Gaston Caperton
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Weighing the environmental costs: buy an eReader, or a shelf of books? - 61 views
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"Bookshelves towering floor to ceiling filled with weighty tomes, or one book-sized device holding hundreds of "books" in electronic form: which one of these options for the voracious reader creates the least damaging environmental footprint? "
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Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 9 views
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"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
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Freakonomics » What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests? A Freakonomics Q... - 42 views
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Standardized tests have much in common with French fries. Both of them differ in composition as well as quality. French fries are available in numerous incarnations, including straight, curly, skins-on, skins-off, and, in recent years, with sweet potatoes. Regarding quality, of course, the taste of French fries can range substantially – from sublime to soggy. It’s really the same with standardized tests.
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Take the No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, a federal accountability law requiring scads of standardized tests to be used in evaluating schools. Do you know that almost all of the standardized tests now being employed to judge school quality are unable to distinguish between well taught and badly taught students?
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all schools – kindergarten through college – should employ exit exams allowing us to determine what students have actually learned. We owe it to our students to make sure that they’ve been properly taught.
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Then there are the questions of what to do with the results. I have actually sat through an extended discussion of how we could use regression analysis to parse out the contribution different teachers made to a group of students’ performance on a set of standardized tests. The answer was, yes it was possible, and could in fact be used to award merit pay increases. But nobody left the room feeling very comfortable that there would be any gain in what we knew made for good teaching.
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Roughly half of the nation’s students are taking tests under NCLB that are completely free of open-ended questions.
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educators have a strong incentive to “teach to the test.” In this case, that means teaching low level skills at the expense of the more demanding material that everyone says students need to master in today’s complicated world.
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But is it fair to give students what amounts to a counterfeit passport to college or work? And do such tests spur high school teachers and principals to aim high with their students? To both questions, the answer is, “No.” In most states today, high school exit tests serve the same role as the standardized tests mandated by NCLB: they try to jack up the floor of student achievement in the nation’s schools. The best high school exit tests would be end-of-course exams akin to the “comprehensive” exams that many colleges and universities require students to pass in their majors before graduation – tests, that is, that would raise the ceiling of student achievement.
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High-stakes testing has narrowed and dumbed down curricula; eliminated time spent on untested subjects like social studies, art, and even recess; turned classrooms into little more than test preparation centers; reduced high school graduation rates; and driven good teachers from the profession. Those are all reasons why FairTest and other experts advocate a sharp reduction in public school standardized testing and a halt to exit exams.
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igh school grade
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point average is a better predictor of college success than either the SAT or the ACT.
Motivate your students for that assessment. - 87 views
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Brain Food: Realistic Lateral Thinking Puzzles - 201 views
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It's probably my Engineering background but some of these assume (incorrectly) alot. For example. "A man is lying dead in a room. There is a large pile of gold and jewels on the floor, a chandelier attached to the ceiling, and a large open window." "Lying" leads one to believe the man is being held down by weight. If we assume he properly set his ballasts for zero/neutral buoyancy he would be floating especially given his now empty tank. Also most wreckage divers use some form of balloon or cabling system attached to a boat to help "carry" heavy loads to the surface. So he wouldn't have been held down by the find. Finally, only the most experienced divers, with the proper training dive for salvage. An experience diver would never be caught out with no air. Not to mention the problems states there is an easy access path with the "large window" so even if things went completely wrong, the diver could have at least tried for the surface. I'm with Sigrid, not for me. ;-)
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RTI Talks | RTI for Gifted Students - 9 views
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learning contracts with the student focused on work that takes the students interests in to account may be helpful.
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"Up from Underachievement" by Diane Heacox
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Gifted learners are rarely "globally gifted
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From a parent's perspective (and sometimes from the child's), this can seem like we are "de-gifted" the child.
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The most important thing is that you have the "data" that shows what the student needs and that you are matching this with an appropriate service.
