It is "tracking." I'm not sure what his point is here.
Unfortunately, the efforts and philosophies of otherwise well-meaning individuals have attempted to eliminate the achievement gap by eliminating achievement.
productive learning is the learning process which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more
manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information,
attention literacy—the ability to exert some degree of mental control over our use of technology rather than simply being distracted by it
"learning ready,"
MIT Open Courseware or courses offered through Khan Academy will provide all the knowledge they need to pass a typical test on the subject
learn, MIT Open Courseware or courses offered through Khan Academy will provide all the knowledge they need to pass a typical test on the subject.
The reality is that I no longer need to send my children to a school to learn algebra, U.S. history, or French.
That doesn't mean that we throw all information and knowledge out of the curriculum. No question, all kids need to be able to read and write effectively, understand enough math to function in their daily lives, and have a basic understanding of science, history, and more. But we must be willing to consider that in a world full of access to knowledge and information, it may be more important to develop students who can take advantage of that knowledge when they need it than to develop students who memorize a slice of information that schools offer in case they might need it someday
But giving students devices and access is only a small part of the equation
Gone are the days when you could blow off a series of homework assignments throughout the semester but pull through with a respectable grade by cramming for and acing that all-important mid-term exam. Getting good grades today is far more about keeping up with and producing quality homework—not to mention handing it in on time.
girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. They also are more likely than boys to feel intrinsically satisfied with the whole enterprise of organizing their work, and more invested in impressing themselves and their teachers with their efforts.
boys approach schoolwork differently. They are more performance-oriented. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence
“The testing situation may underestimate girls’ abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys’ abilities.”
It is easy to for boys to feel alienated in an environment where homework and organization skills account for so much of their grades.
it appears that the overwhelming trend among teachers is to assign zero points for late work. In one survey by Conni Campbell, associate dean of the School of Education at Point Loma Nazarene University, 84 percent of teachers did just that.
It took a politician to show the
word’s educators how to communicate, teach, frame a problem, provide facts and detail,
THEN a solution.
All
children in school by 2015, with massive injection of funds by the private
sector, public sector, religious institutions and not-for-profits, all given
wings by technology, mobiles and the web.
shouldn't we admit we got it wrong" and asks that
we put it right
'Let's march. Let's march for education and
let's march for it together.”
Under a new set of social media guidelines (pdf) issued by the New York City Department of Education, teachers are required to obtain a supervisor's approval before creating a "professional social media presence," which is broadly defined as "any form of online publication or presence that allows interactive communication, including, but not limited to, social networks, blogs, internet websites, internet forums, and wikis."
One of the joys of retirement is having the time to reflect on our profession. Looking back over the 37 years I spent as an educator-20 of them as a teacher and 17 as an administrator-and reflecting on my own schooling as well, I think of the many highly effective teachers I've known. Spanning all grade levels, they engaged students in learning to the point of excitement and kindled the desire to keep on learning.
So what did these teachers have in common?
Go right! Go right! Go right!” the students were shouting. “Now down, down, down, downdowndown!” A few had lifted themselves onto their knees and were pounding invisible keyboards in front of them. “Whoa!” they yelled in unison, some of them instinctively ducking as Doyle’s sprite narrowly avoided a patrolling enemy.
Had he taught anything?
snap up more points and calmly offered a piece of advice. “That extra movement cost you some precious time, Al,” he said, sounding almost professorial. “There are more points up there than what you need to finish.
watched a middle-school teacher named Al Doyle give a lesson, though not your typical lesson. This was New York City, a noncharter public school in an old building on a nondescript street near Gramercy Park, inside an ordinary room that looked a lot like all the other rooms around it, with fluor
Relationships among educators within a school range from vigorously healthy to dangerously competitive. Strengthen those relationships, and you improve professional practice.
A parent of two middle school-aged children, Will Richardson has been blogging about the intersection of social online learning networks and education for the past 10 years at Weblogg-ed.com. He is a former public school educator for 22 years, and is a co-founder of Powerful Learning Practice, a unique long-term, job-embedded professional development program that has mentored over 3,500 teachers worldwide in the last four years.
A Tedx video describing the state of education today and giving several examples of teaching for learning instead of teaching to the exam. A powerful 14 minute presentation.
tackle what colleges were doing poorly: graduating students. Half the students who enroll in post-secondary education never get a degree but still accumulate debt
school spends millions to employ more than 160 “admissions counselors” who man the phones, especially on weekends, guiding prospective students into the right degree program
vast majority are working adults, many with families, whose lives rarely align with an academic timetable.
