Group items tagged

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill .. But what everybody knows is wrong"

Opinion piece describing how modern technology is reducing the need for highly educated workers and the implication for education policy.

Be sure to read all of the comments and arrive at your own opinion!

Timothy Egan's essay examines the value of creative efforts vs quantifying and producing, particularly relating to the political penchant for reducing education to only quantifiable goals.

Individuals can post news reports and in a few cases CNN may run the story on the air or their web sites; also includes "assignments", where CNN looks for people's opinions, but users can post reports on any topic

"What kinds of questions make for good inquiry-based projects? As we said, they must first be questions that the kids truly care about because they come up with them themselves. In addition, good questions share the following characteristics: The questions must be answerable. "What is the poem 'Dream Deferred' based on?" is answerable. "Why did Langston Hughes write it?" may be answerable if such information exists, or if the students have some relevant and defensible opinions. "Why did he choose this particular word in line six?" is not answerable because the only person likely to know such a specific answer is Hughes himself, now deceased. The answer cannot be a simple fact. "In what year was Lincoln killed?" doesn't make for a very compelling project because you can just look it up in any number of books or Web sites. "What factors caused the assassination attempt?" might be a good project because it will require research, interpretation, and analysis. The answer can't already be known. "What is hip-hop music?" is a bit too straightforward and the kids are not likely to learn much more than they know already. "What musical styles does hip-hop draw from and how?" offers more opportunity for exploration. The questions must have some objective basis for an answer. "Why is the sky blue?" can be answered through research. "Why did God make the sky blue?" cannot because it is a faith-based question. Both are meaningful, valid, real questions, but the latter isn't appropriate for an inquiry-based project. "What have people said about why God made the sky blue?" might be appropriate. Likewise, "Why did the dinosaurs become extinct?" is ultimately unanswerable in that form because no humans were around to know for sure, but "What do scientists believe was the reason for their extinction?" or "What does the evidence suggest about the cause?" will work. Questions based on value judgments don't work for similar reasons. You can't objectively answer "Is Hamle

Hi Professor Neustadtl, I have developed a repository for sociology data tailored for researchers, and especially students.  The site is open and free, and has over 3 million social, financial, and economic time series datasets available for downloading.  Importantly, the ease by which a user can find, trim, transform, merge, and download time series data from www.quandl.com is in my opinion, unmatched elsewhere. My hope is that you will visit the site briefly, and perhaps offer me some feedback.  More information about the service is below. I've also included my LinkedIN profile should you be weary of my intentions with this email. www.quandl.com/academics with thanks, Tammer -- Tammer Kamel tammerk@quandl.com http://www.quandl.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/tammerkamel/

"10 Things Every College Professor Hates"

I'm frequently asked to substantiate with research my opinions about independent reading. I don't mind. The research is ubiquitous and it doesn't take me much time to find it. While I am happy to provide websites, journal articles, and book recommendations for colleagues seeking more information about reading research, I often wonder why people ask for it. Does anyone go to the basketball coach and ask her to provide research to support why players are running plays and practicing shots? Does anyone go to the band director and ask him why musicians are playing their instruments during band class?

What Assessment Is Really About Measuring student outcomes is ultimately about trying to improve teaching and learning, and professors should both support and lead such efforts, writes Kate Drezek McConnell.

"We are currently deep in the middle of exam season here in the UK, but the end is in sight. But what do you and your pupils do with this strange time after exams when so much of your time effort (blood and sweat). Do you revel in the limbo and become demob happy, or full throttle to the end of the year? In this session of #UKEdChat we discuss your plans and opinions to 'life after exams'."

"Surveys fill a multitude of purposes within education and give students, teachers, and parents a chance to share their opinions in a familiar way that have been around since the 1920s. The collected information is, among other things, meant to form a framework from which teachers improvement is built upon. Improvements are then implemented and the cycle begins again. In theory, this sounds like a good and reasonable way of working. In reality: Not so much."

"Of course, I have always held the opinion that we are all still scientists in our own unique manner.  In light of that, I have chosen to write about how I think on this blog post.  There are two main types of blog posts on this site to 'demystify the life of a scientist'.  The first deals with large numbers or various statistics reported in the popular news with no real context provided."

News for kids including quizzes

News articles and opinion pieces available at different levels of text complexity.

I've used this site for years. It is a great source for non-fiction articles and Newsela is offering free access till the end of this school year

"A superb creative writing site to stimulate ideas for opinion pieces, news articles, stories or poems. There is a teachers area with whole class whiteboard resources, and a pupil area where your pupils can write their pieces and print."