Serving on the Dunwoody City Council and reaching out on this little blog has given me such joy. Every day I have the opportunity to help people, to touch them in ways that I couldn't even imagine. Below is the first paragraph of an email from a resident whom I deeply respect & admire, and is truly inspirational in her own right, therefore I thought I would share. If you haven't checked out the TED site, it is well worth your time.
Hi John, Just thought I’d share something that happened today as a result of your blog post. I had never heard of TED.com so I followed the link. I chose the “inspirational” category and randomly chose one to look at, a volunteer firefighter named Mark Bezos, I think. His message hit home to me and I copied the link to his talk to a friend of mine and thanked her for effecting my life in a positive way. After seeing the clip, she wrote back a lovely email telling me how I inspired her, something I didn’t realize. It was a great way to start the day. So thank you for posting that link!Here is another video tidbit; every parent reaches a stage where their children's homework is harder than a parent can handle. For that task, I recommend the Khan Academy which is a collection of educational videos on numerous subjects, free on the internet in one easy to find location. For example in the math section, they have videos ranging from first grade addition to complex differential equations. Check it out, as I believe you may find it useful and you may even learn a thing or two. Below is a presentation at a TED conference explaining the Khan videos.
Great resource, John. Something interesting is happening in classrooms that use the Khan videos: the structure of the day is flipped. In other words, kids are introduced to concepts at home via the videos and teacher are spending class time, much of which was formerly allocated to lecture, helping the kids work through practice problems, remediating in small groups, and sometime even engaging in inquiry-based instruction. It never made sense to me that kids should struggle at home alone and get so little in-class time to work problems. (When I flipped things in my own classroom, my kids AP scores shot up.) I think the videos--aside from breaking concepts into tiny, understandable parts--are revolutionary in that aspect as well.
ReplyDeleteMy wife got introduced to an online reading program that my 6 yr old is now really enjoying therefore I thought I would share.
ReplyDeleteReading Eggs
In other educational news, there are now numerous free university courses to be had if you have the time. Harvard & MIT has online courses and extension learning. GPC has free courses for seniors here in Dunwoody as documented below by state law if you ask about them as well as other online offerings.
“The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia shall be authorized to establish programs allowing attendance at units of the University System of Georgia without payment of tuition or other fees, but the General Assembly may provide by law for the establishment of any such program for the benefit of elderly citizens of the state . “