Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items matching "Reasoning" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Mr. Eason

Susan Linn: About That App Gap: Children, Technology and the Digital Divide - 53 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...pp-gap-and-kids_b_1560784.html

technology digital divide children

shared by Mr. Eason on 19 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • children from low-income families spend more time handling technology -- across platforms -- than their wealthier counterparts, and across class, kids mainly use their "handling skills" for entertainment. They play games, watch videos, and visit social networking sites.
  • there's scant evidence that anyone but the companies who make, sell, and advertise on these new technologies benefit from the time young children spend with them, there's plenty of reason to be worried about it.
  • studies showing that the bells and whistles of electronic books actually detract from reading comprehension.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • I'm worried that screen-based reading, with omnipresent hyperlinks, interferes with comprehension and memory, and that heavy Internet use appears to encourage distractedness and discourage deep thinking, empathy, and emotion.
  • fast-paced video games trigger dopamine squirts in our brains -- kind of like cocaine.
  • here's what worries me most: We're turning to the companies that profit from these technologies to help parents manage their kids' relationship with screens. While it's great that the Federal Communications Commission is launching a campaign to promote digital literacy, the fact that companies like Best Buy and Microsoft are funding it make it unlikely that weaning kids from their products will be a priority.
  • the skills they will always need to thrive -- deep thinking, the ability to differentiate fact from hype, creativity, self-regulation, empathy, and self-reflection -- aren't learned in front of screens. They are learned through face-to-face communication, hands-on exploration of the world, opportunities for thoughtful reflection, and dreams.
Tracy Tuten

The real economics of massive online courses (essay) | Inside Higher Ed - 2 views

www.insidehighered.com/...s-massive-online-courses-essay

MOOC credentials education higher education

shared by Tracy Tuten on 09 Aug 12 - Cached
  • Is there a model out there, or an institution/student mix that could effectively utilize MOOCs in such a way as to get around this flaw? It’s hard to tell. Recent articles on Inside Higher Ed have suggested that distance education providers (like the University of Maryland’s University College – UMUC) may opt to certify the MOOCs that come out of these elite schools and bake them into their own online programs. Others suggest that MOOCs could be certified by other schools and embedded in prior learning portfolios.
  • The fatal flaw that I referred to earlier is pretty apparent:  the very notions of "mass, open" and selectivity just don’t lend themselves to a workable model that benefits both institutions and students. Our higher education system needs MOOCs to provide credentials in order for students to find it worthwhile to invest the effort, yet colleges can’t afford to provide MOOC credentials without sacrificing prestige, giving up control of the quality of the students who take their courses and running the risk of eventually diluting the value of their education brand in the eyes of the labor market.
  • In other words, as economists tell us, students themselves are an important input to education. The fact that no school uses a lottery system to determine who gets in means that determining who gets in matters a great deal to these schools, because it helps them control quality and head off the adverse effects of unqualified students either dropping out or performing poorly in career positions. For individual institutions, obtaining high quality inputs works to optimize the school’s objective function, which is maximizing prestige.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • We also know that there are plenty of low- to no-cost learning options available to people on a daily basis, from books on nearly every academic topic at the local library and on-the-job experience, to the television programming on the National Geographic, History and Discovery channels. If learning can and does take place everywhere, there has to be a specific reason that people would be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and several years of their life to get it from one particular source like a college. There is, of course, and again it’s the credential, because no matter how many years I spend diligently tuned to the History Channel, I’m simply not going to get a job as a high-school history teacher with “television watching” as the core of my resume, even if I both learned and retained far more information than I ever could have in a series of college history classes.
  • Tracy Tuten on 09 Aug 12
     
    On why MOOCs are flawed
Tracy Tuten

The Irascible Professor on "The SAT that isn't (the death of aptitude.)" - 2 views

