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Jim Aird

How to Improve Public Online Education: Report Offers a Model - Government - The Chroni... - 18 views

chronicle.com/...138729

education technology Teaching innovative higher education computers public online online education report government

shared by Jim Aird on 23 Apr 13 - No Cached
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  • patchwork collection of online courses that's difficult for students to navigate.
  • they can improve their online-education efforts to help students find streamlined, affordable pathways to a degree.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "Taken together, these steps result in something that looks less like an unorganized collection of Internet-based classes, and more like a true public university."
  • I am always miffed at the people within Higher Ed who recognize that nothing about pedagogy has changed in 50 years except computers and PowerPoint but they still rationalize that nothing needs changed or fixed.
Andrew McCluskey

Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

schoolingtheworld.org/...occupy

education education reform education system schooling pedagogy indigenous indigenous pedagogies knowledge alternative education standardization state standards national standards global standards power authority intellect

shared by Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13 - No Cached
Ant Heald liked it
  • One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority.
  • Once learning is institutionalized under a central authority, both freedom for the individual and respect for the local are radically curtailed.&nbsp; The child in a classroom generally finds herself in a situation where she may not move, speak, laugh, sing, eat, drink, read, think her own thoughts, or even&nbsp; use the toilet without explicit permission from an authority figure.
  • In what should be considered a chilling development, there are murmurings of the idea of creating global standards for education – in other words, the creation of a single centralized authority dictating what every child on the planet must learn.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • In “developed” societies, we are so accustomed to centralized control over learning that it has become functionally invisible to us, and most people accept it as natural, inevitable, and consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy. &nbsp; We assume that this central authority, because it is associated with something that seems like an unequivocal good – “education” – must itself be fundamentally good, a sort of benevolent dictatorship of the intellect.&nbsp;
  • We endorse strict legal codes which render this process compulsory, and in a truly Orwellian twist, many of us now view it as a fundamental human right to be legally compelled to learn what a higher authority tells us to learn.
  • And yet the idea of centrally-controlled education is as problematic as the idea of centrally-controlled media – and for exactly the same reasons.
  • The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect all forms of communication, information-sharing, knowledge, opinion and belief – what the Supreme Court has termed “the sphere of intellect and spirit” – from government control.
  • by the mid-19th century, with Indians still to conquer and waves of immigrants to assimilate, the temptation to find a way to manage the minds of an increasingly diverse and independent-minded population became too great to resist, and the idea of the Common School was born.
  • We would keep our freedom of speech and press, but first we would all be well-schooled by those in power.
  • A deeply democratic idea — the free and equal education of every child — was wedded to a deeply anti-democratic idea — that this education would be controlled from the top down by state-appointed educrats.
  • The fundamental point of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that the apparatus of democratic government has been completely bought and paid for by a tiny number of grotesquely wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbying groups.&nbsp; Our votes no longer matter.&nbsp; Our wishes no longer count.&nbsp; Our power as citizens has been sold to the highest bidder.
  • Our kids are so drowned in disconnected information that it becomes quite random what they do and don’t remember, and they’re so overburdened with endless homework and tests that they have little time or energy to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around them.
  • If in ten years we can create Wikipedia out of thin air, what could we create if we trusted our children, our teachers, our parents, our neighbors, to generate community learning webs that are open, alive, and responsive to individual needs and aspirations?&nbsp; What could we create if instead of trying to “scale up” every innovation into a monolithic bureaucracy we “scaled down” to allow local and individual control, freedom, experimentation, and diversity?
