To date, feedback from participating schools has been overwhelmingly positive. For instance the touch screen interface of the iPad is proving to be a great success for students with special needs.
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http://www.sas.com/govedu/edu/teacher_eval.pdf - 31 views
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Positive school climates can narrow achievement gaps - 19 views
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Positive school climates contribute to academic achievement and can improve outcomes for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, according to a new study published today in Review of Educational Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. In a comprehensive analysis of research published since 2000, U.S. and Israeli researchers found substantial evidence that schools with positive climates can narrow achievement gaps among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and between students with stronger and weaker academic abilities...
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iPads for Learning - Why the iPad? - 134 views
www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/why-ipad
iPad pilot tablet review school technology Apple evaluation resources
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 06 Feb 11
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"We, here at the Victorian government school system, are proud of our internationally recognised eLearning achievements. The iPads for Learning trial is no exception. We are working with Apple to test the value of the iPad, and the applications it can access, as an additional opportunity to engage students and to improve their educational attainment."
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Review website by state government to share resources and evaluation for iPads and tablet computers used in a school setting. Includes details of current pilot schools.
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Education Week: Effective Use of Digital Tools Seen Lacking in Most Tech.-Rich Schools - 100 views
www.edweek.org/...21computing.h30.html
EMT502 technology effective edtech tools digital pedagogy digitallearning digital techintegration flexiblelearning blendedlearning fbl education elearning
shared by trisha_poole on 25 Feb 11
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Those factors include integrating technology into intervention classes; setting aside time for professional learning and collaboration for teachers; allowing students to use technology to collaborate; integrating technology into core curricula at least weekly; administering online formative assessments at least weekly; lowering the student-to-computer ratio as much as possible; using virtual field trips at least monthly; encouraging students to use search engines daily; and providing training for principals on how to encourage best practices for technology implementation. Only about 1 percent of the 1,000 schools surveyed by Project RED followed all those steps, and those that did “saw dramatic increases in student achievement and had revenue-positive experiences,” Ms. Wilson said.
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cut their photocopying and printing budgets in half.
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requires leadership,professional development, collaboration, and new forms of pedagogy and assessment
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Most schools that have integrated laptop computers and other digital devices into learning are not following the paths necessary to maximize the use of technology in ways that will raise student achievement and help save money, a report concludes."We all know that technology does things to improve our lives, but very few schools are implementing properly," said Leslie Wilson, a co-author of the study, "The Technology Factor: Nine Keys to Student Achievement and Cost-Effectiveness," released last month. She is the chief executive officer of the Mason, Mich.-based One-to-One Institute, which advocates putting mobile-computing devices into the hands of all students.
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Creating a culture where all teachers improve by @tim_jumpclarke - 15 views
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"Having worked in a range of schools over 20 years, with many colleagues and having been privileged to visit numerous other schools I think the importance of school culture is one of the key drivers that make a difference. Supportive, compassionate and challenging: encouraging and empowering all staff to be life-long learners: this is the type of culture I endeavour to promote and help flourish."
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5 Reasons Why Origami Improves Students' Skills | Edutopia - 59 views
www.edutopia.org/...tudents-skills-ainissa-ramirez
origami STEAM edutopia skills STEM math makerspace
shared by H DeWaard on 22 Aug 15
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This art form engages students and sneakily enhances their skills -- including improved spatial perception and logical and sequential thinking.
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According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, geometry was one area of weakness among American students.
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Origami has been found to strengthen an understanding of geometric concepts, formulas, and labels, making them come alive.
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Origami excites other modalities of learning. It has been shown to improve spatial visualization skills using hands-on learning.
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Often in assignments, there is one set answer and one way to get there. Origami provides children an opportunity to solve something that isn't prescribed and gives them a chance to make friends with failure (i.e. trial and error).
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Origami is a fun way to explain physics concepts. A thin piece of paper is not very strong, but if you fold it like an accordion it will be.
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While schools are still catching up to the idea of origami as a STEAM engine (the merging of these disciplines), origami is already being used to solve tough problems in technology.
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Additionally, the National Science Foundation, one of the government's largest funding agencies, has supported a few programs that link engineers with artists to use origami in designs. The ideas range from medical forceps to foldable plastic solar panels.
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The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views
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I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
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the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
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They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
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always evolving
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no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
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For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
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So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
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California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
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they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
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The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
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The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
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teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
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must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
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most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
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The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
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So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
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“What worked?”
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“What else did you notice?”
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something to try.
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Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
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“listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
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trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
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one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
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watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
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routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
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It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
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modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
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We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
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Marginal Gains - 5 views
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"Often we look for the big leaps, the silver bullets and the next big thing. But in reality progress and improvement often comes in bitesized pieces on multiple fronts. In this UKEdChat discussion we discuss marginal gains and the little steps that you, your pupils, your school and the wider education world are taking to make improvement to the learning opportunities of our pupils."