irascibleprofessor.com/comments-08-11-12.htm

education essay SAT 2012 esteem objectivism

shared by Tracy Tuten on 13 Aug 12 - Cached
  • It used to be that the SAT was distinguished from its competitor the ACT by the fact that the former was seen as measuring aptitude and being effectively un-coachable, while the latter was a gauge of achievement in learning.
  • At the risk of sounding pejorative, I'd say that I was expecting the test to be a measure of who I was, while some of my fellow students and their parents treated it more as a test of how they could present themselves to admissions officers.  And while I wouldn't suggest that people tend to think of it in these terms, I believe that the latter perception relies on the academically damaging belief that an individual student's capabilities need not matter to what goals he sets for himself.  That perception leads people to believe that there is something inherently unfair about a test that you can't study for.
  • And if after four years of high school they haven't developed much skill for reasoning, that's okay – they can take preparatory courses to learn how to fake it for an exam, and let that be their stepping stone toward academic accomplishment.  As a society that values the promise of formal education more than the satisfaction of actual learning, we have precipitated the death of aptitude.  We are afraid to acknowledge that it exists, because aptitude, whether the product of inborn talent or effective rearing, makes some people better suited than others for certain goals.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Lori Gottlieb, writing in The Atlantic last year, claimed that child-rearing in the current generation has been excessively focused on preserving self-esteem.  As an illustration of one symptom of this, Gottlieb quoted clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel as saying that parents are actually relieved to be told that their struggling children are learning disabled, so that today "every child is either learning disabled, gifted, or both – there's no curve left, no average."  To claim a learning disability is the only way to set legitimate lower benchmarks for performance.  Kids are never just bad at anything anymore, because that's seen as being more harmful to self-esteem.
  • But my worries about the individual effects of the death of aptitude are dwarfed by my concern for its effect on the institutions of higher learning that those individuals are entering.  College is not a one-directional relationship of dispensing knowledge to young people.  The entire institution gains or loses value on the basis of what its students put into it.  By telling students with low aptitude and low interest that they can, should, and must strive to accomplish the same things as their higher-achieving peers, I fear that we're saturating higher education with people who subtract value from their institutions by committing minimum effort and lowering whatever curve still exists for the measurement of performance.
  • We all seem to agree that standards for college readiness need to improve, but you'll hear virtually no one asserting that when those standards are not met, the student ought to leave off college altogether, or to defer it until they have acquired, by sheer will or by natural intellectual growth, the aptitude to be successful at the proper level.  Indeed, just as common in criticism of education is the sentiment that we must see to it that more children enter and complete college.  But if those children don't have the aptitude to do so, the goal of improving college curriculum contradicts the goal of college-for-all.
  • We can't keep pretending that there is no such thing as aptitude and that every child has equal cause to vie for the topmost positions of intellectual esteem.  It does a disservice to the student and the school in kind.
  • Tracy Tuten on 13 Aug 12
     
    An essay on what the SAT says about society's view of education, accomplishments, aptitude, and self-esteem. 
BalancEd Tech

dy/dan » Blog Archive » What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About Math Education Again And Again - 0 views

blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=12782

Mathematics DirectInstruction

shared by BalancEd Tech on 11 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Mathematics, as defined by the CCSS, isn't just a series of discrete content standards. It contains practice standards, too: modeling, critiquing arguments, using tools strategically, reasoning abstractly, and others.
Tracy Tuten

When the 'A' in U.C.L.A. Stands for 'Achievement' - Campaign Spotlight - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vement-campaign-spotlight.html

shared by Tracy Tuten on 13 Feb 12 - Cached
  • The campaign, now getting under way, is for the University of California, Los Angeles. The campaign proclaims that U.C.L.A. is the home of “the optimists,” people who are risk-takers, rule-breakers and game-changers.
  • The campaign is the first for U.C.L.A. from an agency named 160 Over 90, which is based in Philadelphia and recently opened an office in Newport Beach, Calif.
  • That work underscores the growing presence of universities and colleges as advertisers in the media. Their goals include selling themselves to prospective students and the parents of those students, seeking donations from alumni, recruiting faculty members and improving their standings in various surveys.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The agency has also created ads for institutions of higher learning like Michigan State University, Loyola University Maryland and the University of Dayton.
  • The campaign has a section devoted to it on the U.C.L.A. Web site, ucla.edu/optimists, and is getting shout-outs on the U.C.L.A. fan page on Facebook and on the U.C.L.A. Twitter feed, where those who send messages are asked to use the hashtag #optimists.
  • The U.C.L.A. campaign has a small budget, estimated at less than $500,000, for a couple of reasons. One is that much of the campaign is appearing online; there is also print advertising, in newspapers.
  • The video clip can also be watched on YouTube.
  • The new campaign is meant to celebrate “the optimism that abounds on our campus,” she adds, “even in challenging times,” and shine a spotlight on “the dynamism and vitality” as well as the history and legacy of the university.
  • The way to do that, Ms. Turteltaub says, is to focus on “the icons” from U.C.L.A. “who made their mark in whatever fields they choose” and describe their “accomplishment, success, barrier-breaking.”
  • “This is the place that gives you the opportunity to be a game-changer,” Ms. Turteltaub says, “and you’ll choose the game.”
  • Tracy Tuten on 13 Feb 12
     
