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Chai Reddy

Teacher Evaluations May Get a Video Assist - NYTimes.com - 26 views

www.nytimes.com/...04teacher.html

nytimes.com education teaching pedagogy

shared by Chai Reddy on 05 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Mr. Gates is tracking the research closely. The use of digital video in particular has caught his attention. In an interview, he cited its potential for evaluating teachers and for helping them learn from talented colleagues.
  • The meticulous scoring of videotaped lessons for this project is unfolding on a scale never undertaken in educational research, said Catherine A. McClellan, a director for the Educational Testing Service who is overseeing the process. By next June, researchers will have about 24,000 videotaped lessons. Because some must be scored using more than one protocol, the research will eventually involve reviewing some 64,000 hours of classroom video
Andy Whiteway

Building an Internet Culture - 0 views

polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/...internet-culture.html

shared by Andy Whiteway on 24 Mar 09 - Cached
  • ten conclusions that might guide a country's development of a culturally appropriate Internet policy
  • Do not spend vast sums of money to buy machinery that you are going to set down on top of existing dysfunctional institutions. The Internet, for example, will not fix your schools. Perhaps the Internet can be part of a much larger and more complicated plan for fixing your schools, but simply installing an Internet connection will almost surely be a waste of money.
  • Learning how to use the Internet is primarily a matter of institutional arrangements, not technical skills
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Build Internet civil society. Find those people in every sector of society that want to use the Internet for positive social purposes, introduce them to one another, and connect them to their counterparts in other countries around the world. Numerous organizations in other countries can help with this.
  • Machinery does not reform society, repair institutions, build social networks, or produce a democratic culture. People must do those things, and the Internet is simply one tool among many. Find talented people and give them the tools they need. When they do great things, contribute to your society's Internet culture by publicizing their ideas.
  • For children, practical experience in organizing complicated social events, for example theater productions, is more important than computer skills. The Internet can be a powerful tool for education if it is integrated into a coherent pedagogy. But someone who has experience with the social skills of organizing will immediately comprehend the purpose of the Internet, and will readily acquire the technical skills when the time comes
  • Conduct extensive, structured analysis of the technical and cultural environment. Include the people whose work will actually be affected. A shared analytical process will help envision how the technology will fit into the whole way of life around it, and the technology will have a greater chance of actually being used.
  • Don't distribute the technology randomly. Electronic mail is useless unless the people you want to communicate with are also online, and people will not read their e-mail unless they want to. Therefore, you should focus your effort on particular communities, starting with the communities that have a strong sense of identity, a good record of sharing information, and a collective motivation to get online.
    • Andy Whiteway
      Andy Whiteway on 24 Mar 09
       
      This community could so easily be the students - but how often do schools seem to be obsessed with givgin staff lots of access to technology and email but block/restrict students' use of it?
Rachel Ernst

Seth's Blog: Learning from the MBA program - 0 views

sethgodin.typepad.com/...ning-from-the-mba-program.html

shared by Rachel Ernst on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • I taught for five to twenty hours a week, and very little of it was about the books. So, if concepts from books are easy, what’s hard?Doing it.Picking up the phone, making the plan, signing the deal. Pushing ‘publish.’ Announcing. Shipping.We spent a lot of time on this area. Every morning, each person came in prepared to push someone in the group to overcome the next hurdle. This is what growth looks like, and it was energizing to be part of.We didn’t do this at all at when I was at Stanford. We spent a lot of time reading irrelevant case studies and even more time building complex financial models. The thing is, you can now hire someone to build a complex financial model for you for $60 an hour. And a week’s worth of that is just about all the typical entrepreneur is going to need. The rest of the time, it’s about shipping, motivating, leading, connecting, envisioning and engaging. So that’s what we worked on.It amazes me that MBA students around the world aren’t up in arms. How can schools justify taking $100,000 in cash and teaching exactly the wrong stuff?
    • Rachel Ernst
      Rachel Ernst on 05 Jun 09
       