  • The most academically “gifted” students excel at obedience, instinctively shaping their thinking to the prescribed curriculum and unconsciously framing out of their awareness ideas that won’t earn the praise of their superiors.&nbsp; Those who resist sitting still for this process are marginalized, labeled as less intelligent or even as mildly brain-damaged, and, increasingly, drugged into compliance.
  • the very root, the very essence, of any theory of democratic liberty is a basic trust in the fundamental intelligence of the ordinary person. &nbsp; Democracy rests on the premise that the ordinary person — the waitress, the carpenter, the shopkeeper — is competent to make her own judgments about matters of domestic policy, international affairs, taxes, justice, peace, and war, and that the government must abide by the decisions of ordinary people, not vice versa.&nbsp; Of course that’s not the way our system really works, and never has been. &nbsp; But most of us recall at some deep level of our beings that any vision of a just world relies on this fundamental respect for the common sense of the ordinary human being.
  • This is what we spend our childhood in school unlearning.&nbsp;
  • If before we reach the age of majority we must submit our brains for twelve years of evaluation and control by government experts, are we then truly free to exercise our vote according to the dictates of our own common sense and conscience?&nbsp; Do we even know what our own common sense is anymore?
  • We live in a country where a serious candidate for the Presidency is unaware that China has nuclear weapons, where half the population does not understand that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, where nobody pays attention as Congress dismantles the securities regulations that limit the power of the banks, where 45% of American high school students graduate without knowing that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. &nbsp; At what point do we begin to ask ourselves if we are trying to control quality in the wrong way?
  • Human beings, collaborating with one another in voluntary relationships, communicating and checking and counter-checking and elaborating and expanding on one another’s knowledge and intelligence, have created a collective public resource more vast and more alive than anything that has ever existed on the planet.
  • But this is not a paeon to technology; this is about what human intelligence is capable of when people are free to interact in open, horizontal, non-hierarchical networks of communication and collaboration.
  • Positive social change has occurred not through top-down, hierarchically controlled organizations, but through what the Berkana Institute calls “emergence,” where people begin networking and forming voluntary communities of practice. When the goal is to maximize the functioning of human intelligence, you need to activate the unique skills, talents, and knowledge bases of diverse individuals, not put everybody through a uniform mill to produce uniform results.&nbsp;
  • You need a non-punitive structure that encourages collaboration rather than competition, risk-taking rather than mistake-avoidance, and innovation rather than repetition of known quantities.
  • if we really want to return power to the 99% in a lasting, stable, sustainable way, we need to begin the work of creating open, egalitarian, horizontal networks of learning in our communities.
  • They are taught to focus on competing with each other and gaming the system rather than on gaining a deep understanding of the way power flows through their world.
  • And what could we create, what ecological problems could we solve, what despair might we alleviate, if instead of imposing our rigid curriculum and the destructive economy it serves on the entire world, we embraced as part of our vast collective intelligence the wisdom and knowledge of the world’s thousands of sustainable indigenous cultures?
  • They knew this about their situation: nobody was on their side.&nbsp; Certainly not the moneyed classes and the economic system, and not the government, either.&nbsp; So if they were going to change anything, it had to come out of themselves.
  • As our climate heats up, as mountaintops are removed from Orissa to West Virginia, as the oceans fill with plastic and soils become too contaminated to grow food, as the economy crumbles and children go hungry and the 0.001% grows so concentrated, so powerful, so wealthy that democracy becomes impossible, it’s time to ask ourselves; who’s educating us?&nbsp; To what end?&nbsp; The Adivasis are occupying their forests and mountains as our children are occupying our cities and parks.&nbsp; But they understand that the first thing they must take back is their common sense.&nbsp;
  • They must occupy their brains.
  • Isn’t it time for us to do the same?
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    Carol Black, creator of the documentary, "Schooling the World" discusses the conflicting ideas of centralized control of education and standardization against the so-called freedom to think independently--"what the Supreme Court has termed 'the sphere of intellect and spirit" (Black, 2012). Root questions: "who's educating us? to what end?" (Black, 2012).
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
Richard Bradshaw

The Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics | The Heritage Fou... - 33 views

www.heritage.org/...formation-of-american-politics

progressive politics constitution

shared by Richard Bradshaw on 30 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Government had to be limited both because it was dangerous if it got too powerful and because it was not supposed to provide for the highest things in life.
  • In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. First, government must protect the poor and other victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production: i.e., dictating at what prices things must be sold, methods of manufacture, government participation in the banking system, and so on. Second, government must become involved in the "spiritual" development of its citizens -- not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment ("conservation"), education (understood as education to personal creativity), and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
  • Progressives therefore embraced a much more active and indeed imperialistic foreign policy than the Founders did.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The trend to turn power over to multinational organizations also begins in this period, as may be seen in Wilson's plan for a League of Nations, under whose rules America would have delegated control over the deployment of its own armed forces to that body.
  • The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. They had confidence that modern science had superseded the perspective of the liberally educated statesman. Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing.
  • Government, it was thought, needed to be led by those who see where history is going, who understand the ever-evolving idea of human dignity.
  • Politics in the sense of favoritism and self-interest would disappear and be replaced by the universal rule of enlightened bureaucracy.
  • Today's liberals, or the teachers of today's liberals, learned to reject the principles of the founding from their teachers, the Progressives.
  • That is the disparagement of nature and the celebration of human will, the idea that everything of value in life is created by man's choice, not by nature or necessity.
  • Liberal domestic policy follows the same principle. It tends to elevate the "other" to moral superiority over against those whom the Founders would have called the decent and the honorable, the men of wisdom and virtue. The more a person is lacking, the greater is his or her moral claim on society. The deaf, the blind, the disabled, the stupid, the improvident, the ignorant, and even (in a 1984 speech of presidential candidate Walter Mondale) the sad -- those who are lowest are extolled as the sacred other.
  • The first great battle for the American soul was settled in the Civil War. The second battle for America's soul, initiated over a century ago, is still raging. The choice for the Founders' constitutionalism or the Progressive-liberal administrative state is yet to be fully resolved.
  • The Progressive system managed to gain a foothold in American politics only when it made major compromises with the Founders' constitutionalism.
  • Sober liberal friends of the Great Society would later admit that a central reason for its failure was precisely the fact that it was an expertise-driven engineering project, which had never sought the support or even the acquiescence of popular majorities.
  • Seth Roberts on 31 Dec 10
     
    I hope you know better than to use any resource from such a biased source in the classroom without one from the opposite side, say the Brookings Institution in this case. I found your posting of this article from this anti- free thought organization that is a puppet of big business and the far right on an education site plain wrong.
  • Richard Bradshaw on 31 Dec 10
     
    Well, the truth is I did not intend to share this bookmark with Diigo Education, but somehow it was posted in the group. I had intended it only for myself as part of research I am doing.
Steven Szalaj

Raise the bar with national exam for teachers - chicagotribune.com - 53 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...29-bd-20121229,0,7069731.story

Education Certification Union

shared by Steven Szalaj on 30 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Steven Szalaj on 30 Dec 12
     
    Editorial about a recommendation by the AFT Pres to develop a professional certification for teachers.  It's about time...
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Michelle Kassorla on 30 Dec 12
     
    About time for what? For standardized tests to ruin the teaching profession like it has ruined our kids? For the government to control, from the top down, what education departments teach their students? Looks like a HUGE power grab and a very bad way for a Union, who professes to stand against standardized tests to act! Shame on them! Go to Fairtest.org to find out more about the scam of standardized testing. If you think a standardized test can improve education, you must also think you can fatten a calf by weighing it!
  • Mark Smith on 30 Dec 12
     
    Michelle is right. More standardized testing is not the answer for anything, least of all teacher certification. Come on, Steven .. use your critical thinking skills. Don't encourage the bean counters and bureaucrats who are so enamored of things that can be measured and filed into neat categories. The most valuable things cannot be measured in any "objective" way. To focus on what's measurable is to focus on what's shallow.
  • Steven Szalaj on 31 Dec 12
     
    Mark & Michelle, thank you for your comments. When I posted this I knew the words "standardized test" would be a flashpoint. It is for me too. With nearly 40 years in the classroom, teaching a creative art (music) to all different levels (kindergarten through college and well beyond), I have often railed against reducing any education, any student, to a number. Very little in what I have taught can be measured with a pencil-and-paper test. What I see here is different than this. It is the union that she is saying should be the "gate-keeper" to our profession, rather than some generic government standard test. Yes, tests would be a part of the certification, but from what I read, so would much more, including actual classroom work. The certification would be similar to the AMA for physicians or the Bar for attorneys. These are certifications designed and administered by the profession - not the government - and validate a candidate's readiness to practice. Yes, I too am strongly against the government, or any organization outside of our profession, to certify, to validate, a teacher's ability to do the job. But we have to admit there is a problem with teacher certification and validation. There are people who simply should not be in the classroom (haven't we all seen them?). It is very difficult to remove folks who are dragging the respect for our profession down. Yes, there is remediation. Yes, it should be a difficult process to remove someone in order to protect against administrative abuses. But what is talked about here is the profession policing itself - something that the teacher's unions, in general, have steadfastly refused to do. What the AFT Pres is suggesting is that the best thing we can do to raise the status of teaching as a profession is to take action ourselves to make it happen. Really, if we in the profession do not do this, then it will be imposed from those outside who do not know what we do, how we do it and why we do it.
  • Michelle Kassorla on 31 Dec 12
     
