Real hacks for online education from the ancient greek masters.

Online education is hard. Specially if you’ve been thrown into it after years of teaching on-site in an educational system designed to work as such. Nevertheless, online education is our new reality. Better embrace it ’cause we have to keep on leading the way for the future generations through any medium available.

Of course there are pain points. This is more than stepping out of our comfort zone, this is a whole new league. Fortunately, there are some educators that have paved the road for us: The ancient greeks. …

Since childhood we learn mistakes are the worst. You get scored poorly, you get scolded, you fail. This also applies to sports and arts. Even socially, you get signaled, they make fun of you. Failing is definitely not something to look forward to.

They teach us to be ashamed of our mistakes. We learn to fail in private because if we try and fail, everyone will laugh. They’ll signal it’s wrong to take risks. It’s wrong not to appear perfect. It’s wrong not to be a pro.

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We’ve been talking about the importance of giving our students something to yearn for, and how it might be the most important thing we should do as teachers.

Igniting curiosity in your students will ultimately let you evolve from a presenter to a facilitator, fueling their curiosity even further.

How can we prompt curiosity?

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kanhneman introduces us to the priming effect. The inception of thoughts and feelings towards an idea via the biases of our intuiton. …

Patience, curiosity, unending energy. Everything I envy from the relationship between my students and their videogames.

How do they do it? How can I do it? I can see at least 3 clear differences between the traditional education tools and the land of coins and cherries.

Levels

Videogames greet us with level zero. It’s expected to be a mess. You are expected to be clumsy. As a matter of fact, if you clear the level too easily it will surely result in disengagement.

You learn through interaction. Start doing before understanding what is going on, or even knowing the mechanics and…

I’ve been working with teenagers for over 5 years now. Accepting their attention divides between my content, Fortnite, and the latest Instagram Filter is just a fact of life. When I thought I had it figured out, pandemic happened.

In this new setting something is clear. Attention is a rare gift.

1. Start by stating the value

Long be gone the old “what, when, where, how, why”. Why would anyone care about a piece of information that means nothing to its receiver? I cannot care about something which doesn’t relate to my present (or desired future) situation.

Always start with the “why”. Why this lesson will…

La imagen es una parte integral de nuestra cultura. La civilización contemporánea en la que estamos inscritos es casi inconcebible sin la presencia de imágenes y a través del paso del tiempo parece que nuestra sociedad cada vez se apega con mayor intensidad a la necesidad de estas representaciones visuales artificiales.

En el sentido más simple y directo, la imagen no es más que la representación de una de una cosa, un pensamiento, (un sigma), de forma externa. Debemos recordar que si pretendemos un entendimiento más amplio del concepto de imagen en realidad tenemos que tomar en consideración mucho más…