      How much of our instruction is truly relevant to students? How much engages their imagination, builds meaningful relationships and equips with skills to develop their own talents?
Michele Brown

Stephen R. Covey: Our Children and the Crisis in Education - 61 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ren-and-the-cris_b_545034.html

education leadership

shared by Michele Brown on 21 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves -- who can take initiative and be the solution to problems. They need people who can build trust and get along with others, and solve complex challenges in teams without much supervision.
  • "Partnerships between schools and parents in educating the whole child, which includes developing both the character strength and the competencies required to really succeed in the 21st Century."
  • A.B. Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Seven Habits of Highly Effective People -- a set of universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society, organization, or family. I take no credit for these principles. I simply organized, sequenced and articulated them. These principles include 1) taking personal responsibility and initiative, 2) getting clear about what's important to you and setting goals, 3) putting those priorities first and being disciplined, 4) seeking mutual benefit in all interactions with others -- the golden rule, 5) seeking to understand others from their perspective first before making your point, 6) valuing differences and creating third-alternative solutions to problems that are better than "my way" or "your way," and 7) taking care of and renewing yourself in all four areas of life -- body, mind, heart and spirit.
  • The approach is inside-out, with the teachers and administrators learning, living and modeling the principles themselves first, and then, at the most basic level, integrating the principles into their teaching every day. There is no new curriculum. The principles of effectiveness are creatively woven by teachers into every subject -- reading, math, history, science, social studies, art, etc. From the moment they walk into the school each day until the final bell rings, the children soak in their adult leaders' belief that they are leaders of their own lives, have unique talents, and can make a difference.
  • We don't define leadership as becoming the CEO or the few percent who will end up in big leadership positions. We are talking about leading your own life, being a leader among your friends, being a leader in your own family. Leadership, as one school put it, is doing the right thing even when no one is looking.
  • The world has moved into one of the most profound eras of change in human history.
Dave Zhao

City of San Marcos, CA : Talent Show Winners - 0 views

www.san-marcos.net/index.aspx

Elise

shared by Dave Zhao on 26 Mar 11 - No Cached
    • Dave Zhao
      Dave Zhao on 26 Mar 11
       
      Elise琵琶独奏，合奏双获第一，wow
  • Dave Zhao on 26 Mar 11
     
    Instrumental Group 1st: Elise Zhao
Maureen Greenbaum

College is a waste of time - CNN.com - 49 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

college skills

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
    • Brian Mull
      Brian Mull on 03 Jun 11
       
      Marketing oneself in society today is a skill that all students MUST have, but too many schools are ignoring.
  • Of course, some people want a formal education. I do not think everyone should leave college, but I challenge my peers to consider the opportunity cost of going to class. If you want to be a doctor, going to medical school is a wise choice. I do not recommend keeping cadavers in your garage. On the other hand, what else could you do during your next 50-minute class? How many e-mails could you answer? How many lines of code could you write?
    • Brian Mull
      Brian Mull on 03 Jun 11
       
      The key is balance. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What we need is to construct learning environments and experiences that connect with the real world. NOt the world within the school's four walls.
  • ...10 more annotations...
    • Brian Mull
      Brian Mull on 03 Jun 11
       
      People who are successful in this area have a drive to be successful. We need to meet our students where they are, and we need to construct learning experiences in a way that engages their passions and promotes this drive. Schools and teachers can do this, but school and classroom structures need to change. 
    • Brian Mull
      Brian Mull on 03 Jun 11
       
      I rather think of this as many schools are failing to give students the skills they need to empower themselves. We can't take the responsibility away of students empowering themselves. It's a small, but vital thinking shift.
  • I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.
  • 36% of college graduates showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning or writing after four years of college.
  • college as a stepping-stone to success rather than a means to gain knowledge. College fails to empower us with the skills necessary to become productive members of today's global entrepreneurial economy.
  • Failure is punished instead of seen as a learning opportunity.
  • Learning by doing
  • A major function of college is to signal to potential employers that one is qualified to work. The Internet is replacing this signaling function.
  • creating personal portfolios to showcase their talent.
  • document our accomplishments, and have them socially validated with tools such as LinkedIn
maureen greenbaum

