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Looking in the Wrong Places | Edge.org - 5 views

www.edge.org/...er-looking-in-the-wrong-places NaturalScience senseperception paradigm
shared by Gareth Jones on 19 May 18 - No Cached
  • We should be very careful in thinking about whether we’re working on the right problems. If we don’t, that ties into the problem that we don’t have experimental evidence that could move us forward. We're trying to develop theories that we use to find out which are good experiments to make, and these are the experiments that we build.   We build particle detectors and try to find dark matter; we build larger colliders in the hope of producing new particles; we shoot satellites into orbit and try to look back into the early universe, and we do that because we hope there’s something new to find there. We think there is because we have some idea from the theories that we’ve been working on that this would be something good to probe. If we are working with the wrong theories, we are making the wrong extrapolations, we have the wrong expectations, we make the wrong experiments, and then we don’t get any new data. We have no guidance to develop these theories. So, it’s a chicken and egg problem. We have to break the cycle. I don’t have a miracle cure to these problems. These are hard problems. It’s not clear what a good theory is to develop. I’m not any wiser than all the other 20,000 people in the field.
  • I’m still asking myself the same question that I asked myself ten years ago: "What is going on in my community?" I work in the foundations of physics, and I see a lot of strange things happening there. When I look at the papers that are being published, many of them seem to be produced simply because papers have to be produced. They don’t move us forward in any significant way. I get the impression that people are working on them not so much because it’s what they’re interested in but because they have to produce outcomes in a short amount of time. They sit on short-term positions and have short-term contracts, and papers must be produced.
  • The field that I mostly work in is the foundations of physics, which is, roughly speaking, composed of cosmology, the foundations of quantum mechanics, high-energy particle physics, and quantum gravity. It’s a peculiar field because there hasn’t been new data for almost four decades, since we established the Standard Model of particle physics. There has been, of course, the Higgs particle that was discovered at the LHC in 2012, and there have been some additions to the Standard Model, but there has not been a great new paradigm change, as Kuhn would have put it. We’re still using the same techniques, and we’re still working with the same theories as we did in the 1970s.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • That makes this field of science rather peculiar and probably explains why there hasn’t been much progress. But it’s not like we don’t have any questions that need to be answered. There are a lot of questions that have been around for decades. For example, what is dark energy? What is dark matter? What are the masses of the Standard Model particles? And what’s up with the foundation of quantum mechanics? Is a theory that's fundamentally not deterministic, where we cannot predict outcomes, the last word that we have, or is there something more to it? Is there maybe another underlying structure to reality?
  • but we haven't reached the fundamental level. Maybe we will never reach it. Certainly, the theories that we have right now are not all there is. The question is, of course, if we don’t have any guidance by experiment, how do we make progress? And are we doing the right thing?
  • We’ve reached this point where we have to carefully rethink if the criteria that we’re using to select our theories are promising at all. If one looks at the history of this field in the foundations of physics, progress has usually been made by looking at questions that, at least in hindsight, were well posed, where there was an actual mathematical contradiction. For example, special relativity is incompatible with Newtonian gravity. If you try to resolve this incompatibility, you get general relativity.
  • There are various similar examples where such breakthroughs have happened because there was a real problem. There was an inconsistency and people had to resolve it. It had nothing to do with beauty. Maybe beauty was, in some cases, the personal motivation of the people to work on it. There’s certainly some truth to this, but I don’t think it’s good to turn this story around and say that if we only pay attention to this motivation that comes from ideals of beauty it will lead to progress.
  • If we are working with the wrong theories, we are making the wrong extrapolations, we have the wrong expectations, we make the wrong experiments, and then we don’t get any new data. We have no guidance to develop these theories. So, it’s a chicken and egg problem. We have to break the cycle. I don’t have a miracle cure to these problems. These are hard problems. It’s not clear what a good theory is to develop. I’m not any wiser than all the other 20,000 people in the field.
  • The way that research is funded in foundations of physics and in many other fields just puts a lot of things at a disadvantage that are not pursued anymore. Typically, everything that takes longer than three years to complete, no one will start it because they can’t afford it. They can literally not afford it.
  • Who makes the decisions about the funding? Superficially, people say that it's a funding agency, so it’s the university who get to hire people. But that puts the blame on the wrong party. In the end it’s the community itself who makes the decisions. What do the funding agencies do if they get a proposal? They send it to reviewers. And who are the reviewers? They're people from the same community. If you look at how hiring decisions are being made, there’s some committee and they are people from the same community. They have some advisory boards or something, which contains people from the same community.
  • Even if that wasn’t so, what the people in these committees would be doing is looking at easy measures for scientific success. Presently, the most popular of these measures are the number of publications and the number of citations. And maybe also whether the person has published in high-impact journals. So, these are the typical measures that are presently being used. But what do they measure? They primarily measure popularity. They indicate whether somebody’s research is well received by a lot of people in the same community. And that’s why once a research area grows beyond a certain critical mass, you have sufficiently many people who tell each other that what they’re doing is the good thing to do. They review each other’s papers and say that that’s great and it's what we should continue to do. It’s a problem in all communities that grow beyond a certain size.
  • I later came to the United States and then Canada, and that gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about quantum gravity. I also figured out that much of what goes on in quantum gravity is very detached from reality. It’s pretty much only mathematics. Yes, the mathematics is there, but I still don’t know if it’s the mathematics that describes reality.
  • That’s the very reason why we don’t normally think of gravity as a weak force. It’s the only force that is left over on long distances, and the reason for this is that it adds up. It gets stronger the more mass you pile up. More precisely, we should say that the reason we find it so hard to measure quantum gravitational effects is that we either have a particle that has very pronounced quantum properties, like, say, a single electron or something like that, but then it’s so light that we cannot measure the gravitational field. Or we have some object that is so heavy that we can measure the gravitational field, but then it doesn’t have quantum properties. Okay, so that’s the actual problem.
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Montessori preschool boosts academic results and reduces income-based inequalit - 5 views

