"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
Gone are the days when you could blow off a series of homework assignments throughout the semester but pull through with a respectable grade by cramming for and acing that all-important mid-term exam. Getting good grades today is far more about keeping up with and producing quality homework—not to mention handing it in on time.
girls succeed over boys in school because they tend to be more mastery-oriented in their schoolwork habits. They are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals. They also are more likely than boys to feel intrinsically satisfied with the whole enterprise of organizing their work, and more invested in impressing themselves and their teachers with their efforts.
boys approach schoolwork differently. They are more performance-oriented. Studying for and taking tests taps into their competitive instincts. For many boys, tests are quests that get their hearts pounding. Doing well on them is a public demonstration of excellence
“The testing situation may underestimate girls’ abilities, but the classroom may underestimate boys’ abilities.”
It is easy to for boys to feel alienated in an environment where homework and organization skills account for so much of their grades.
it appears that the overwhelming trend among teachers is to assign zero points for late work. In one survey by Conni Campbell, associate dean of the School of Education at Point Loma Nazarene University, 84 percent of teachers did just that.
The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player
gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to
the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like
"tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish
exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are
so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who
want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the
teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with
envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to
themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication
tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication."
The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much
Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make
Math Easy."
What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into
little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up
depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring. Ask a few kids:
the reason most don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it
is utterly boring.
game designers have a better take on the nature of learning than curriculum
designers. They have to. Their livelihoods depend on millions of people being
prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex
game. If their public failed to learn, they would go out of business. In the
case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their business is
boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamor for a new curriculum!
watching kids work at mastering games confirms what I know from my own
experience: learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply
engaged in hard and challenging activities.
The preoccupation in America with "Making It Easy" is self-defeating and cause
for serious worry about the deterioration of the learning environment.
I have found that when they get the support and have access to suitable software
systems, children's enthusiasm for playing games easily gives rise to an
enthusiasm for making them, and this in turn leads to more sophisticated
thinking about all aspects of games, including those aspects that we are
discussing here. Of course, the games they can make generally lack the polish
and the complexity of those made by professional designers. But the idea that
children should draw, write stories and play music is not contradicted by the
fact that their work is not of professional quality. I would predict that within
a decade, making a computer game will be as much a part of children's culture as
any of these art forms.
Designed for grades 3-5, the CYBERCHASE Lucky Star game show challenges kids to compete for top scores while building important math skills. This easy-to-install application engages students using the hugely popular characters from CYBERCHASE
I know I've posted this site before, but for those new teachers I'm posting it again. Love this site! Leave it to the Smithsonian to make it easy to differentiate reading levels within interesting informational articles for grades K-12. Worth a look.
"Smart Science® online hands-on labs provide outstanding science education.
Inexpensive and efficient STEM education.
Built-in scientific inquiry facilitating student discovery of science.
Online hands-on real experiments, not simulations.
Online lab reports, easy to write and grade.
Archive of lab reports obtained with a simple mouse click.
Retention of lab reports and all student work for 5 years.
Differentiated reading levels"
Wow, pretty impressive and just might be worth the money. Do the lite demo they provide and see what you think.
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:
culture of learning” instead of a “culture of earning.”
Creating that kind of culture isn’t easy, but Bull continually goes back to formative assessment as the key.
“I find that formative assessment tends to be the most important aspect of a learning assessment plan,” he said. “It has the most impact on a student’s learning.”
grade-less report card, where words like “outstanding” or “needs improvement” are used in place of letter or number grades.
digital or paper portfolios that display a collection of student work. “It’s a very reflective process,” said Bull. It works best if students analyze their own body of work
Writing becomes authentic and important because it is something that a 'real' audience is going to see!
The cool thing about this is that family members can far more easily be involved in her learning and in providing regular feedback than they could be if her writing was only contained in the traditional paper journal.
What an easy way to have parental involvement! This would solve some of that issue of parents not knowing what their children are doing at school or what is going on when the child gets older and more close-lipped.
Don't we ALL benefit from somebody interacting with us and commenting on our thinking?
Grandparents and other relatives rarely have an opportunity to observe or see what their grandchildren are doing in school. The student blogs also allows them to be a part of our classroom community.