“College is designed in every way for that 20 percent—cost, time, scheduling, everything,” says LeBlanc. He set out to create an institution for the other 80 percent, one that was flexible and offered a seamless online experience
low completion rate can be blamed partly on the fact that college is still designed for 18-year-olds who are signing up for an immersive, four-year experience replete with football games and beer-drinking. But those traditional students make up only 20 percent of the post-secondary population.
online courses are created centrally and then farmed out to a small army of adjuncts hired for as little as $2,200 a class. Those adjuncts have scant leeway in crafting the learning experience.
An instructor’s main job is to swoop in when a student is in trouble. Often, they don’t pick up the warning signs themselves. Instead, SNHU’s predictive analytics platform plays watchdog, sending up a red flag to an instructor when a student hasn’t logged on recently or has spent too much time on an assignment
highly standardized courses, and adjuncts who act more like coaches than professors
Very clear imagery. He opens the essay with his personal anecdote to set the scene for this discussion. It also lets the reader know right away that he is a gun owner.
What I was doing was perfectly legal. In North Carolina, long-gun transfers by private sellers require no background checks.
so long as the buyer has a purchase permit or a concealed-carry license.
I felt uneasy
He liked the rifle. I needed the cash. We shook hands, and off we went.
There is rarely a moment when I’m not within reach of a firearm.
We don’t touch the guns or draw them from their holsters. They are unseen and unspoken of, but always there.
Rarely do we mention what we carry
I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew the rules: Always assume a firearm is loaded. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Know your target and what’s beyond it.
Guns were often a bridge between father and son.
or my family, guns had always been a means of putting food on the table. My father never owned a handgun. He kept nothing for home defense.
had a gun put to my head
I can remember that
steel
I can remember
In the end, what happened was swept under the rug. My parents said the school was probably trying to keep the story off the news.
surrounded myself with the people I did as a form of protection.
I dropped to the ground as gunfire rang from a car at a bonfire party.
I pushed friends behind the brick foundation of a house as a shootout erupted over pills. There were times when someone could have easily been shot and killed.
his service weapon pushed into the base of my skull.
I stood there trembling while they apologized.
Jackson County
I found a community that reminded me of my grandmother, where folks still kept big gardens and canned the vegetables they grew. They still filled the freezer with meat taken by rod and rifle — trout and turkey, dove and rabbit, deer, bear, anything in season.
hared passion for wilderness and time spent in the field with gun in hand.
Those types of things are rare now, even in places like Appalachia.
A few weeks later, the boy took that .30-30 lever action into the field and killed his first deer with it — the same as his uncle, his grandfather and great-grandfather.
centuries of experience gathered around the campfire each night
the .308 blew apart the morning.
There is a sadness that only hunters know, a moment when lament overshadows any desire for celebration
Life is sustained by death
the killing is not easy, nor should it be.
would feed me for a year
I asked if there was anything I could’ve done differently to make him more comfortable when he first approached the truck.
He smiled and told me: “But this is South Carolina. Most every car I pull over has a gun.”
As I headed toward the mountains, all I could think about was Philando Castile,
situation was re
All I could think about was how things might have been different if the
versed and that young black state trooper with braces had been behind the wheel, a white trooper cautiously approaching the car.
It was impossible not to recognize how gun culture reeks of privilege.
This guy knows his guns. Even though his essay doesn't cite research, you can see his ethos through his personal experience and his use of precise jargon.
There were always guns, but nothing like the assault weapons that line the shelves today.
firearms whose sole purpose would be to take human life if I were left with no other choice.
I’ve witnessed how quickly a moment can turn to a matter of life and death. I live in a region where 911 calls might not bring blue lights for an hour. Whether it’s preparation or paranoia, I plan for worst-case scenarios and trust no one but myself for my survival.
they joke about the minute hand of the doomsday clock inching closer to midnight.
as they wait for the end of the world.
they own them because they’re fun at the range and affordable to shoot. They use the rifles for punching paper, a few for shooting coyotes. E
step as close to Title II of the federal Gun Control Act as legally possible without the red tape and paperwork. They fire bullets into Tannerite targets that blow pumpkins into the sky.
None of them see a connection between the weapons they own and the shootings at Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland. They see mug shots of James Holmes, Omar Mateen, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz — “crazier than a shithouse rat,” they say. “If it hadn’t been that rifle, he’d have done it with something else.”
Where is the fault in this logic? It just doesn't add up.
They fear that what starts as an assault-weapons ban will snowball into an attack on everything in the safe.