ukedchat.com/...montessori-academic-results montessori kindergarten nursery
shared by Martin Burrett on 31 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 31 Oct 17
     
    "Not only do Montessori children do better overall than those in conventional preschools, but Montessori preschools help low-income children to perform as well as wealthier children Children in Montessori preschools show improved academic performance and social understanding, while enjoying their school work more, finds the first longitudinal study of Montessori education outcomes. Strikingly, children from low-income families, who typically don't perform as well at school, show similar academic performance as children from high-income families. Children with low executive function similarly benefit from Montessori preschools. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that well-implemented Montessori education could be a powerful way to help disadvantaged children to achieve their academic potential."
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low motivation - 7 resources for addressing low motivation - 55 views

teachinginhighered.com/...low-motivation teaching and engagement motivation and Learning
shared by Jeff Andersen on 15 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Jeff Andersen on 15 Feb 17
     
    Despite your best efforts, your entire class seems to start experiencing a huge decline in motivation. What started out well, as you watched your students' curiosities be heightened, now feels like an attempt to lift something well beyond your capacity. You're experiencing "the dip," and it is a common occurrence. You may very well not have done anything wrong, to cause this to happen. However, there are plenty of strategies you can use to bring the motivation back in a course.
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The beauty of unfinished work - The Learner's Way - 34 views

