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Dennis OConnor

Information Investigator 3 by Carl Heine on Prezi - 101 views

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    What if every student (and educator) was a good online researcher?  I know, you don't have the time to teach information fluency skills.  What if you could get a significant advance is skills with just a 2 -3  hour time commitment?  Here's a great Prezi 'fly by" of the new Information Investigator 3.1 online self paced class.  Watch the presentation carefully to find the link to a free code to take the class for evaluation purposes. 
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    Of course you could always have you school librarian/media specialist teach information skills to your students! That's what they do!
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    I couldn't agree more. Library Media Specialists, especially when they can collaborate with classroom teachers, are the best resource for teaching these skills. However the problem of access to a Librarian and the issue of scale are real barriers. I've been creating content for Librarians for a decade. They are the best! You'll find years of free resources at: http://21cif.com This resource will help them reach more students. We had 1000 teens take this course at the Center for Talent Development. It really does work. We're hoping to reach teachers and librarians everywhere so we can pass along the skills and the opportunity. If American education was marginally rational there would be professionally staffed library media centers in every school. Since that isn't the case, I hope Internet based resources can keep the lights on for a new generation that really needs information fluency.
Peter Beens

Free Teaching Resources, Tools, & Lesson Plans - Intel Education - 41 views

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    Intel offers free, easily integrated tools and teaching resources to support collaborative student-centered learning. Our online thinking tools provide active learning places where students can engage in robust discussions, analyze complex information, pursue investigations, and solve problems. You'll also find teaching resources such as exemplary lesson plans, assessment strategies, and technology-enriched project ideas for all K-12 subjects. Developed by educators, these free tools and resources support 21st century learning, with project-based approaches in the classroom.
Daniel Spielmann

Emergent Learning Model « The Heutagogic Archives - 41 views

  • Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE)
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      What is the difference between SOLEs and PLEs?
  • The Open Context Model of Learning is a way of thinking about the relationships of learning such that a (teacher) develops both a subject understanding as well as an ability in the (learner) to take forward their learning in that subject.
  • What I hoped to do below with the ELM is to show how all learning can be complementary and, given that everyone wants to learn, how we can design learner-responsive resources, institutions and networks.
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  • three part structure of ELM
  • in our free time outside of institutions
  • comes from our own interests
  • interests of individuals
  • ocial process of learning
  • designs the pre-condition for social processes to emerge, which is the essence of informal learning
  • Informal Learning is the social processes that support self-organised learning in any context
  • structured learning opportunities without formal learning outcomes’
  • identified a process of resource creation that responded to learners interests
  • n adaptive model of resource creation
  • content creation toolkits
  • structuring of learning opportunities through resources
  • as the key process in non-formal learning
  • institutionalisation of processes surrounding learning
  • education as a system, rather than learning as a process
    • Daniel Spielmann
       
      What if they aren't? What's the system's answer to that then?
  • What formal learning, or education, has really become specialised in is maintaining itself as a set of institutions and buildings.
  • Formal learning is the process of administering and quality assuring the accreditation of learning and the qualifications
  • Non-formal learning is structured learning resources without formal learning outcomes.
  • So what ELM aims to do is to replace the notion of learning as being a process of accreditation, that occurs within an institutionally constrained and hierarchical system, with a series of processes that better matches how people actually learn, following interests, collaborating and finding resources.
  • more about meeting the needs and interests of human beings
  • we should start with the social processes of everyday life, and design a system that enables learning to naturally emerge
  • a) education; is a process organized by institutions who offer qualifications based on set texts to be used by learning groups in classes to meet accreditation criteria. Teachers provide resources and broker these educational processes. b) learning; is a process of problem-solving carried out by people individually or collaboratively by finding resources and discussing the emerging issues with trusted intermediaries.
  • People + Resources = Learning
trisha_poole

Technology Resources for Schools - 97 views

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    On this wiki you will find resources for different educational applications, Web 2.0 and digital image and video resources. My name is Suzie Vesper and I work as an ICT Facilitator in New Zealand at the national level and within a school. Feel free to add your own ideas and resources to this site. If you do add some content, please add some information about yourself to my contributors page.
Lisa C. Hurst

Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 9 views

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    "AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
June Frost