Edu-Traitor! Confessions of a Prof Who Believes Higher Ed Isn't the Only Goal | HASTAC - 52 views

hastac.org/...ieves-higher-ed-isnt-only-goal

education Higher

shared by maureen greenbaum on 09 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • many brilliant, talented young people are dropping out of high school because they see high school as implicilty "college prep" and they cannot imagine anything more dreary than spending four more years bored in a classroom when they could be out actually experiencing and perfecting their skills in the trades, the skills, and the careers that inspire them.
  • The abolishing of art, music, physical education, tech training, and shop from grade schools and high schools means that the requirement for excellence has shrunk more and more right at the time when creativity, imagination, dexterity, adaptability to change, technical know-how, and all the rest require more not less diversity. 
    • Peg Mahon
      Peg Mahon on 10 Aug 11
       
      AMEN!
  • we make education hell for so many kids, we undermine their skills and their knowledge, we underscore their resentment, we emphasize class division and hierarchy, and we shortchange their future and ours,
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There are so many viable and important and skilled professions that cannot be outsourced to either an exploitative Third World sweat shop or to a computer, that require face-to-face presence, and a bucketload of skills--but that  do not require a college education:  the full range of IT workers, web designers, body workers (ie deep tissue massage), yoga and pilates instructors, fitness educators, DJ's, hair dressers, retail workers, food industry professionals, entertainers,  entertainment industry professionals, construction workers, dancers, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, landscapers, nanny's, elder-care professionals, nurses's aids, dog trainers, cosmetologists, athletes, sales people, fashion designers, novelists, poets, furniture makers, book keepers, sound engineers, inn keepers, wedding planners, stylists, photographers, auto mechanics, and on and on.  
  • maureen greenbaum on 09 Aug 11
     
    Cathy Davidson
  • Carol Ansel on 09 Aug 11
     
    In general, I agree. However, novelists and poets don't need college?? And perhaps less so to artists and musicians? Perhaps... but what better way to learn the history and analysis of their Art, in order to place their own work in context?
  • Peg Mahon on 10 Aug 11
     
    I could not agree more with you Maureen. As a long time middle school teacher in Oakland and Mpls I am thoroughly convinced that our nation and our states are nuts to have cut all of the tech and arts classes out of elementary, middle and high schools. EVERY student should learn a trade/skill set in high school. The hs drop out rate is horrifying and no surprise that the crime rate follows. We have a nation of under achieving teens because the adults have not kept up with funding the myriad of opportunities that would capture and harness their interests and creativity. I look forward to reading your book Maureen and to following you on here.
Steve Ransom

What If We Stopped Teaching Kids What They Cannot Do? | HASTAC - 3 views

hastac.org/...ching-kids-what-they-cannot-do

teaching kids children kindergarten ability motivation achievement failure selfconcept

shared by Steve Ransom on 02 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • How do we understand our gifts without the certificate, the diploma?   That's the challenge.  
  • And, sadly, much of our formal education is about standardizing exactly
  • that shift, in teaching that kindergarten child who believes she can do absolutely anything that, no, she's a poor reader, or bad in math, or a poor speller, or a poor artist or has no musical talent (as my husband was once told when he was a child: 
  • Steve Ransom on 02 Aug 11
     
    Great post by Cathy Davidson: "How do we understand our gifts without the certificate, the diploma?   That's the challenge."
Jenny Staley

Future Workplace and Kaplan University to Host 2011 Social Learning Boot Camp - 2 views

www.marketwatch.com/...-learning-boot-camp-2011-09-23

shared by Jenny Staley on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Jenny Staley on 26 Sep 11
     
    NEW YORK, Sep 23, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Future Workplace and Kaplan University, a leader in higher education innovation, are teaming up to present the 2011 Social Learning Boot Camp, an exclusive two-day event designed to provide talent development executives with the tools to design and launch social learning platforms. The boot camp is scheduled for Sept.
Jimbo Lamb

