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Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching

Home Advocacy Top Ten in '10: ISTE's Education Technology Priorities for 2010 Through a common focus on boosting student achievement and closing the achievement gap, policymakers and educators alike are now reiterating their commitment to the sorts of programs and instructional efforts that can have maximum effect on instruction and student outcomes. This commitment requires a keen understanding of both past accomplishment and strategies for future success. Regardless of the specific improvement paths a state or school district may chart, the use of technology in teaching and learning is non-negotiable if we are to make real and lasting change.  With growing anticipation for Race to the Top (RttT) and Investing in Innovation (i3) awards in 2010, states and school districts are seeing increased attention on educational improvement, backed by financial support through these grants. As we think about plans for the future, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has identified 10 priorities essential for making good on this commitment in 2010: 1. Establish technology in education as the backbone of school improvement . To truly improve our schools for the long term and ensure that all students are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve in the 21st century, education technology must permeate every corner of the learning process. From years of research, we know that technology can serve as a primary driver for systemic school improvement, including school leadership, an improved learning culture and excellence in professional practice. We must ensure that technology is at the foundation of current education reform efforts, and is explicit and clear in its role, mission, and expected impact. 2. Leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness . Last year, President Obama established a national goal of producing the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. To achieve this goal in the next 10 years, we must embrace new instructional approaches that both increase the college-going rates and the high school graduation rates. By effectively engaging learning through technology, teachers can demonstrate the relevance of 21st century education, keeping more children in the pipeline as they pursue a rigorous, interesting and pertinent PK-12 public education. 3. Ensure technology expertise is infused throughout our schools and classrooms.  In addition to providing all teachers with digital tools and content we must ensure technology experts are integrated throughout all schools, particularly as we increase focus and priority on STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) instruction and expand distance and online learning opportunities for students. Just as we prioritize reading and math experts, so too must we place a premium on technology experts who can help the entire school maximize its resources and opportunities. To support these experts, as well as all educators who integrate technology into the overall curriculum, we must substantially increase our support for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program.  EETT provides critical support for on-going professional development, implementation of data-driven decision-making, personalized learning opportunities, and increased parental involvement. EETT should be increased to $500 million in FY2011. 4. Continuously upgrade educators' classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of "highly effective" teaching . As part of our nation's continued push to ensure every classroom is led by a qualified, highly effective teacher, we must commit that all P-12 educators have the skills to use modern information tools and digital content to support student learning in content areas and for student assessment. Effective teachers in the 21st Century should be, by definition, technologically savvy teachers. 5. Invest in pre-service education technology

Of course, schools and classroom practices need to be current -- what teacher or district leader would say that we should continue to teach the way we did back in the "good ol' days?" Can you show me a successful organization or business that prides itself on keeping things exactly the way they were?

We need to believe the adults delivering education services are capable of being innovative, adaptive and collaborative and welcome being accountable for student outcomes. Then we need to invest in this belief by providing both the professional development and the infrastructure to make this belief a reality for all students and all teachers.

Ultimately, it is about delivering core education in today's world by today's standards of success.

I believe this is the basic approach: Education needs to be more relevant and rigorous for students. Educational institutions need to be more engaging and empowering for teachers. A high school diploma needs to be more directly applicable and valued in the economy. These are attainable goals; all education investments should be measured against these objectives.

Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”

High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary. Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests. That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.

in teacher preparation programs and in professional development activities so that students and in-service music educators will better be able to negotiate the increasingly litigious educational world

egal issues facing music educators remain one of the least important topics of conversation for preservice music educators.

how active they have been willing in inserting their decisions in school-based assessment policy.

Historically, courts have been somewhat deferential to school leaders and have not been willing to hear too many cases dealing with educational law and assessment.

Based on this decision, courts would be more likely to defer to school leaders in making their final rulings.

distinguish issues are purely academic from those that are purely disciplinary.

s. Three basic factors must exist for constitutional due process to exist: a student must have proper notice, a student must be given the chance to be heard, and the hearing should be conducted in a fair manner

The court decided that denying a student of education, regardless of the amount of time, could not be considered an inconsequential thing and claimed that a person’s right to education was equitable to the rights to liberty and property. In the majority decisions, the Supreme Court justices argued:

The US Supreme Court’s decision in Goss created the opportunity for students, parents, and their representatives to challenge not only disciplinary suspensions and expulsions but also other decisions by school officials that may affect liberty or property rights, including grades and grading policies.

that of courts taking a more active role and deferring less often to school leaders.

Because of these high stakes (real or imagined),

little more than attendance and participation, others feel that grades must represent academic achievement and that “allowing non-academic factors to affect academic grades distorts the truth about students’

however, because music is addressed minimally in these laws, their enactment has had minimal direct impact on music educators’ assessment practices.

subjecting us to pop quizzes, cold calls, and pedagogical tactics that during an in-the-flesh seminar would have taken precious minutes of class time to arrange.

felt decidedly unlike a normal classroom. For one thing, it was exhausting: a continuous period of forced engagement, with no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag

One educational psychologist, Ludy Benjamin, likens lectures to Velveeta cheese—something lots of people consume but no one considers either delicious or nourishing.)

adically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries.

past half millennium, the technology of learning has hardly budge

Lectures are banned

attending class on Apple laptops

Lectures, Kosslyn says, are cost-effective but pedagogically unsound. “A great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn.”

