Many students have not previously had the opportunity to participate in Socratic conversations. In his essay “Notes on Dialogue” Stringfellow Barr offers some great advice on how to participate in a Socratic conversation....
Robi Marshall, co-author of the soon to be introduced Progymnasmata for Teachers from Confluence Courseware, travels today in order to deliver 3 days of seminars on the subject which will be incorporated into the courseware. This courseware will enable classical schools to educate teachers in this ancient yet relevant method of preparing students for rhetoric....
Socratic Conversation, Lecturing or Didactic teaching, and Experiential Learning Confluence Courseware guides suggest appropriate interpretive and analytic questions in order to facilitate great classroom conversations as well as prompts for academic essays and project-based learning experiences in an effort to provide a truly interdisciplinary, liberal arts education. As such, this course is organized around the principles of the Paideia method (from the Greek paidos meaning “upbringing”) which incorporates three aspects of learning: the Socratic conversation, lecturing or didactic teaching, and experiential learning. This pedagogic method focuses on building a strong foundation of basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities that can...
Great Conversations that Center around Great Ideas Found in Great Works Syntopical thinking, also known as synthesis, is the touchstone of a liberal arts education and syntopical reading is the most important type of reading in the Humanities so that we may form the most informed evaluative positions about the works that we explore. In fact, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, synthesis and evaluation are the highest level critical thinking skills that we aspire to in education. A great tool to assure a syntopical approach in this class is Mortimer Adler’s work The Great Ideas, and his collection of essays which divide Humanities education...
What Are the Humanities? Simply put, the Humanities study human culture throughout the world from the first moment of human existence until the present. Because all of cultural history is such a vast subject, humanists often aim to study specific reoccurring themes in culture, as well as certain cultures at certain times, and to investigate representative cultural production that best captures the human spirit—those “true and beautiful” works that best make sense of who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. In “Culture and Values of the Western World,” we will focus principally on Western humanistic traditions...
Confluence Courseware is an effort to reverse current cultural and social trends and use digital technology not as an ends but a means—as a tool to promote genuine and significant human conversation. Using great works—including influential and important texts from all of human history in the creative arts and literature, religion, philosophy, the natural, applied and social sciences—Confluence Courseware is an attempt to utilize the more beneficial aspects of our technological society, while mitigating the more deleterious cultural consequences, so that we may remember our cultural heritage and re-engage in timeless conversations which center around what it means to be human....
Confluence Courseware is an effort to reverse current cultural and social trends and use digital technology not as an ends but a means—as a tool to promote genuine and significant human conversation about great ideas. We live in a hyper-connected age; ours is a technology saturated society of instantaneous messaging, vast networks of streaming information and a deluge of images that give a dizzying tinge to life and leave an overwhelming sense of relentless acceleration. Yet, for all of the allure of our digital devices and the promise of continual connectivity, something is missing. Since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution,...
Dr. Robert Woods will create a courseware series as a gateway to the great books and great ideas for high school and adult learning. Dr. Woods, the incoming Head of The Covenant School delivered the best speech about the great books I have ever heard at Coram Deo Academy, DFW, several years ago. Now he is helping to leverage significant scholarship and years of great conversation as a creator of Confluence Courseware!...
Great courseware requires great creators. Today I have interviews with several outstanding scholars and educators interested in becoming Courseware Creators that revive the Western intellectual tradition while developing a royalty stream for themselves. Rodney...
Enjoying high interest in the CC project from potential creators as well as schools that may enjoy the rich Courseware. The idea that a creator can retain copyright and monetize their creations through a royalty stream is gaining traction....