Looked at this class blog. Wouldn't this be a wonderful exercise? The teacher could blog, the students could blog on personal level but also have a class blog which is a place for inspiration for writing exercises (thinking like a language arts/writing/reading teacher here) when students don't have their own inspiration/focus for creative writing.
This blog would also be a great place to steal ideas! :)
When I visit with teachers and suggest they have students create a web site or blog as an educational tool, often the teacher will tell me he/she doesn't have time to read/monitor that. However, most teachers have students complete writing assignments and turn them in for a grade - lab reports, essays, reports, etc. So, wouldn't this also be a way for students to create such assignments?
This article shows the versatility of the 3rd grade students' blogs - one reported on planet studied, one on animal, etc. So, it wouldn't have to just be a place for creative writing/online writer's notebook!
The NETS help guide technology planning and curriculum development for all grade levels and provide a roadmap for digital age learning, teaching and leadership ..
Recently, educators working on a NETS web page for staff and students tackled the challenge by translating the NETS for Students into action verbs .. Here's what they've come up with:"
A 2006 article by Alfie Kohn in the English Jouranl that looks at the dangers of leaning on rubrics to jsutify grades or make grading easy. Compelling agrument.
More discussion on ethics is needed as technology is used to assess student learning. I believe the use of the letter grade system exacerbated the problem.
However, ‘academics who once praised the Internet for giving students more access to information are now worried it is providing students with easy access to pre-written essays
Parts of an essay can be quoted in a Google search in order to trace "cut & paste" plagiarism.
However, where calculators make it easy for students and adults to make quick calculations, they are ‘becoming a mental crutch for students, rather than a tool that promotes higher order learning’
There are professional development tools that are sorted by grade level, ease of use, and written in plain English.
Classroom Materials, created by teachers for teachers, are ready-to-use materials that provide easy ways to incorporate the Library's unparalleled primary sources into instruction.
Make sure you are on Glogster EDU. You will need to sign up for an account. It is FREE and easy to use. Your students can utilize this resource to create engaging and interactive posters for various classroom projects!
Description: Glogs are online, interactive posters. "A valuable teaching tool that integrates diverse core subjects including math, science, history, art, photography, music and more for individual learner portfolios, unique alternative assessments, and differentiated instructional activities." From Glogster EDU
Description: Glogs are online, interactive posters. "A valuable teaching tool that integrates diverse core subjects including math, science, history, art, photography, music and more for individual learner portfolios, unique alternative assessments, and differentiated instructional activities." From Glogster EDU
Really is a powerful tool in the classroom, with so many ways to implement it for any subject. Also, teachers can set up student accounts and monitor activity.
Glogster EDU Premium is a collaborative online learning platform for teachers and students to express their creativity, knowledge, ideas and skills in the classroom.
The American Enterprise Institute is one of the leading conservative think tanks. The AEI, and the conservative movement in general, have an interest in a more religious population, since religious voters are more likely to vote Republican and for conservative parties elsewhere in the world. Therefore, one needs to skeptical of research emanating from a think tank with a strong ideological bias; especially when that research serves the interests of the institution.
Across the world, "population change is reversing secularism and shifting the center of gravity of entire societies in a conservative religious direction." The same will be true here in the United States, where religious families have more children than non-religious ones.
It's easy to underestimate the role that population change can have in social change, Kaufmann says, but it can have a huge role, especially when differences in values drive differences in fertility
the fringe of ultra-Orthodox pupils in Israel's Jewish primary schools in 1960 has ballooned: they now comprise a third of the Jewish first grade class. They are gaining power: in Jerusalem, Haredim rioted in late December, demanding the right to segregate women on buses, and have already elected the city's first Haredi mayor.
the ultra-Orthodox may form a majority of observant American and British Jews by 2050
In the United States, Republicans have a similar values-driven fertility advantage -- an advantage, Kaufmann argues, which will outweigh the Democratic advantage of increased immigration, in part because many immigrants are conservative on social issues and maximalist in their family planning.
"In Seattle, there are nearly 45 percent more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19 percent more kids than dogs.”
Summary of article from the American Enterprise Institute journal, "The American", that claims that future of the U.S. is more religious than secular due to the large family size of religious fundamentalists.
Lisa C. Hurst on 05 May 15"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
