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Bradford Saron

Bring Your Own Technology - And Thinking About Equity « - 0 views

  • The really big question, how do we ensure equity? Have students with their own devices bring them. There are more students who have them than we think, and if the case is made that students are benefiting from the learning, more families will invest in the mobile technology for school and home.  If parents can be assured that an investment in Grade 4 will carry their child through for four-to-six years with their learning, many will make this choice.  I am often stunned by families that buy their child a cell phone, but don’t have a computer.  I am also quite comfortable in saying that if they are investing in a cell phone and not a computer there are better options to support their child’s learning.  We need to help guide families with what technology will have the greatest impact in supporting their child’s learning.  Of course, not all students will supply a computer up front, this could range from a few students to the entire class depending on the school or district.  The second option would be a lease-to-own option for students. There are a number of options available with price points around $20 per month.  This picks up on the cell phone argument, and a more affordable device with more value for student learning.  Families could be assured their child would be getting a device that would be ideal for learning for a number of years, and could be used at school and home.  Finally, there are  students that, for many reasons (financial and otherwise) won’t embrace the first two options.  We need to find ways to supply these students with a comparable technology to use at school.  Many schools have class sets of laptops that could be repurposed for this project; in other cases investments will need to be made.  The challenge is that the investments will be uneven (and this is difficult to do) with some schools requiring a greater percentage of investment than others.
Bradford Saron

The child-driven education - 1 to 1 Schools - 0 views

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    For those of us at the WASDA Leadership and Visioning Workshop, the 1:1 initiative was talked about a lot, not to mention the TED video from Sugata Mitra (Hole in the Wall). 
Vince Breunig

Educational Leadership:Reading: The Core Skill:Every Child, Every Day - 1 views

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    Great article on reading from Educational Leadership
Bradford Saron

Technology and the Whole Child - Practical Theory - 1 views

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    Justification for and defense of technology.
Bradford Saron

Douglas Rushkoff - Blog - 'Present Shock': The Future Isn't a Book, It's a Vi... - 2 views

  • "Twentieth century problems could be won, they had bad guys that could be beaten. You could go to the moon and stick a flag in the ground. But 21st century problems don’t have clear end points. Global warming, terrorism, child starvation: these are chronic problems that we can’t address through victory, but rather through developing sustainable, real time models or behaviors. These are not things you win, they’re things you learn to deal with and abate."
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    I love this. Lots to think about here. 
Bradford Saron

Reforming Chinese Education: What China Is Trying to Learn from America | Solutions - 0 views

  • Some educators have come to the conclusion that China’s outstanding academic success, as indicated by test scores, may be what is holding it back. Now, China is searching for better education models elsewhere. Although the government does not publicly endorse American education as the model, the public seems eager to embrace what is viewed as a more liberal and creative system—ironically, at a time when many in the United States are gazing enviously at the discipline and order of the Chinese system, and the No Child Left Behind Act has brought a new focus on testing.
  • For thousands of years, dynasties of emperors (with a few exceptions) followed the Confucian tradition of conformity, hierarchy, and respect for authority, and the Communist government continued this tradition by seeking to maintain control over all aspects of life. The result has been a highly disciplined but docile workforce. Fostering creativity suggests freedom, and though that prospect can be glimpsed in education reforms, the reality may still lie someway off.
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    A must read from Yong Zhao. 
Bradford Saron

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com - 1 views

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    Wow.
Bradford Saron

Needed: A New Model of Pedagogy : : Don Tapscott - 1 views

  • We need to move to a customized and collaborative model that embraces 21st century learning technology and techniques.  This is not about technology per se – it’s about a change in the relationship between the student and teacher in the learning process.
  • So Portugal launched the biggest program in the world to equip every child in the country with a laptop and access to the web and the world of collaborative learning. To pay for it, Portugal tapped into both government funds and money from mobile operators who were granted 3G licenses. That subsidized the sale of one million ultra-cheap laptops to teachers, school children, and adult learners. Here’s how it works: If you’re a teacher or a student, you can buy a laptop for 150 Euros (U.S. $207). You also get a discounted rate for broadband Internet access, wired or wireless. Low income students get an even bigger discount, and connected laptops are free or virtually free for the poorest kids. For the youngest students in Grades 1 to 4, the laptop/Internet access deal is even cheaper — 50 Euros for those who can pay; free for those who can’t. That’s only the start: Portugal has invested 400 million Euros to makes sure each classroom has access to the Internet. Just about every classroom in the public system now has an interactive smart board, instead of the old fashioned blackboard.
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    Don Tapscott is the author of a number of books on understanding the digital native. 
Bradford Saron

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice - 2 views

  • A steady diet of pundit Thomas Friedman, publisher Rupert Murdoch, and press releases from the Business Roundtable would convince most readers that CEO decisions in managing their businesses, technological choices, swings in financial markets, and global boom-and-bust cycles had little to do with the U.S. economy. While putting onto public schools the solution for economic downturns, rather than business executives, is a loony non-sequitur, it is a victory in shifting blame from corporate leaders’ flawed decisions to the shoulders of educators
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Wow. What a powerful comment.
  • It is also a myth that all U.S. schools are broken. Surely,most urban schools are low-performing and in many cases have earned the label of “dropout factories.” Washington, D.C, for example, would be a poster child for such districts. Moreover, although islands of excellence in urban districts do exist (including D.C.), they are seldom stable over time. Where the myth-making enters is when urban schools are conflated with all U.S. schools. Not only I but many others have pointed out that the U.S. has a three-tiered system of schooling where the top two tiers have mostly “successful” schools by current standards. The bottom tier contains failing urban schools. Thus, all U.S. schools are not failures by any standard.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      I have been looking for a good way to say this for two years. Cuban just did. 
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    One could add that public education got no credit during the boom times of the 1990s.
Bradford Saron

Brain scan: Making data dance | The Economist - 0 views

  • “THE biggest myth is that if we save all the poor kids, we will destroy the planet,” says Hans Rosling
  • that it no longer makes sense to consider the world as divided between developing and industrialised countries; and that people everywhere respond similarly to increasing levels of wealth and health, with higher material aspirations and smaller families.
  • The best measure of political stability of a country, he believes, is whether fertility rates are falling, because that indicates that women are being educated and basic health services are being provided.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Within a year Google had bought Gapminder, and a version of the bubble-graph software is now available free online under the name Google Motion Chart.
  • Do the data give any sneak previews of our future? “For most of human history, the world has been dominated by Asia, and it will be again within 40 years,” he says. “While nothing now can stop the surge to 9 billion, if the poorest 2 billion get improved child survival and the ability to buy bicycles and mobile phones, population growth will stop. We cannot have people at this level looking for basics like food and shoes. Lower-middle-income countries will also forge forward—but only if we invest in the right technologies to avoid severe climate change.”
  • “We can stop population growth, we can eradicate poverty, we can solve the energy and the climate issues but we have to make the right investments,” he says. “I know a good world is possible if we leave emotion aside and just work analytically.”
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    The data minded Hans Rosling allows us to peek into his mind and how he approaches the presentation of data and how we can learn from it. I love his approach to change: "Leave emotion aside, and just work analytically." 
Bradford Saron

Parents as tigers or wimps.The tiger mom. - 3 views

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    Zhao referred to the tiger mom. Here, Cuban gives an overview.
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