Sen. Michael Bennet: Bring Teachers' Pay Into This Century - 37 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...teacher-salary_b_944832.html

shared by Jimbo Lamb on 01 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.
    • Jimbo Lamb
      Jimbo Lamb on 01 Sep 11
       
      What is meant by "rewarded?" If this is about merit pay, then it won't work. I already work my butt off. I would like to be able to not have to get part-time jobs (yes, plural) to pay my bills. If I had more time to focus on my classroom, that would be spectacular! As for support, we need a better professional development set up. I spend way too much time sitting in meetings when I could accomplish so much more.
Cynthia Sarver

CITE Journal - Language Arts - 94 views

www.citejournal.org/...article1.cfm

21stcenturyliteracy 307 teachered_21stcentury

shared by Cynthia Sarver on 31 Oct 11 - Cached
  • Since it is through communication that we exercise our political, economic and social power, we risk contributing to the hegemonic perpetuation of class if we fail to demand equal access to newer technologies and adequately prepared teachers for all students
    • Cynthia Sarver
      Cynthia Sarver on 31 Oct 11
       
      What is being done??
  • They can benefit their students by developing and then teaching their students to develop expertise in evaluation of search engines and critical analysis of Web site credibility. Well-prepared teachers, with a deep and broad understanding of language, linguistics, literature, rhetoric, writing, speaking, and listening, can complement those talents by studying additional semiotic systems that don’t rely solely on alphabetic texts.
  • Not only will teachers need to understand “fair use” policies, they are likely to need to integrate units on ethics back into the curriculum to complement those units on rhetoric.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Students should be counseled not only on the risks to their physical safety, but also on the ways that the texts they are composing today, and believe they have eliminated, often have lives beyond their computers, and may reappear in the future at a most inopportune time.
  • learn methods of critically analyzing the ways in which others are using multiple semiotic systems to convince them to participate, to buy, to believe, and to resist a wide range of appeals
  • It also implies the process of uncovering one’s own cultural, social, political and personal (e.g. age, gender) backgrounds and understanding how these backgrounds can and often do influence one’s own ways of communicating and interacting with others in virtual and face-to-face encounters.
  • nstances of anti-social behavior in online communication such as using hurtful language and discriminating among certain members of virtual communities have been reported.
  • allows their members to construct and act out identities that may not necessarily be their real selves and thus lose a sense of responsibility toward others
  • Professional development for teachers and teacher educators must be ongoing, stressing purposeful integration for the curriculum and content, rather than merely technical operation. It also needs to provide institutional and instructional support systems to enable teachers to learn and experiment with new technologies. Offering release time, coordinating student laptop initiative programs or providing wireless laptop carts for classroom use, locating computer labs in accessible places to each teacher, scheduling lab sessions acceptable for each teacher, and providing alternative scheduling for professional development sessions so that all teachers can attend, are a few examples of such systems. Finally, teachers and students must be provided with technical support as they work with technology. Such assistance must be reliable, on-demand, and timely for each teacher and student in each classroom.
  • educators must address plagiarism, ownership, and authorship in their classrooms.
  • strategies to assess the quality of information and writing on the Web
  • help students develop netiquette
  • Such netiquette is thus not only about courtesy; more importantly, it is about tolerance and acceptance of people with diverse languages, cultures, and worldviews.
  • Teachers and teacher educators must examine with students the social processes through which humans grow individually and socially, and they must expose the potentially negative consequences of one’s individual actions. In doing so, teachers and educators will be able to reinforce the concept of learning as a social process, involving negotiation, dialogue, and learning from each other, and as a thinking process, requiring self-directed learning as well as critical analysis and synthesis of information in the process of meaning-making and developing informed perceptions of the world.
Drew Rosenshine

Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead? : NPR Ed : NPR - 49 views

www.npr.org/...get-gritty-help-them-get-ahead

grit mindset kids teaching dissertation

shared by Drew Rosenshine on 14 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • they need to have a "growth mindset" — the belief that success comes from effort — and not a "fixed mindset" — the notion that people succeed because they are born with a "gift" of intelligence or talent.
  • ducators say they see it all the time: Kids with fixed mindsets who think they just don't have the "gift" don't bother applying themselves. Conversely, kids with fixed mindsets who were always told they were "gifted" and skated through school tend to crumble when they hit their first challenge; rather than risk looking like a loser, they just quit.
  • We don't use the word 'gifted' — ever," Giamportone says. "In our school, you will never hear it." " 'Smart' is like a curse," adds social studies teacher June Davenport.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Instead, the school is plastered with signs and handmade posters promoting a "growth mindset."
  • The focus is always more on putting out effort than on getting the right answers. Teachers have been trained to change the way they see students, and how they speak to them.
  • praise students for their focus and determination.
  • "If I was an outsider and I was hearing this conversation, I might think that this was some kind of hippie-dippy love fest," concedes the teacher, Nathan Cearley. "But what you see is actually a more rigorous and risky learning environment."
  • In three years, Cearley says, he's seen kids grow less afraid of making mistakes, and more willing to ask for help. Test scores at Lenox have jumped 10 to 15 points.
  • The number of schools using Brainology is expected to double this year, from 500 to 1,000.
  • A limited intervention, she says, if not consistently reinforced in and out of school, can only have limited results. "We don't know whether we've had any effect — the jury's out," says Duckworth. "It just seems to me extremely implausible that that's going to permanently and impressively change a child."
  • "Grit as a goal seems to be multiply flawed and very disturbing," says education writer Alfie Kohn. For starters, he says, "the benefits of failure are vastly overstated, and the assumption that kids will pick themselves up and try even harder next time, darn it — that's wishful thinking."
  • if there's a problem with how kids are learning, the onus should be on schools to get better at how they teach — not on kids to get better at enduring more of the same.
    • Drew Rosenshine
      Drew Rosenshine on 15 Jul 14
       
      Yes, but once again this is not an either/or situation.
  • I don't think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don't love," Duckworth says. "So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That's as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence."
  • But now, three years into the growth-mindset training at Lenox Academy, Blaze says, she believes "you can teach old dogs new tricks."
  • Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead?
  • After years of focusing on the theory known as "multiple intelligences" and trying to teach kids in their own style, Hoerr says he's now pulling kids out of their comfort zones intentionally.
Josh Flores

Meet Banshee, Havok, 'n' Beast - 27 views

www.nerdist.com/...meet-banshee-havok-n-beast

x-men teachers authentic models student centered

shared by Josh Flores on 06 May 11 - No Cached
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 06 May 11
       
      Model of students struggling to be seen as "normal".
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 06 May 11
       
      Model of students with social anxiety
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 06 May 11
       
      The teacher acknowledges that failure is part of the learning process but also demonstrates the importance of having trust in the student after specifically stating his expectations.  Stating expectations and following it up with trust is important for fostering a Student-Centered learning environment.  Too few educators are willing to let go of control and allow students to become empowered by their own curiosity.
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 06 May 11
       
      Model of students with unique talents
    • Josh Flores
      Josh Flores on 06 May 11
       
      The teacher demonstrates authentic research by creating a product to test rather than simply look at research and respond with a traditional essay.
Matt Renwick

Charter School Study Finds High Teacher Pay Helps Students - WSJ - WSJ - 20 views

online.wsj.com/...-pay-helps-students-1414123264

charter school study finds teacher pay students wsj

shared by Matt Renwick on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • After four years at the charter school, eighth-graders showed average test score gains in math equal to an additional year and a half of school, compared with district students.
  • an extra half-year in science and almost an extra half-year in English
  • the charter has a lean administrative staff and slightly larger classes—31 students compared with an average of about 26 or 27 in district schools—so it can pour resources into teacher pay and training.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Teachers are observed by colleagues and get feedback weekly, and they have four weeks of full-day professional development each year.
  • Days are long, with teachers at work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and students attending from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Many teachers don’t last. Of 43 hired during the four years studied, 47% didn’t return for a second year, in most cases because they weren’t asked back.
    • Matt Renwick
      Matt Renwick on 03 Nov 14
       
