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"In business and at every level of government, we hear how important it is to graduate more students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, as our nation's competitiveness depends on it. The Obama administration has set a goal of increasing STEM graduates by one million by 2022, and the "desperate need" for more STEM students makes regular headlines. The emphasis on bolstering STEM participation comes in tandem with bleak news about the liberal arts - bad job prospects, programs being cut, too many humanities majors. As a chemist, I agree that remaining competitive in the sciences is a critical issue. But as an instructor, I also think that if American STEM grads are going lead the world in innovation, then their science education cannot be divorced from the liberal arts."

"I read Fareed Zakaria's work often. He's a great journalist for the Washington Post and a TV news anchor with his own show on CNN. I dug into a piece yesterday he wrote titled "Why America's Obsession with STEM Education is Dangerous". Unlike Zakaria's articles on foreign policy, which are insightful, thought-provoking, and in-depth, this article paints an innacurate and overly-simplified picture of what STEM education is and should be. Worse yet, his argument injects dangerously reductive rhetoric into the public debate on education, where we already see heightened emotion and political division. Maybe this type of reaction is what Zakaria is aiming for. He releases a new book today on this same topic called "In Defense of a Liberal Education". "

"Why Digital Learning will Liberate Teachers"

""Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.""

" This Copyright Decision Tool was developed by the Copyright Consortium of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) . The CMEC Copyright Consortium is composed of the ministers of education of the provinces and territories, with the exception of Quebec. (For further background on copyright and education, you can visit the CMEC Web pages on copyright. ) This Copyright Decision Tool is a supplement to the Fair Dealing Guidelines , created to help teachers determine whether their use of a copyright-protected work is fair dealing. The tool helps teachers assess whether fair dealing permits them to use a copyright-protected work for students without permission or payment of copyright royalties. Fair dealing is only one of several users' rights provided to educational users in the Copyright Act. For a description of other educational users' rights, see Copyright Matters! Every school board or school district should have a staff member who is familiar with copyright law. For more information, contact the ministry or department of Education Copyright Officer for your province or territory, listed here. CMEC wishes to acknowledge that the Copyright Decision Tool is liberally adapted, with permission, from the University of Ottawa's Fair Dealing Decision Tree ."

" According to the latest EQAO report, half of Ontario Grade 6 students don't meet the curriculum standard in math. That's a problem. But it's not the only one. What worries me is that only 13 per cent of students who didn't meet the provincial standard when they were in Grade 3 manage to catch up so they meet the standard for Grade 6. That's the lowest number on that indicator in five years. If you fall behind in math you stay behind. That's why it's important to get it right, not just at some vague moment in the future, but for kids who are in Ontario schools right now. Fortunately, every parent in Ontario is sure they know how to teach math. Many parents want to get rid of "discovery math," broadly defined as "doing it weird." If only that loopy Liberal government would teach math the way we learned it when we were kids, the theory goes, there'd be no problem. Sure, great, except for one thing. Very few parents I've met can perform more than the most rudimentary arithmetic for themselves. If you all learned math so well, why do you inch toward Junior's algebra homework with a cross and a bulb of garlic?"

"There is a lot of talk about the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in education. Schools, governments, and businesses are hoping that today's STEM students can solve tomorrow's global issues. The importance of a quality education has not been lost on me. I've gone from a liberal arts university to some highly-technical professions and back (and forth). This has left me with a well-rounded amount of experience in all the STEM subjects. But there's more to education than getting a STEM job. A lot more. That's why a new term is gaining *ahem* steam. It's called STEAM and it's the idea of incorporating arts into a STEM-based curriculum. In other words, let's help students think more creatively and better understand the problems they're already working to solve"

"I used to think that when students were disengaged it was their own fault, and while sometimes that is still true, I have found in my years of teaching that a lot of the fault lies with me as the teacher.  Yet, realizing that I may be the cause of my students disengagement is hard to swallow.  It certainly has not done wonders to my self-esteem, and yet, there is something liberating about realizing that while I am a part of the problem, that also means that I can fix it.  Or at the very least fix the things I control.  Student disengagement is something I can do something about. But why are students so disengaged?  What lies behind the restlessness, the misbehavior, the bored stares?  Every year I survey my students throughout the year, and particularly on those days where nothing seems to be working.  I ask them simply to explain what is going on and they share their truths with me.  So here are their truths on student disengagement."

A significant shift continues to occur within global education markets. It is signified by the manner in which it makes sense to speak of a global education market. It is driven by neo-liberalism and the expansion of markets into all aspects of our lives and it is made possible by manipulation of the third messaging system within the educational triad of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It is a drive towards accountable, comparable and productive education systems fine-tuned to maximise the return on investment and provide industry with the workforce it desires. What must be asked is how does this trend impact students and are these the forces that should be driving change in our education systems?

"Trust is like the air we breathe; it is essential to our wellbeing and survival, but we barely notice or think about it until it's in short supply. In many different parts of the world, trust in public and public-serving institutions - especially the news media - has declined alarmingly over at least the last decade. Its absence is creating enormous disruption around the world, threatening politics, public health, social relations and many of the other foundations of well-functioning societies. One of the contributors to this state of affairs is the internet. It promised access to a vast ocean of data, news and information, to liberate us from the media's traditional gatekeepers and to make us smarter, more engaged citizens. The internet revolution delivered on some of that promise. But it also unleashed a flood of disinformation and, well, junk. And with weakened gatekeepers, it eventually made it harder than ever to know what and whom to trust."

"It seems like any news report shared on Twitter or YouTube is inundated with "fake news" claims: comments calling out something for being "liberal propaganda" or "paid for by Russia." Most often these claims are just a way of dismissing facts or analysis that someone disagrees with. The thing is, there are bigger, more harmful examples of bias and bad reportage. These rare but educational incidents get lost in the flurry of baseless "fake news" accusations. Case in point: Mark I. Pinsky at Poynter issued a powerful report on the shameful role Southern newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and the Montgomery Advertiser played in normalizing and covering up injustice, racism, and violence against Black people in the decades following the Civil War, through the civil rights movement, and continuing today. Here we have an actual, high-stakes example of the news getting something wrong. It's important for students to examine cases like this -- and the political contexts surrounding them -- to build a more informed understanding of "fake news.""

" Failure to graduate life-ready students is a societal issue, and it impacts all of us. The solution is a re-imagined education system that produces graduates who step confidently and purposefully from high school to post-secondary studies, employment, and other life roles. To achieve this, schools must not only be for students, but about them, and by them, guided by liberated teachers and administrators."