Comments for The Pifactory's Weblog

Comment on Take it nice and slow by Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:37:45 +0000

I wouldn’t feel comfortable quoting Mel Levine.

Perhaps you didn’t know that Levine had to surrender his medical lisense to the North Carolina Medical Board because more than 50 boys had accused Levine of molesting them. Incidents date back to the 1970s. Surely you saw the front page story about the sex abuse scandal in the New York Times? Additionally, Levine was forced off the board he created because of the sex abuse allegations. Here’s one news story.
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:n6Uo-bc4-nQJ:www.patriciaebauer.com/2009/03/20/mel-levine-license-abuse/+%22Mel+Levine%22+surrenders+license&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Comment on We should be teaching mathematical thinking by thu thuat

thu thuat — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:00:41 +0000

Very impressive and worth reading.

Comment on Why I no longer set homework by Emma

Emma — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:01:58 +0000

As a freshmen high school student, I was thrilled to read this, and not merely because you are putting into practice the eradication of a thing I’ve long detested, but because you’ve offered rational reasons why it should be done. Your argument is thorough and extremely understandable, and I’m excited to learn there are is actually scientific data behind why homework is illogical. This has definitely given me a lot of food for thought – thank you.

Comment on Win, win not fail, fail by Lee

Lee — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:51:16 +0000

Wow. You are an intense dude. I am from Canada and we are just beginning the “Assessment” dialogue. Of course, as late adopters – in Canadian education – our School Division is mostly interested in Testing. I agree with the movement to individual learning descriptors…but they want to put a grade on every descriptor. I am desparately trying to modify a 20 year career from “old school” grading (ELA teacher) to a constructivist approach. What I learned from your discussions was the idea of honouring the curriculum – but breaking it down into learning tasks or descriptors. Then I can try to work around the “grading” and try to achieve real learning. I see that even i n your system you have to ultimately come up with a grade for report cards and parent teacher interviews.

I hope my journey can become as successful as yours seems to be. I appreciate you sharing your ideas. I find it interesting that you moved to the US from Britain.

Comment on Win, win not fail, fail by none today

none today — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:38:16 +0000

All these points are so relevant. Grading day is a day of tears for me both of frustration and guilt. I never fully understand exactly what I am telling the parents with these numbers and letters yet feel guilty that one way or another my marks will impact this child’s perception of themselves.

Forget high school take grades down to a kindergarten level and really what are we telling our kids? I had to check (poorly written) boxes that informed my student’s parents that their child knows alphabet letters or not. Well, today they do, yesterday they forgot one of them and tomorrow who knows? When these report cards go home will they even be relevant to what the student knows three weeks later?

I don’t know what the “right” answer is for grades but at least there are people out there like you challenging the way we label our students!

Comment on Adolescence, a time for second, third… as many chances as it takes by rose

rose — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:10:11 +0000

What that you have mentioned are really helpful and also they help you in many ways. I do agree that these type of , there is something news too about adolescent at http://4adolescents.com/blog

Comment on JJ’s knock-out question by Vicky

Vicky — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:28:58 +0000

Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation Anyway … nice blog to visit.

cheers, Vicky.

Comment on Assessment — when the numbers don’t add up by kirktalk

kirktalk — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:40:28 +0000

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Comment on Assessment — when the numbers don’t add up by matwisternoff

matwisternoff — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:19:56 +0000

Wow ) I found nice site -> Caroline Ducey

Comment on JJ’s knock-out question by morton

morton — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:17:34 +0000

I'd say that what you write is mostly correct (but at the bottom, shouldn't it be "Of course, repeated subtractions are *divisions*"?)Still, I would say the difference between e.g. subtraction and division amounts to this: by division, we determine the size of a part that can be subtracted so-and-so-many times to amount to zero. Dividing means dividing into a number of equal parts, and it also means being of a size that taken so-and-so-many times makes such-and-such.This can also be expressed by the word measure as something measures some other thing. Take the determination of the greatest common divisor of two numbers. What it amounts to is finding the measure that taken so-and-so-often equals the one number, taken so-and-so-often equals the other number.The Euclidian algorithm for determining the GCD can be easily undestood by help of this notion of "some number measures another", and it can be seen that the algorithm indeed determines the divisor by repeated subtraction, cf. the wikipedia.en article on the Euclidian algorithm