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D. S. Koelling

Views: What's High School For? - Inside Higher Ed - 35 views

  • In theory, dual enrollment enables high school students to accrue college credits for very little cost and imbues them with a sense of confidence that they can complete college work. If students can succeed in college classes while still in high school, conventional wisdom holds, they will be more likely to matriculate at the postsecondary level.
  • In reality, though, dual enrollment may do more harm than good.
  • The problem is that high school is not college and completion of a dual enrollment high school class is not always a guarantee that students have learned the material.
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  • As a result, classes that used to be termed “college-prep” are now seen as college proper.
  • In practice, however, courses covered in a high school setting on a high school calendar are often vastly different in practice.
  • This is not a criticism of high school teachers. Many are excellent educators and care deeply about students. But they often teach more classes than college faculty do, have myriad extracurricular responsibilities, and lack the requisite training that enables college faculty to introduce best practices in the field. In contrast, college faculty members expect a higher level of work from students, including having them study independently, write in the discipline and be exposed to the latest research. They are less likely to offer extra credit, or evaluate students based on an inflated high school norm.
  • High school students, especially sophomores and juniors, are not like college students. A collection of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are normally at a different stage of intellectual and moral development than are college students. Treating a high school student like a college student does not always do them a favor.
  • This student, as a sophomore in high school, earned a “C” in a “college” English course, which exempts her from our basic English 111 College Writing class. Even though her ACT score indicates her writing skills are deficient, we are limited in what we can do. Like many students who have already passed a “college” class, she thinks she already has the necessary writing skills to be successful in college. We know she very likely does not. Our willingness to increase student access by accepting transfer credit means that, without taking this student’s credits away, we cannot help her with her writing. Instead, by virtue of an average performance as a high school sophomore, this student will be placed into college classes for which she is unprepared.
  • Most colleges willingly accept credits from like institutions because we trust that our courses are equivalent and that our faculty are credentialed. I doubt that same trust applies to high schools. The best service a high school can provide is to prepare students for college, not substitute for it.
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    High school dual enrollment programs may not be helping students succeed in college.
anonymous

Virtual Communities and Embodied Realities: "he was SPYING ON ME....do they see nothing... - 8 views

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    The fate of privacy in the 2.0 world: students spying on students.
anonymous

Virtual Communities and Embodied Realities: Public Displays, Before and After the End o... - 24 views

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    What's the future of privacy in the Web 2.0 world? Community? Protest? Reflections on the aftermath of Tyler Clementi's suicide and the end of Don't Ask Don' Tell
Stan Golanka

Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context - NYTimes.com - 49 views

  • It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
    • Stan Golanka
       
      Core discussion topic? From this, I see a few discussion issues: 1. Do we prize "mash-ups" more than original work? Who is "we" in this? 2. If the answer to #1 is "yes," then the next question is: is this good or bad? 3. Finally, if the answer is "bad" to #2, what place do "mash-ups" have, and how do we help our students see the value in original work?
  • Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise;
    • Stan Golanka
       
      How do teachers help students rise above this "digital forest of mediocrity"?
  • Mr. Johnson added that the book’s migration to the digital realm will turn the solitary act of reading — “a direct exchange between author and reader” — into something far more social and suggested that as online chatter about books grows, “the unity of the book will disperse into a multitude of pages and paragraphs vying for Google’s attention.”
    • Stan Golanka
       
      If Johnson's predictions are true, is this necessarily bad? How much of this concern is "nostalgia"? What would be lost from an academic p.o.v, and what migh be gained?
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  • Instead of reading an entire news article, watching an entire television show or listening to an entire speech, growing numbers of people are happy to jump to the summary, the video clip, the sound bite — never mind if context and nuance are lost in the process; never mind if it’s our emotions, more than our sense of reason, that are engaged; never mind if statements haven’t been properly vetted and sourced.
    • Stan Golanka
       
      Should teachers "fight" this, or embrace it? Can summaries/sound bites ever be appropriate for academic discussions?
  • And online research enables scholars to power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking.
  • Digital insiders like Mr. Lanier and Paulina Borsook, the author of the book “Cyberselfish,” have noted the easily distracted, adolescent quality of much of cyberculture. Ms. Borsook describes tech-heads as having “an angry adolescent view of all authority as the Pig Parent,” writing that even older digerati want to think of themselves as “having an Inner Bike Messenger.”
    • Stan Golanka
       