25 Best Sites for Free Educational Videos - 162 views

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    25 best educational video sites from RefSeek
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    HI Tom You could now add in iMinds which is a new resource of short grabs of information available for download like iTunes. Libby
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    RefSeek's guide to the 25 best online resources for finding free educational videos. With the exception of BrainPOP and Cosmeo, all listed sites offer their extensive video libraries for free and without registration.
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    Brainstorm is only free for the first 3 days. After that it is $29.99/month!
Erin DeBell

SPAN 103N W01 S111: Foro de lenguaje y cultura - Semana 9 - El embarazo - Due Sunday, 7/17 - 7 views

    • Erin DeBell
       
      Suggestions: Use past tense (preterite) more often to talk about things that happened in the past. The verbs you recognized are good examples.  At this point, though, not only should you recognize words, but phrases and TENSES/CONCEPTS, as well.  These are the grammar examples you will need to share on your chart.  Did you see any reflexive verbs?  Commands?  Preterite?  If so, share the example AND the English equivalent (translation).
    • Erin DeBell
       
      Also, for your chart you might end up being short on Country-Specific resources.  When looking for things to share, think about sharing info from a particular country.  It is too late for this post, but since your resource is from California, perhaps you could find some info on the Hispanic population in California.  Where are they from?  Then pick one of those countries of origin and find some info about it for us.  Bingo!  Country-specific example for your chart.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      Since this forum is over, you can post this info on the "country-specific catch-up forum" that I will make available immediately.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      I sense a lot of stress about the forum requirements, so I am going to provide group feedback this way.  Make sure to click on each "sticky note" to get my feedback on the post.  This will help you complete your chart as best as possible.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      HIGHLIGHTS: You will see a lot of highlights on this page.   Pink/red highlights indicate a mistake is present.  I have not highlighted ALL mistakes, just some that you should be able to fix with what you know at this point. GREEN means GOOD!  I have highlighted many phrases that indicate good/correct grammar usage.  Sometimes I highlight in green things that I really like :-)  Green means GO!!!
    • Erin DeBell
       
      YELLOW highlights are for important things - read them!
    • Erin DeBell
       
      FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE WORRIED ABOUT BEING SHORT ON COUNTRY-SPECIFIC REFERENCES, I WILL SHARE IDEAS ON HOW TO INCLUDE THOSE AND PROVIDE A SEPARATE "Country-Specific Catch-Up Forum" where you can explore individual countries a bit further.
  • siertas
  • ...49 more annotations...
  • Vi la pagina
  • Me encanta
  • unico
  • Lo unico que puedes hacer es revisar y leer tus viejos forums y buscar ejemplos que
  • usastes.
  • Me pongo
  • nervioso
  • Completado
    • Erin DeBell
       
      If you want to say "I completed," you should use the preterite.  Verb = COMPLETAR.  Yo completé.
  • están encontrando
  • mucho las
    • Erin DeBell
       
      muchas
  • encontre
  • promueve
  • parecer
  • matres
  • olvido
    • Erin DeBell
       
      This post is very interesting.  The quote included is informative and summarizes the findings of the source Gabriela consulted.  This information is very useful for all of us.  The content is excellent, but I would like to see more linguistic information.  For example, did you pick up any new words from reading this article?  If so, you should list them (WITH English translations for the benefit of classmates).   Also, to obtain country-specific resources, you could have looked up premature births in Spanish-speaking countries and focused on one in particular, perhaps sharing information or a resource from that country.  Feel free to do this and post on the "make-up forum" available soon.
  • Yo necesito leer mis viejos forums
  • Yo escribo el charto pronto
  • unico problema
  • ayudan
  • yo vi que usaron el preterite(pasado tenso) como "se logro-was accomplished".
  • usted sito
  • son
  • son embarazado
  • Encuentré
  • en español: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXmHnpBgEqw.
  • muchísimas ejemplos
  • los verbos reflexivos, empieza immediatemente en diapositiva 2: “se usa para identificar afecctiones serias o mortales antes que lo síntomas aparezcan. Se puede empezar el tratamiento antes que la salud del bebé se perjudique por estas afecciones.”
  • Objeto Directo ejemplo, de diapositiva 4: “...el tratamiento puede salvarle o evitarle problemas....”
  • Objeto Indirecto ejemplo, de diapositiva 16: “...si no le practicaron pruebas preliminares de la audición a su bebé al nacer, asegúrarse de que le practiquen estas pruebas.”
  • Y Objecto Doble en diapositiva 22: “...y al recién nacido se les da de alta antes que el bebé....”
  • Ejemplos de vocabulario nuevo
  • Ahora estoy curiosa como se prueban los recién nacidos in otros países. Encuentro un sitio de Bolivia
  • No la encuentro la misma que Bolivia
  • la situación en Venezuela
  • me dijo
  • Hablé con mis vecinos, quienes son de El Salvador
  • Tuve que buscar
  • Completado
  • Completado
  • Completado
  • Completado las
  • decidí esperar
  • yo no realizo que “verb use” fue el verbos yo uso en “my post.”
  • haci
  • y haci vino
  • el nacio vajo
  • Escuchado
  • nombre de la operación
Dennis OConnor