      I wonder why - performance, or too much stress due to longer hours and out of work expectations? Regardless, this high turnover rate has got to impact the kids in the end.
  • Critics of charter schools say, among other complaints, that they drain money from regular public schools, skim talented students and nudge out disruptive ones.
  • Matt Renwick on 03 Nov 14
     
    mattrenwick.com
matt oconnor

Homepage - ReadWriteThink - 14 views

www.readwritethink.org

resources education teaching

shared by matt oconnor on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Get inspired and make connections with diverse and talented literacy professionals.
    • Kalin Wilburn
      Kalin Wilburn on 19 May 11
       
      I cannot say enough good things about this website. They offer SO many great resources for teachers and students. They have worksheets, lesson plans, and interactive tools for all to enjoy.
    • Christi Johnson
      Christi Johnson on 12 Jul 11
       
      Right on Kalin!
  • April Grybosky on 03 Jul 09
     
    Comics
  • Marc Patton on 29 Jun 12
     
    Here at ReadWriteThink, our mission is to provide educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials.
  • matt oconnor on 28 May 13
     
    liots of edu resources and pd strategies
Andrew McCluskey

Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

schoolingtheworld.org/...occupy

education education reform education system schooling pedagogy indigenous indigenous pedagogies knowledge alternative education standardization state standards national standards global standards power authority intellect

shared by Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13 - No Cached
Ant Heald liked it
  • 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.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • 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?
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    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).
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
Frederick Eberhardt

Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods |... - 85 views

www.edutopia.org/uiry-project-learning-research

Collaborative Learning Powerful Student as Researcher

shared by Frederick Eberhardt on 03 Oct 09 - Cached
  • In essence, students must learn how to learn, while responding to endlessly changing technologies and social, economic, and global conditions.
  • students learn more deeply if they have engaged in activities that require applying classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems.
  • developing inquiring minds
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Studies of problem-based learning suggest that it is comparable, though not always superior, to more traditional instruction in teaching facts and information. However, this approach has been found to be better in supporting flexible problem solving, reasoning skills, and generating accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations.
  • design challenges need to be carefully planned, and they emphasized the importance of dynamic feedback.
  • When students have no prior experience with inquiry learning, they can have difficulty generating meaningful driving questions and logical arguments and may lack background knowledge to make sense of the inquiry.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 03 Oct 09
       
      Absolutely true. I discovered this when I used inquiry-based methods with my students in Qatar who were used to rote learning. They truly did not know where to start. They first needed to learn *how* to be inquisitive.
  • Requiring students to track and defend their thinking focused them on learning and connecting concepts in their design work
  • All the research arrives at the same conclusion: There are significant benefits for students who work together on learning activities.
  • groups outperform individuals on learning tasks and that individuals who work in groups do better on later individual assessments.
  • In successful group learning, teachers pay careful attention to the work process and interaction among students.
  • "It is not enough to simply tell students to work together. They must have a reason to take one another's achievement seriously.
  • She and her colleagues developed Complex Instruction, one of the best-known approaches, which uses carefully designed activities requiring diverse talents and interdependence among group members.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 03 Oct 09
       
      Interesting... worth checking out.
  • They require changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices -- changes that are often new for teachers and students.
  • Adrienne Michetti on 03 Oct 09
     
    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
  • Adrienne Michetti on 03 Oct 09
     
    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
  • Frederick Eberhardt on 06 Oct 11
     
    Vocational Education meets Research in the dynamic classroom of Linda Darling-Hammond, 2008. The students are doing the research, teaching and learning. They control their own destiny and they are taking the world by storm! They are not waiting to be taught, they are teaching each other and themselves as teams of researchers. Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Powerful learning: what we know about teaching for understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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