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Be very explicit with what the differentiation is and how it is addressing the needs
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A major shift with RTI is that there is less emphasis on the "label" and more on the provision of appropriate service.
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When a child has met all the expected benchmarks
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independent reading
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reading log
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small group for discussions using similar questions.
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long-term solutions might include forming a seminar group using a
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program like "Junior Great Books."
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Ideas for differentiating reading for young children can also be found at: http://www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/readingdifferentiation.asp http://www.appomattox.k12.va.us/acps/attachments/6_6_12_dan_mulligan_handout.pdf
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enrich potential
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to plan appropriate instruction, based on data that show the learners' needs.
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additional enrichment and challenge in their area(s) strength.
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Tiers 2 or 3
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As the intensity of the needs increase, the intensity of the services also increases.
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our ability to nurture potential in students prior to formal identification
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appropriately scaffolded activities through Tier 2 support.
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, with high-end differentiation and expectations, we are able to support the development of potential in all students.
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This body-of-evidence can be used to support the nomination process and formal identification when appropriate.
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likely to be of particular benefit for culturally and linguistically diverse, economically disadvantaged, and twice exceptional youngsters who are currently underrepresented within gifted education.
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Tier 1 include:
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Tier 2 include:
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Tier 3 include:
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universal screening
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Aspergers
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gifted children with learning disabilities?
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If we provide enrichment activities for our advanced students, won't that just increase the acheivement gap?
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Educational opportunities are not a “zero sum” game where some students gain and others lose.
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the needs of all learners.
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One is focusing on remediation, however the second approach focuses on the nurturing of potential through creating expectations for excellence that permeate Tier 1 with extended opportunities for enrichment for all children who need them at Tier 2. With the focus on excellence, the rising tide will help all students reach their potential. This is the goal of education.
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make sure that the screener is directly related to the curriculum that you are using and that it has a high enough ceiling to allow advance learners to show what they know.
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recognizing that students who are above grade level, or advanced in their academics, also need support to thrive
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all students deserve to attend a school where their learning needs are met
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seek out ways to build the knowledge and skills of teachers to address the range of needs
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This includes learning about differentiated instruction within Tier 1and creating additional opportunities for enhancements and enrichments within Tier 2.
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first
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This often means that the district views the school as a “high-needs” school and does feel that many children would qualify for gifted education services (thus no teacher allocation is warranted). If this is the case, then this is a problematic view as it perpetuates the myth that some groups of children are not likely to be “gifted”.
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These five differentiation strategies are as follows: Curriculum Compacting (pre-assessment of learners to see what they know) The use of Tiered Assignments that address: Mastery, Enrichment, and Challenge Tiered Learning Centers that allow children to further explore skills and concepts Independent and Small group learning contracts that allow students to follow area of interest Questioning for Higher Level thinking to stretch the minds of each child.
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RTI was,
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first proposed as a way to help us better identify students who continue to need additional support in spite of having appropriate instructional opportunities to learn.
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The primary issue is the need for measures of potential as well as performance.
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an IQ measure
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portfolio
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that sometimes occur outside of school
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children with complex sets of strengths and needs require a comprehensive evaluation that includes multiple types, sources, and time periods to create the most accurate and complete understanding of their educational needs.
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a "diamond" shaped RTI model
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confusing
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use the same icon to represent how we address the increasing intensity of academic and behavioral needs for all learners.
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English Language Learners?
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Differentiated instruction is part of a strength-based approach to Tier 1, providing enriched and challenging learning opportunities for all students. However, a comprehensive RTI approach for gifted learners will also need strong Tier 2 and 3 supports and services.
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Tracking, or the fixed stratification of children into learning levels based on limited data (placing children in fixed learning groups based on a single reading score), is the opposite of RTI.
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off grade level trajectories
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this may includ
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assess the slope and speed of learning and plot the target from there.
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content acceleration and content enrichment.
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independent or small group project of their choice.
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renzullilearning.com.
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additional learning opportunities that both challenge the learner and address high interest learning topics.
