Zach Groshell – Page 44

What constitutes “balanced literacy” depends on who you’re talking to

I recently finished reading Dan Willingham’s book, Raising Kids who Read: What Parents and Teachers can do. Of particular interest to me (Zach) was the chapter in which Willingham described the infamous “Reading Wars”. Having just facilitated design thinking around literacy at my school, during which we started a discourse (Described in this recent post)…

July 25, 2019 5Comments

Do teachers need research to be good teachers?

Seasoned teachers know a lot about how to do their jobs, and can generally execute the default instruction that we're all familiar with pretty well. Practical knowledge of this kind is sometimes referred to as craft knowledge or wisdom of practice, and it forms the basis of some national teaching assessments (Leinhardt, 2007). While craft knowledge includes…

May 20, 2019 20Comments

3 big ways schools can enable a culture of creativity and design thinking

Recently I had the opportunity to present at ETC 2019 in Bangkok with my colleague in MYP Design, Nik Madalinski. Our workshop, called Cre8 Design, was a weird one. We gave participants the chance to pick from 8 micro-presentations around current trends and topics in design technology over the course of 80 minutes (If time…

May 15, 2019 8Comments

How would your students grade you on Rate My Professors?

I recently had the chance to distribute a survey to students in my design classes, one of those school-wide ones that all students have to complete on all of their teachers. I was happy with the results. It included questions such as "My teacher likes me" and "My teacher takes time to speak with me about…

April 17, 2019 2Comments

EARCOS Teacher’s Conference is in Bangkok this year, and I’m presenting!

Who among my #PLN is going to EARCOS 2019? Cause I'll be there. I'm excited to announce that a new workshop that I have been cooking up with Nik Mad will make its debut at the EARCOS Teacher's Conference 2019 in Bangkok! Here is the description of our workshop: STRAND: Design Technology Title: Cre8 Design Cre8 Design is a workshop in which Nik…

January 21, 2019 3Comments

Was The Oregon Trail the peak of educational gaming?

Do you remember the game The Oregon Trail? Did it spark something in you that had you playing it for days on end? Something I share with a lot of nineties kids is the nostalgia for a game that made learning about a relatively brief historical phenomenon fun. On an old Macintosh computer my friends and…

January 10, 2019 3Comments

Learning lists underwater: A transdisciplinary approach to design

In 1975, a couple of phycologists confirmed an interesting hypothesis: If you send a learner underwater in a scuba suit to memorize a list of words, they will remember those words better when tested underwater than when tested on land. But if the learner learns the words on land, they will remember them better on…

November 4, 2018 4Comments

Turning the tables on the ed podcast

I recently had the opportunity to sit and chat with Shane from The Ed Podcast, a show that focuses on conversations surrounding the teaching life and profession. It was a great experience, and one that I think documents pretty well where I am in my career at this moment in time. Listening to podcasts like The…

April 13, 2018 3Comments