s Writing Class
I was poking around on Orson Scott Card's website recently and came across an archive of essays on writing called "Uncle Orson's Writing Class."
Educational Omission
Despite categorizing many of my posts as ‘educational content,’ I rarely set out to teach you something in a rigorous fashion; instead, I am usually attempting to explicate a specific concept or idea, without providing full context or progressing through an entire topic.
Origins of Language Article
This is just a quick post to share an article across which I recently came. It was published in the Wall Street Journal, and since we often discuss linguistics in our posts it seemed worth sharing.
Seeing the Light, Seeing the Lightning
There are certain principles that I have found underpin an astonishing number of our modern systems, and gaining a thorough understanding of a principle like that can enable you to understand or surmise how so many different things work. One of those, which is what we will be discussing today, is the photoelectric effect. It seems like at least once a week I come across some new piece of technology that leverages the photoelectric effect in a completely new or different way, and increasingly I marvel at how such a relatively simple principle underpins so much of our modern world. So let's talk about the photoelectric effect.
Remember When
Don't worry: this isn't a post in which I rant about the good ol' days, and how the whole world's just about falling apart in this dilapidated modern age (although maybe I should write one, if I can pop off phrases like "dilapidated modern age"). No, this post is about education, and specifically memorization. I don't know about you, but I hated rote memorization in school, and I still do. Give me papers to read on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or ask me to be able to explain how a Hall Effect Thruster works and I'll happily dive right in, but ask me to memorize the technical parameters of an aircraft that I'll always be able to simply look up if I need them and there will ensue great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but the point is that I am not, and never have been, fond of rote memorization.
