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marcmancinelli

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

  • 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
       
      US has long been mediocre or at the bottom of international comparisons, but it's not a zer-sum game
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  • 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
       
      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.
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    A great perspective piece on American education compared to the world.
Sharin Tebo

Education in the United States and Finland: What is and what can be | CTQ - 36 views

  • The simple answer is this: Finland’s cultural values and priorities are manifested in its system of education: “to guarantee all people…equal opportunities and rights to culture, free quality education, and prerequisites for full citizenship.”
  • Finland aims to uplift everyone in society; in Finland’s case, this vision can be achieved by providing equitable access to education and other social benefits. 
  • Finnish students do not begin their formalized education until the age of 7, standardized testing is unheard of in the formative years, and autonomy and play are encouraged throughout the curriculum.
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  • At the foundation of Finnish educational success are two core values: trust and equity. 
  • Finland’s educational system had become more decentralized and decision-making occurred at the local level.
  • local autonomy
  • Constraints on control and standardization facilitated greater flexibility, freedom, and the teaching profession became more supported, trusted, and respected.
  • Love of Learning
  • growth
  • relationships
  • personalized learning
  • n such a climate, adult stakeholders ostensibly trust one another, causing classroom environments to be less controlling and more collaborative in nature. 
  • With trust and equity as twin pillars of the educational system, it is unsurprising that Finland is able to focus on learning processes for civic engagement and development rather than on expending unnecessary energy for checklists, data, and oversight. 
  • Too many of our communities, schools, and students remain constrained and marginalized by poverty, lack of access, and limited opportunities.  Too many of us are focused on extrinsic motivators that inevitably lead to competition, compliance, expediency, sanctions, disengagement, and a diminished love of learning. 
  • “we’re measuring a lot of things in education today,” and wondered, “how are we measuring care?” 
  • perhaps we should be focusing less on Finnish education and more on the cultural values and conditions that make it possible.
James Shockley

Web 2.0 Smack Down - 149 views

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    Digital Edition mag Top Stories Benjamin Franklin: An Extraordinary United States Global Change Research National World War II Museum Mayan Math Activity Product Review: StudySync FORUMS How did you choose an SIS? Are schools ready for open source? Can you Google-proof a question using Bloom's Taxonomy? Does online training work? top tech resources LCD or DLP? More.. Subscribe| Customer Service|Contact Us|About Us|eNewsletters|Advertising New Articles From the Classroom Leadership Professional Development Tech/Media Coordinators Tech Talk Studies in Ed Tech Ideas and Opinions How To EdTech Ticker TL Advisor Blog Leader of the Year Awards of Excellence Portraits of Learning Other Contests Upcoming Webinars Data Management Security eLearning Copyright Funding Mobile & Wireless Assessment & Testing Curriculum News & Trends Products Features Editor's Desk Issues Current Issue Newsletters eBooks White Papers Grants Columns Podcasts Web Tours Buyers Guide News Site of the Day QuickFlicks IT Guy Interactive Whiteboards Student Information Systems
Mr. Mohan

The Cost of Saving Lives in Bangladesh - Ben W. Heineman Jr. - The Atlantic - 13 views

  • if real reform is to occur on the ground, hard, complex questions must be asked and answered
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      what are these questions in your mind?
  • consumers across the globe looking for cheap prices
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      what is OUR responsibility?
  • global garment retailers who want the incur the lowest cost--and offer the lowest price--to compete in developed markets but who do not want to be complicit in publicized worker tragedies in developing markets
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  • $38 dollars per month
  • whether Bangladesh has the means to enforce such laws
  • International Labor Organization
  • Inadequate government is a huge obstacle to change
  • only about one percent of Bangladesh garment factories have good standards.
  • garment factory owners are willing to allow workers to organize in unions or associations in order to have a voice in health and safety conditions
  • "who pays" and "who is accountable"
  • Approximately 60 percent of the clothing made there goes to United States or the European Union
  • there are several problems
  • standards may depend on local law
  • buyers may simply cut off the suppliers rather than helping them improve their practices
  • global buyers simply leave the country when they conclude that conditions are so bad
  • question then becomes whether international buyers are willing to go beyond imposition of standards and supplier cut offs and to pay, in some form, for the undetermined costs
  • actually implementing major substantive change
  • significant challenge in a weak state like Bangladesh.
  • Can a robust consumer movement arise among those shopping for discount clothing in response to the Bangladesh building collapse?
  • What are the standards? What is the cost? Who is accountable?
  • drawn an analogy between the collapse of the Rana Plaza in the Bangladesh Capital of Dhaka and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York which claimed 146 lives
  • Rana Plaza catastrophe represents a more complicated set of fractured global relationships, responsibilities and financial capabilities.
Powerof R10

