Of the four core academic subjects, science education suffers most from a lack of ambition about its own relevance. We explore how science education could become more relevant—and why it matters for all of us.
In education, critical thinking is a popular idea but an elusive reality. We discuss the steps we take to achieve critical thinking in our classrooms, including selecting powerful concepts and sources, making connections between the classroom and the world, using discussion to deepen thinking, and finally, moving from isolated concepts to the bigger picture.
Why are we learning this? It’s the most commonly asked question in classrooms.
When asked, teachers generally reach for an instrumental answer. There isn’t always one in easy grasp, but it’s the reflex.
Today we consider a different, deeper ‘why’ thanks to help from Margaret Atwood. In the 2004 Kesterton Lecture at the Carleton School of Journalism, Atwood does what great writers do best: reveals a deep truth that both makes me feel something and makes me want to be a better person.
2022 was a year of growth and experimentation for Kaleidoscope. We discuss the biggest changes we made this year, including scaling our approach to teach larger classes; experimenting with interactive async learning and workshop modules; investigating the links between education, democracy, and dynamism; and honing our approach to curriculum design.
Of the four core subjects, high school math has the highest ambitions—but also the most misplaced. The result of our default sequence is that students graduate high school unable to apply math to help them make better decisions across a range of contexts, both personal and professional. In this piece we contemplate what math could be—and why it matters for us all.
A typical two-hour online workshop is just that: a single two-hour session. There may be breakout rooms or a bit of reading for pre-work, but not a lot of actual work gets done. We discuss what we do instead to create half a dozen learning opportunities from a single workshop, including pre-work, multiple rounds of iteration on work products, feedback from peers and instructors, and “extension sessions.”
As part of a new partnership with the Rise Fellowship, we’ve recently gone from running classes with a maximum of 10 students to classes four or five times that size. At these sizes, we had to create new ways of interacting, which, honestly, is fun for us! We love innovating on online pedagogy. Today we’re sharing five things that have worked for us as we've supersized our classes:
