marketed by Ameritech Library Services, a subsidiary of the Ameritech
Corporation, one of the world's largest communication companies
new system Horizon was built on the Marquis, Dynix library system, and is being
developed by Ameritech Library Service in collaboration with the University of
Chicago and Indiana University. It was first introduced in the USA in 1991
Horizon is a fully integrated client/server library management system,
providing a graphical user interface for the library, and offering the
functionality and standards required for an open system, including Web access,
Z39.50 standard for information exchange, the TCP/IP communication standard,
UNIX and Windows NT for portability. Horizon uses the SQL database management
system, available from Sybase or Microsoft.
the main hardware is a SUN computer Sparc Server 1000 with a UNIX Solaris 2.5
operating system
the centre of any library system is the cataloguing module.
Cataloguing and Authority Control contain the bibliographic database used by all
Horizon modules
project will contain four stages of activity. Three of them include:
the preparation of standardised cataloguing rules and their implementation
working out subject classification
exchange of records among different systems
preparation of legal and financial responsibilities
collecting money for buying software and technical equipment etc. (we have
already received $705,000 from the Mellon Foundation)
implementation of system
testing of the National Catalogue module
schedule preparation for creation of databases
users' training
Generally speaking, the main points of plan in Nicholas Copernicus University
Library have been successfully realised. The progress is visible. Since
September 1998 new modules have been implemented and tested. In the opinion of
our users they work quite well. Of course, problems arise from time to time, and
sometimes they are quite troublesome, but they are solved on a daily basis.
Here we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they're choosing books like 13-year-old girls -- or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment.
two-thirds of freshmen identify themselves as "middle of the road" or "conservative." Such people aren't likely to stay up late at night arguing about Mary Daly's "Gyn/Ecology" or even Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
"I have stood before classes," he tells me, "and seen the students snicker when I said that Melville died poor because he couldn't sell books. 'Then why are we reading him if he wasn't popular?' "
a notable uptick in superficiality and a notable uptick in the anesthetizing of that native curiosity that was once a prominent feature of the adolescent mind."
maybe young people's reading choices reflect our desire to keep them young
"People don't necessarily read their politics nowadays. They get it through YouTube and blogs and social networks. I don't know that there is a fiction writer out there right now who speaks to this generation's political ambitions. We're still waiting for our Kerouac."
This is an important speech on a very important subject. But before I begin, I want to just speak briefly about Haiti, because during the last eight days, the people of Haiti and the people of the world have joined together to deal with a tragedy of staggering proportions. Our hemisphere has seen its share of hardship, but there are few precedents for the situation we’re facing in Port-au-Prince. Communication networks have played a critical role in our response. They were, of course, decimated and in many places totally destroyed. And in the hours after the quake, we worked with partners in the private sector; first, to set up the text “HAITI” campaign so that mobile phone users in the United States could donate to relief efforts via text messages. That initiative has been a showcase for the generosity of the American people, and thus far, it’s raised over $25 million for recovery efforts.
Information networks have also played a critical role on the ground. When I was with President Preval in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, one of his top priorities was to try to get communication up and going. The government couldn’t talk to each other, what was left of it, and NGOs, our civilian leadership, our military leadership were severely impacted. The technology community has set up interactive maps to help us identify needs and target resources. And on Monday, a seven-year-old girl and two women were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed supermarket by an American search-and-rescue team after they sent a text message calling for help. Now, these examples are manifestations of a much broader phenomenon.
The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet. When something happens in Haiti or Hunan, the rest of us learn about it in real time – from real people. And we can respond in real time as well. Americans eager to help in the aftermath of a disaster and the girl trapped in the supermarket are connected in ways that were not even imagined a year ago, even a generation ago. That same principle applies to almost all of humanity today. As we sit here, any of you – or maybe more likely, any of our children – can take out the tools that many carry every day and transmit this discussion to billions across the world.
First, students tend to lose interest in
whatever they’re learning. As motivation to get good grades goes up,
motivation to explore ideas tends to go down. Second, students try
to avoid challenging tasks whenever possible. More difficult
assignments, after all, would be seen as an impediment to getting a
top grade. Finally, the quality of students’ thinking is less
impressive. One study after another shows that creativity and even
long-term recall of facts are adversely affected by the use of
traditional grades.
Very true; especially the "avoiding challenging tasks" part.
Unhappily, assessment is sometimes driven by entirely
different objectives--for example, to motivate students (with grades
used as carrots and sticks to coerce them into working harder) or to
sort students (the point being not to help everyone learn but to
figure out who is better than whom)
Standardized tests often have the additional
disadvantages of being (a) produced and scored far away from the
classroom, (b) multiple choice in design (so students can’t generate
answers or explain their thinking), (c) timed (so speed matters more
than thoughtfulness) and (d) administered on a one-shot,
high-anxiety basis.
The test
designers will probably toss out an item that most students manage
to answer correctly.
the evidence suggests that five disturbing consequences are likely
to accompany an obsession with standards and achievement:
1. Students come to regard learning as a
chore.
intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation
tend to be inversely related: The more people are rewarded for doing
something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had
to do to get the reward.
2. Students try to avoid challenging tasks.
they’re just being rational. They have
adapted to an environment where results, not intellectual
exploration, are what count. When school systems use traditional
grading systems--or, worse, when they add honor rolls and other
incentives to enhance the significance of grades--they are
unwittingly discouraging students from stretching themselves to see
what they’re capable of doing.
This is the reinforcement of a "fixed mindset" (vs. (growth mindset) as described by Carol Dweck.
They seem to be
fine as long as they are succeeding, but as soon as they hit a bump
they may regard themselves as failures and act as though they’re
helpless to do anything about it.
When the point isn’t to
figure things out but to prove how good you are, it’s often hard to
cope with being less than good.
It may be the systemic demand for high
achievement that led him to become debilitated when he failed, even
if the failure is only relative.
But even when better forms of assessment are
used, perceptive observers realize that a student’s score is less
important than why she thinks she got that score.
just smart
luck:
tried hard
task difficulty
It bodes well for the future
the punch line: When students are led to focus on
how well they are performing in school, they tend to explain their
performance not by how hard they tried but by how smart they are.
In their
study of academically advanced students, for example, the more that
teachers emphasized getting good grades, avoiding mistakes and
keeping up with everyone else, the more the students tended to
attribute poor performance to factors they thought were outside
their control, such as a lack of ability.
When students are made to
think constantly about how well they are doing, they are apt to
explain the outcome in terms of who they are rather than how hard
they tried.
And if children are encouraged to think of themselves as
"smart" when they succeed, doing poorly on a subsequent task will
bring down their achievement even though it doesn’t have that effect
on other kids.
The upshot of all this is that beliefs about
intelligence and about the causes of one’s own success and failure
matter a lot. They often make more of a difference than how
confident students are or what they’re truly capable of doing or how
they did on last week’s exam. If, like the cheerleaders for tougher
standards, we look only at the bottom line, only at the test scores
and grades, we’ll end up overlooking the ways that students make
sense of those results.
the problem with tests is not limited
to their content.
if too big a deal is made
about how students did, thus leading them (and their teachers) to
think less about learning and more about test outcomes.
As Martin
Maehr and Carol Midgley at the University of Michigan have
concluded, "An overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the
pursuit of excellence."
Only now and then does it make sense for the
teacher to help them attend to how successful they’ve been and how
they can improve. On those occasions, the assessment can and should
be done without the use of traditional grades and standardized
tests. But most of the time, students should be immersed in
learning.
the findings
of the Colorado experiment make perfect sense: The more teachers are
thinking about test results and "raising the bar," the less well the
students actually perform--to say nothing of how their enthusiasm
for learning is apt to wane.
The underlying problem concerns
a fundamental distinction that has been at the center of some work
in educational psychology for a couple of decades now. It is the
difference between focusing on how well you’re doing something and
focusing on what you’re doing.
The two orientations aren’t mutually exclusive, of course,
but in practice they feel different and lead to different behaviors.
But when we get carried away with results, we wind up,
paradoxically, with results that are less than ideal.
Unfortunately,
common sense is in short supply today because assessment has come to
dominate the whole educational process. Worse, the purposes and
design of the most common forms of assessment--both within
classrooms and across schools--often lead to disastrous
consequences.
grades, which by their very
nature undermine learning. The proper occasion for outrage is not
that too many students are getting A’s, but that too many students
have been led to believe that getting A’s is the point of going to
school.
research indicates that the use of traditional
letter or number grades is reliably associated with three
consequences.