Information Fluency Newsletter - 28 views

  • Subscribe to our email newsletter and receive periodic updates about 21CIF including professional development opportunities and new resources.
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    "Information Fluency Newsletter! Subscribe to our email newsletter and receive periodic updates about 21CIF including professional development opportunities and new resources."
Jason Finley

Diigo in Education - 108 views

Marie, my primary use and focus with Diigo is the social networking aspect that you mentioned. There is definitely truth to the statement that "Chance favors the connected mind." I've created a g...

Diigo

Lisa McCulloch

100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher | Best Universities - 7 views

  • Teachers learn from their experience, from their colleagues, from their students, and any number of other resources. If you are a teacher looking for ways to expand your knowledge base, here are 100 free lectures you can watch to help facilitate some of that learning.
  • Creative Learning Environments
  • Technology
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Technology
  • Information for New Teachers
  • Technology
  • Information for All Teachers
  • Teaching Specific Subjects
  • Special Needs
  • Arts
  • Arts
  • Physical Education and Health Education
  • Arts From film to music to the nature of creativity, watch these videos to learn about teaching the arts.
  • Lectures from Influential Professors
  • The following videos demonstrate ways to use technology in the classroom and offer tips, lessons, and information.
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    Great teachers know that learning doesn't stop as soon as you graduate from college. Teachers learn from their experience, from their colleagues, from their students, and any number of other resources. If you are a teacher looking for ways to expand your knowledge base, here are 100 free lectures you can watch to help facilitate some of that learning.
Steve Ransom

Wikipedia:FAQ/Schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Students should never use information in Wikipedia (or any other online encyclopedia) for formal purposes (such as school essays) until they have verified and evaluated the information based on external sources. For this reason, Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a great starting place for research but not always a great ending place.
  • It is possible for a given Wikipedia article to be biased, outdated, or factually incorrect. This is true of any resource. One should always double-check the accuracy of important facts, regardless of the source. In general, popular Wikipedia articles are more accurate than ones that receive little traffic, because they are read more often and therefore any errors are corrected in a more timely fashion. Wikipedia articles may also suffer from issues such as Western bias, but hopefully this will also improve with time. For more information
  • Although the majority of edits attempt to improve the encyclopedia, vandalism is frequent.
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  • If an anonymous or relatively new user changes a statistic or date by even a little bit, without justifying their edit, they are particularly likely to raise a red flag. If an individual continues to vandalize after being warned, then they may even be blocked from further editing.
  • keeps a full history of every change to every article
  • It is for this reason that readers must be particularly diligent in verifying Wikipedia against its external sources, as discussed above. It is also a good idea, if you feel uncomfortable about an article, to check its history for recent "bad-faith" edits. If you find a piece of uncorrected vandalism, you might even decide to help future users by correcting it yourself. That's a great feature of Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia can be an excellent starting place for further research.
  • Students can compare information in Wikipedia with information in other encyclopedias or books in the library. As a general rule, contributors to Wikipedia are encouraged to cite their sources, but, of course, not all do. For the sake of verifiability, it is advisable to cite an article that has listed its sources. Most of our better articles have sections such as "References," "Sources," "Notes," "Further reading," or "External links," which generally contain such information.
  • The 2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for Schools is a selection of 5,500 articles deemed suitable for school children and has been checked and edited for this audience and protected against editing or vandalism. It contains about the equivalent content to a 20 volume encyclopaedia organized around school curriculum subjects, and is available online and as a free download for use by schools.
  • Educators can use Wikipedia as a way of teaching students to develop hierarchies of credibility that are essential for navigating and conducting research on the Internet.
  • Wikipedia's objective is to become a compendium of published knowledge about notable subjects.
Charles Greenberg

