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John Evans

More and More, Schools Got Game - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • As Net-generation teachers reach out to gamers, classrooms across the country are becoming portals to elaborate virtual worlds.
  • But lately, researchers and educators say sentiment toward gaming is changing. Advocates argue that games teach vital skills overlooked in the age of high-stakes tests, such as teamwork, decision-making and digital literacy. And they admire the way good games challenge players just enough to keep them engaged and pushing to reach the next level
  • if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & INLINE_ARTICLE_AD ) == INLINE_ARTICLE_AD && inlineAdGraf ) { placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,20,'inline=y;!category=microsoft;',true) ; } The Pew Research Center reported in September that 97 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 play video games, and half said they played "yesterday."
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  • A new generation of game designers is borrowing from the sophisticated platforms and stunning graphics that captivate students for hours after school. They hope to channel the kind of feverish determination students exhibit when stealing a car in Grand Theft Auto and redirect it toward more wholesome pursuits, such as algebra.
  • Compelling games can help schools compete for students' attention, advocates say, even as many teenagers are tackling complex projects on the Internet in their free time.
  • Private foundations and the National Science Foundation have contributed millions of dollars to developing or studying games. The U.S. Education Department awarded a $9 million grant in September to a New York-based education firm to develop games for the hand-held Nintendo DS to weave into middle school science lessons
John Evans

Well-Connected Parents Take On School Boards - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • For a new generation of well-wired activists in the Washington region, it's not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance.
John Evans

Dangerously Irrelevant: Parents are using online tools to push on schools - 0 views

  • The Washington Post recently published a really interesting article on the ability of well-connected parents to influence the decisions of their local school districts (hat tip to The Science Goddess). The term ‘well-connected’ refers to parents’ abilities to use online tools to communicate and mobilize (rather than to their connections to people with power).
  • Below are a few examples of parents pushing back on their local school systems. Parent tools include blogs, online petitions, and even administration countdown timers! I’ve linked to individual posts but you can click on the headers to see the blogs in their entirety. Has MCPS dropped American History from its curriculum? Change mayoral control? Beware the mushroom cloud! Media pig Wanted: a full-day kindergarten slot - do you feel lucky?
  • Online communication technologies have greatly amplified the abilities of parents to voice their opinions and mobilize for desired change. Activist parents now have a bevy of new tools and strategies to help facilitate their agendas and they are not afraid to use them. School organizations are going to have to get used to this new state of affairs in which parent activism and criticism are more public, permanent, and far-reaching. I’m pretty sure that most school leaders haven’t really thought about this…
John Evans

What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.
  • The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”
  • The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” 
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  • The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”.
  • Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
  • First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools.
  • Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned.
  • Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents.
John Evans

Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: The Flipped Classroom - 0 views

  • Despite the buzz about the flipped classroom and its promotoin as the “real revolution” in learning, there has been plenty of pushback and lots of questioning this year about what exactly this practice entails. What expectations and assumptions are we making about students’ technology access at home when we assign them online videos to watch? Why are video-taped lectures so “revolutionary” if lectures themselves are so not? (As Karim Ani, founder of Mathalicious pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed this summer, “Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it’s a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it’s a ‘revolution.’”)
  • And as the year rolls to a close, some teachers who’ve experimented with flipping their classrooms are evaluating the practices and questioning the hype about its transformative potential. Shelley Wright, for example, had written a blog post last year about why she loved “the flip.” But by October of 2012, she’d penned another: “The Flip: The End of a Love Affair.” She noted that she didn’t really disagree with anything she’d said last year, but that flipping the classroom “simply didn’t produce the tranformative learning experience I knew I wanted for my students.”
  • And that question is likely to lead to an incredibly powerful “flip” — one that isn’t about video-based lectures assigned after school, but about flipping the classroom away from the focus on teachers’ control of content and towards student inquiry and agency. (Here's hoping that's a trend I get to talk about in 2013.)
John Evans

Schools demanding news literacy lessons to teach students how to find fact amid fiction... - 6 views

  • When Ife Adelona saw a picture of singer Selena Gomez as an adult magazine covergirl circulating on Twitter, the 17-year-old knew what she had to do. “I immediately went for a second source to make sure it wasn’t true,” Ife said.
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    "When Ife Adelona saw a picture of singer Selena Gomez as an adult magazine covergirl circulating on Twitter, the 17-year-old knew what she had to do. "I immediately went for a second source to make sure it wasn't true," Ife said. "
John Evans

What teachers need and reformers ignore: time to collaborate - 3 views

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    "Concern for 21st century learning has driven the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by more than 40 states. These new standards recognize that the premium in today's world is not merely on students' acquiring information, but on their being able to analyze, synthesize, and apply what they've learned to address new problems, design solutions, collaborate effectively, and communicate persuasively. Achieving these goals will require a transformation in teaching, learning, and assessment so that all students develop the deeper learning competencies that are necessary for post-secondary success."
John Evans

7 ways to foster kids' confidence and creativity with hands-on learning - The Washingto... - 2 views

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    "Juan Carlos Galindo, a Wheaton High School ninth-grader with attention-deficit disorder, always had difficulty managing academic demands when he was younger. His mother, Virginia Munoz, a single mother of four, regularly found her son asleep with homework in his lap. She knew he was struggling, and she worried he would become a checked-out, rebellious teenager. In seventh grade, however, Juan Carlos was invited to participate in a maker learning partnership between Parkland Middle School in Rockville and the KID Museum in Bethesda. The maker philosophy emphasizes hands-on, self-guided projects to build kids' technical skills and confidence through tinkering, inventing and designing."
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