The message of Daniel Pinks book "Drive" applies here. Paying someone more, i.e. good grades, does not make them better thinkers, problems solvers, or general more motivated in what they are doing. thanks for sharing.
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Book In An Hour: A Classroom Strategy
April 30, 2009 by Ellsbeth
This past winter I had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer, Dr. Lendol Calder. This is the first place where I came across the strategy called Book In An Hour. Since then I’ve tried to find additional internet resources on this strategy, but they appear to be few and far between. I know other people would find it useful, so I decided to write up the strategy and post it here on the blog. If you know of additional resources or ways to adapt this strategy, I would enjoy hearing from you.
What: The Book In An Hour strategy is a jigsaw activity for chapter books. While the strategy can take more than an hour depending on the reading and presentation method you choose.
Why: While many teachers view this activity as a time saver, I view it as a way to expose students to more literary and historical materials than I might have been able to do otherwise. There are many books that I would love my students to read, but I know that being able to do so is not always my reality. This st
y gives me an avenue to expose them to additional literature and other important historical works without taking much time away from the other aspects of my courses. It also provides opportunities for differentiation. This strategy can be adapted to introduce a book that students will be reading in-depth. Instead of j
ng to divide students up into groups or jigsaw with individual students. If you are using groups, I recommend making them heterogeneous or creating them in a way that subtly facilitates differentiation. I also encourage you to give each student in the grou
This points to stark differences - what about subtle differences between cultures. Do our symbols affect brain development - do our tools affect brain development?
Other
Gestalt psychologists emphasized the common properties of mind in all
cultures
in the
basic forms, as well as in the content of people's thinking.
The early 1930
had experienced the conditions
necessary to alter radically the content and form of their thought.
we expected that they would
display a predominance of those forms of thought that come from activity that is
guided by the physical features of familiar objects.
Therefore we began,
as most field work with people does, by emphasizing contact with the people who
would serve as our subjects. We tried to establish friendly relations so that
experimental sessions seemed natural and non-threatening. We were particularly
careful not to conduct hasty or unprepared presentations of the test
materials.
As a rule, our experimental sessions began with long
conversations which were sometimes repeated with the subjects in the relaxed
atmosphere of a tea house, where the villagers spent most of their free time, or
in camps in the field and in mountain pastures around the evening campfire.
These talks were frequently held in groups. Even when the interviews were
held with one person, the experimenter and other subjects made up a group of
two or three who listened attentively to the person being interviewed and who
sometimes offered remarks or comments on what he said. The talk often took the
form of a free-flowing exchange of opinion between participants, and a
particular problem might be solved simultaneously by two or three subjects,
each proposing an answer. Only gradually did the experimenters introduce the
prepared tasks, which resembled the “riddles” familiar to the population and
therefore seemed like a natural extension of the conversation.
He characterized primitive
thinking as “prelogical” and “loosely organized.”
Primitive people were said to
be indifferent to logical contradiction and dominated by the idea that mystical
forces control natural phenomena
We conceived the idea of carrying out the first far-reaching study of
intellectual functions among adults from a non-technological non-literate,
traditional society
hamlets
nomad
1. Women living in remote villages who were illiterate and who were not
involved in any modern social activities. There were still a considerable
number of such women at the time our study was made. Their interviews were
conducted by women, since they alone had the right to enter the women's
quarters.
2. Peasants living in remote villages who were in no way
involved with socialized labor and who continued to maintain an
individualistic economy. These peasants were not literate.
3. Women who
attended short-term courses in the teaching of kindergarteners. As a rule,
they had no formal schooling and almost no training in literacy.
4. Active kolhoz (collective farm) workers and young people who had taken short
courses. They were involved as chairmen running collective farms, as holders
of other offices on the, collective farm, or as brigade leaders. They had
considerable experience in planning production, distributing labor, and taking
stock of output. By dealing with other collective farm members, they had
acquired a much broader outlook than isolated peasants. But they had attended
school only briefly, and many were still barely literate.
5. Women students admitted to teachers school after two or three years of study. Their
educational qualifications, however, were still fairly low.
Short-term psychological experiments
would have been highly problematic under the field conditions we expected to
encounter
they need to have a "growth mindset" — the belief that success comes from effort — and not a "fixed mindset" — the notion that people succeed because they are born with a "gift" of intelligence or talent.
ducators say they see it all the time: Kids with fixed mindsets who think they just don't have the "gift" don't bother applying themselves. Conversely, kids with fixed mindsets who were always told they were "gifted" and skated through school tend to crumble when they hit their first challenge; rather than risk looking like a loser, they just quit.