    You are still talking about a standardized test. Let's face it--doctors have to have specific knowledge to do their job. Whether or not they are creative or engaging is not as important as their knowledge base. The same with lawyers--knowledge of the law is essential, and everything else is secondary. However, in teaching, although educational theory and knowledge of their subject area is important (and already tested, by the way) the most essential aspect of teaching is how you can creatively engage students, interact with parents and peers, and stay organized and motivated. These things CAN'T BE TESTED. Right now, teachers already go through extensive training, evaluation, and continuing education. Do you REALLY think that a standardized test will really improve teaching? I know a lot of university professors who can easily pass a test, but few of them can teach worth beans.
Nigel Coutts

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status and Education Pt 2 - The Learner's Way - 9 views

thelearnersway.net/...omic-status-and-education-pt-2

education learner teaching learning equity

shared by Nigel Coutts on 29 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Nigel Coutts on 29 Oct 17
     
    An unavoidable element of the discourse around educational disadvantage or equality is how we define and assess equality. One definition will see this as being in equality of access to education, funding for education and/or resources. Such an approach has largely been seen in government funding models however subtle variations on this theme have resulted in significant differences in resulting policies.
D. S. Koelling

Shared Governance Is a Myth - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 14 views

chronicle.com/...126245

governance shared university college highered

shared by D. S. Koelling on 09 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • It takes years of rank and the bitter­sweet experience of extensive committee service to realize that faculty influence on the operation of the university is an illusion, and that shared governance is a myth.
  • Committees report to administrative officers who are at liberty to accept, reject, or substantially alter faculty recommendations.
  • One would think that faculty senates exercise jurisdiction over a range of college life and policy. In reality, the right of many senates does not extend beyond making recommendations to the president, who is under no obligation to accept them.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A more probable source of this way of doing business is the residue of an old ideal of the university. Such survivals of previous practices are not unusual in social life. Physicians, for example, experience a struggle between two competing understandings of their field: the prevalent view that treating patients is a business, and the residue of the old ideal that it is a calling. Ministers live the same ambiguity. Faculty committees constitute the respect that today's university pays to the old notion that it is a community of students and scholars. The impotence of the committees is acknowledgment that at this time in history, institutions of higher education are business ventures, in certain ways similar to factories.
  • If education is primarily a business, managers hire the faculty. If universities are communities of students and scholars, faculty members hire the managers.
  • The growing disempowerment of the faculty is accelerated by the distance of governing boards from campus processes.
Maureen Greenbaum

Calls from Washington for streamlined regulation and emerging models | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...regulation-and-emerging-models

higher ed higher regulation competency based innovation accreditation

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 02 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • more of online “innovations” like competency-based education.
  • reauthorization of the Higher Education Act might shake out.
  • flow of federal financial aid to a wide range of course providers, some of which look nothing like colleges.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • 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.”
  • any new money for those emerging models would likely come out of the coffers of traditional colleges.
  • cut back on red tape that prevents colleges from experimenting with ways to cut prices and boost student learning.
  • decentralized, more streamlined form of accreditation.
  • 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&nbsp;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,”
  • “The gateway to education reform is education oversight reform,”
  • 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.
  • “The technology has reached the point where it really can improve learning,” he said, adding that “it can lower the costs.”
  • 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.
Randolph Hollingsworth

Lumina Foundation's Federal Policy Priorities - full report and 2 page summary - 9 views

www.luminafoundation.org/...federal_policy_priorities

shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 30 May 14 - No Cached
  • federal policy needs to look beyond access to encompass student success and work for all students in the 21st century, including working adults, low-income students, first-generation students and students of color
  • Randolph Hollingsworth on 30 May 14
     
    federal government sought to promote equitable access to postsecondary education. This role continues to be critical on Capitol Hill, especially for low-income, minority and other underserved populations. ... This requires supporting innovative practices at institutions of higher education and other quality postsecondary education providers. ...Congress must help ensure that postsecondary education is affordable. ...most critically, federal policy must assure the quality of credentials in terms of student learning.
Ed Webb

