Teaching With Documents:
Lesson Plans
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Teaching With Documents - US History - 102 views
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Teaching with Historic Places--a Program of the National Park Service - 50 views
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shared by Dimitris Tzouris on 25 Jun 10
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Techne » Mobile Computing and Education - What are the Conditions for Innovat... - 8 views
blogs.nitle.org/...-the-conditions-for-innovation
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We use new technologies in innovative ways to solve problems. The bigger the problem, the more creative and innovative we need to be. It’s like the United State space program in the 1960’s and 70’s. The huge advancements in fuel cells, integrated circuits, or even freeze-dried foods were not the results of research units considering how space travel might work; rather, they were the results of a national imperative to put a person on the moon within a decade.
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When we have a working, effective systems – like liberal education – new technologies like mobile computing find less context for innovation.
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Henry Clay and the American System for kids *** - 6 views
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Taxing all foreign goods, to boost the sales of US products and protect manufacturers from cheap British goods
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● Introducing a protective Tariff to enable the nation to raise money from these taxes and at the same time protect the nation's goods from cheaper priced foreign items
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The American System helped to fuel the belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States
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Roads and canals were built that enabled Americans to travel and the Cumberland Road, the Erie Canal were constructed
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● Henry Clay's American System eventually ran out of steam during the administration of President Jackson
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Nat Geo MapMaker Kits - National Geographic Society - 34 views
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2.2 The Third Estate as the voice of the nation - French Revolution - OpenLearn - The O... - 24 views
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He argued that sovereignty, or ultimate political power in a state, derives not from the monarch but from the ‘people’ or ‘nation’, that it must be exercised in their interest and for their benefit, that it should be controlled and circumscribed by laws, and that the ruler's tenure of office is in the nature of a trust exercised for the people's benefit and with their consent, underpinned by an implicit agreement or ‘social contract’
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additional boost, first from the success of the American Revolution and the summoning of a constitutional convention by the United States in 1787, and now in France by the summoning of the Estates-General.
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Sieyès's purpose is to isolate and marginalise the nobility in his readers’ eyes, and to expose it to their critical censure. In the circumstances of 1789, his message took on startling implications about the respective roles of the nobility and the Third Estate in the Estates-General.
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The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 48 views
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there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
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it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children
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Students are labeled as "creative" if they display a knack for art or music, and sometimes in writing, however, they are rarely recognized as creative in math or science where a lot of creativity is not only needed, but excellent for learning within those very two disciplines.
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This is precisely why creativity education is important. It is needed everywhere, not just in the arts. Those teaching outside of arts education need to start recognizing the importance of creative thinking as well.
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When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”
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The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process.
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When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions. Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with. Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.
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those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better
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Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
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What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.
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kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.
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highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.
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When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates. They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.
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solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others
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When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.
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The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach
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those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.
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The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer
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“As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”
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In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.
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there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
United Nations Library - 0 views
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Iraq Holding First Election since U.S. Troop Withdrawal | United States Institute of Peace - 5 views
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s itself a triumph of sorts
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The process does, however, face some challenges.
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three provinces forming the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) hold their elections separately.
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parties representing the ethnic and religious diversity of the province have not been able to agree to hold elections
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Baghdad decided to postpone elections in the Sunni-majority western provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for security reasons
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In terms of a national identity, it might imply that certain provinces are less important than others
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Given the toxic political environment, the rivalries and electoral history in Iraq, the integrity of elections will come into question by some.
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Political and other differences are normal, but it is important that they are dealt with peacefully through a process of dialogue and problem-solving
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Elections and Events 1811-1849 - The Library - 11 views
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Indirect elections are “in use between 1840 and 1872. Indirect elections enhanced the political power of the hacendados, because voting districts often coincided directly with the boundaries of haciendas. The first stage of an indirect election, when voters gathered to choose electors, occurred in the cantones, the administrative sub-units of a municipality. Cantones often were made up of nothing more than one or two haciendas, giving landowners a clear advantage to control the selection of electores. Above and beyond all other aspects of the electoral system, the oral vote [in use until 1950] insured the predominance of patron-client relations” (pages 65-66). Describes process for recording oral votes. “Throughout the nineteenth century, national politics followed to a great extent the rise and fall of alliances between departmental networks. For instance, in the mid 1840s San Vicente and San Miguel were allied against Sonsonate and San Salvador” (page 163).