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HS7 - National Pilot Study (High School) | PERTS - 17 views
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"Teaching Adaptive Mindsets Improves Achievement Programs that teach students to have adaptive mindsets have recently received increased attention among educators and policy makers. These programs help students think about school in ways that help them stay motivated and engaged, even when coursework is challenging. In addition to being effective at improving students' motivation and achievement, they are also brief and easy to administer. PERTS Teaches Adaptive Mindsets on a National Scale Because of the promise of mindset programs, the White House Office of Technology and Science Policy recently hosted a convening to explore ways to apply mindset programs more broadly. An important outcome of this meeting was a plan to conduct a national study that will deliver mindset programs in a large, nationally representative sample. PERTS has expertise in delivering mindset programs across the nation, and we will take a lead in conducting the national study. The National Mindset Pilot is the first step."
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One Equally Effective but Lower-Cost Option to Summer School - 9 views
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"Just improving poor children's access to books they can read and want to read may seem too simple an idea for improving reading achievement. But the evidence is clear. When children from low-income families are given the opportunity to select books for summer reading they will read those books during the summer months."
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CBI: Our education systems are not delivering - while average performance rises gently,... - 0 views
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UK ranks among the highest spending OECD countries measured in terms of percentage of GDP on education.
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explanation for the conveyor belt comes not from money, therefore, but from other incentives that schools face.
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We should not be surprised that these drive behaviour – but not always the behaviour that the Department for Education wants.
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When we look at whether the improvement on the GCSE metric is general or specific to those close to the grade boundary, it is clear that this measure is driving what is happening in schools.
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intensive targeting of resources on pupils just below the C grade and/or an increase in teachers’ expertise in ‘teaching to the test’ has been behind improvements.
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Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the rise in exam grades for average ability candidates really reflects an increase across all groups in mastery of the subjects studied.
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Narrowly-defined targets like these, based only on exam results subtly inhibit the overall education of young people.
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At earlier stages in the system, similar testing frameworks focus school accountability on achieving a certain percentage of pupils reaching a defined average, rather than a focus on absolute attainment.
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it is possible to dramatically reduce attainment gaps in their primary school populations and raise standards on a broader basis than the UK has managed.
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CBI: We must drive change through a culture of expectation - 1 views
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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.
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nternational evidence from high-performing education systems suggests more formative assessment during schooling would be beneficial
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But an over-reliance on summative assessment can distort the quality of education by becoming the dominant focus of school activity.
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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.
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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
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should be commissioned to advise on the right balance of timing and the optimal mix between formative and summative assessment
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The fantasies driving school reform: A primer for education graduates - The Answer Shee... - 5 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQA5vwzLU_blog.html
education reform poverty teachers gr8 speech research black minority poor
shared by Steve Ransom on 14 May 12
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Let me repeat: black elementary school students today have better math skills than white students did only twenty years ago.
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As a result, we’ve wasted 15 years avoiding incremental improvement, and instead trying to upend a reasonably successful school system.
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But the reason it hasn’t narrowed is that your profession has done too good a job — you’ve improved white children’s performance as well, so the score gap persists, but at a higher level for all.
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Policymakers, pundits, and politicians ignore these gains; they conclude that you, educators, have been incompetent because the test score gap hasn’t much narrowed.
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If you believe public education deserves greater support, as I do, you will have to boast about your accomplishments, because voters are more likely to aid a successful institution than a collapsing one.
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In short, underemployment of parents is not only an economic crisis — it is an educational crisis. You cannot ignore it and be good educators.
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equally important educational goals — citizenship, character, appreciation of the arts and music, physical fitness and health, and knowledge of history, the sciences, and literature.
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If you have high expectations, your students can succeed regardless of parents’ economic circumstances. That is nonsense.
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health insurance; children are less likely to get routine and preventive care that middle class children take for granted
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If they can’t see because they don’t get glasses to correct vision difficulties, high expectations can’t teach them to read.
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Because education has become so politicized, with policy made by those with preconceptions of failure and little understanding of the educational process, you are entering a field that has become obsessed with evaluating only results that are easy to measure, rather than those that are most important. But as Albert Einstein once said, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.
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To be good educators, you must step up your activity not only in the classroom, but as citizens. You must speak up in the public arena, challenging those policymakers who will accuse you only of making excuses when you speak the truth that children who are hungry, mobile, and stressed, cannot learn as easily as those who are comfortable.
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U.S. high school dropout rate reaches record low, driven by improvements among Hispanic... - 12 views
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Just 7% of the nation’s 18-to-24 year olds had dropped out of high school, continuing a steady decline in the nation’s dropout rate since 2000, when 12% of youth were dropouts.
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The decline in the size of the Hispanic dropout population has been particularly noteworthy because it’s happened at the same time that the Hispanic youth population is growing.
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The dropout rate for black youth also was at a record low in 2013 (8%) and has fallen by nearly half since 2000 (15%).
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Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation - Early College High School Initiative - 5 views
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Social Networking as a Tool for Student and Teacher Learning - 52 views
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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
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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.
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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.