    That work underscores the growing presence of universities and colleges as advertisers in the media. Their goals include selling themselves to prospective students and the parents of those students, seeking donations from alumni, recruiting faculty members and improving their standings in various surveys.
Patti Anderson

The 21st Century Teacher - 238 views

www.the21stcenturyteacher.com

21st century resources

shared by Patti Anderson on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Patti Anderson on 20 Nov 11
     
    Why use 21st century teaching??
  • Alice Manning on 23 Nov 11
     
    Thanks for sharing this Patti. I thought it was a great read. It very clearly articulates the many simple reasons why we do need to integrate technology into education and let it become as seamless as using pen and paper. The Evolution video was fascinating ...
Kate Pok

Southern Hospitality? Not for Immigrants - NYTimes.com - 43 views

www.nytimes.com/...tality-not-for-immigrants.html

race racism Teaching culture immigration immigrants race & ethnicity

shared by Kate Pok on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Kate Pok on 20 Nov 11
     
    Good article illustrating the fluid definitions of race.
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Elaine Snow on 21 Nov 11
     
    Except that those ridiculous portions of the law, including the transport part, are now in the process of being repealed. As embarrassing as this all is, one should still do her homework.
  • Kate Pok on 21 Nov 11
     
    Many thanks for your comments. As far as I can tell, there's been a lot of debate about rescinding parts of the bill and there's certainly been support to change parts of it, but I haven't found anything that says that's definitely happening. At any rate, I was planning to use the article as an example of how racial categories tend to change based on circumstances rather than set in stone. Again, thanks for reminding me to double check details.
  • Elaine Snow on 21 Nov 11
     
    You are right, racial categories do tend to change based on the times as history shows us, but I'll point you to two articles in The Birmingham News which show a little more than just debate about rescinding parts of that bill. http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/09/federal_judge_throws_out_xxxx.html http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/11/immigration_law_amendments_in.html The fringe parts of this law are embarrassing to me as a native of Alabama, so I'd love to have our lawmakers' second thoughts on this seen as part of what's going on with this law.....Thanks, not meaning to nit-pick!
  • Kate Pok on 21 Nov 11
     
    @Elaine, for some reason your message hasn't shown up and I wanted to make sure I responded. I absolutely agree with you that the there are plenty of wonderful Alabamans who are embarrassed by the fringe parts of the law and I certainly don't mean any disrespect by posting this article. In fact, I think this article actually points to the generosity of spirit and kindness I remember most about growing up in the south. I'm also glad to see that there's quite a bit of protest about the worst parts of this law and agree that the protests should also be part of the conversation so I'm including the links you sent me here: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/09/federal_judge_throws_out_xxxx.html and http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/11/immigration_law_amendments_in.html The articles do report that quite a few legislators and many immigrant rights activists are advocating revisions to the law and I look forward to seeing the repeals. That said, the articles also note that the bulk "of the new law is in effect despite a federal court challenge to it brought by the U.S. Justice Department, church groups and state and national civil liberties groups " and a "federal judge [Blackburn] this afternoon again upheld most sections of Alabama's tough new immigration law." In short, the fight for repeals is just beginning. Once more, I stress that I do NOT mean to offend anyone; rather, I think it's important to discuss the circumstances under which such a restrictive law could be passed as well as the reactions that have mobilized in response to it. I think it's a wonderful "teaching moment" about politics, economics, civic engagement, global economy, etc. Sincerest regards.
Kimber Tate

Reading, Writing, and Wikis: Nurturing a Sense of Wonder Across the Curriculum - 97 views

eduscapes.com/...readwritewiki

shared by Kimber Tate on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
    • Kimber Tate
      Kimber Tate on 21 Jun 12
       
