Do We Still Need to Teach Writing?

Uploaded by cdevroe

I just read a fascinating article where Bill Gates predicts the end of the keyboard.  He says with the advancements in things like touch screens and voice recognition, keyboards will become less and less important.

 So what does this mean for teaching kids how to write?  Do you teach them with paper and pencil?  Do you teach them how to enter with a keyboard? Or, do you teach them how to talk into their computer?

I think some of the best and easiest to understand writing is when someone write the way the speak.  That is if they can articulate their thoughts.  I know that some people are still holding on to their old Royal typewriters and some like the feel of pen and paper.  I’m sure future generations will feel the same about their first computer they could talk to.

I think the world is going to get a lot noisier.

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Sink or Swim Learning

I’ve written a lot about the downsides of sink or swim learning.  However, I came across this video and I found it mesmerizing.  Enjoy!

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Is Knowing How to Spell Words You Can’t Define Improtant?

Uploaded by foreversouls

When I watch the national spelling bee, I know they can spell the words but the don’t seem to know the meaning of very many.  So is it better to misspell a word you know or spell a word you don’t know correctly.

The concept of a spelling bee was first in print in 1876.  Two of the big differences between then and now are “Spellcheck” and a massively larger pool of words.  In 1876, there was probably a much smaller gap between spelling and understanding…about 7 or 8 hundred thousand words.

The moderators always seem so smart about all the words but I’m sure they have to look most of them up.  I thought is going to a definitions bee and including words someone might actually use some day.

Just a thought…not earth shaking.  I hope I spelled everything right.

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Do We Write and Read More or Less?

Uploaded by Joseph Dath

 On a gut level, you might say that kids today just don’t read and write like we used to…or most adults just don’t read books. 

However, when you dig into it a little what’s really evident is that reading and writing have changed so much that comparing the past to today is comparing apples to oranges.

Here’s what I mean.  It used to be that you wrote long letters to friends and family and dropped them in the mail box.  In fact, a lot of history is recorded letters.  The civil war is a great example because it is one of the most documented wars because of all the letters.  The big change is not a decline in writing but a decline in using a paper and pen.  If you added up all the emails, text messages and posts on social networking sites, the amount of writing is massively greater.  Think about when congress wants another departments emails and the get several million emails to look at.

Well what about newspapers.  No one reads newspapers like they used to.  This is an absolutely true statement.  The reality is that people are probably more engaged and interested in their world, but news print just doesn’t cut it.  I could wait for old news to appear on my door step or I could just go to Yahoo news and see what’s happening right now.  A newspaper might offer you two or three columnists on a subject while you can go on line and get a hundred different points of view.  Newspapers also have to compete with 24/7 cable news and sports.  I remember rushing to the paper to get the sports scores in the morning.  Now I can watch the ticker on ESPN or call them up on my cell phone.

I know you’ll say, what about books.  No one reads books any more.  I’d say some one has the be reading books because the number of books in print each year has exploded.  Today about a 100,000 books are published each year.  If you read a book a week, you’d be reading .005% of the new books.  Hard to keep up on your reading that way.  Think about all the people who used to own a really good set of encyclopedias.  Their basically worthless today because if you want the knowledge of the world a quick Google search will work and you can get everything in multi-media.

So here’s a good question, have we change the way we teach reading and writing to fit a new world or are we still in line with the 1950s?

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Learning to Learn

I think this is an interesting topic in the world of accelerated learning.  Most people learn by trial and error.  They really have not formal education on how to learn.  The question is, “is learning a skill like everything else that can be taught?”

One of the more interesting ways to learn how to learn is to try to teach something.  When you do this, you have to struggle with why others aren’t learning what you’re teaching or it doesn’t stick very long. 

Part of it is understanding your own learning style so you can productively work on learning something.  For example, I know people who need to write things down to understand and remember something while others need to actually see a demonstration.  So if this isn’t part of the way the teacher teaches than can you translate it for yourself.

I also think there are a lot of trick and techniques for things like taking tests, writing papers and even studying.  They aren’t always one size fits all, but they’re a start.   I remember when I was in school that there were two types of kids that got good grades.  One group that really studied hard and spent a lot of time going over things.  The other group didn’t study much at all but seem to do well.  I think they knew something the other kids didn’t.  Because of the school I went to, you can rule out difference in IQs or even social background.  They were very similar and at the higher end. 

My guess is that one group did things the hard way and the other group had learned how to learn. 

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Teaching Kids to Sell

One of the most important skills you can learn in life is how to sell.  It’s part of everything you do in your personal and business life.  It’s really all about how do you get other people excited about your ideas and getting them to agree with you.

 Unfortunately, there is a strong bias in educations and schools against selling.  So it doesn’t happen.  In fact, selling gets loaded up with a lot of negative connotations.  It’s really a disservice to kids.

Learning to sell is really about how to build rapport and connect with others, how to listen and ask great questions, how to present ideas and concepts in a way that persuades, and how to reach agreement and concensus.  Is this as important as learning to read?  Is it as important as memorizing the date of the Norman Conquest?

One of the key things about learning to sell is that it takes lots and lots of practice.  Getting started early is a big help.

So for all of you who have a chance to do something different than traditional school, I suggest adding sales to the curriculum.

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What’s the Matter with Kids Today?

I read a lot of blogs about how terrible things are with the younger generation.  Oh, how it used to be better.  We read 50 books on the way to school walking through 10 feet ove snow, up hill both ways. 

 I can’t remember a generation that did think the next generation was going to hell in a handbasket…and yet society goes on and progresses.  In 1900, 90% of the popluation lived in poverty and the average life expectancy was 40. 

So for a little entertainment, here’s a little video I like that sums everything up.

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