Mystery Skype - Skype in the classroom - 3 views

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    "The concept is simple: classrooms Skype call each other and try to guess where the other classroom is located either in the United States or in the world."
Derek Allison

Teaching With Documents - US History - 102 views

  • Teaching With Documents: Lesson Plans
  • This section contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections.
Cath Horan

RBA: Speech-The Economic Outlook - 8 views

  • world economy has continued its expansion
  • 2014 economic global growth is thought likely by major forecasters to be a bit higher than in 2013
  • growth is coming from the advanced countries
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  • United States continues its recovery led by private demand and over the second half of last year the economy expanded at an annualised rate of just over 3 per cent.
  • The euro area has resumed growth, albeit in a somewhat hesitant fashion and with noticeable differences in performance by country.
  • A few emerging economies have lately come under pressure,
  • In fact were the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to step up its current program of quantitative and qualitative easing, it would soon be adding more cash to the global financial system, in absolute terms, than the Federal Reserve.
  • China's economy grew close to, and in fact a little faster than, the government's target last year. Strong and about equal contributions to growth were made by household consumption and investment. Consumer price inflation continues to be stable.
  • Recent indicators have shown possible signs of slower growth in the early part of 2014: growth of industrial production slowed; retail sales and passenger vehicle sales moderated; and fixed asse
  • Australia certainly weathered the financial crisis well, and with a real GDP some 13 per cent larger than it was at the beginning of 2009, compares well with many other advanced countries. It is the case, though, that growth while positive, has been running at a pace a bit below its trend pace for about 18 months now. The rate of unemployment has increased by something like a percentage point over the same period.
  • strong conditions in the natural resources sector.
  • n the rest of the economy, households have spent most of the past five years behaving more conservatively, or rather more normally, than they did over a long period up to the mid 2000s when they had been in a very expansive mood. Both consumption and residential construction have been soft for a while.
  • esources sector's capital spending continues to fall, it
  • It is unlikely, though, that a pick-up in resources exports, as important as that will be, will be enough to keep overall growth on the right trac
  • Recent data shows stronger household consumption over the summer. The latest surve
  • bundant signs of confidence in the housing market
  • Measures of business confidence have improved over the past six months. Businesses seem, so far, to be taking a cautious approach to investment,
  • is important to stress that this outlook is, obviously, a balance between the large negative force of declining mining investment and, working the other way, the likely pick up in some other areas of demand helped by very low interest rates, improved confidence and so on, as well as higher resource shipments. The lower exchange rate since last April and the improved economic conditions overseas also help.
  • On inflation, our view is that it will be a little higher than we thought three months ago
Phil Higgins

TakingITGlobal - Inspire. Inform. Involve. - 40 views

    • Phil Higgins
       
      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!
Jac Londe

Making Oil from Plastic - 34 views

  • Making Oil from Plastic
  • Tons of plastic from Japan and US is left afloat in the Pacific Ocean, which is endangering marine life significantly.
  • Blest, a Japanese company has invented a safe and user friendly machine
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  • The machine is effective in recycling different kinds of plastic into oil.
  • Utilization doesn't just take into account the 20 percent of recycled plastic. But it also considers the incinerated 52 percent used for energy recovery like generating electric power or heat. Akinori Ito says "If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we prohibit CO2 production and at the same time, increase people's awareness about the value of plastic garbage"
  • Oil from Shale: Oil can be extracted from this fine grained, organic rich, sedimentary rock through pyrolysis, thermal dissolution or hyderogentation. Shale contains high concentrations of organic chemical compounds known as Kerogen. From this solid mixture, oil is extracted through chemical process. Shale can be effective converted into combustible oil shale gas and liquid hydrocarbons (shale oil). Global deposits of Shale are estimated to be around 2.8 trillion to 3.3 trillion barrels of restorable oil. Planet earth is blessed with about 600 known oil shale deposits, most of which is found in United States of America. Although several countries have oil hale deposits, known deposits of economic importance is found only in 33 countries.
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