      Reasons and Purpose for using wikis in English/language arts
thebda

Steve Hargadon: Escaping the Education Matrix | MindShift - 49 views

blogs.kqed.org/...-escaping-the-education-matrix

education reform system

shared by thebda on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • “We tell a story about the power of learning that is very different from what we practice in traditional models of school
  • If we really want children to grow up to become self-reliant and reach their full potential, “we would be doing something very different in schools. We live in a state of cognitive dissonance.”
  • “What are most kids getting out of 12 years of school?” he asks. “The honest answer is they’re learning how to follow
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The reason so many adults find the situation tolerable, he says, may stem from the fact that they experience little control over their own lives. Additionally, they themselves are products of the system
  • For models of healthier ways to frame education, Hargadon suggests looking to food and libraries. “No one says that from age six to 17, we will give you all the same food, at the same time, regardless of your individual circumstances or needs,”
  • “In some ways, traditional schools have co-opted a lot of traditional parental responsibilities,” he says. “That’s really unhealthy,
  • Recognizing the different needs of every student, and the desire to help each one become personally competent as a learner and find productive things to do in life—that won’t happen online.”
  • Technology can support a transformation, but it’s not a silver bullet
  • one way change agents get tripped up is by promoting a particular model, rather than a process by which people can develop (or adopt) models
  • “Living in a democracy means involving people in decision making,” Hargadon says. “You can’t just create a new system to implement top down; you have to provide the opportunity to talk about it and build it constructively.”
  • Jennie Snyder on 09 Jan 14
     
    "How do you tell a story that opens the door to rethinking what people have believed for decades?" Thoughtful piece on changing our paradigm.
Jac Londe

17 U.S. Code § 113 - Scope of exclusive rights in pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works | LII / Legal Information Institute - 10 views

www.law.cornell.edu/...113

u s code scope exclusive graphic works information

shared by Jac Londe on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • U.S. Code › Title 17 › Chapter 1 › § 113 17 U.S. Code § 113 - Scope of exclusive rights in pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
  • (a) Subject to the provisions of subsections (b) and (c) of this section, the exclusive right to reproduce a copyrighted pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work in copies under section 106 includes the right to reproduce the work in or on any kind of article, whether useful or otherwise.
  • (b) This title does not afford, to the owner of copyright in a work that portrays a useful article as such, any greater or lesser rights with respect to the making, distribution, or display of the useful article so portrayed than those afforded to such works under the law, whether title 17 or the common law or statutes of a State, in effect on December 31, 1977, as held applicable and construed by a court in an action brought under this title.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • (c) In the case of a work lawfully reproduced in useful articles that have been offered for sale or other distribution to the public, copyright does not include any right to prevent the making, distribution, or display of pictures or photographs of such articles in connection with advertisements or commentaries related to the distribution or display of such articles, or in connection with news reports.
  • (d) (1) In a case in which— (A) a work of visual art has been incorporated in or made part of a building in such a way that removing the work from the building will cause the destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work as described in section 106A (a)(3), and
  • (B) the author consented to the installation of the work in the building either before the effective date set forth in section 610(a) of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, or in a written instrument executed on or after such effective date that is signed by the owner of the building and the author and that specifies that installation of the work may subject the work to destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification, by reason of its removal,
  • then the rights conferred by paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 106A (a) shall not apply.
  • (2) If the owner of a building wishes to remove a work of visual art which is a part of such building and which can be removed from the building without the destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work as described in section 106A (a)(3), the author’s rights under paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 106A (a) shall apply unless—
  • (A) the owner has made a diligent, good faith attempt without success to notify the author of the owner’s intended action affecting the work of visual art, or (B) the owner did provide such notice in writing and the person so notified failed, within 90 days after receiving such notice, either to remove the work or to pay for its removal.
  • For purposes of subparagraph (A), an owner shall be presumed to have made a diligent, good faith attempt to send notice if the owner sent such notice by registered mail to the author at the most recent address of the author that was recorded with the Register of Copyrights pursuant to paragraph (3). If the work is removed at the expense of the author, title to that copy of the work shall be deemed to be in the author.
  • (3) The Register of Copyrights shall establish a system of records whereby any author of a work of visual art that has been incorporated in or made part of a building, may record his or her identity and address with the Copyright Office. The Register shall also establish procedures under which any such author may update the information so recorded, and procedures under which owners of buildings may record with the Copyright Office evidence of their efforts to comply with this subsection.
Siri Anderson

This Insane New App Will Allow You To Read Novels In Under 90 Minutes | Elite Daily - 164 views

elitedaily.com/...ead-novels-in-under-90-minutes

app apps reading-comprehension Spritz

shared by Siri Anderson on 08 Mar 14 - No Cached
Rhett Hughes liked it
  • Siri Anderson on 08 Mar 14
     
    A new way of presenting text that makes it considerably easier to read and comprehend text quickly.
  • aphane1 on 10 Mar 14
     
