Group items tagged

There are two key areas where this is happening and where it is having an impact on organisational learning.Extensive use of public social media sites like YouTube, Scribd, Slideshare, Blogger, Wordpress, Wikipedia, and so on, that support the creation, sharing and commenting of content, as well as the co-creation of content, means that workers are now using similar approaches in their organisations to co-create and share their own content within their own work teams.Extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc where individuals have built a personal network of trusted friends, means that they are using similar approaches to build networks of trusted colleagues (both internally and externally), as well as power team workspaces and internal communities of practice.

This new approach will embrace both the use of external social media tools as well as internal tools, but what is clear these tools will need to support - as well as power - far wider approaches to learning, than has hitherto been the case. In fact as learning and working become much more closely integrated, “learning” will not be seen as a separate activity requiring separate, dedicated learning systems or platforms, but will need to be supported and enabled within the normal workflow collaboration systems.

“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.

Our data show that great teams: Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don't do both. Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as "asides" during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance.Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team.

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.

he Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) in Oregon, in a formal study asked higher education faculty what skills and knowledge they believe contribute to preparing students to succeed in college. Conley’s definition of college and career readiness is very basic: The level of preparation a student needs to succeed – without remediation – in credit-bearing general education courses or a two-year certificate program.1 The State of Colorado has also adopted this definition for college readiness.2 Such a definition might satisfy some community college and university faculty, but it is not comprehensive enough to really describe the preparation students need for the world of work or college level studies. There are productive behaviors that faculty expect in students and that employers expect in employees as well. EPIC went further to define college and career readiness by expanding the definition into one that is more comprehensive. The expansion includes more of the habits, skills, and attitudes that faculty and employers know are essential to success. It includes four areas:Key Content Knowledge (writing, simple research, core/GE subject area knowledge) Key Cognitive Strategies (inquisitiveness, reasoning, intellectual openness, precision and accuracy) Key Learning Skills and Techniques (self-control, note taking, time management) Key Transition Knowledge and Skills (understanding college or work as a system, interpersonal and social skills, culture of college)

nother resource for higher education faculty to consider is the work done by Arthur L. Costa regarding habits of mind for effective participation in the workplace and beyond. Costa’s recommended habits of mind are popular today and can be used for college students and employees alike. The 16 Habits of mind5 Persisting Communicating with clarity and precision Managing impulsivity Gathering data through all senses Listening with understanding and empathy Creating, imagining, innovating Thinking flexibly Responding with wonderment and awe Metacognition Taking responsible risks Striving for greater accuracy and precision Finding humor Questioning and problem posing Thinking interdependently Applying past knowledge to new situations Remaining open to continuous learning

It turns out to be remarkably straightforward: Give frequent feedback to teachers, use loads of data on individual students to guide their instruction, employ heavy tutoring, increase instructional time, and maintain very high expectations.

But here are the solutions that this challenge brings to mind. Eliminate paper from the budget and remove all copiers and computer printers from schools and the central office (with exceptions of essential need). “On this date, everything goes digital.” Create a professional development plan where all faculty and staff learn to teach themselves within a networked, digital, and info-abundant environment — it’s about Learning-Literacy. Although workshops would not completely disappear, the goal would be a culture where casual, daily, and self-directed professional development is engaged, shared, and celebrated — everyday! Then extend the learning-literacy workshops to the greater adult community. Establish a group, representing teachers, staff, administration, students, and community. Invite a “guru” or two to speak to the group about the “Why” of transforming education.  Video or broadcast the speeches to the larger community via local access, etc. The group will then write a document that describes the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the person who graduates from their schools — a description of their goal graduate. The ongoing work of writing this document will be available to the larger community for comment and suggestion. The resulting piece will remain fluidly adaptable. Teachers, school administrators, and support staff will work in appropriately assembled into overlapping teams to retool their curricula toward assuring the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the district’s goal graduate. Classroom curricula will evolve based on changing conditions and resources. To help keep abreast of conditions, teachers and support staff will shadow someone in the community for one day at least once a year and debrief with their teams identifying the skills and knowledge they saw contributing to success, and adapt their curricula appropriately.