I understand what’s at stake
I think about that boy picking up that AR in Cabela’s, and I’m torn between the culture I grew up with and how that culture has devolved.
changes I know must come, changes to what types of firearms line the shelves and to the background checks and ownership requirements needed to carry one out the door.
an unrelenting fear of what could be lost
a subsistence culture already threatened by the loss of public land, rising costs and a widening rural-urban divide; the right of individuals to protect their own lives and the lives of their families.
He cut a look in my direction as if I’d absolutely lost my mind.
I’d be fine with an assault-weapons ban
question is irrelevant, that the reason doesn’t supersede the right.
Despite everything we have in common, despite the fact that he’s my best friend and we were going squirrel hunting in a few days, the two of us fundamentally disagree
As sad as it is to say, the silence is easier
there were kids on the television in the background, high school survivors who were willing to say what we are not, and I was ashamed.
ne of those pretty, late-winter days with bluebird skies when the trees are still naked on the mountains and you can see every shadow and contour of the landscape.
The muzzle was pointed in our direction. Ashley was terrified.
The truth is, there are guns I feel justified in owning and guns I feel belong on battlefields.
I know that part of what they’re missing or refusing to acknowledge is how fear ushered in this shift in gun culture over the past two decades.
Fear is the factor no one wants to address — fear of criminals, fear of terrorists, fear of the government’s turning tyrannical and, perhaps more than anything else, fear of one another.
I recognize this, because I recognize my own and I recognize that despite all I know and believe I can’t seem to overcome it.
I don’t buy into that only-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun bravado.
I have no visions of being a hero. Instead, I find myself looking for where I’d run, asking myself what I would get behind. The gun is the last resort. It’s the final option when all else is exhausted.
we walked, I could feel the pistol holstered on my side, the weight of my gun tugging at my belt. The fear was lessened by knowing that there was a round chambered, that all it would take is the downward push of a safety and the short pull of a trigger for that bullet to breathe. I felt safer knowing that gun was there.
How does fear drive so many of us to distrust and hate our fellow Americans? How does the Gun Lobby and the NRA use this fear to their advantage? What role does fear play in racial prejudice? How do we combat and address this fear?
In many kindergarten classrooms there is no playtime at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.
Then you can't really blame teachers here. Policy/curriculum has to change.
“We have had a politically and commercially driven effort to make kindergarten a one-size-smaller first grade. Why in the world are we trying to teach the elementary curriculum at the early childhood level?”
Finnish children similarly have a lengthy and playful childhood, not beginning formal schooling until age 7. Yet Finland consistently gets the highest scores on international exams.
Instructional materials like these imply that teachers can stop inappropriate
use of sources through three strategies: (1) teaching students from early grades
the nuts and bolts of crediting all sources they use; (2) designing
plagiarism-proof assignments that spell out how works should be cited and that
include personal reflection and alternative final projects like creating a
brochure; and (3) communicating to students that you're laying down the law on
plagiarism ("I'll be on the lookout for this in your papers, you know").
Any worthwhile guide to preventing plagiarism should
Discuss intellectual property and what it means to "own" a text.
Discuss how to evaluate both online and print-based sources (for
example, comparing the quality and reliability of a Web site created by an
amateur with the reliability of a peer-reviewed scholarly article).
Guide students through the hard work of engaging with and
understanding their sources, so students don't conclude that creating a
technically perfect bibliography is enough.
Acknowledge that teaching students how to write from sources
involves more than telling students that copying is a crime and handing them a
pile of source citation cards.
That pedagogy should both teach source-reading skills and take into
consideration our increasingly wired world. And it should communicate that
plagiarism is wrong in terms of what society values about schools and learning,
not just in terms of arbitrary rules.
through formal education, people learn skills they can apply elsewhere—but
taking shortcuts lessens such learning.
communicate why writing is important. Through writing, people learn, communicate
with one another, and discover and establish their own authority and identity.
Even students who feel comfortable with collaboration and uneasy with individual
authorship need to realize that acknowledged collaboration—such as a coauthored
article like this one—is very different from unacknowledged use of another
person's work.
Text2cloud is a collaborative effort to explore idea-driven writing with the web imagined as the primary destination. Engaging with the end of privacy, school violence, censorship, and the transformation of literacy, text2cloud aims to spur similar uses of multimedia for reflection, meditation, deliberation, and speculation--in sum, the introspective arts on associates with the life of the mind.
Threads on campus violence, how the loss of privacy in the digital age is transforming life on campus, and how public life is changed by the proliferation of concealed cameras. Navigational makeover introduced to improve reading experience. Feedback welcome.
"At the time of publication, it was leading up to 100 years since the cessation of fighting at the end of the First World War. The destruction of life, lands and families finally ceased for a couple of decades and bringing to mind the conflict of modern-day young generations is still important as lessons can be learned from those tragic battles."