    It's not an app. It's a proposed API. It has lots of potential I agree. But nothing downloadable yet unfortunately. It's meant for developers right now to incorporate into their apps. To my knowledge, no app has launched with it. Not on iOS anyways.
  • Rhett Hughes on 10 Mar 14
     
    Sadly, as an educator, I am not big on reading books as I just can't find the time. I find myself reading more informational texts from sources such as NGM and The Week Magazine (Flipboard on my iPad is my friend for this reason). HOWEVER, I would really like to see how this works for reading a book. I might actually start reading more biographies and such.
Jennie Snyder

Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? : The New Yorker - 36 views

www.newyorker.com/...130729fa_fact_gawande

Innovation

shared by Jennie Snyder on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly
  • Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century.
  • The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • nsisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery.
  • The idea spread like a contagion, travelling through letters, meetings, and periodicals. By mid-December, surgeons were administering ether to patients in Paris and London. By February, anesthesia had been used in almost all the capitals of Europe, and by June in most regions of the world.
  • On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in the mouth of a young man undergoing the excision of a tumor in his jaw.
  • Four weeks later, on November 18th, Bigelow published his report on the discovery of “insensibility produced by inhalation” in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.
  • There were forces of resistance, to be sure. Some people criticized anesthesia as a “needless luxury”; clergymen deplored its use to reduce pain during childbirth as a frustration of the Almighty’s designs.
  • Yet soon even the obstructors, “with a run, mounted behind—hurrahing and shouting with the best.” Within seven years, virtually every hospital in America and Britain had adopted the new discovery.
  • Sepsis—infection—was the other great scourge of surgery. It was the single biggest killer of surgical patients, claiming as many as half of those who underwent major operations
  • nfection was so prevalent that suppuration—the discharge of pus from a surgical wound—was thought to be a necessary part of healing.
  • In the eighteen-sixties, the Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Lister read a paper by Louis Pasteur laying out his evidence that spoiling and fermentation were the consequence of microorganisms. Lister became convinced that the same process accounted for wound sepsis.
  • Lister had read about the city of Carlisle’s success in using a small amount of carbolic acid to eliminate the odor of sewage, and reasoned that it was destroying germs. Maybe it could do the same in surgery.
  • During the next few years, he perfected ways to use carbolic acid for cleansing hands and wounds and destroying any germs that might enter the operating field.
  • The result was strikingly lower rates of sepsis and death.
  • Far from it.
  • Surgeons soaked their instruments in carbolic acid, but they continued to operate in black frock coats stiffened with the blood and viscera of previous operations—the badge of a busy practice.
  • hey reused sea sponges without sterilizing them.
  • It was a generation before Lister’s recommendations became routine and the next steps were taken toward the modern standard of asepsis—that is, entirely excluding germs from the surgical field, using heat-sterilized instruments and surgical teams clad in sterile gowns and gloves.
  • Maybe ideas that violate prior beliefs are harder to embrace. To nineteenth-century surgeons, germ theory seemed as illogica
  • The technical complexity might have been part of the difficulty. Giving Lister’s methods “a try” required painstaking attention to detail.
Timothy Hare

Scaffold Like an Ant- A simple scaffolding example | An Ethical Island - 64 views

anethicalisland.wordpress.com/...t-a-simple-scaffolding-example

example instructions tools

shared by Timothy Hare on 15 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Today, they wanted to remain in this drawing/ scaffolding phase. They were going deeper than any class has ever gone in their reasoning and understanding of a difficult subject. It was pretty cool.
Maureen Greenbaum

