Active Learning: Teaching without Talking

Geoff Petty has a lovely accent and offers a wealth of information and resources on his website www.geoffpetty.com and through the website called Teachers Toolbox: http://www.teacherstoolbox.co.uk (Cambridge Regional College, UK). While most of the research he refers to and teaches about is focused upon young persons, most is also appropriate for adult-learning. I especially enjoyed […]

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From Jane Vella’s Back Porch: LNRA at its best

My friend and colleague, Paula Berardinelli, shared how she is doing her LNRA (Learning Needs and Resources Assessment) with seventeen students in an online graduate course on LEADERSHIP. Paula telephoned each of the seventeen, and succeeded in talking with fourteen students. One graduate student said,” I have been a graduate student for two years, and […]

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Jane Vella 80th YEAR

A cherished group of beautiful people gathered at Karen Ridout’s home in Raleigh on June 30th  to celebrate with me as I entered my 80th year. What fun! Good food, good friends, good wine, good conversation. And lots of laughter! I am a deeply grateful woman whose daily prayer is THANK YOU.  I know this […]

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Reflection: Learning About Learning

A key practice of both Dialogue Education and Deep Structure Living (www.DeepStructureLiving.com) is reflection. This week, I’m asking: Just how important is reflection to learning, development and performance? Why do I ask this? THE PRAGMATIC: I am interested in continuing to deepen learning so that is meaningfully retained, and transferred, in other words people DO […]

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Part Two: Teasing-Out How Our Theory of Learning/Teaching Matters

The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. –Laurent A. Daloz (1999) Just for fun, let’s look at potential alternatives for each of the sentences in this quote. The proper aim of education […]

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Forget Show and Tell – Showing (not Telling) Strengthens Learning

Creative writers all know what’s sometimes called the first rule of writing:  show, don’t tell. What does this mean? Here, I’ll show you: TELLING Our fundraiser was really successful and fun. We were filled to capacity and exceeded our goals for income. SHOWING I’ve never seen so many people in our auditorium; they were spilling […]

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Focus Matters

Just like a photograph can bring a specific dimension of a scene into focus or to our attention. Writing about why we do what we do can bring new insights. Part One B: Teasing-Out How Our Theory of Learning/Teaching Matters Some readers will remember the invitation in the last post of mine (May 27). I […]

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