We don't use the word 'gifted' — ever," Giamportone says. "In our school, you will never hear it." " 'Smart' is like a curse," adds social studies teacher June Davenport.
Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a "growth mindset."
The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.
praise students for their focus and determination.
"If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest," concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. "But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment."
In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.
The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000.
A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. "We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out," says Duckworth. "It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child."
"Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing," says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, "the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking."
if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.
Yes, but once again this is not an either/or situation.
I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love," Duckworth says. "So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence."
But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes "you can teach old dogs new tricks."
Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead?
After years of focusing on the theory known as "multiple intelligences" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years."
What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?
students in math, science, humanities, and social sciences—rather than those in more directly career-oriented fields—tend to show the most growth in the areas measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the primary tool used in their study. Also, students learn more from professors with high expectations who interact with them outside of the classroom. If you do more reading, writing, and thinking, you tend to get better at those things, particularly if you have a lot of support from your teachers.
Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area but often arrive with strong convictions about their abilities.
It has become difficult to give students honest feedback.
As the college-age population declines, many tuition-driven institutions struggle to find enough paying customers to balance their budgets. That makes it necessary to recruit even more unprepared students, who then must be retained, shifting the burden for academic success away from the student and on to the teacher.
Although a lot of emphasis is placed on research on the tenure track, most faculty members are not on that track and are retained on the basis of what students think of them.
Students gravitate to lenient professors and to courses that are reputedly easy, particularly in general education.
It is impossible to maintain high expectations for long unless everyone holds the line in all comparable courses—and we face strong incentives not to do that.
Formerly, full-time, tenured faculty members with terminal degrees and long-term ties to the institution did most of the teaching. Such faculty members not only were free to grade honestly and teach with conviction but also had a deep understanding of the curriculum, their colleagues, and the institutional mission. Now undergraduate teaching relies primarily on graduate students and transient, part-time instructors on short-term contracts who teach at multiple institutions and whose performance is judged almost entirely by student-satisfaction surveys.
Contingent faculty members, who are paid so little, routinely teach course loads that are impossible to sustain without cutting a lot of corners.
Many colleges are now so packed with transient teachers, and multitasking faculty-administrators, that it is impossible to maintain some kind of logical development in the sequencing of courses.
Students may be enjoying high self-esteem, but college teachers seem to be suffering from a lack of self-confidence.
This was interesting to me....but I wasn't so impressed with their "tool". But it might be a good first step for teams that aren't into the whole pre-assessment thing.
forecasters have little ability to predict how intense future El Niño episodes will be. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) it is also near impossible to pinpoint the exact dates that El Niño will begin.
Through the creative turns of language they use to describe the world and our experiences, the familiar becomes unfamiliar again, and we discover in the everyday world fresh food for insight and reflection.
We want them to pay attention to course content, to be astonished by what they find there, and to report back to us and the world what they have discovered.
Find an everyday object that connects to your discipline, or a photograph or image that accompanies an article or book in your field.
Close — and I mean really close — reading.
in which practitioners slowly read the sacred scriptures of Judaism aloud to one another, pausing and discussing and questioning at every turn.
Tell about it.
asked what they had learned from the experience, and especially what they had noticed about the text that they hadn’t perceived before
pointed out anomalies and inconsistencies, and wondered
What? For the first step, students spend time just observing the object and taking notes.
So what? Students write down questions based on their observations and share them with one another.
Now what? The final stage shifts into more whole-class and teacher-centered discussion
Attention through assessments.
For 13 consecutive weeks, she asked students to leave the campus and make a visit to the nearby Worcester Art Museum in order to spend time in front of the same work of art.
As they learned to train their attention on a work of art, their attention brought them insights. They saw more clearly, developed new ideas, and wrote creatively about what they observed.
Save important websites and access them on any computer.
Categorize websites by titles, notes, keyword tags, lists and groups.
Search through bookmarks to quickly find desired information.
Save a screenshot of a website and see how it has changed over time.
Annotate websites with highlighting or virtual "sticky notes."
View any annotations made by others on any website visited.
Share websites with g
Diigo can provide a way to enrich or extend learning about a topic.