The Future of College? - The Atlantic - 29 views

www.theatlantic.com/...375071

future college education pedagogy

shared by Maureen Greenbaum on 16 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • proprietary online platform developed to apply pedagogical practices that have been studied and vetted by one of the world’s foremost psychologists, a former Harvard dean named Stephen M. Kosslyn, who joined Minerva in 2012.
  • inductive reasoning
  • Minerva class extended no refuge for the timid, nor privilege for the garrulous. Within seconds, every student had to provide an answer, and Bonabeau displayed our choices so that we could be called upon to defend them.
  • ...45 more annotations...
  • subjecting us to pop quizzes, cold calls, and pedagogical tactics that during an in-the-flesh seminar would have taken precious minutes of class time to arrange.
  • felt decidedly unlike a normal classroom. For one thing, it was exhausting: a continuous period of forced engagement, with no relief in the form of time when my attention could flag
  • One educational psychologist, Ludy Benjamin, likens lectures to Velveeta cheese—something lots of people consume but no one considers either delicious or nourishing.)
  • because I had to answer a quiz question or articulate a position. I was forced, in effect, to learn
  • adically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries.
  • past half millennium, the technology of learning has hardly budge
  • fellow edu-nauts
  • Lectures are banned
  • attending class on Apple laptops
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are cost-effective but pedagogically unsound. “A great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn.”
  • Minerva boast is that it will strip the university experience down to the aspects that are shown to contribute directly to student learning. Lectures, gone. Tenure, gone. Gothic architecture, football, ivy crawling up the walls—gone, gone, gone.
  • “Your cash cow is the lecture, and the lecture is over,” he told a gathering of deans. “The lecture model ... will be obliterated.”
  • One imagines tumbleweeds rolling through abandoned quads and wrecking balls smashing through the windows of classrooms left empty by students who have plugged into new online platforms.
  • when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don’t get educated.
  • Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.”
  • “The freshman year [as taught at traditional schools] should not exist,” Nelson says, suggesting that MOOCs can teach the basics. “Do your freshman year at home.”) Instead, Minerva’s first-year classes are designed to inculcate what Nelson calls “habits of mind” and “foundational concepts,” which are the basis for all sound systematic thought. In a science class, for example, students should develop a deep understanding of the need for controlled experiments. In a humanities class, they need to learn the classical techniques of rhetoric and develop basic persuasive skills. The curriculum then builds from that foundation.
  • What, he asks, does it mean to be educated?
  • methods will be tested against scientifically determined best practices
  • Subsidies, Nelson says, encourage universities to enroll even students who aren’t likely to thrive, and to raise tuition, since federal money is pegged to costs.
  • We have numerous sound, reproducible experiments that tell us how people learn, and what teachers can do to improve learning.” Some of the studies are ancient, by the standards of scientific research—and yet their lessons are almost wholly ignored.
  • memory of material is enhanced by “deep” cognitive tasks
  • he found the man’s view of education, in a word, faith-based
  • ask a student to explain a concept she has been studying, the very act of articulating it seems to lodge it in her memory. Forcing students to guess the answer to a problem, and to discuss their answers in small groups, seems to make them understand the problem better—even if they guess wrong.
  • e traditional concept of “cognitive styles”—visual versus aural learners, those who learn by doing versus those who learn by studying—is muddled and wrong.
  • pedagogical best practices Kosslyn has identified have been programmed into the Minerva platform so that they are easy for professors to apply. They are not only easy, in fact, but also compulsory, and professors will be trained intensively in how to use the platform.
  • Professors are able to sort students instantly, and by many metrics, for small-group work—
  • a pop quiz at the beginning of a class and (if the students are warned in advance) another one at a random moment later in the class greatly increases the durability of what is learned.
  • he could have alerted colleagues to best practices, but they most likely would have ignored them. “The classroom time is theirs, and it is sacrosanct,
  • Lectures, Kosslyn says, are pedagogically unsound,
  • I couldn’t wait for Minerva’s wrecking ball to demolish the ivory tower.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • Minerva’s model, Nelson says, will flourish in part because it will exploit free online content, rather than trying to compete with it, as traditional universities do.
  • The MOOCs will eventually make lectures obsolete.”
  • certain functions of universities have simply become less relevant as information has become more ubiquitous
  • Minerva challenges the field to return to first principles.
  • MOOCs will continue to get better, until eventually no one will pay Duke or Johns Hopkins for the possibility of a good lecture, when Coursera offers a reliably great one, with hundreds of thousands of five-star ratings, for free.
  • It took deep concentration,” he said. “It’s not some lecture class where you can just click ‘record’ on your tape.”
  • part of the process of education happens not just through good pedagogy but by having students in places where they see the scholars working and plying their trades.”
  • “hydraulic metaphor” of education—the idea that the main task of education is to increase the flow of knowledge into the student—an “old fallacy.”
  • I remembered what I was like as a teenager headed off to college, so ignorant of what college was and what it could be, and so reliant on the college itself to provide what I’d need in order to get a good education.
  • it is designed to convey not just information, as most MOOCs seem to, but whole mental tool kits that help students become morethoughtful citizens.
  • for all the high-minded talk of liberal education— of lighting fires and raising thoughtful citizens—is really just a credential, or an entry point to an old-boys network that gets you your first job and your first lunch with the machers at your alumni club.
  • Its seminar platform will challenge professors to stop thinking they’re using technology just because they lecture with PowerPoint.
  • professors and students increasingly separated geographically, mediated through technology that alters the nature of the student-teacher relationship
  • The idea that college will in two decades look exactly as it does today increasingly sounds like the forlorn, fingers-crossed hope of a higher-education dinosaur that retirement comes before extinction.
anonymous