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o Vasconcelos “al término de su gestión promovió su reelección, para lo cual reformó la Constitución el 9 de marzo de 1849. Deseaba otro mandato constitucional de dos años para reconstruir Centroamérica. Francisco Dueñas y el Coronel Nicolás Angulo se opusieron a esta reforma, alegando que se quebrantaba el ordenamiento constitucional” (page 140). Figeac 1938: “Don Doroteo Vasconcelos se portó a la altura del deber patriótico en el primer período de su Administración, pero cometió un grave e imperdonable error: permitió que lo reeligieran para un segundo período presidencial. La Constitución Política entonces vigente, prohibía en su artículo 44 la reelección del presidente de la República, y para dar el paso apuntado se dispuso la reforma [de 9 de marzo de 1849 de la Cámara de Senadores]” (page 171). Leistenschneider 1980: “En marzo de 1849 la Asamblea Legislativa reforma el Art. 44 de la Constitución Nacional, el cual fijaba el período presidencial para dos años, prohibiendo la reelección; la reforma permite la reelección de Presidente por una sola vez” (page 88). Monterey 1978: Marzo 17, 1849—“La Asamblea Legislativa…convoca a los pueblos a elecciones de Presidente del Estado, Diputados y Senadores” (page 85). December Monterey 1978: Diciembre 1849—“Se efectúan en el Estado de El Salvador las elecciones de Autoridades Superiores; fué reelecto el Presidente don Doroteo Vasconcelos” (page 93). “Se presentaron como principales candidatos a la Presidencia de la República, los señores Doroteo Vasconcelos y Lic. Francisco Dueñas” (page 94). El SalvadorAcronyms1811-18491850-18991900-19341935-19691970-19791980-19891990-19992000-2009More than one electionSources UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla,
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shared by Tracy Tuten on 20 Sep 12
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How to Fix the Schools - NYTimes.com - 1 views
www.nytimes.com/...ra-how-to-fix-the-schools.html
how to nytimes schools education pedagogy higher ed
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Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.
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Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so.
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His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
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Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”
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High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.
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How Do We Transform Our Schools? - Education Next : Education Next - 26 views
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And yet the machines have made hardly any impact.
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An organization’s natural instinct is to cram the innovation into its existing operating model to sustain what it already does. This is the predictable course, the logical course—and the wrong course.
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The way to implement an innovation so that it will transform an organization is to implement it disruptively—not by using it to compete against the existing paradigm and serve existing customers, but to let it compete against “non-consumption,” where the alternative is nothing at all.
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At first glance there appears to be little non-consumption of education in the United States since students are required to receive schooling. Looking deeper, however, reveals many pockets of non-consumption where students would be delighted with computer-based learning rather than the alternative, nothing at all. Take Advanced Placement (AP) courses for starters. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 33 percent of schools nationwide offered no AP classes in 2002–03. Those that do provide AP courses today only offer a fraction of the 34 courses for which AP exams are available, because they lack the resources to hire more AP teachers or there is not enough student demand to justify a dedicated course and teacher.
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TakingITGlobal - Inspire. Inform. Involve. - 40 views
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This seems like it can be a great way to harness the youth's appetite for Web 2.0. I am seeking a collaboration project with another school in some other part of the world other than the United States. I would like to group my students on Diigo with student at another school to work on something together. Anyone interested?
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Hi Phil, Not sure if you want to use the environment or sustainability as theme, but Caretakers of the Environment International (CEI) partners are often seeking ongoing collaboration with environmental projects that students can share. It might take some digging, but I suggest going to http://www.caretakers4all.org, click on some of the national branch links and try connecting with people. I coordinate a group from Salem, OR and we have partners in Chicago and NY. Good luck!
United Nations Cyberschoolbus - 0 views
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Dissent Magazine - Winter 2011 Issue - Got Dough? Public Scho... - 59 views
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To justify their campaign, ed reformers repeat, mantra-like, that U.S. students are trailing far behind their peers in other nations, that U.S. public schools are failing. The claims are specious. Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three.
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Drilling students on sample questions for weeks before a state test will not improve their education. The truly excellent charter schools depend on foundation money and their prerogative to send low-performing students back to traditional public schools. They cannot be replicated to serve millions of low-income children. Yet the reform movement, led by Gates, Broad, and Walton, has convinced most Americans who have an opinion about education (including most liberals) that their agenda deserves support.
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THE COST of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year
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Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes
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Thoreau - Walking - Webtext - 41 views
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When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle south-west, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks, would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits, which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide for the thousandth time, that I will walk into the south-west or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
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I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west.