Beyond extended student learning, Diigo can be used as a form of professional development.
Research
Teaching students to research is a common standard across all grade levels, elementary, middle school, high school, and beyond. Diigo excels as a research tool:
Students can save relevant websites to lists in their Diigo student accounts. Each saved bookmark captures the URL and a screenshot, and can be searched later.
Students can highlight important information right on the website, using Diigo. Later, when students return to the website, they find the reason they saved the bookmark in the first place.
Students can use virtual sticky notes to summarize the important points of information from the website. This activity will mimic the time-tested procedure of using note cards to summarize and organize research projects.
Students working on similar topics can create and join groups in order to collaborate.
Later, when students need to document their sources, Diigo can be used to recall website URLs for citing sources.
How in the WORLD do I do the social part of it??
This seems useful, but I'm still trying to figure out how to let the kids collaborate on Outliners and then share the Outliners with me easily. I bet there's something huge that I'm missing here...
Granted, there are no papers to grade, and assignments aren’t free-form, but how does one professor handle so many students?
We had four teaching assistants, and my initial plan was that they would spend a lot of time on the discussion forum, answering questions. One night in the early days, I was on the forum at 2 a.m. when I saw a student ask a question, and I was typing my answer when I discovered that another student had typed an answer before I could. It was in the right direction, but not quite there, so I thought I could modify it, but then some other student jumped in with the right answer. It was fascinating to see how quickly students were helping each other. All we had to do was go in and say that it was a good answer. I actually instructed the T.A.’s not to answer so quickly, to let students work for an hour or two, and by and large they find the answers.
Most students who register for MOOCs don’t complete the course. Of the 154,763 who registered for “Circuits and Electronics,” fewer than half even got as far as looking at the first problem set, and only 7,157 passed the course. What do you make of that?
EdX operates under an honor code, with no way to verify that the student who registered is the one doing the work. Is that likely to change?
It’s quite possible employers would be happy with an honor certificate. We’re looking at various methods of proctoring. We have talked about people going to centers to take exams. There are also companies that use the cameras inside a laptop or iPad to watch you and everything else that’s happening in the room while you take an exam, and that may be more scalable.
And because we will have all this data on how students actually use our materials, there are opportunities for research on learning. We can watch how many attempts students made before they got an exercise right, and if they got it wrong, what they used to try to find a solution. Did they go to the textbook, go back and watch the video, go to the forum and post a question?
There is a risk that the mistakes of the past – both teaching to the test by schools and micro-management of the school system through the means of exams and league tables – may be repeated in the EBC.
nternational evidence from high-performing education systems suggests more formative assessment during schooling would be beneficial
But an over-reliance on summative assessment can distort the quality of education by becoming the dominant focus of school activity.
Removal of the currently over-specified and repetitive national curriculum from primary schools in favour of clearly defined goals on literacy, numeracy, science and computer science.
more stretching
judged by Ofsted
Move the focus of our exam system to 18 and develop clearly rigorous and stretching standards for both academic and vocational A-levels, with maths and English retained until 18 for both
A study
should be commissioned to advise on the right balance of timing and the optimal mix between formative and summative assessment
Interestingly, unlike math, which can often be difficult to teach in all of its abstraction, algorithms do stuff. Algorithms are operational. You show kids how to use a program like Scratch or Hackasaurus and, very soon, they can actually manipulate, create, and do, in their very own and special way.
the beauty of teaching even the youngest kids algorithms and algorithmic or procedural thinking is that it gives them the same tool of agency and production that writing and even reading gave to industrial age learners who, for the first time in history, had access to cheap books and other forms of print.
Cathy Davidson discusses the need for a fourth "R" -pertaining to "algoRithim" - It is important, she argues, because, "in the 21st century, we need [an]...expanded push towards the literacy that defines our era, computational literacy. Algorithms are as basic to the way the 21st century digital age works as reading, writing, and arithmetic were to the late 18th century Industrial era."
"The classic "3 R's" of learning are, of course, Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic. For the 21st century, we need to add a fourth R--and it will help inspire the other three: Algorithm. "
Today robotics and artificial intelligence call for another education revolution
working lives are so lengthy and so fast-changing that simply cramming more schooling in at the start is not enough. People must also be able to acquire new skills throughout their careers.
lifelong learning that exists today mainly benefits high achievers—and is therefore more likely to exacerbate inequality than diminish it.
a burst at the start and top-ups through company training—is breaking down. One reason is the need for new, and constantly updated, skills.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today
It is easier to learn later in life if you enjoyed the classroom first time around: about 80% of the learners on Coursera already have degrees. Online learning requires some IT literacy, yet one in four adults in the OECD has no or limited experience of computers. Skills atrophy unless they are used, but many low-end jobs give workers little chance to practise them.
