Day 2: Didi

with Dr. Howard Gardner

Today was a very fruitful day.  For the plenary session, Howard Gardner talked about his upcoming book "The Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good: Reflections in a Postmodern, Digital Era."  He gave us the 'reframed' version: a book in an hour.  He defined the old notions and new conceptualizations of truth, beauty and goodness.  It was very thought-provoking and raised a lot of questions about shifts in thinking about perceived facts or truths in this day and age.

Ricci and I with Dr. David Perkins

For my mini course, I attended "Assessment that Further Learning" presented by Rhonda Bondie and Sande Dawes.  The session was very interactive and incorporated a lot of strategies and techniques to teach for understanding.  As I hoped, I had an AHA moment during the session.  I am very much familiar with assessment driving instruction.  In my mind, assessment is a tool to help teachers know where their students are so their planning and instruction can be better informed.  So it was a complete and welcome surprise when Rhonda pointed out how much more important it is that assessments help students to know "their" strengths and how they best learn since at the end of the day, these students are left with themselves so having that self-knowledge is extremely powerful.

Later that afternoon, we had a study group session on 'Questioning Protocols.'  We were given an opportunity to get acquainted with it in small groups.  I think this protocol will help a lot when we get back and try to establish a learning community within the school to practice and share what we've learned from this institute.

Ricci with Steve Seidel

This evening, we had a reception at the Harvard Museum of Natural History where we were able to chat and mingle with the Project Zero faculty and staff.  Today was definitely a great day! :)