Two Profound Articles

Over the weekend I read two articles that I found to be profound and worth consideration with a larger audience. Here are links to the articles and thoughts that came to my mind with each article:

FIRST ARTICLE:

A veteran teacher turned coach shadowed 2 students for 2 days -- a sobering lesson learned

I had never considered before this article what it would be like to shadow a student and to experience what they experience during a day. I found the idea that "Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting" is such an important reminder. I do provide class breaks, but I need to do an even better job of getting students moving and active in the learning process. This is much easier to do in Lights Academy. It is a bigger challenge in my Theology classes.

What do you think? What do your students experience? Does the exercise taken on by this teacher have value for all of us? What would we learn?

SECOND ARTICLE:

How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?

The idea of true multitasking has been refuted from a research perspective for quite some time. I appreciate the approach of the author of this article in that allowing students to "multitask" at times is not necessarily a bad thing, but that when it comes to focused work and study, our students need to understand the implications of any attempt to respond to multiple stimuli.

This gets me wondering as to whether we need to be intentional in our curriculum about helping students understand the research and the best practices behind the research about their approach to technology? Does this need to be part of a class? A unit? An ongoing focused discussion? Students will say that they can multitask just fine, but that is in opposition to the growing body of research?

I was leading a session at our district conference two weeks ago and one of the participants shared that their son attended a school where brain research and best practices was presented as part of an introductory class to high school. Do we all need to follow this pattern no matter what we teach?

I would be interested in your thoughts on these issues because I believe we are all better off wrestling with them together. Please share your ideas as a comment to this post.