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Steve Ransom

SmartBlog on Education - Bullying prevention from the ground up - SmartBrief, Inc. Smar... - 0 views

  • Policies, programs, protocols, etc., can be useful tools for people to use, but they don’t change people — only people can change people. Bullying prevention must also start from the ground up — the ground of changing people’s hearts and minds towards greater respect and caring. Bullying prevention should not just be about stopping a negative behavior; it should be about how the members of the school community treat each other.
  • Compliance is a poor, ineffective substitute for a community’s commitment to creating the type culture and climate needed for learning — one that is incompatible will all types of bullying.
  • If people can’t see their culture, they will not be able to change it. Unfortunately, people can become easily habituated to ways of interacting that are often not respectful.
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  • Regardless of how they might appear, all educators think they are doing a good job and suggesting the opposite will only make them more defensive and less open to any recommendation for changing.
  • Fear freezes people into place and prevents meaningful change.
  • Most bullying-prevention efforts emphasize what shouldn’t happen:“Don’t bully others.” The implicit message is that the schools themselves don’t have to change; they just have to make sure that bullying doesn’t happen.
  • many students who bully learn to do it under the radar of adult supervision. Traditional rewards and consequences have little if any impact on bullying behavior in schools.
  • Tell a different story.
  • Stand on principles.
  • Translate principles into specific words and actions.
  • Get adult behavior aligned with principles.
  • All students can lead.
  • Becoming a more caring and respectful school community is the means and the ends towards preventing and reducing bullying in schools.
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    One of the best articles I've read on combatting the many forms of bullying in schools.
Steve Ransom

In Digital Age, Schools That Succeed are Schools That Connect | MindShift - 0 views

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    Schools must be intentional and informed about facilitating powerful learning with social media and new learning spaces... not simply tolerate it.
Steve Ransom

It Is Not About the Gadgets - Why Every Teacher Should Have to Integrate Tech Into Thei... - 0 views

  • On the other hand, I work with teachers now that are often running scared – very scared at times. They are blocked from using much technology, teachers that use drill and skills based software are praised, those that ask about doing anything online are scoffed at … they have to go out of their way and jump through 5 hoops all the time knowing that if things aren’t 100% smooth they will be questioned about safety, educational value, whether they have their students best interest and safety in mind and on and on. They are told (in error) that they will lose the district their e-Rate funding by having student work online or even have students working online … COPA laws will be broken, … in some schools and districts its not about making teachers integrate technology, its making administration, politicians and others see it as having value and creating an environment where it is at least OK and at best encouraged and supported. I never thought I would write such a comment, but believe me it is very ugly in places … I support 6 school districts, about 100,000 students and 8-10,000 teachers … some districts and some schools are very open and supportive of tech integration, others are extremely scared of all the things that they’ve heard of, more so than I would have thought. Good news is we are starting to make real progress … much too slowly, but progress. Yes, tech integration should not be an option, but there are still many places where it is not an option really. That’s the thinking we still need to overcome.
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    Great comment by Brian Crosby in the comment section. Does your school/district really support teachers as they aim to integrate technology... or treat them like novice children?
Steve Ransom

Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond - 0 views

  • The people who concentrate wealth don't do things just out of the goodness of their hearts for the most part, but in order to maintain their position of dominance and then extend their power.
  • One can at least be suspicious that skyrocketing student debt is a device of indoctrination. It's very hard to imagine that there's any economic reason for it. Other countries' education is free, like Mexico's, and that is a poor country.
  • There are a lot of factors. And one of them, probably, is just that students are trapped.
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  • Your future depends on it; my salary depends on it.
  • until I got to Central High, I literally didn't know I was a good student, because the question never came up.
  • There were tests, but they just gave information about what's going on. This is something we ought to be doing better.
  • "How can mosquitoes fly in the rain?" And then, but why is there a problem? Well, you study the force of the raindrop hitting a mosquito - it's like a person being hit by a locomotive.
  • It doesn't matter how much you learn in school; it's whether you learn how to go on and do things by yourself.
  • Control from above, control by the administrators. No respect for the working person, whether it's a teacher or machinist.
  • Kids are naturally creative, and of course, you don't have to beat it out of them. That's why they're asking, "Why?" all the time.
  • You can't let teachers control the classroom. That's teaching to test; then the teachers are disciplined. They do what you tell them. Their salaries depend on it; their jobs depend on it. They become sociopaths like everyone else. And you have a society where it's only, "Look after me; I'll forget everyone else."
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    Best read of the day. "It doesn't matter how much you learn in school; it's whether you learn how to go on and do things by yourself."
Steve Ransom