Please Sir, how do you re-tweet? - Twitter to be taught in UK primary schools - 2 views

uk.techcrunch.com/...e-taught-in-uk-primary-schools

twitter technology literacy education UK socialmedia

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. And that’s not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
  • Traditional education in areas like phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic remain but modern media and web-based skills and environmental education now feature.
  • The skills that let kids use Internet technologies effectively also work in the real world: being able to evaluate resources critically, communicating well, being careful with strangers and your personal information, conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your environment. Those things are, and should be, taught in schools. It’s also a good idea to teach kids how to use computers, including web browsers etc, and how those real-world skills translate online.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • I think teaching kids HOW TO use Wikipedia is a step forward from ordering them NOT TO use it, as they presently do in many North American classrooms.
  • Open Source software is the future and therefore we need to concentrate on the wheels and not the vehicle!
  • Core skills is very important. Anyone and everyone can learn Photoshop &amp; Word Processing at any stage of their life, but if core skills are missed from an early age, then evidence has shown that there has always been less chance that the missing knowledge could be learnt at a later stage in life.
  • Schools shouldn’t be about teaching content, but about learning to learn, getting the kind of critical skills that can be used in all kinds of contexts, and generating motivation for lifelong learning. Finnish schools are rated the best in the world according to the OECD/PISA ratings, and they have totally de-emphasised the role of content in the curriculum. Twitter could indeed help in the process as it helps children to learn to write in a precise, concise style - absolutely nothing wrong with that from a pedagogical point of view. Encouraging children to write is never a bad thing, no matter what the platform.
  • Front end stuff shouldn’t be taught. If anything it should be the back end gubbins that should be taught, databases and coding.
  • So what’s more important, to me at least, is not to know all kinds of useless facts, but to know the general info and to know how to think and how to search for information. In other words, I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury.
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Schools should focus more on teaching kids on how to think creatively so they can create innovative products like twitter rather then teaching on how to use it….
  • Ed Webb on 25 Mar 09
     
    The British government is proposing that Twitter is to be taught in primary (elementary) schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK's education system. And that's not all. Kids will be taught blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia alongside Maths, English and Science.
Michael Sheehan

5 Free educational resources from the U.S. Government (Part 1) - 149 views

seekoutlearning.blogspot.com/...ational-resources-from-us.html

learning free resources government science

shared by Michael Sheehan on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Michael Sheehan on 29 Nov 13
     
    Check out these 5 terrific (and free) educational resources from the U.S. government.
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Change is possible - but we must be clearer about what we ask schools to develop i... - 1 views

www.cbi.org.uk/...change-is-possible

CBI Education campaigns

shared by Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12 - No Cached
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
      Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12
       
      Question: What are the goals set out on the political level? What does Gove want to achieve?
  • lacks
  • guardrails
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • which makes transformational change
  • ifficult
  • In Finland, the goals of education are explicitly linked to competitiveness, research and innovation.
  • nowhere in the UK do they really drive the terms under which schools are assessed.
  • In England, the government has defined its approach as being based on curriculum rigour.
  • This lack of a comprehensive statement of the achievement we are looking for schools to deliver is a key failing.
  • best schools
  • areas of high disadvantage
  • define the outcome they need
  • in the face of the complex and inconsistent demands the system places on them.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
      Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12
       
      Clear indication that the system as a whole is not supporting a generally accepted set of goals. Instead, the schools are trying to achieve a goal they see as important at worst while fighting the systemic demands.
  • One such school leader told us they had taken a conscious decision with one group of young people to focus on five key subjects and some life skills, knowing that the accountability system would score them down for it, as it expected eight qualifications from all students at that time.
  • Our system should reward schools making brave decisions which focus on boosting long-term outcomes for pupils, not punish them.
  • It should be able to survive changes of government and provide the test against which policy changes and school actions are judged
  • shine the light on whether the system is truly addressing the needs of all students, rather than just the few required to meet a government target.
  • Focus on raising the ambition and attainment for every child as far as their abilities permit
  • guide young people effectively on their choice of enabling subjects…
  • thos and culture that build the social skills also essential to progress in life and work, and allow them time to focus on this
  • Have a school accountability and assessment framework that supports these goals rather than defining them.
  • social literacy
  • a range of core subjects
  • ncluding critically maths, English, the sciences
  • effective use and understanding of computer science.
  • ‘enabling subjects’
  • humanities, languages, arts, technical and practically-based subjects
  • equip a young person to move on
  • o university, or to an apprenticeship or vocational qualification
  • a set of behaviours and attitudes,
  • An exclusive focus on subjects for study would fail to equip young people with these, though rigour in the curriculum does help
  • ‘employability skills’
  • Behaviours can only be developed over time, through the entire path of a young person’s life and their progress through the school system.
  • right context at school
  • A supportive culture, pastoral care and the right ethos are all needed to make the difference.
  • a long tail of pupils failing to achieve the desired outcomes can no longer be accepted.
  • enable all of our young citizens to reach the desired standards.
  • conflicting expectations placed on schools.
  • renewed system should be able to judge performance against the goals based on more complex metrics.
  • judgement
  • on overall culture and ethos, teaching and governance
  • group of data points, including testing but also outcomes data.
  • Development of a clear, widely-owned and stable statement of the outcome that all schools are asked to deliver.
  • beyond the merely academic, into the behaviours and attitudes schools should foster
  • basis on which we judge all new policy ideas, schools, and the structures we set up to monitor them
  • Ofsted
  • asked to steward the delivery of these outcomes
  • resourcing these bodies to develop an approach based on a wider range of measures and assessments than are currently in use,
Randolph Hollingsworth