thelearnersway.net/...the-beauty-of-unfinished-work
shared by anonymous on 25 Jul 15 - No Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      I love this concept!  The focus is on the process of learning.  Doesn't that also help to identify the way we learn as well as the progress of the learning?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      The down side of this is that there also has to be some sort of focus on the importance of completing what is started.  Everything might not have to have an end product but some things certainly should have!
  • At times it has been deeply admonished and hidden from view. Individuals who failed were to be shunned or punished. At other times failure was to be avoided by setting the bar for success so low that failure was impossible. The result of this movement was that success became meaningless, achievable by all without risk and through little effort.
  • ...8 more annotations...
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      The generation when who were deeply admonished and hidden is older and most are relieved that this is no longer the case.  The generation who were shunned or punished seem to still be a part of the mainstream but most have embraced that this is no longer the case.  The generation who were part of the low expectations with failure impossible seem to be the predominance of the population now and we are seeing that there is no concept of consequences, no motivation toward high achievement, and an attitude of entitlement.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      This seems like we are evolving but moving more in a cyclical fashion and thinking more like the early innovators in our country - Jefferson, Franklin, Ford, Bell - We see a need for something and strive to create it - marking our failures as a way of knowing, "well that won't work so lets find something that will."
  • A culture that accepts failure as a part of the learning process will need to take time to celebrate the steps taken towards learning as much as it celebrates the finished product.
  • A digital work of art, of music of writing is never truly finished, it grows and transforms over time. 
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      Transformation from the mindset of this is done, this if finished, this is the final draft to here is where we are at this point but it may be revisited, revised, refined at a later time.
  • mistakes are a sign that the learning is not pitched at a level below the needs of the students; if the students are not making mistakes when they engage with new learning the expectation has been set too low.
  • What must be avoided is a belief that mistakes are to be accepted without an equal emphasis on identifying and understanding their causes.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 15
       
      Identify and understand the causes of mistakes so that another attempt can be made at correcting them and progress is made!
  • Nigel Coutts on 25 Jul 15
     
    There is a danger in seeking finished perfection in all that we do. There is a risk that our students will focus solely on the attributes that define a finished piece and overlook the importance of the process that leads to it.
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RBA: Speech-The Economic Outlook - 8 views

www.rba.gov.au/...sp-gov-260314.html outlook
shared by Cath Horan on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • world economy has continued its expansion
  • 2014 economic global growth is thought likely by major forecasters to be a bit higher than in 2013
  • growth is coming from the advanced countries
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • United States continues its recovery led by private demand and over the second half of last year the economy expanded at an annualised rate of just over 3 per cent.
  • The euro area has resumed growth, albeit in a somewhat hesitant fashion and with noticeable differences in performance by country.
  • A few emerging economies have lately come under pressure,
  • In fact were the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to step up its current program of quantitative and qualitative easing, it would soon be adding more cash to the global financial system, in absolute terms, than the Federal Reserve.
  • China's economy grew close to, and in fact a little faster than, the government's target last year. Strong and about equal contributions to growth were made by household consumption and investment. Consumer price inflation continues to be stable.
  • Recent indicators have shown possible signs of slower growth in the early part of 2014: growth of industrial production slowed; retail sales and passenger vehicle sales moderated; and fixed asse
  • Australia certainly weathered the financial crisis well, and with a real GDP some 13 per cent larger than it was at the beginning of 2009, compares well with many other advanced countries. It is the case, though, that growth while positive, has been running at a pace a bit below its trend pace for about 18 months now. The rate of unemployment has increased by something like a percentage point over the same period.
  • strong conditions in the natural resources sector.
  • n the rest of the economy, households have spent most of the past five years behaving more conservatively, or rather more normally, than they did over a long period up to the mid 2000s when they had been in a very expansive mood. Both consumption and residential construction have been soft for a while.
  • esources sector's capital spending continues to fall, it
  • It is unlikely, though, that a pick-up in resources exports, as important as that will be, will be enough to keep overall growth on the right trac
  • Recent data shows stronger household consumption over the summer. The latest surve
  • bundant signs of confidence in the housing market
  • Measures of business confidence have improved over the past six months. Businesses seem, so far, to be taking a cautious approach to investment,
  • is important to stress that this outlook is, obviously, a balance between the large negative force of declining mining investment and, working the other way, the likely pick up in some other areas of demand helped by very low interest rates, improved confidence and so on, as well as higher resource shipments. The lower exchange rate since last April and the improved economic conditions overseas also help.
  • On inflation, our view is that it will be a little higher than we thought three months ago
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Principal: 'I was naïve about Common Core' - 4 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-i-was-naive-about-common-core commoncore testing standardizedtesting highstakestesting accountability critique
shared by Steve Ransom on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted.  The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.
  • Whether or not learning the word ‘commission’ is appropriate for second graders could be debated—I personally think it is a bit over the top.  What is of deeper concern, however, is that during a time when 7 year olds should be listening to and making music, they are instead taking a vocabulary quiz.
  • Real learning occurs in the mind of the learner when she makes connections with prior learning, makes meaning, and retains that knowledge in order to create additional meaning from new information.  In short, with tests we see traces of learning, not learning itself.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Teachers are engaged in practices like these because they are pressured and afraid, not because they think the assessments are educationally sound. Their principals are pressured and nervous about their own scores and the school’s scores. Guaranteed, every child in the class feels that pressure and trepidation as well.
  • I am troubled that a company that has a multi-million dollar contract to create tests for the state should also be able to profit from producing test prep materials. I am even more deeply troubled that this wonderful little girl, whom I have known since she was born, is being subject to this distortion of what her primary education should be.
  • The Common Core places an extraordinary emphasis on vocabulary development
  • Parents can expect that the other three will be neglected as teachers frantically try to prepare students for the difficult and high-stakes tests.
  • They see data, not children. 
  • Data should be used as a strategy for improvement, not for accountability
  • A fool with a tool is still a fool.  A fool with a powerful tool is a dangerous fool.
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The Nerdy Teacher: What Makes Project Based Learning Effective? #Edchat #EngChat - 132 views