On Academic Labor » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 24 views

www.counterpunch.org/...27

academic labor economics

shared by anonymous on 05 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient
  • If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it
  • we should put aside any idea that there was once a “golden age.” Things were different and in some ways better in the past, but far from perfect
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • And I think those are the kinds of things we should be moving towards: a democratic institution, in which the people involved in the institution, whoever they may be (faculty, students, staff), participate in determining the nature of the institution and how it runs; and the same should go for a factory
  • There are more and more professional administrators, layer after layer of them, with more and more positions being taken remote from the faculty controls
  • In a reasonably functioning university, you find people working all the time because they love it; that’s what they want to do; they’re given the opportunity, they have the resources, they’re encouraged to be free and independent and creative—what’s better?
  • anonymous on 06 Oct 14
     
    A transcript of remarks given by Noam Chomsky about the labor crisis in high ed.
Maughn Gregory

How to Fix Our Math Education - NYTimes.com - 63 views

www.nytimes.com/...to-fix-our-math-education.html

education math ed_aims ed_content applied

shared by Maughn Gregory on 25 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
  • Today, American high schools offer a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, pre-calculus and calculus (or a “reform” version in which these topics are interwoven). This has been codified by the Common Core State Standards, recently adopted by more than 40 states. This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life.
  • A math curriculum that focused on real-life problems would still expose students to the abstract tools of mathematics, especially the manipulation of unknown quantities. But there is a world of difference between teaching “pure” math, with no context, and teaching relevant problems that will lead students to appreciate how a mathematical formula models and clarifies real-world situations.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For instance, how often do most adults encounter a situation in which they need to solve a quadratic equation? Do they need to know what constitutes a “group of transformations” or a “complex number”? Of course professional mathematicians, physicists and engineers need to know all this, but most citizens would be better served by studying how mortgages are priced, how computers are programmed and how the statistical results of a medical trial are to be understood.
  • Imagine replacing the sequence of algebra, geometry and calculus with a sequence of finance, data and basic engineering.
  • Traditionalists will object that the standard curriculum teaches valuable abstract reasoning, even if the specific skills acquired are not immediately useful in later life. A generation ago, traditionalists were also arguing that studying Latin, though it had no practical application, helped students develop unique linguistic skills. We believe that studying applied math, like learning living languages, provides both useable knowledge and abstract skills.
  • In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).
Roland Gesthuizen

Parenting With Dignity - Reasons why punishment doesn't work - 26 views

www.parentingwithdignity.com/...s_punishment_does_not_work.htm

parenting punishment discipline behaviour

shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 26 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Roland Gesthuizen on 26 Mar 15
     
    Punishment guarantees a "push-back" response in all of the following situations: (A "push-back" response is simply the natural human resistance to change. Any time that one attempts to change a child's behavior the child will resist. Add punishment and you will insure more resistance to change.)
Marc Patton

Why the Chromebook? - 57 views

www.wheatonacademy.org/...Why_the_Chromebook%3f.htm

Planning Google

shared by Marc Patton on 15 Jan 14 - No Cached
Amanda A liked it
  • Marc Patton on 15 Jan 14
     
    Supporting student learning is the primary goal and a non-negotiable factor of our 1:1 program.  In light of this principle, the following questions were asked in determining what kind of device we wanted at Wheaton Academy:
  • Matthew Rosenberg on 16 Jan 14
     
    Excellent article. Our school is going Chromebook next year and this article does a great job explaining Wheaton's Academies reasoning for their adoption of Chromebooks.
fergtoo