Call for Submissions - US Dept of Labor Employment and Training Administration - 27 views

www.doleta.gov/...SGA-DFA-PY-10-03.pdf

open educational resource grants OER opencontent

shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 31 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Randolph Hollingsworth on 31 Jan 11
     
    See also statement by Labor Dept (http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/eta20101436.htm) and White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/20/new-job-training-and-education-grants-program-launched) and Chronicle article at http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/2-billion-federal-program-could-be-windfall-for-open-online-learning/29167 $2-Billion Federal Program Could Be 'Windfall' for Open Online Learning January 22, 2011, 9:49 am By Marc Parry "The Obama administration is encouraging the development of high-quality immersive online-learning environments. It suggests courses with simulations, with constant feedback, and with interactive software that can tailor instruction and tutoring to individual students. It likes courses that students can use to teach themselves. And it demands open access to everything: "All online and technology-enabled courses must permit free public use and distribution, including the ability to re-use course modules, via an online repository for learning materials to be established by the federal government.... That's because the government is requiring that all work supported by the grants be made available under what's known as a "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License," which Mr. Green described as 'one of the most open content licenses that exists.'"
Julia Gardiner

Lateline - 29/10/2012: PMs plan for every child to learn an Asian language - 14 views

www.abc.net.au/...s3621224.htm

shared by Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15 - No Cached
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      The rationale or thinking behind introducing languages early in primary school
  • Gillard Government's Asian Century white paper sets an aspiration for Australia to rank as the world's 10th biggest economy by 2025, capitalising on the rapid economic growth in the region.
  • education will be the key and wants all school students to study an Asian language.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • funded
  • where all the new teachers might come from
  • where all the new teachers might come from.
  • the gold standard
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
       The gold standard =any excellent example of something, like how Olympians are the gold standard for athletes
  • If you understand through the learning of language how people think, how they construct meaning, what is important to them culturally, then I think that gives us better insights into the people that we're going to be working with in the future and negotiating with.
  • The Prime Minister says she'll force the curriculum changes by tying them to Commonwealth funding to state and private schools.
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      Is this  good policy making? Some would  consider  it 'blackmail'!
  • Broadly, teachers and education experts have welcomed the plan, but question where the money is going to come from.
  • catchcry of the Hawke and Keating governments
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      The Hawke-Keating Government refers to the Federal Government of Australia from 11 March 1983 to 11 March 1996. It was a Labour government
  • Currently across all levels of schooling there's around 18 per cent of our young people who are studying one of the four priority Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and Korean. And that diminishes to fewer than 6 per cent by the time they get to Year 12.
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      How do we encourage students to  continue  learning an Asian language into the final years  of high school and  eyond?
  • say we simply don't have enough Asian language teachers to deliver the Prime Minister's vision and for the last decade the numbers of graduates have been declining.
  • hat's happened because universities have been under these budget constraints and when they've made decisions about what to cut, they cut courses with low enrolments and there goes the languages.
  • JEANNIE REA, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      Suggested reasons for the decline in language graduates and therefore  in language teachers. 
  • will help.JULIA GILLARD: We live in an age of different learning possibilities and choices. What we can do through the National Broadband Network, what we can do through having the world's first online national curriculum, which is what the Australian curriculum is, means we can get a deeper penetration of language, literacy and learning.
  • e Prime Minister acknowledges the shortages, but says technology
  • will help.
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      This argument t can be debated.  It would suggest that technology in itself will be a solution!
  • we need to be looking very carefully at what sort of encouragement and incentives we can provide to students so they continue doing a language, go on and major in a language in university and then go on to teach in the area.
  • JEANNIE REA:
    • Julia Gardiner
      Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
       