Why Leaders Should Brand Their Schools - Finding Common Ground - Education Week - 0 views

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    Why Leaders Should Brand Their Schools
Steve Ransom

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Practical examples of social media in elementary... - 0 views

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    Nice post by Chris Casal explaining the various social services used at his school.
Steve Ransom

A Must Read Google Plus Guide for Schools ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning - 0 views

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    "In this short guide, Eric will walk you through a step by step process on how to tap into the educational potential of Google Plus. It starts with a general overview of Google Plus suite of tools then moves to  the second section where you will get to learn how to activate Google Plus for your school account. In the Profile and Setting section, Eric explains how to edit your profile information and how to manage your profile visibility settings. The last remaining parts of this guide provide some tips on how to search for people and manage your circles and communities, and how to post, share, and comment. Overall, the guide is a must read and I recommend that you share it with your colleagues."
Steve Ransom

Peter T. Coleman, PhD: The Consequences of Our Games - 0 views

  • "At a time when games are becoming ever more realistic, reality is becoming more gamelike."
  • The problem is not that games are inconsistent with many aspects of our lives; it is that they provide a limited and skewed lens on the world
  • It stresses the strategic interdependent interests of humans and assumes that in games there is always a rational choice which is the best counter-choice to your opponent's.
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  • Seeing more and more aspects of our lives as games to win through maximization has a sort of self-perpetuating effect with perverse consequences, not the least of which is the impairment of what Diesing terms social rationality; the cherishing of unique relationships, personal connectedness, cooperative functioning, solidarity and sentiment.
  • If winning efficiently is the goal, then the rules (ethical, moral, legal, and spiritual), are essentially obstacles to game.
  • In our schools, competition for access to elite preschools, for grades, for social status, in sports, over positions of leadership, and for admission to exclusive colleges transforms one of our most basic institutions for fostering community, ethics and learning into competitive, individualistic corporate training-grounds. In these settings, the importance of competitive sports becomes paramount, for both financial and training purposes, and the artistry of cheating (see this year's Stuyvesant High School cheating scandal) and rule-bending (see Joe Paterno) revered. Such intense competition encourages the professionalization of parenting -- through tutors, highly-educated nannies, prep courses, and professional training camps (such as investment camps). You can imagine the deleterious effects these trends have on the ethos of care and moral responsibility in our families and schools, a critical buffer against bullying and violence in the lives of our children.
  • We become hyper-connected through technologies, boasting our number of "friends" on Facebook, and have less and less intimacy.
  • We choose friends with benefits or Internet porn over romantic relationships as they are less messy, more efficient.
  • Life is a race and we are losing.
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    A great piece worth the time to reflect on. Mindfulness needs to be practiced frequently.
Steve Ransom

Students Battle School Districts Over First Amendment Rights On Social Media - 0 views

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    Seems more reactionary and controlling. Stronger vision, leadership, and willingness to model social media use and engage students in these spaces likely would help a gread deal here. Conversation leads to learning/understanding. Harsh discipline simply leads to compliance much of the time.
Steve Ransom

The Casal Operating System: Social media in our K-5 school - 0 views

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    Blog post to go along with Chis Casal's presentation at #nyscate13
Steve Ransom