Open Education Week - 58 views

  • Open education seeks to reduce barriers to learning for everyone while providing tools and resources that facilitate success. Initiatives in open education include open sharing of high-quality educational materials (Open Educational Resources), flexible and free learning formats that make use of open content, alternative pathways to assessment and certification of learning, and projects that support improvements in educational systems.
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    Welcome to the Open Education Week website. We are busy planning activities for 5-10 March 2012 to explore open education projects, resources and institutions around the world. Events will engage you in discussions and presentations about how open sharing in education can foster improvements in teaching and learning globally, make education more accessible, and create opportunities for collaboration and innovation. All live and virtual activities will be free and open to the public. Please check back for schedules, resources and information.
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    Be part of the beginning. No turning back
Deborah Baillesderr

CommonLit | Free Fiction & Nonfiction Literacy Resources, Curriculum, & Assessment Mate... - 53 views

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    Great resource for CCSS-ELA. This site is geared for grades 5-12. The library is full of informational and literature text that can be found by lexile range, grade level, theme, genres, device or standards. You have the ability to get paired text, related media (videos), a teacher guide, and a parent guide. Assessment and discussion questions are included that asked students to prove their answers using passages from the text. Truly worth checking out.
Mark McDonough

Diigo 101 - Student Learning with Diigo - 110 views

  • Diigo is much more than a simple web annotation or social bookmarking tool. It is an online research and collaborative research tool that integrates tags, digital highlights, interactive sticky notes, captured snapshots, and group-based collaboration, allowing a whole new process of online information management, learning, and teaching in the 21st Century.
    • terenceonline
       
      Good Summary of Diigo
  • My Network is a new Diigo social features that adds to the product's strength. My Network creates a "content-centric social network," in which people are connected by what they clip, tag, and highlight. Users will be able to collaborate with other users based not on who is a friend to whom, but rather by who is interested in what. My network delivers web content specifically tailored to a user interests and shows users with similar interest. Participation in a larger network is made possible with its community features that connects users with people with common interests; thus, building global communities around topics and knowledge, tags, and sites.
  • Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other Stuff (Diigo) is a powerful free social bookmarking website with annotating capabilities.
    • Mark McDonough
       
      Bold the first letters of the Diigo acronym: Digest, Internet, Information, ...
  •  
    Diigo is much more than a simple web annotation or social bookmarking tool. It is an online research and collaborative research tool that integrates tags, digital highlights, interactive sticky notes, captured snapshots, and group-based collaboration, allowing a whole new process of online information management, learning, and teaching in the 21st Century. 
  •  
    This is a great resource on Diigo and how to use.
Sasha Thackaberry

E-learning on the rise - 28 views

  • ​E-learning is a growing trend at community colleges, according to survey results from the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
  • E-learning is already used at 47 percent of community colleges and is expected to increase to 55 percent within two years. The survey of 578 community college faculty was conducted by Eric Liguori, an assistant professor at California State University.
  • Eighty-four percent of respondents believe e-learning is a valuable educational tool.
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  • The top five benefits of e-learning identified by respondents are: It increases access through location and time-flexible learning. More resources and information are available to students 24/7. Teachers can use a wide variety of tools and methods for teaching. It is a good supplement to face-to-face curriculum. It can lead to a richer learning experience if integrated correctly, freeing up class time for more engaging activities. This experience is often referred to as “flipping the classroom.”
  • When asked about the barriers to adopting online learning, faculty cited such concerns as doubt about its capability and reliability, acceptance by students and teachers, and lack of resources, such as time and technical support.
  • Twenty-three percent of respondents said the effectiveness of e-learning depends on the resources available, including the format and features of courses. For example, e-learning is best when teachers are adequately trained to use it, there is high-quality content and curriculum design, it’s used in conjunction with real-world situations and there is opportunity for student-teacher interactions, discussion boards and collaborative projects.
  • “Our survey looked at how community college faculty members are using e-learning as a cost-effective means” to increase completion rates and ensure that “students walk away with credentials that are meaningful in the workplace and that they are prepared for the careers they hope to pursue, including, for many, the start of entrepreneurial endeavors,” said NACCE President and CEO Heather Van Sickle.
Karen Polstra

