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marcmancinelli

Think Again: Education - By Ben Wildavsky | Foreign Policy - 31 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...think_again_education

education international finland

shared by marcmancinelli on 27 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • But when the results from the first major international math test came out in 1967, the effort did not seem to have made much of a difference. Japan took first place out of 12 countries, while the United States finished near the bottom.
  • By the early 1970s, American students were ranking last among industrialized countries in seven of 19 tests of academic achievement and never made it to first or even second place in any of them. A decade later, "A Nation at Risk," the landmark 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, cited these and other academic failings to buttress its stark claim that "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
    • marcmancinelli
      marcmancinelli on 27 Feb 11
       
      US has long been mediocre or at the bottom of international comparisons, but it's not a zer-sum game
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • J. Michael Shaughnessy, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, argues that the latest PISA test "underscores the need for integrating reasoning and sense making in our teaching of mathematics." Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, claims that the same results "tell us … that if you don't make smart investments in teachers, respect them, or involve them in decision-making, as the top-performing countries do, students pay a price."
    • marcmancinelli
      marcmancinelli on 27 Feb 11
       
      People use crises to advance their own agendas...
  • But don't expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age -- there wasn't one.
  • According to the most recent statistics, the U.S. share of foreign students fell from 24 percent in 2000 to just below 19 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan saw increased market shares from their 2000 levels, though they are still far below the American numbers.
  • And even with its declining share, the United States still commands 9 percentage points more of the market than its nearest competitor, Britain.
  • A 2008 Rand Corp. report found that nearly two-thirds of the most highly cited articles in science and technology come from the United States, and seven in 10 Nobel Prize winners are employed by American universities. And the United States spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.
  • But over the long term, exactly where countries sit in the university hierarchy will be less and less relevant, as Americans' understanding of who is "us" and who is "them" gradually changes. Already, a historically unprecedented level of student and faculty mobility has become a defining characteristic of global higher education. Cross-border scientific collaboration, as measured by the volume of publications by co-authors from different countries, has more than doubled in two decades.
  • marcmancinelli on 27 Feb 11
     
    A great perspective piece on American education compared to the world.
Roland O'Daniel

Scientific American: 60-Second Science - 80 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...podcasts.cfm

web2.0 podcast science scientific american

shared by Roland O'Daniel on 23 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Roland O'Daniel on 23 Aug 10
     
    Great weekly 60 second podcast that can be used as an incredible starter. I just listened to three podcasts that involved solar power, Mars, laughter and morality, and regressions to liars. If you can't start a conversation or class with those topics you aren't very imaginative!
Maureen Greenbaum

How Big Data Is Taking Teachers Out of the Lecturing Business: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

adaptive learning pedagogy education ASU Arizona Knewton math

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • David Heckman, a mathematician, was accustomed to lecturing to the class, but he had to take on the role of a roving mentor, responding to raised hands and coaching students when they got stumped
  • Like institutions at every level of American education, it is going through some wrenching changes. The university has lost 50 percent of its state funding over the past five years.
  • alarmingly high numbers of students showing up on campus unprepared to do college-level work.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • more efficient way to shepherd students through basic general-education requirements—particularly those courses, such as college math, that disproportionately cause students to drop out
  • That fall, with little debate or warning, it placed 4,700 students into computerized math courses. Last year some 50 instructors coached 7,600 Arizona State students through three entry-level math courses running on Knewton software. By the fall of 2014 ASU aims to adapt six more courses, adding another 19,000 students a year to the adaptive-learning ranks.
Kris Cody

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens: Scientific A... - 103 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

education reading research ebooks epub books

shared by Kris Cody on 10 May 13 - No Cached
  • prevented them from zooming out to see a neighborhood, state or country
    • Monica Williams-Mitchell
      Monica Williams-Mitchell on 10 May 13
       
      This explains, in real terms, why I've had so much struggle with online reading! Very interesting article.
  • Because of these preferences—and because getting away from multipurpose screens improves concentration—people consistently say that when they really want to dive into a text, they read it on paper
    • Kris Cody
      Kris Cody on 11 May 13
       
