Since 1999, we have been working to develop freely available web applications for K-12 educators. Our aim is to research and develop online tools that support thinking-centered curriculum and instruction.
Think of ThinkingGear as an online toolbox for educators who are interested in developing lessons and assessments that put the cultivation of good thinking and deeper understanding up-front as instructional goals. ThinkingGear’s general mission is to develop situated tools and technologies to address some of the most intractable problems in education and to improve the depth and quality of learning.
ThinkingGear has taken on a number of projects during the past few years. We’ve designed web sites, conducted needs assessment studies, and developed online educational programs. At the moment, we are writing up the results of a small-scale research and development study that focused on The Rubric Machine, a ThinkingGear application.
ThinkingGear is for educators, staff developers, instructional designers, and curriculum developers who believe that cultivating good thinking skills and dispositions deepens understanding and sharpens academic performance. Anyone who wants to use ThinkingGear can. And it’s free.
The information age is not coming; it is here. As we move toward this next stage of social organization, we believe that education’s greatest challenges, and opportunities, will involve the emergence of the sovereign student. New technologies will afford individual students unprecedented levels of choice and control over the shape and content of their education. We view this shift toward genuinely student-centered education as a good, and until now unachievable, thing. We aim to support the shift to student sovereignty by helping educators differentiate instruction and students regulate their thinking and learning.
Yes. ThinkingGear tools have been incorporated into online teacher training courses at University of Albany and WideWorld (http://wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/), a professional development program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. We’ve also developed web-based programs and products for National Geographic Society and Tufts University. And a number of teachers have asked us if it they could use ThinkingGear in their own teacher training programs. Overall, users seem to like ThinkingGear, and want more tools and resources.
Our long-term vision for ThinkingGear is to develop a freely available, open source, course-development platform for designing thinking-centered curriculum and instruction. However, our initial patterns of work reflect three rather targeted and modest missions:
Mission 1: Develop a suite of instructional assessment tools and products.
Mission 2: Support ThinkingGear networks and communities.
Mission 3: Seek funding and collaborative relationships to develop ThinkingGear products and programs.