Lifelong learning starts at school. As a rule, education should not be narrowly vocational. The curriculum needs to teach children how to study and think. A focus on “metacognition” will make them better at picking up skills later in life.
Inequality was there long before high-tech innovations. The only gap produced by tech is between those with access to networks and devices and those without. two thirds of earth still without access to internet.
The following year teachers are required to “map” curriculums, a long process with no apparent functional use. Teaching for Understanding and Cross Curriculum Literacy are two trendy new programs promoting the latest hot topic. Everyone reads Active Literacy before author Heidi Hayes Jacobs arrives amidst great fanfare to promote her comprehensive program, which administrators cherry-pick, then forget. By 2008 the latest buzz-phrase is Professional Learning Communities. The high school adopts this concept at considerable cost and strife. Three years later Principal Power moves on, and PLCs fizzle. With each new initiative Sara’s enthusiasm diminishes. She has twenty-two years of books, binders, and workshop folders stacked in a file drawer, representing hundreds of hours of abandoned work. Sara digs through the strata like a scientist noting geologic eras. She ponders the energy spent on each new program, technological advance, and philosophical shift, and decides the only way she’ll make it to retirement is to stop caring so much. President Obama introduces the Race to the Top Fund, and by 2010 New York has successfully secured its slice of the cash cow. Common Core Standards are developed in 2011, and a system is put into place to rate teachers based on student test scores.
Epilogue
In 2013 the anti-union movement hits NY State and teacher unions lose the right to collectively bargain. With the help of key Assembly members, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo push through legislation they had endorsed for years eliminating the time-honored practice of laying-off teachers by seniority—“last hired, first fired.” A new math teacher is hired at Sara’s school. Being young and unattached, Bob impresses the new principal, who sees to it that he is not assigned the “problem” kids. Sara remains a competent and dedicated teacher, but the fire is out. She is asked to mentor Bob, but feels no motivation to train the competition. Bob can’t help but notice that Sara shows little interest in the newest reform initiatives. In 2014 a math position is cut due to budget constraints. At half the pay, Bob is clearly the better choice. Sara is laid off, and at age fifty, with a son in college, she joins the unemployed.
raction Hunt
Posted by:lismac #130700
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We walked around the school in small groups armed with cameras and looked for fractions occuring in our school. Each child had to find one scene to capture with the camera. Another group stayed in the classroom and created their fractions with classroom materials. Example- 10 pencils. 9 were yellow and one was red. Then the small groups would come to our computer and insert their picture. Each child then inserted text boxes to type in the fractions. Example- 9/10 of the pencils are yellow. 1/10 of the pencils are red. 9/10 + 1/10= 10/10 They could choose the fonts and colors and such... they used word art to add their names. They loved it! We also do one using multiplication.
Fraction Hunt
Posted by:lismac #130700
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We walked around the school in small groups armed with cameras and looked for fractions occuring in our school. Each child had to find one scene to capture with the camera. Another group stayed in the classroom and created their fractions with classroom materials. Example- 10 pencils. 9 were yellow and one was red. Then the small groups would come to our computer and insert their picture. Each child then inserted text boxes to type in the fractions. Example- 9/10 of the pencils are yellow. 1/10 of the pencils are red. 9/10 + 1/10= 10/10 They could choose the fonts and colors and such... they used word art to add their names. They loved it! We also do one using multiplication.
One activity that went over pretty well with my class was putting fractions in order. After completing a lesson on comparing fractions, each student was given a fraction on a 3x5 card and asked to tape it to their chest. Then they were instructed to line up in order from greatest to least. After they had completed the task, after much deliberation, I informed them of the correct order. They did pretty well considering there were fifteen students.
Another thing I did was draw fractions number lines (about seven inches long) on a piece of paper, one under another with enough space between lines so my students could label the points. The first line was not divided. The points were labeled 0 and 1.
The second line was divided into halves. The students labeled the points on the line 0/2, 1/2, and 2/2.