      This is backed up by a recent article: Faris, Michael J., and Stuart A. Selber. "E-Book Issues In Composition: A Partial Assessment And Perspective For Teachers." Composition Forum 24.(2011): ERIC. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
  • Surveys and consumer reports also suggest that the sensory experiences typically associated with reading—especially tactile experiences—matter to people more than one might assume.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • When reading a paper book, one can feel the paper and ink and smooth or fold a page with one's fingers; the pages make a distinctive sound when turned; and underlining or highlighting a sentence with ink permanently alters the paper's chemistry.
  • discernible size, shape and weight.
  • Although many old and recent studies conclude that people understand what they read on paper more thoroughly than what they read on screens, the differences are often small. Some experiments, however, suggest that researchers should look not just at immediate reading comprehension, but also at long-term memory.
  • When taking the quiz, volunteers who had read study material on a monitor relied much more on remembering than on knowing, whereas students who read on paper depended equally on remembering and knowing.
  • E-ink is easy on the eyes because it reflects ambient light just like a paper book, but computer screens, smartphones and tablets like the iPad shine light directly into people's faces.
  • the American Optometric Association officially recognizes computer vision syndrome.
  • People who took the test on a computer scored lower and reported higher levels of stress and tiredness than people who completed it on paper.
  • Although people in both groups performed equally well on the READ test, those who had to scroll through the continuous text did not do as well on the attention and working-memory tests.
  • Subconsciously, many people may think of reading on a computer or tablet as a less serious affair than reading on paper. Based on a detailed 2005 survey of 113 people in northern California, Ziming Liu of San Jose State University concluded that people reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts—they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper, and are more likely to read a document once, and only once.
  • When reading on screens, people seem less inclined to engage in what psychologists call metacognitive learning regulation—strategies such as setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way
  • Perhaps she and her peers will grow up without the subtle bias against screens that seems to lurk in the minds of older generations.
  • They think of using an e-book, not owning an e-book,"
  • Participants in her studies say that when they really like an electronic book, they go out and get the paper version.
  • When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But text is not the only way to read.
  • Monica Williams-Mitchell on 10 May 13
     
    it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text.
  • Kris Cody on 11 May 13
     
    it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text.
Roland Gesthuizen

Digital Divide and Social Media: Connectivity Doesn't End the Digital Divide, Skills Do... - 42 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...d-the-digital-divide-skills-do

digitaldivide social socialnetworking society connectivity ScientificAmerican blog

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 15 Dec 11
     
    Whether we like it or not, we live in a very unequal and stratified world. We live in societies in which inequality is ignored in education, science, and in the social media. As Internet technologies are rapidly evolving and new digital divides on the Internet emerge, we must move beyond, at some point, a singular concern over Internet access and technological infrastructure issues. We must tackle socio-cultural differences, we must focus on Internet skills, literacies and social media usage.
Maureen Greenbaum

How Big Data Is Taking Teachers Out of the Lecturing Business: Scientific American - 1 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Any accurate evaluation of adaptive-learning technology would have to isolate and account for all variables: increases or decreases in a class's size; whether the classroom was “flipped” (meaning homework was done in class and lectures were delivered via video on the students' own time); whether the material was delivered via video, text or game; and so on. Arizona State says 78 percent of students taking the Knewton-ized developmental math course passed, up from 56 percent before
  • in Japan, where it is common for managers who have studied English with the adaptive-learning software iKnow to list their iKnow scores on their resumes.
  • “The reality is that it's going to be done,” says Eva Baker, director of the Center for the Study of Evaluation at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It's not going to be a little part. It's going to be a big part. And it's going to be put in place partly because it's going to be less expensive than doing professional development.”
  • Maureen Greenbaum on 19 Jul 13
     
    This whole article is essential reading 
Kenuvis Romero

This is your brain on psilocybin… | The Scicurious Brain, Scientific American... - 0 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...is-is-your-brain-on-psilocybin

shared by Kenuvis Romero on 23 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • the authors cite a large body of literature characterizing 5-HT2a agonism resulting in pyramidal cell inhibition in cortical areas via excitation of GABAergic interneurons that synapse on pyramidal cells.
  • increased blood deoxygenation levels is concretely correlated with neuronal action-potentions; inhibition of neurons results in less APs and thus less blood flow. BOLD contrasts are the basis of fMRI studies–all of them would be invalidated if this were refuted.
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