The district budget will be re-written to exclude all items that do not directly contribute to the goal graduate or to supporting the institution(s) that contribute to the goal graduate. Part of that budget will be the assurance that all faculty, staff, and students have convenient access to networked, digital, and abundant information and that access will be at least 1 to 1. A learning environment or platform will be selected such as Moodle, though I use that example only as a means of description. The platform will have elements of course management system, social network and distributive portfolio. The goal of the platform will be to empower learning, facilitate assessment, and exhibit earned knowledge and skills to the community via student (and teacher) published information products that are imaginative, participatory and reflect today’s prevailing information landscape. Expand the district’s and the community’s notions of assessment to include data mining, but also formal and informal teacher, peer, and community evaluation of student produced digital products. Encourage (or require) teachers to produce imaginative information products that share their learning either related or unrelated to what they teach.  Also establish learning events where teachers and staff perform TED, or TELL (Teachers Expressing Leadership in Learning) presentations about their passions in learning to community audiences. Recognize that change doesn’t end and facilitate continued adapting of all plans and documents. No more five-year plans. Everything is timelined to the goal graduate.

95 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 use the Internet? And all of this is happening while we are in the midst of an explosive rise in mobile technology.

Access to richer graphics and data, as well as superior tools, is still limited on many affordable mobiles. At the same time, many schools continue to demonize cell phone use during school, which may be an outdated policy. Not only are there an increasing number of educational applications for mobiles but, as Blake-Plock suggests, prohibiting phones now means "disconnecting the kid from what's actually happening in most of our lives."

In 2009, the FCC began developing the National Broadband Plan, a work-in-progress that aims to increase broadband access across the country by providing additional infrastructure, incentives for companies to create low-cost access, educational programs, and much more.

Incremental change isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We’ve got to be much more ambitious. We’ve got to be disruptive. You can’t keep doing the same stuff and expect different results.

There are three basic skills that students need if they want to thrive in a knowledge economy: the ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving; the ability to communicate effectively; and the ability to collaborate.

they insist that their teachers come from the top one-third of their college graduating classes.

Principals have always been hired to administer schools. Superintendents expect their principals to set priorities consistent with district goals, use data for decision making, plan and schedule work of the school, oversee the budget and many other managerial tasks—including punctual submission of reports to the central office. Currently, efforts by some

we must engage in rigorous, disciplined inquiry and informed dissent and commentary” about our work and the social, political, and economic contexts in which our work is situated.

initiate the development of venues where it is possible to hear the perspectives of many groups, including those who oppose us, remaining open to new data or points of view, yet staying true to our work and our purpose—producing high quality educational leaders and rigorous research of consequence.

Policy recommendation: Immediately implement a new teacher evaluation system based 50% on student assessment data. Prohibit the use of experience or degree level as a basis for compensation.

Policy recommendation:  Set in place a strategy to turn over all host district schools, across all grade levels to the charter operator.

Conclusions & Implications: The strongest correlate of true teaching effectiveness was the estimate of teacher contribution to student achievement on the same test a year later. However, this correlation was only modest (.30). All other measures including effectiveness measures based on alternative tests and student, parent and administrator perceptions of teacher effectiveness were less correlated with the original value-added estimate, thus raising questions about the usefulness of any of these other measures. Because the value-added measure turns out to be the best predictor of itself in a subsequent year, this estimate alone trumps all others in terms of usefulness for making decisions regarding teacher retention (especially in times of staffing reduction) and should also be considered a primary factor in compensation decisions. Note that while it may appear that school administrators, students and their parents have highly consistent views regarding which teachers are more and less effective (note the higher correlations across administrator ratings of teachers, and student and parent ratings), we consider these findings unimportant because none of these perception-based ratings were as correlated with the original value-added estimate as the value-added estimate was with itself (which of course, is the TRUE measure of effectiveness).

The best way to understand the expectations of a particular medium is to participate in that medium and identify its genre expectations as they emerge.

Students need to think of their online data along the dimensions of: * accessibility* searchability* persistence

teaching our students about the kairos of digital media, its accessibility and persistence, and the extent to which it is public and private will prepare them not only for the writing situations that they find themselves in now, but also those they will face in the future.