The third line was divided into thirds. The students labeled the points 0/3, 1/3, 2/3, 3/3.
You probably get the idea. The remaining lines were divided into fourths, fifths, sixths, eighths, tenths, and twelfths, and the points were labeled. (It is very...
I created an interactive fraction number line from 0 to 2 on my wall. I have about 40 fraction cards with different fractions and I have students take turns putting the cards on the number line. They get the chance to see that some of the fractions are equivelent to others.
Well, you are not alone. Fractions lessons sometimes need repeating over and over until they understand the CONCEPTS. Try giving them a mnemonic device to help them remember what to do. My kids decided to use GCF as Greatest Calories n Fat so that's why you REDUCE!! This just helped them to know when to use the GCF but it still needs lots of practice. Also, do a lot of hands-on activities that show equivalency in fractions. Make fraction strips using construction paper, and the kids can show all the equivalent fractions by matching up the strips. Or try the pizza fraction pieces that you can buy. I believe that it just takes lots of fun practice as well as drills on the procedures. Take your time and don't rush through it or you'll be sorry to see that they won't remember any of it by Christmas!!
Make up index cards before hand. Group them in 3's (.25 on one card, 1/4 on another, 25% on the third) make up however many sets of three you need to give a card to each of the students in your class. Once the cards have been shuffled, pass one to each student. Have them find their 'family' WITHOUT MAKING A SOUND. When .20, 1/5 and 20% find each other they have to put their cards on a large number line in the front of the class. It's a great way to get them all involved, and gets them up and around the classroom.
I also have my student play Fraction Tic Tac Toe, on a 4 x 4 grid filled with halves, fourths, and eighths. They have to make a whole with 3 fractions in a row. They love it!!! I'm not sure where the gamesheet come from, but I am sure you can make your own.
One of the best decisions our team made last summer was to pre-install Casper (5) profiles on all of our iPads. We pulled
the student IDs from our ASPEN (6) student
information system, logged each student into Casper and installed the four
profiles needed for our plan. The profiles took Safari web browser off the iPad.
As we progressed through the year, we discovered that these tools took a lot of
time to create something we were trying to move away from in the first place.
The reason for moving away from textbooks is that they offer a myopic vision of
a world that is ever-changing. Simply viewing a textbook on an iPad does not
change or innovate learning, nor does it use the iPad to its full potential. If
your plan is to digitize a standard textbook, save your money and renew your
textbook licenses.
This year we are incorporating K-12 digital portfolios along with revised
information and digital literacy standards. Every BPS student will have a Google
Apps for Education account that they will use in conjunction with the Blogger (15) application
to begin creating their Life of Learning portfolio
Begrundelser for anvendelsen af iPads i undervisningen bevæger sig fra en forestilling om at erstatte tekstbøger til en forestilling om at kunne lærerne kan samarbejde med eleverne i skyen ved hjælp af værktøjer, der automatisk synkroniserer med eleverns iPads
The students that make it into help desk are those who not only enjoy working
with technology in an educational context, but have a desire to serve, support
and possibly solve problems in the school on a daily basis.
.
Aside from simply troubleshooting, our
students help their former teachers at the middle and elementary levels as well
as create how-to scripts and videos for students, faculty and the Burlington
community. Our students have not only helped within the BPS community, but have
helped our Tech Team organize two major conferences in the past year:
You can have the most precisely calculated plan in place before you launch, but
if you don't have the right support in place, your launch may stumble. I regard
our IT department as one of the best I have ever worked with. I say this in all
sincerity because I do "work with" this team. These guys not only manage a
robust infrastructure, but they take part in the educational conversation and
give our staff the best tools to create dynamic, engaging classrooms.
Teknisk support er en del af løsningen og de skal deltage i den løbende pædagogisk/didaksike debet
However, we must work to incorporate information and digital literacy standards
into the K-12 curriculum as early as possible. Students in Kindergarten should
understand what it means to be nice to someone and how that will translate to
writing and living on the Web. As students grow up through the educational
pathways, they must be exposed to new and emerging technologies as early as
possible in a safe, responsible manner. By doing so, we are preparing them for a
global economy that requires these skills.
Our middle school is adding character education to the arts and humanities curriculum. Teaching students at a young age to be thoughtful and responsible with technology will make it a much better experience inside the classroom.
Horizon library automation system
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