the Truth About Being a Hero - WSJ - 14 views

www.wsj.com/...111903596904576516302821089790

hero

shared by fergtoo on 23 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • We all want to be special, to stand out; there's nothing wrong with this. The irony is that every human being is special to start with, because we're unique to start with.
  • n the military I could exercise the power of being automatically respected because of the medals on my chest, not because I had done anything right at the moment to earn that respect.
  • I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • "A lot of people have done a lot more and gotten a lot less, and a lot of people have done a lot less and gotten a lot more."
  • I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts, but also, in part, because the kids liked me and they spent time writing better eyewitness accounts than they would have written if they hadn't liked me
  • The only people who will ever know the value of the ribbons on their chests are the people wearing them—and even they can fool themselves, in both directions.
  • he whole assault ground to a halt, except for one kid named Niemi, who had sprinted forward when we came under the intense fire and disappeared up in front of us somewhere.
  • alking to a group of us about when it was a platoon leader earned his pay. I knew, floating above that mess, that now that time had come. If I didn't get up and lead, we'd get wiped.
  • I'm most proud of is that I simply stood up, in the middle of all that flying metal, and started up the hill all by myself.
  • I did it for the right reasons.
  • At this point I saw the missing kid, Niemi, pop his head up. He sprinted across the open top of the hill, all alone.
  • He was a black kid, all tangled up in black-power politics, almost always angry and sullen. A troublemaker. Yet here he was, most of his body naked with only flapping rags left of his jungle utilities, begging for a rifle when he had a perfect excuse to just bury his head in the clay and quit. I gave him mine. I still had a pistol. He grabbed the rifle, stood up to his full height, fully exposing himself to all the fire, and simply blasted an entire magazine at the two soldiers in front of us, killing both of them. He then went charging into the fight, leaving me stunned for a moment. Why? Who was he doing this for? What is this thing in young men? We were beyond ourselves, beyond politics, beyond good and evil. This was transcendence.
  • Crashing out of the clouds into this confusion came a flaming, smoking twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter.
  • I saw Niemi pop into sight again. He sprinted to the downed chopper.
  • the only thing he could think to do was sprint across the open hilltop to see if he could find a place from which he could lay down fire to protect them.
  • Niemi got a Navy Cross.
  • I got a Navy Cross.
  • elicopter pilot
  • ont-page story
  • The kid who borrowed my rifle didn't get anyt
  • hing.
  • It was just about that time I got knocked out and blinded by a hand grenade. I came to, groggy.
  • hen a kid I knew from Second Platoon, mainly because of his bad reputation, threw himself down beside me, half his clothes blown away. He was begging people for a rifle. His had been blown out of his hands.
Daryl Bambic

Be the Change. Listen. Follow-up » Edurati Review - 42 views

eduratireview.com/...be-the-change-listen-follow-up

professional_development

shared by Daryl Bambic on 09 Jun 10 - Cached
  • 1. Be the change. Leaders of professional development seem to forget that they’re actually teaching, and that part of teaching is modeling the activity you hope to see adopted. A session devoted to equipping teachers to implement more collaborative learning that is presented via “death by PowerPoint” is an oxymoron, a term originating from a Greek word appropriately meaning “pointedly foolish.” As one teacher recently expressed it, “Why does the worst teaching often happen in sessions on how to improve teaching?” Why, indeed? Modeling is a powerful teaching technique. In addition to communicating that the suggested new approach promotes learning, demonstration taps into some of the brain’s natural learning systems: This may be because demonstration actually encourages the brain to engage. Specialized neurons known as mirror neurons make practicing “in the head” possible…When a teacher repeatedly performs a sequence of steps, her students’ mirror neurons may enable their own preliminary practice of the same steps. In other words, as a teacher demonstrates a skill, students mentally rehearse it.1
  • Though we’ve been invited to lead professional development, we do not have all the answers. Professional development involves merging new research findings with current personnel—i.e., bringing ideas and people together. One way I’ve tried to do more of this recently is to ask teachers if any of them have tried something similar to a new approach I’ve explained. If any have, I invite them to share their experience. This invites elaboration, a critical cognitive process for constructing understanding. If the teacher’s experience was positive, we discuss why the approach was successful. If the teacher’s experience was frustrating, we often find together the reason for it and develop a plan for structuring it better the next time. This give-and-take values everyone, respects the experience present in the session, and allows the leader to be a colleague rather than an aloof expert.
  • 2. Listen. I have a tendency to get preoccupied with my preparation and forget that I’ll actually have people in the professional development session. Not just people but colleagues!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 3. Follow up. I’ve written previously about the importance of coaching and the characteristics of an effective coach. A one-time information flood is ineffective, no matter how engaging the session’s leader may be. Teachers need support as they begin to implement new ideas, methods, and approaches. Note that support, not judgement, is needed. Showing up with an evaluation form is a certain way to kill any benefit professional development might yield. Teachers are learners, and we need the time and space to try, to reflect, to try again, to get helpful feedback, and to truly master implementation. We need the opportunity to learn. Coaching provides this opportunity, along with the encouragement and feedback necessary for success.
« First ‹ Previous 201 - 220 of 312 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page