Ideas and Tools to Give Everyone a Voice…

Against Personalized Learning

Annie Murphy Paul

A couple of years ago, educator Benjamin Riley kicked up a fuss with a blog post provocatively titled “Don’t Personalize Learning.” Personalized learning, of course, is a very popular notion; as he slyly noted, it’s “a head-nodder phrase”: “Sprinkle the word into virtually any conversation or speech regarding education, and you’ll typically see at least a handful of heads nodding in the room in happy…

Shaping Our Tools to Fit the Brain

Annie Murphy Paul

We all have experience with things like ergonomic chairs: seats that are designed with the human body in mind. The designer of an ergonomic chair has to have a solid working knowledge of the human body and how it operates in order to build a chair that will be comfortable, supportive, and appealing to sit in. The same is true of the technological tools we use: the people who design them have to…

Using the Social Brain to Promote Learning

Annie Murphy Paul

A recent brain-imaging study showed just how powerfully teenagers are influenced by their peers. That's not necessarily bad news, however: “If your teen’s friends are displaying positive behavior, then it’s fabulous that your teen will see that behavior and be influenced by it,” said study author Lauren Sherman, a researcher at UCLA. Sherman's observation lines up with a favorite idea of mine:…

Three Ways I’ve Become A Better Listener

By Crystal Morey May 27, 2016 8:25 am…

David Brooks on Deciding Better

In this New York Times column, David Brooks explores what he calls the “choice explosion” over the last 30 years – the ever-expanding variety of options Americans have on what we eat, media sources, spiritual beliefs, lifestyles, identities. Our culture has always embraced individual choice, says Brooks, as compared, for example, to the Japanese, who prefer…