Classroom 2.0 - 62 views

    • Justin Shorb
       
      How many members of the Diigo Ed group are using this forum? I don't want to be overwhelmed by too many social networking groups that I become inundated with too much information to be a truly participating member of any of them. I like the Diigo Ed group, so far!
    • Monika King
       
      I enjoy reading the items in the Forum, but I have yet to contribute.
    • Meredith Johnson
       
      I find the two forums match very well for what my interests are in education.
    • Deb White Groebner
       
      While I am new to the Diigo Ed group (and like it so far), I joined CR 2.0 a year and a half ago and have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations, info, and (especially) the webinars! Lots of good sharing all around.
    • Antwon Lincoln
       
      Just a wonderful resource for all who are in to connecting classrooms with technology!
    • Phil Taylor
       
      I also belong to Diigo in Education as well as four of EDTech type groups, as well as one that I have created for my school.
    • Gerald Carey
       
      I also can see different uses for these two forums.
    • Susan Wanke
       
      I've been using Diigo and the group Diigo in Education for quite some time, but Classroom 2.0 is active with tons of ideas for all of us.
  • social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in education
  • Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network. We especially hope that those who are "beginners" will find this a supportive comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog. Because of spammers, we have to approve all memberships here. While your membership is pending you are still welcome to peruse the site or attend any events!
    • Molly Hinkle
       
      I'm wondering how the value of this will balance with the time required to do it right!
    • Karen Polstra
       
      Me too.  I just joined.  We will see.
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    Online social networking at its best. This Ning page is centered around using online resources in today's classrooms. Excellent group!
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    The community for educators using Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies!
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    I've been using it the last 3 weeks. There is a large group of educators there and usefull shared information.
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    I just joined the Classroom 2.0 ning about a week ago. It appears to have some valuable information. I am new to social networking, but am looking forward to the experience. I am very interested in Web 2.0 technologies so the ning seemed like a good place to start.
  •  
    This is an interesting website with a great collection of tools for use in e-learning, blended classrooms and traditional teaching.
  •  
    This is an interesting website with a great collection of tools for use in e-learning, blended classrooms and traditional teaching.
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    web 2,  classroom practice
  •  
    This is an interesting website with a great collection of tools for use in e-learning, blended classrooms and traditional teaching.
Trudy Pretorius

Getting Started - 173 views

  •  
    "So What exactly are Google Lit Trips? The short version is simple. Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about "real world" references made in that particular portion of the story. "
Andrew McCluskey

Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

  • 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.  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  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.
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  • 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.   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. 
  • 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.  Our votes no longer matter.  Our wishes no longer count.  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?  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.  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.   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.  Of course that’s not the way our system really works, and never has been.   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. 
  • 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?  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.   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. 
  • 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.  Certainly not the moneyed classes and the economic system, and not the government, either.  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?  To what end?  The Adivasis are occupying their forests and mountains as our children are occupying our cities and parks.  But they understand that the first thing they must take back is their common sense. 
  • They must occupy their brains.
  • Isn’t it time for us to do the same?
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    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).
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    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
Randy Yerrick

Middle School Chemistry | Download Free Science Activities, Access Chemistry Multimedia... - 113 views

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    Great website with lesson plans and lots of multimedia covering basic chemistry topics. Though titled "middle school chemistry" much of the material can be referred to or used for basic high school chemistry or even biology (such as the basics on bonding, water molecules, etc).
  • ...1 more comment...
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    Agreed. The chapter on the periodic table is worth it just for the animations, let alone the lesson plans and other resources. What a good get, Holly. Kudos to the American Chemical Society for setting it up.
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    Worth a bump, I stumbled upon this gem today. Excellent resource, there is even a free pdf textbook.
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    Middle School Chemistry lessons with worksheets and standards.
Melanie Weser

Internet Detective | Home - 86 views

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    well-designed, detailed, topics include quality of information on internet, plagiarism & citation, definitions of information sources, much more, geared towards college, could be used in high school 
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    Free Internet Research tutorial takes about an hour to complete
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