Group items tagged

Secretary Duncan said, U.S. educational reform policy is motivated by a belief that the U.S. educational system is particularly failing disadvantaged children. Yet an analysis of international test score levels and trends shows that in important ways disadvantaged U.S. children perform better, relative to children in comparable nations, than do middle-class and advantaged children. More careful analysis of these levels and trends may lead policymakers to reconsider their assumption that almost all improvement efforts should be directed to the education of disadvantaged children and few such efforts to the education of middle-class and advantaged children

A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).

Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.

Henry Jenkins COMM 202 Introduction to Communications Technology This course is intended as an introduction to the ways new and emerging communications technologies impact our culture. While the primary focus will be on digital and mobile technologies and practices (contemporary new media), the course will also consider a range of older media when they were new - including print culture, cinema, television, recorded sound, photography, and the telephone. The course is divided into three broad units: Understanding Technological Change is intended to offer broad conceptual frameworks for thinking about the relations between technology and culture. Reinventing... takes as its starting point the ways that the emergence of digital, networked, and mobile communications technology has impacted pre-existing media forms. Rethinking... examines a range of institutions and practices as they are re-imagined in response to the introduction of new communications technologies. Taken as a whole, this class will introduce students to: Core issues concerning the study of communications technologies The process of media in transition The ways that new media impact existing media and institutions Core digital platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, eBay, Flickr, Second Life, etc.) and the ways they are reshaping our everyday lives.

This book is the result of my attempts to answer these questions with data and evidence from a variety of sources. Essentially, I reached the following conclusions: The current education reform efforts that attempt to provide a common, homogenous, and standardized educational experience, e.g., the Common Core Standards Initiative in the U.S., are not only futile but also harmful to preparing our children for the future. Massive changes brought about by population growth, technology, and globalization not only demand but also create opportunities for “mass entrepreneurship” and thus require everyone to be globally minded, creative, and entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurship is no longer limited to starting or owning a business, but is expanded to social entrepreneurship, policy entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship. Traditional schooling aims to prepare employees rather than creative entrepreneurs. As a result the more successful traditional schooling is (often measured by test scores in a few subjects), the more it stifles creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit. To cultivate creative and entrepreneurial talents is much more than adding an entrepreneurship course or program to the curriculum. It requires a paradigm shift—from employee-oriented education to entrepreneur-oriented education, from prescribing children’s education to supporting their learning, and from reducing human diversity to a few employable skills to enhancing individual talents. The elements of entrepreneur-oriented education have been proposed and practiced by various education leaders and institutions for a long time but they have largely remained on the fringe. What we need to do is to move them to the mainstream for all children.

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.

My Perfect School I’ve been asked on several occasions what my perfect school looks like. Today as it stands in January 2012 this would be my perfect school. PreK - 1st Grade: 1 iPad for every two students: iPads stay at school owned and managed by the school. 2 - 3rd Grade: 1:1 iPad program: Each student has their own iPad and iPads primarily stay at school and can be checked out by the parents to take home if need/wanted. 4th Grade: 1:1 iPad and 1:1 Laptop: The iPads are allowed to be taken home and are tied to a guardians account. The school purchases a set of “standard apps” anything above that is up to the parents. The laptops stay at school and can be checked out by the parents to take home if need/wanted. 5th Grade: 1:1 iPad and 1:1 Laptop: Same as 4th grade however the students at some point during the year gain the responsibility of taking both the iPad and the Laptop home. 5th Grade is a great time to do this because: In 5th grade students still only have one classroom teacher. This sense of classroom community is a great place to talk about responsibility and practice it. A good time to practice taking care of your devices before hitting middle school where students have 4 to 6 different classes in 4 to 6 different classrooms with 4 to 6 different teachers. Allow students to learn to organize their digital lives so they are not trying to figure this out at the same time they are learning a new “schooling” system of lockers, freedom and multiple classes. 6 -12th Grade: 1:1 iPad and 1:1 Laptop: Both devices become the sole responsibility of the student. The school loads a “standard” set of software on all devices and the students/parents are responsible for managing the rest.

Reformy myth #1: That every state has done its part and more, to pour money into high need, especially poor urban districts. It hasn’t worked, mainly because teachers are lazy and overpaid and not judged on effectiveness, measured by value-added scores. So, now is the time to slash the budgets of those high need districts, where all of the state aid is flowing, and fire the worst teachers. And, it will only help, not hurt.

Reformy myth #2: The only aid to be cut, the aid that should be cut, and the aid that must be cut in the name of the public good, is aid to high need, large urban districts in particular. The argument appears to be that handing down state aid cuts as a flat percent of state aid is the definition of “shared sacrifice.” And the garbage analysis of district Return on Investment by the Center for American Progress, of course, validates that high need urban districts tend to be least efficient anyway. Therefore, levying the largest cuts on those districts is entirely appropriate.

Reformy myth #3: The general public is fed up and don’t want to waste any more of their hard earned tax dollars on public schools. They are fed up with greedy teachers with gold plated benefits and fed up with high paid administrators. They don’t care about small class sizes and…well… are just fed up with all of this taxing and spending on public schools that stink. As a result, the only answer is to cut that spending and simultaneously make schools better.

1. Go to the website here

It starts with the fact that globalization and the information technology revolution have gone to a whole new level. Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled smartphones, the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected. This is the single most important trend in the world today. And it is a critical reason why, to get into the middle class now, you have to study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before. All this technology and globalization are eliminating more and more “routine” work — the sort of work that once sustained a lot of middle-class lifestyles.

If teachers are to help students change their incorrect beliefs, they first need to know what those are.

Knowledge of student misconceptions is a critical tool for science teachers. It can help teachers to decide which demonstration to do in class, and to start the lesson by asking students to predict what’s going to happen. If a teacher doesn’t have this special kind of knowledge, though, it’s nearly impossible to change students’ ideas.

hese skills are not taught by rote learning alone, but rather are learned through discovery, inquiry, and exploration. Many of these skills cannot be successfully taught through an application or website, but must be experienced in class and facilitated by a teacher.

Just because an educational tool isn’t perfect does not mean it should be disregarded. Just because an online classroom does not replace the role of a teacher doesn’t mean that this learning tool has no educational merit. Though there are thousands of technological tools that help enhance instruction, it doesn’t mean that teachers will be rendered obsolete.

Epistemologies of the Digital Age Epistemology is the study of knowledge and, according to Shaffer, every age has its own epistemology, i.e., what it means to know something. Computers — which are increasingly becoming ubiquitous in work and school — provide the means to think in new ways, which will fundamentally reconfigure our thinking and theories of knowledge. Computers in general, and epistemic games in particular, are structuring new epistemologies for our digital age. “The epistemology of School,” in Shaffer’s words, “is the epistemology of the Industrial Revolution — of creating wealth through mass production of standardized goods. School is a game about thinking like a factory worker. It is a game with an epistemology or right and wrong answers in which Students are supposed to follow instructions, whether they make sense in the moment or not.” While this kind of epistemology may have been appropriate and even innovative for the Industrial Revolution, it is outdated for our informational economy and digital age. Being literate in the digital age uses reading and writing as a foundation to build upon, but they are no longer solely sufficient. Students must learn to produce various kinds of media and learn how to solve problems using simulations.