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Cathy Davidson

In general, I agree. However, novelists and poets don't need college?? And perhaps less so to artists and musicians? Perhaps... but what better way to learn the history and analysis of their Art, in order to place their own work in context?

I could not agree more with you Maureen. As a long time middle school teacher in Oakland and Mpls I am thoroughly convinced that our nation and our states are nuts to have cut all of the tech and arts classes out of elementary, middle and high schools. EVERY student should learn a trade/skill set in high school. The hs drop out rate is horrifying and no surprise that the crime rate follows. We have a nation of under achieving teens because the adults have not kept up with funding the myriad of opportunities that would capture and harness their interests and creativity. I look forward to reading your book Maureen and to following you on here.

Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill into law last week to encourage the state's K-12 and higher education systems to use massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The bill Scott signed allows MOOCs, under certain conditions, to be used to help teach K-12 students in four subjects and also orders Florida education officials to study and set rules that would allow students who have yet to enroll in college to earn transfer credits by taking MOOCs.

A quick overview of how the Internet is changing education, and how educators can take advantage of it.

Higher education is jumping into the cloud with both feet. According to a new report by the Campus Computing Project, 89% of higher ed currently uses or is actively consider cloud services. I found that figure quite startling as I hadn't thought that many schools were moving into the cloud just yet. Apparently I was mistaken.

Examines how universities are changing, including lowering expectations, getting rid of programs, and considering the pressure that graduation rates will be used to judge institutions. An interesting connection to global ed reform and the various pressures in education. A disturbing discount of humanities and their import.

Free, two-part training toolkit designed to reduce incidents of bullying and for use by classroom educators provided by U.S. Department of Education (ED)

Another federal agency with powers of the purse over education. Yeah, that's what we need.

The very next entry in Diigo, (after this one about a new ed-tech agency) was an article about Victoria, Australia providing iPads for every student. Some of the classrooms in my school haven't even a single computer for the 27 students to use. Somebody needs to provide the leadership to help the U.S. keep up with the rest of the world. If it is a fed agency, so be it. Iit's better than what we have now (at least in my state) which is nothing.

The high volume of research on different programs, products, practices, and policies in education can make it difficult to interpret and apply the results. We review the research. Then, by focusing on the results from high-quality research, we try to answer the question "What works in education?"  Our goal is to provide educators with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions.

"A mountain of evidence indicates that educators have been painfully slow to use technology to change and improve the ways they teach." Thoughtful piece examining the reasons for slow transformation.

"A mountain of evidence indicates that educators have been painfully slow to use technology to change and improve the ways they teach." Thoughtful piece examining the reasons for slow transformation.

University groups previously decried "a time of limited and sometimes shrinking budgets for higher education," and called on the Labor Department to lower the threshold and adjust for regional and sector differences. Institutions have pushed back against the significant financial burden associated with raising salaries to meet the threshold or paying overtime for additional hours worked. Though faculty members are still exempt, the status of postdocs with light teaching loads is still in question, and many support staffers are eligible for the increase.

Mobile technology is on the minds of higher education professionals more than ever before. At the recent HighEdWeb conference in Austin, the itinerary included several ways schools can use social media, blogs and mobile technologies to better captivate its student body .. As tomorrow's grads become increasingly married to their mobile devices, here are five ways that mobile tech matters just as much as social technology in the higher ed space.

ANYA KAMENETZ

A great analysis of the problems with financial giants supporting educational reform.

This is one juicy article which may change your view of the big picture of ed reform or help you get others to see it more clearly. Pass it on.

Asa Spencer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in the Education Gadfly Weekly: "Traditionalists cringe, tech buffs rejoice: This latest NAEP writing assessment for grades eight and twelve marks the first computer-based appraisal (by the "nation's report card") of student proficiency in this subject. It evaluates students' writing skills (what NAEP calls both academic and workplace writing) based on three criteria: idea development, organization, and language facility and conventions. Results were predictably bad: Just twenty-four percent of eighth graders and 27 percent of twelfth graders scored proficient or above. Boys performed particularly poorly; half as many eighth-grade males reached proficiency as their female counterparts. The use of computers adds a level of complexity to these analyses: The software allows those being tested to use a thesaurus (which 29 percent of eighth graders exploited), text-to-speech software (71 percent of eighth graders used), spell check (three-quarters of twelfth graders), and kindred functions. It is unclear whether use of these crutches affected a student's "language facility" scores, though it sure seems likely. While this new mechanism for assessing kids' writing prowess makes it impossible to track trend data, one can make (disheartening) comparisons across subjects. About a third of eighth graders hit the NAEP proficiency benchmark in the latest science, math, and reading assessments, compared to a quarter for writing. So where to go from here? The report also notes that twelfth-grade students who write four to five pages a week score ten points higher than those who write just one page a week. Encouraging students to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is a start."

learning to know, to do, to live together, to be--developed in UN report and discussed by ed tech and mobile learning.