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flips education on its head

First, online education isn't the one and only teaching tool.

Second, online education integration will help teachers make a more impactful influence on students.

“Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background. Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.”

How does this impact Teachers?

Teaching is a professional craft. Thinking that any high-scoring college student could come in and excel demeans it as a profession. No one would consider letting smart English majors perform surgery on low-income patients, or allowing cum laude math majors to do legal work for poor clients.

Stuffing under-prepared rookies’ ears with confidence and sending them into the fray doesn’t have a net neutral impact on our students or our national conversation on education.

Effective principals need clear goals, a culture of support and enough leeway to make decisions

25 percent of a school’s impact

communication and respect

Step 2: Teach students how to set goals and plan to meet them

And yet the machines have made hardly any impact.

Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households.

little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

few children whose families obtained computers said they used the machines for homework. What they were used for — daily — was playing games.

Teachers whose students make the greatest achievement gains have extensive preparation and experience relevant to their current assignment (subject, grade level, and student population taught). Opportunities to work with like-minded, similarly accomplished colleagues – and to build and share collective expertise – are also strongly associated with effective teaching. Accomplished teachers who have opportunities to share their expertise — and serve as leaders (as coaches, mentors, teacher educator, etc.) — are more likely to remain in the profession. To teach effectively, teachers must have access to the people, resources, and policies that support their work in the classroom. This includes: (1) principals who cultivate and embrace teacher leadership; (2) time and tools for teachers to learn from each other, (3) opportunities for teachers to connect and work with community organizations and agencies that support students and their families outside the school walls; (4) evaluation systems that comprehensively measure the impact of teachers on student learning, (5) performance pay systems that primarily reward the spread of teaching expertise and spur collaboration among teachers.

A Better System for Schools: Developing, Supporting and Retaining Effective  Teachers

Erikson’s Stages of Development  Erik Erikson, a German psychoanalyst heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, explored three aspects of identity: the ego identity (self), personal identity (the personal idiosyncrasies that distinguish a person from another, social/cultural identity (the collection of social roles a person might play). Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development considers the impact of external factors, parents and society on personality development from childhood to adulthood. According to Erikson’s theory, every person must pass through a series of eight interrelated stages over the entire life cycle. Infant (Hope) – Basic Trust vs. Mistrust Toddler (Will) – Autonomy vs. Shame Preschooler (Purpose) – Initiative vs. Guilt School-Age Child (Competence) – Industry vs. Inferiority Adolescent (Fidelity) – Identity vs. Identity Diffusion Young Adult (Love) – Intimacy vs. Isolation Middle-aged Adult (Care) – Generativity vs. Self-absorption Older Adult (Wisdom) – Integrity vs. Despair

That finding highlights one of Marzano’s key conclusions from the study. The teachers who were most effective using the whiteboards displayed many of the characteristics of good teaching in general: They paced the lesson appropriately and built on what students already knew; they used multiple media, such as text, pictures, and graphics, for delivering information; they gave students opportunities to participate; and they focused mainly on the content, not the technology.

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.