Minerva boast is that it will strip the university experience down to the aspects that are shown to contribute directly to student learning. Lectures, gone. Tenure, gone. Gothic architecture, football, ivy crawling up the walls—gone, gone, gone.

“Your cash cow is the lecture, and the lecture is over,” he told a gathering of deans. “The lecture model ... will be obliterated.”

when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don’t get educated.

Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.”

“The freshman year [as taught at traditional schools] should not exist,” Nelson says, suggesting that MOOCs can teach the basics. “Do your freshman year at home.”) Instead, Minerva’s first-year classes are designed to inculcate what Nelson calls “habits of mind” and “foundational concepts,” which are the basis for all sound systematic thought. In a science class, for example, students should develop a deep understanding of the need for controlled experiments. In a humanities class, they need to learn the classical techniques of rhetoric and develop basic persuasive skills. The curriculum then builds from that foundation.

What, he asks, does it mean to be educated?

methods will be tested against scientifically determined best practices

Subsidies, Nelson says, encourage universities to enroll even students who aren’t likely to thrive, and to raise tuition, since federal money is pegged to costs.

We have numerous sound, reproducible experiments that tell us how people learn, and what teachers can do to improve learning.” Some of the studies are ancient, by the standards of scientific research—and yet their lessons are almost wholly ignored.

memory of material is enhanced by “deep” cognitive tasks

he found the man’s view of education, in a word, faith-based

ask a student to explain a concept she has been studying, the very act of articulating it seems to lodge it in her memory. Forcing students to guess the answer to a problem, and to discuss their answers in small groups, seems to make them understand the problem better—even if they guess wrong.

e traditional concept of “cognitive styles”—visual versus aural learners, those who learn by doing versus those who learn by studying—is muddled and wrong.

Professors are able to sort students instantly, and by many metrics, for small-group work—

a pop quiz at the beginning of a class and (if the students are warned in advance) another one at a random moment later in the class greatly increases the durability of what is learned.

he could have alerted colleagues to best practices, but they most likely would have ignored them. “The classroom time is theirs, and it is sacrosanct,

I couldn’t wait for Minerva’s wrecking ball to demolish the ivory tower.

The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”

Minerva’s model, Nelson says, will flourish in part because it will exploit free online content, rather than trying to compete with it, as traditional universities do.

The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”

certain functions of universities have simply become less relevant as information has become more ubiquitous

Minerva challenges the field to return to first principles.

MOOCs will continue to get better, until eventually no one will pay Duke or Johns Hopkins for the possibility of a good lecture, when Coursera offers a reliably great one, with hundreds of thousands of five-star ratings, for free.

It took deep concentration,” he said. “It’s not some lecture class where you can just click ‘record’ on your tape.”

part of the process of education happens not just through good pedagogy but by having students in places where they see the scholars working and plying their trades.”

“hydraulic metaphor” of education—the idea that the main task of education is to increase the flow of knowledge into the student—an “old fallacy.”

I remembered what I was like as a teenager headed off to college, so ignorant of what college was and what it could be, and so reliant on the college itself to provide what I’d need in order to get a good education.

it is designed to convey not just information, as most MOOCs seem to, but whole mental tool kits that help students become morethoughtful citizens.

for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club.

professors and students increasingly separated geographically, mediated through technology that alters the nature of the student-teacher relationship

The idea that college will in two decades look exactly as it does today increasingly sounds like the forlorn, fingers-crossed hope of a higher-education dinosaur that retirement comes before extinction.

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.

attention due to their high levels of youth engagement that contribute to substantial learning, enhanced critical thinking

such as heightened confidence and sense of agency

Decades of research findings link adolescent engagement, efficacy, and responsibility with opportunities for immersion and mastery, connection in a community of practice, embracing youth voice, and cultivating youth leadership with adolescent engagement, and non-school settings have emerged as crucial developmental and learning environments for youth

Throughout the United States, teen participants in CYD programs assert that the programs saved their lives, putting them on positive trajectories and away from gangs, drug use, crime, and ennui.

The creative process at the center of CYD programs contributes to profound personal growth for youth participants

And as they experience the creative process over an extended period, they learn that they can use it to express their own identities, understand and change the world around them, and connect to the greater human experience.”

community of practice of youth artists and their artist mentors, the paid, professional artists who comprise the full-time faculty. SAY Sí boasts a 100% rate of graduation and pursuit of higher education in a community with a 45% dropout rat

hese programs had a central belief in the ability of young people to achieve and grow artistically and personally through creative expression and skill building in the arts.

impact of arts-based youth programs in reducing risk factors and building protective factors in a study conducted in three American cities

She also catalogued characteristics of effective CYD programs, such as supporting risk within a safe space (

Teens develop intrinsic motivation as they immerse themselves and develop competence in a topic, connect with others who share this interest, and work with educators positioned as senior collaborators—