Making School Reform - 0 views

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    This recent talk by Gary Stager is well worth your 20 minutes to chew on. He pushes and challenges the notion of school and learning... as should we all.
Steve Ransom

Challenging 'Internet safety' as a subject to be taught - NetFamilyNews.org |... - 0 views

  • The Internet is embedded in and encompasses virtually all of human life, positive, negative and neutral.
  • All that happens online is much more symptomatic (sometimes an early warning system) than a cause of social problems that we’ve been working on addressing since long before we had the Internet.
  • Internet safety education teaches kids to hide negative or deviant behavior rather than correct it. Do you see a problem with that? I do.
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  • What needs to be taught is skills, not just information, and certainly not all the inaccurate information so much “Internet safety education” has disseminated over nearly two decades.
  • “properties” (“persistence,” “searchability,” “replicability,” and “scalability”) and “dynamics” (“invisible audiences,” “collapsed contexts,” and “the blurring of public and private”) – and now some of those, e.g., “persistence,” are changing with the arrival of “ephemeral,” or disappearing, digital media in services
  • media is both social and digital.
  • full, healthy participation in participatory media, culture and society.
  • what protects children online is what protects them offline.
  • life skills, literacies and safeguards that are both internal – respect for self and others, resilience, empathy, and a strong inner guidance system (sometimes called a moral compass) – and external, such as good modeling, parenting and teaching by caring adults, peer mentoring, instruction in digital and media literacy, social-emotional learning, protective technology used thoughtfully, family and school rules, well-designed digital environments, and well-established laws against discrimination, sexual harassment, bullying, and crime.
  • teach the skills of today’s very social digital media: digital literacy, media literacy and social literacy, which together address both media-specific risk reduction and proficiency in participatory media use.
  • ACCESS
  • ANALYZE
  • CREATE
  • REFLECT
  • “ACT:
  • These are the competencies that students need to navigate participatory media and culture.
  • providing access and opportunities to analyze, create, reflect and act as much with digital media as with older media right in core academic classes, schools are affording them the skills, community, and self-actualization that increase safety (resilience) as well as efficacy in and out of media. This is the real “Internet safety [or competency]” that needs to be taught in schools.
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    We need to get this and push back against the flawed Internet Safety/Danger narrative if we are truly going to prepare students as healthy and wise citizens. "what protects children online is what protects them offline."
Steve Ransom

Pasco leads way as school districts explore social media | Tampa Bay Times - 0 views

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    How many are afraid because they really don't understand/have not used social media in powerful and professional ways? "You don't need to be afraid if you are doing the right thing."
Steve Ransom

NYC Schools Social Media Guidelines - 0 views

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    These seem pretty balanced... [PDF]
Steve Ransom

20 useful ways to use TodaysMeet in schools | Ditch That Textbook - 0 views

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    A nice collection of ideas here on using a backchannel in the classroom.
Steve Ransom

Schools work on computer, keyboard skills so students capable of taking online exams | ... - 0 views

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    Are we losing our minds?
Steve Ransom

talking word processor | Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner - 0 views

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    WordTalk is a powerful free tool that ought to be on every computer in every school where Microsoft Word is installed on a Windows computer! This is a tool that has the potential to benefit ALL learners, especially any who struggle with reading or writing. I'm adding WordTalk to my list of Extra Special Learning Resourses.  WordTalk is a high quality free add-in that provides convenient, versatile and customizable text-to-speech for any document written or opened in Microsoft Word. It works in every version of MS Word, from Word 97 through Word 2010; and it's available to run on every version of Windows from Windows 98 through Windows 7.
Steve Ransom

Students Are 'Hacking' Their School-Issued iPads: Good for Them - Audrey Watters - The ... - 1 views

  • too often “the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision the child programs the computer
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    Implementation gone awry. Audrey Watters nails the key issues surrounding computers in education (via Seymour Papert) and in 1:1 implementations. The personal computer.... needs to be personal.
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