      Can teachers moderate this attitude? Does our (adults) use/non-use of technology help breed this attitude?
  • authors “will increasingly tailor their work to a milieu that the writer Caleb Crain describes as ‘groupiness,’ where people read mainly ‘for the sake of a feeling of belonging’ rather than for personal enlightenment or amusement. As social concerns override literary ones, writers seem fated to eschew virtuosity and experimentation in favor of a bland but immediately accessible style.
    • Stan Golanka
       
      Does this ring true to educators? Are social concerns and literary conerns opposites? How does web publishing affect "literary" publishing, as opposed to "non-literary" publishing?
  • However impossible it is to think of “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” or “Jersey Shore” as art, reality shows have taken over wide swaths of television,
D. S. Koelling

Shared Governance Is a Myth - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 14 views

  • It takes years of rank and the bitter­sweet experience of extensive committee service to realize that faculty influence on the operation of the university is an illusion, and that shared governance is a myth.
  • Committees report to administrative officers who are at liberty to accept, reject, or substantially alter faculty recommendations.
  • One would think that faculty senates exercise jurisdiction over a range of college life and policy. In reality, the right of many senates does not extend beyond making recommendations to the president, who is under no obligation to accept them.
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  • A more probable source of this way of doing business is the residue of an old ideal of the university. Such survivals of previous practices are not unusual in social life. Physicians, for example, experience a struggle between two competing understandings of their field: the prevalent view that treating patients is a business, and the residue of the old ideal that it is a calling. Ministers live the same ambiguity. Faculty committees constitute the respect that today's university pays to the old notion that it is a community of students and scholars. The impotence of the committees is acknowledgment that at this time in history, institutions of higher education are business ventures, in certain ways similar to factories.
  • If education is primarily a business, managers hire the faculty. If universities are communities of students and scholars, faculty members hire the managers.
  • The growing disempowerment of the faculty is accelerated by the distance of governing boards from campus processes.
anonymous

Social Networking as a Tool for Student and Teacher Learning - 52 views

  • Online social networking includes much more than Facebook and Twitter. It is any online use of technology to connect people, enable them to collaborate with each other, and form virtual communities, says the Young Adult Library Services Association
  • Among students surveyed in a National School Boards Association study, 96 percent of those with online access reported using social networking, and half said they use it to discuss schoolwork. Despite this prevalence in everyday life, schools have been hesitant to adopt social networking as an education tool. A 2010 study into principals’ attitudes found that “schools are one of the last holdouts,” with many banning the most popular social networking sites for students and sometimes for staff.
  • Survey research confirms, however, that interest in harnessing social networking for educational purposes is high. As reported in School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies and Realities in 2010, a national survey of 1,200 principals, teachers and librarians found that most agreed that social networking sites can help educators share information and resources, create professional learning communities and improve schoolwide communications with students and staff. Those who had used social networks were more positive about potential benefits than those who had not. In an online discussion with 12 of the principals surveyed, most said, “social networking and online collaboration tools would make a substantive change in students’ educational experience.” They said these tools could improve student motivation and engagement, help students develop a more social/collaborative view of learning and create a connection to real-life learning.
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  • Most national, state and local policies have not yet addressed social networking specifically; by default, it often falls under existing acceptable use policies (AUPs). While AUPs usually provide clear language on obscenities, profanity and objectionable activities, they also leave out gray areas that could open students to harmful activities while excluding them from certain benefits of social networking. Likewise, boilerplate policies that ban specific applications, such as Twitter, may miss other potential threats while also limiting the ability of students to collaborate across schools, districts, states or countries. The challenge for districts is to write policies that address potentially harmful interactions without eliminating the technology’s beneficial uses.
Brian Peoples

Book In An Hour: A Classroom Strategy « Not All Who Wonder Are Lost - 8 views

  • « Thoughts on Collaboration and Developing Higher Level Questioning Skills Twittering with a Purpose: A Starter (or Restarter) Guide » 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
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    suggested on #sschat
Tamara Connors

Digitally Speaking / FrontPage - 43 views

  • Our kids’ futures will require them to be: Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.” More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information. More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world. Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids. More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically. Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice. More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world. Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.
  • are today's teachers prepared for the significant changes that must happen before this new vision of an educated citizen becomes a reality?
Steve Ransom

Alfie Kohn News and Comments - 37 views

  • “façade of orderly purposefulness”
    • Steve Ransom
       
      Great metaphor here!
  • “Tell me the incomes of your students’ families,” he wrote, “and I’ll describe to you your school.”
    • Steve Ransom
       
      A sad but true reality.
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    Nice tribute to Ted Sizer and Gerald Bracey
Steve Ransom