      What type of incentive scan be offered/
  • Julia Gardiner on 10 Mar 15
     
    The Prime Minister wants all school students to study an Asian language to secure Australia's future in the Asian Century.
  • nadinebailey on 11 Mar 15
     
    Completely deluded. Even here in Singapore, surrounded supposedly by chinese speakers the international schools are not getting it right and success stories are unusual ...
Marc Patton

VREP - 42 views

www.vrep.org

Science STEM Art Teaching_Ideas Teacher_Resources on

shared by Marc Patton on 31 Oct 12 - Cached
  • Marc Patton on 31 Oct 12
     
    The Virtual Reality Education Pathfinder (VREP) is an educational initiative and partnership between government, education, and industry creating an ever-growing consortium of schools and businesses committed to bringing a new kind of learning and teaching to schools across the country.
Maughn Gregory

Belief and Lazy Consensus: Focusing on Governance - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Highe... - 31 views

chronicle.com/...39232

education shared_governance faculty_quietism lazy_concensus higher_Ed

shared by Maughn Gregory on 07 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Maughn Gregory on 07 Apr 12
     
    the desire not to seem like a crank; misconceiving of the work of the university as "service" rather than governance; deciding to focus on your disciplinary colleagues elsewhere (or online) instead of your institution; a healthy human hatred of meetings-all of these add up to a sort of despair that the faculty can make a difference.
Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder

CBI: Our education systems are not delivering - while average performance rises gently,... - 0 views

www.cbi.org.uk/...ion-systems-are-not-delivering

CBI report

shared by Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Spending on education accelerated still further after 1997, rising in real terms by 71% by 2010-11.
  • UK ranks among the highest spending OECD countries measured in terms of percentage of GDP on education.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • but we are being outperformed by nations which spend less.
  • the challenge lies not in what we spend, but in what we do.
  • explanation for the conveyor belt comes not from money, therefore, but from other incentives that schools face.
  • Schools have become used to governments setting blanket targets,
  • We should not be surprised that these drive behaviour – but not always the behaviour that the Department for Education wants.
  • The percentage of pupils gaining five ‘good’ A*-C GCSEs has increased by 50% over the last decade.
  • this should be an indicator of great success
  • has been questioned by many commentators.
  • When we look at whether the improvement on the GCSE metric is general or specific to those close to the grade boundary, it is clear that this measure is driving what is happening in schools.
  • intensive targeting of resources on pupils just below the C grade and/or an increase in teachers’ expertise in ‘teaching to the test’ has been behind &nbsp;improvements.
  • Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the rise in exam grades for average ability candidates really reflects an increase across all groups in mastery of the subjects studied.
  • Narrowly-defined targets like these, based only on exam results subtly inhibit the overall education of young people.
    • Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder
      Sirkku Nikamaa-Linder on 22 Nov 12
       
      This is why Finland only has one national test....
  • If an acceptable level is reached, failure among a substantial minority is tolerated.
  • At earlier stages in the system, similar testing frameworks focus school accountability on achieving a certain percentage of pupils reaching a defined average, rather than a focus on absolute attainment.
  • it is possible to dramatically reduce attainment gaps in their primary school populations and raise standards on a broader basis than the UK has managed.
eaalvarez553

SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy: Assembling the Puzzle | Common Sense Education - 37 views

www.commonsense.org/...taxonomy-assembling-the-puzzle

blooms SAMR edtech EDUC6420 techframework

shared by eaalvarez553 on 21 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Augmentation/Apply: Using a simple yet powerful tool for visualization like GeoGebra, students explore the concepts covered in the resources described in 1., and solve related standard problems. The scope and number of the problems is not governed by what is available in the “back of the book,”&nbsp;but rather driven by the evolution of student understanding, as measured by suitable formative assessment processes.
  • Substitution/Remember: Students use ebooks and other Open Education Resources&nbsp;to acquire basic knowledge about statistical tools and procedures. 2. Substitution/Understand: At the same time, they begin a process of gathering information online describing applications of these statistical tools to an area of interest to them, using simple bookmark aggregation services (e.g., Diigo, Delicious) to collect and tag these resources, relating them to the knowledge gained in 1.
trisha_poole

