Group items tagged

Dependent on PD

Besides the lack of time and/or motivation, I’m beginning to wonder if teachers really know how to learn new skills independently. We come from a system of education where everything was fed to us. As a student (even through my master’s degree), if I was told I needed to learn something there was a clear process I had to go through to learn it; sign up (and pay) for the right course with the available expert, buy some textbooks, go to class, follow directions, and collect my credits to show that I had learned it. Most PD follows a similar process (although greatly abbreviated). So that is the paradigm that teachers have for their own learning – they feel that they need to be taught something in order to learn it. I’m not sure that they know there is now another way to learn, especially where learning about technology is concerned. But how would they know this new way of learning if it’s rarely been modeled for them? And if this is how they view their own learning, can we really expect them to teach students how to be independent learners?

A rise of mean global temperatures above 4 or 5 degrees Celsius would shift the atmosphere to pre-glacial/interglacial conditions, which dominated the Earth from about 34 million years ago (end-Eocene) (Zachos et al., 2008)

good values have to be grown from the inside out. Attempts to short-circuit this process by dangling rewards in front of children are at best ineffective, and at worst counterproductive

Children are likely to become enthusiastic, lifelong learners as a result of being provided with an engaging curriculum; a safe, caring community in which to discover and create; and a significant degree of choice about what (and how and why) they are learning

Unfortunately, carrots turn out to be no more effective than sticks at helping children to become caring, responsible people or lifelong, self-directed learners

moving away from a one-size-fits-all system, in which students largely follow the same calendar and curriculum on their way to collecting 120 credits for a bachelor's degree

More of the decisions colleges make about their direction must be rooted in data.

Now the data exist to track students, the classes they took, how they performed, and their outcomes after graduation—all of which can inform decisions.

instruction that builds conceptual knowledge helps students’ link old knowledge with new knowledge, and this means providing time for reflection and communication

give state regulators a new option to either act as accreditors or create their own accreditation systems.

“States could accredit online courses, or hybrid models with elements on- and off-campus.”

regional accreditors are doing a fairly good job. They are under enormous pressure to keep “bad actors” at bay while also encouraging experimentation. And he said accreditors usually get it right.

Andrew Kelly, however, likes Lee’s idea. Kelly, who is director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Higher Education Reform, said it would create a credible alternative to the existing accreditation system, which the bill would leave intact.

eliminating bureaucracy in higher education regulation is a top priority

“Accreditation could also be available to specialized programs, individual courses, apprenticeships, professional credentialing and even competency-based tests,”

broad, bipartisan agreement that federal aid policies have not kept pace with new approaches to higher education.

expansion of competency-based education. And he said the federal rules governing financial aid make it hard for colleges to go big with those programs.

accreditors is that they favor the status quo, in part because they are membership organizations of academics that essentially practice self-regulation.

changes to the existing accreditation system that might make it easier for competency-based and other emerging forms of online education to spread.

offering competency-based degrees through a process called direct assessment, which is completely de-coupled from the credit-hour standard.

A web developer’s job

“Curiosity is the key to unlocking anything you’re interested in,”

“Mistakes mean that you can improve your ideas.”