Electronic Devices Redefine Quality Family Time - NYTimes.com - 31 views

  • “The family was in the same room, but not together,”
  • One family. One room. Four screens. Four realities
  • Never has there been so much to consume, on so many devices.
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  • The transformation of the American living room into a multiscreen communication and entertainment hub” promises to “change our domestic sphere
  • Individual family members might find themselves contently connected to parallel worlds almost all the time.
Maggie Tsai

MyWeb4Ed: Diigo- A regular educators look at why Diigo is a teacher's friend - 55 views

  • I sat today using Diigo to bookmark, annotate, highlight, capture pages and pictures, and do just about anything I needed to do effortlessly.  Ya'll, this is straight from this educator's heart:  Diigo is amazing! Now look, my thinking about tech tools is that they have to serve everyone:  teachers --administrators, students, parents -- basically all stakeholders to be truly of value.  I'm into the reality of teaching which means if it is not going to improve the outcome for students academically by supporting their learning, most teachers just don't have the time to deal with it.  But, I'd like to think I'm a realist and if there's a tool that makes a teacher's life easier, then preparing for lessons, classes, professional developments and, yes, our other life is easier, and that translates to a happier educator who has more time to work on supporting those students learning
  •  Diigo has to be the single most valuable tool that I have on my computer.
Seth Mitchell

The Flipped Class: Myths vs. Reality - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education. - 148 views

  • The traditional definition of a flipped class is:Where videos take the place of direct instructionThis then allows students to get individual time in class to work with their teacher on key learning activities.It is called the flipped class because what used to be classwork (the "lecture" is done at home via teacher-created videos and what used to be homework (assigned problems) is now done in class.
    • trisha_poole
       
      Providing blended learning experiences for internal students.
  • The Flipped Classroom is NOT:
    • trisha_poole
       
      Great! It's not an "easy" way out of teaching or reducing the workload - it's all about engaging the learners in the process of learning and providing more opportunities (affordances) for this learning to occur.
  • The Flipped Classroom IS:
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  • A blending of direct instruction with constructivist learning.
    • Seth Mitchell
       
      This is often overlooked.  The content should serve authentic application of skills, not itself.
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    A good post about what a flipped classroom is and what it can be. It outlines what it is not, as well. Good basic introduction to flipped classrooms.
Matt Renwick

The Connected Educator Movement Is Failing, And We're All To Blame | - 49 views

  • the reality is that we live in a bubble that feeds our own needs. It’s sometimes very hard to see outside that bubble, and it can often be viewed as successful when you can only see the fruits of your own work. 
  • When you have received teaching strategies,  Skyped in the classroom with an author, or had someone on the other side of the world- help you in a new way, it is indescribable.
  • Actually talking to people, instead of just emailing, tweeting, or blogging seems to work much better in getting any point across.
Martin Burrett

Using Online Maps in your teaching - 92 views

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    Great set of tools and ideas for using maps to take students to places there may never visit in reality.
jojomitty

New tool helps districts compare bandwidth pricing | eSchool News - 4 views

    • jojomitty
       
      Our bandwidth use during school hours is always an issue. It would be very beneficial to know we are getting the best deal!
  • Every student should have the opportunity to take advantage of digital learning, and one of the ways to help make that a reality is through transparency. We want every school district to see how much bandwidth they can get for their budget.”
  • 500 percent more bandwidth for only 15 percent more cost
Jennie Snyder

Will Richardson: My Kids are Illiterate. Most Likely, Yours Are Too - 10 views

    • anonymous
       
      I wonder if most parents (and even some teachers) even know what this means.  Sometimes I think we are too entrenched in old-school ways of thinking students need to know and love classics instead of understanding how literature is a reflection of the times and using the classics as mentor pieces for creating something which reflects here and now!
  • kids need to be in systems that care for them and are focused on literacy they will need to be successful in their lives instead of being focused primarily on standardizing their way to "high student achievement" based on a metric that is growing less and less relevant each day
    • anonymous
       
      We need to really look at our definition of the word achievement!  Do we mean they have achieved a high score by regurgitating info/facts?  Do we mean they understand something and can apply that understanding in a new and meaningful way?
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  • I'm mad that the "big" conversations around "reform" in education right now all revolve around basically doing what we've been doing for the past 100 years only "better," and that we'll get there by incentivizing teachers to teach for a test.
  • That is their reality; it wasn't ours. The NCTE knows it.
    • anonymous
       
      Just like we recognize that times are different from when my parents attended a 1-room school or when there less than 50-100 in a graduating class in a whole town, we need to recognize that times today are different.
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    Literacies needed for future success by Will Richardson
Deborah Baillesderr

Quiver - 3D Coloring App - 52 views

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    A fun app that brings kids coloring pages to life! This app was formerly know as colAR.
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