Interview with EFF Member, Education and Technology Advisor, Gavin Dykes - PrometheanPl... - 18 views

community.prometheanplanet.com/...ology-advisor-gavin-dykes.aspx

EFF education technology advisor news phd

shared by trisha_poole on 08 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • trisha_poole on 08 Oct 11
     
    Gavin Dykes is an independent education and technology advisor who works with governments, agencies, major corporations and institutions across the world on policy and strategy.
Randolph Hollingsworth

Ariz State Univ - Service Learning syllabus (USL410 Indep Placement) - 7 views

servicelearning.asu.edu/...10

shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 07 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Randolph Hollingsworth on 07 Sep 12
     
    COURSE OBJECTIVES: This is a graded internship that allows you to integrate your own coursework with a hands-on service learning experience. The central objective of this course is to provide students with community experiences and reflection opportunities that examine community needs, the importance of civic engagement, and social justice issues affecting ethnic minorities and marginalized populations in contemporary American society. Students dedicate 70 hours at a pre-approved site (including Title I K-12 schools, youth programs, health services, social services, environmental programs, government agencies, etc.) directly serving a population in need or supporting activities that contribute to the greater good of our community. A weekly seminar, course readings, discussions, and reflection assignments facilitate critical thinking and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, citizenship, and how to contribute to positive social change in our community. The course is also designed to provide "real-world" experiences that exercise academic skills and knowledge applicable to each student‟s program of study and career exploration. STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Student will be introduced to essential skills associated with their baccalaureate studies to actively serve the local community. While completing this in-depth study of cultural diversity, citizenship and social justice issues facing our community, students will gain an understanding of the value of Social Embeddedness and the importance of incorporating civic engagement into their collegiate careers, as they strive to become civically engaged students. Students will be introduced to inequalities, discrimination, and other community issues facing ethnic minorities and marginalized populations, as well as the correlation with greater societal issues. INTERNSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:  Service hours - 70 hours of community outreach (spread throughout the semester in which you are enrolled in the course)
Bob Rowan

Weblogg-ed - 2 views

weblogg-ed.com

ADVIS Retreat advis web20 BLOGS-RECOMMENDED blogs education teaching

shared by Bob Rowan on 13 Sep 09 - Cached
  • no better place for my children to watch that speech (or any other, for that matter) than in a place where ideas are encouraged, where critical thinking about those ideas is a natural part of the conversation, and where appropriate response and debate can flourish. Where the adults in the room lead my kids to dig deeper, to validate facts, and consider the many levels of context in which every speech and every debate takes place. Where the discussion around it is such that it lays to rest the concern that many seem to have about this particular speech in general, that in some way the President will be able to “indoctrinate” our kids into some socialist mindset. If schools are the fully functioning learning communities that we hope they are, they should be the place where our kids learn to make sense of ideas, not to fear them. That, however, is not the message we are sending.
    • C Clausen
      C Clausen on 13 Sep 09
       
      Isn't it ironic that the very things that we fought for and received via the US Constitution, Civil Rights, etc. are the very things that students are today losing? As an American History teacher I talk about the past, present, and future and show my students how things have/have not changed throughout time. I begin the year by reading the "True Story of the 3 Little Pigs," and talk about J.S. Mill and his challenge to others to question. Is society truly against the educating of its students to have an open-mind, ask questions, and look at many perspectives?
  • In the midst of all of the “uproar” over the President’s planned speech to school kids on Tuesday, I keep thinking about what all of this says about schools, about what they are for, and about the perception that a lot of people in this country have of them.
    • Michelle Ohanian
      Michelle Ohanian on 16 Sep 09
       
      My English Language Learners were very positive about the speech and couldn't understand all the uproar. Aren't we teaching in government funded schools? Well my young adults liked the message of responsibilty. I have also taught the true story of the 3 little pigs but my ELLs weren/t really familiar with the original version. It helped with point of view from the orignal version.
  • thin walls
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • thin walls
  • C Clausen on 13 Sep 09
     
    Education Speech
  • Michelle Ohanian on 16 Sep 09
     
    Education Speech
  • Bob Rowan on 09 Mar 11
     
    Will Richardson is Mr. Utopian Education to a lot of people. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, most folks agree that he offers thought-provoking topics.
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