www.thenerdyteacher.com/...es-project-based-learning.html Edchat Twitter learning project
shared by Mariusz Leś on 28 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mariusz Leś on 28 Nov 11
     
    1. OWNERSHIP is key. For this project, the students were not listening to me on why Twain was or was not a racist, they were showing me and the rest of class what they thought. They were invested in winning their argument. They knew that their work was going to determine if he was guilty or not. Although I gave the assignment, the students were in charge the rest of the way. It was their project and they wanted to do it win. When students feel they own what they are doing, they will work harder. When the audience is larger, they want to impress everyone. These are not crazy ideas, they are the results of owning the work they are doing. OWNERSHIP is a major factor in the value of PBL. 2. CREATIVITY is the another major part of the PBL and is closely linked with OWNERSHIP. Students were allowed to be creative in their work as a lawyer or witness. Witnesses needed to stay within character, but could add their own elements on the witness stand. Allowing the students to create gives them a bigger sense of OWNERSHIP. 3. Another part of the PBL is the COLLABORATION. Students were working with each other trying to decide the best plan of attack. Witnesses would meet with their lawyers and discuss how the questions they were going to ask and how they should dress. The Jury worked on group projects researching the previous public opinions on Twain and his writing. Students were sharing ideas freely with one another. I had three sections of American Lit at the time, so I had three trails running. Lawyers would help others in the other classes and trash talk the opposing lawyers as well. It was all in good fun, but the collaboration had students working hard with one another to accomplish this goal. 4. Depending on how you set up your project, CRITICAL THINKING, is also an important part of PBL. With my Twain Trail, students needed to think about both sides of the argument. Students needed to prepare their witnesses for potential cross-examination questions. They needed to
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Making The News : Welcome - 49 views

mtn2.e2bn.org/mtn news media international publishing languagearts socialstudies
shared by Bruce Fryer on 04 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Bruce Fryer on 04 Jul 12
     
    Making the News 2 (MTN2) is a website designed to introduce students to the world of online media publishing and broadcasting for the 21st century. Teachers may register, doing so will create a homepage on MTN for their school. The teacher may then create student accounts. Students can then login and create articles and programmes which will be submitted to the teacher and if approved published on the school homepage. Well rated articles will be added to the National MTN2 site. Articles may be text and images or they may be video, audio or a sequence of images.
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Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement - 9 views

cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/TYS4 research thinking writing tools group process graduate education
shared by pjt111 taylor on 18 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • pjt111 taylor on 18 Sep 11
     
    Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement is the working title of a book by Peter Taylor and Jeremy Szteiter that assembles the tools and processes from research and writing courses taught in the Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking. The most up to date version of the book can be viewed at http://cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/TYS (and associated links, including a link to a full pdf of the book). "For your research and writing to progress well, your questions and ideas need to be in alignment with your aspirations, your ability to take or influence action, and your relationships with other people. Shorten these items to head, heart, hands, and human connections. Your efforts to bring these 4H's into alignment is what we mean when we invite you to take yourself seriously." Some comments from former students looking back on the influence of the research courses out of which this book has arisen: Jane, a healthcare professional and story-teller: I learned is to 'hold my ideas loosely', which means accepting my own idea as a valid one but always leaving the space open to take in the counterarguments. I learned to give myself permission to be circular and come back to previous steps or thoughts, and I actually became more comfortable doing so. I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling.
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A Teacher's Top 3 Must Haves | @LeadingLearner - 54 views

leadinglearner.me/...a-teachers-top-3-must-haves Pedagogy
shared by Brian Taylor on 20 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Brian Taylor on 20 Nov 16
     
    Being able to construct a learning progression from simple facts to important concepts or simplex skills to complex ones is our daily bread and butter.  The ability to do this really well sets some teachers apart.  It helps create a focus on learning within the classroom rather than just being busy.  Whilst the sequencing of knowledge is a crucial starting point the real star teachers also know the points at which key misunderstandings or mistakes are often made by pupils.  In the classroom they are already alert to these possible errors and can intervene quickly and incisively.  Teachers spending time planning together must focus on the learning progressions or journeys, if you prefer.  A critical element of this planning is the determining of excellence; what standard should these pupils be able to reach.  My suggestion would be start with the end in mind; what kep concept or complex skill are you trying to teach.
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School Would Be Great If It Weren't for the Damn Kids - 95 views

www.alfiekohn.org/...damnkids.htm school alfie kohn students edreform education interest current commentary
shared by Jason Schmidt on 17 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • It simply doesn’t make sense to try to “purge ‘ineffective’ teachers and principals.”  His listener, almost giddy with gratitude now, prepares to chime in, as Samuelson, without pausing, delivers the punch line:  That’s right, it’s time to stop blaming teachers and start . . . blaming students!
  • His focus is not on students’ achievements (the intellectual accomplishments of individual kids) but only on “student achievement” (the aggregate results of standardized tests)
  • As I’ve noted elsewhere, we have reason to worry when schooling is discussed primarily in the context of “global competitiveness” rather than in terms of what children need or what contributes to a democratic culture
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Upon hearing someone castigate students for being insufficiently motivated, a noneconomist might be inclined to ask two questions.  The first is:  “Motivated to do what, exactly”?  Anything they’re told, no matter how unengaging, inappropriate, or, well, demotivating? 
  • Whenever I see students made to cram facts into their short-term memories for a test, practice a series of decontextualized skills on yet another worksheet, listen passively to a lecture, or inch their way through the insipid prose of a corporate-produced textbook, I find myself thinking of a comment made by Frederick Herzberg, a critic of traditional workplace management:  “Idleness, indifference, and irresponsibility,” he said, “are healthy responses to absurd work.”
  • The more you reward people for doing something, or for doing it well, the less interest they typically come to have in whatever they had to do to get the reward. 
  • People who blame students for not being “motivated” tend to think educational success mean little more than higher scores on bad tests and they’re apt to see education itself as a means to making sure our corporations will beat their corporations.  The sort of schooling that results is the type almost guaranteed to . . . kill students’ motivation.
  • one thing that’s happened is a concatenation of rewards and punishments, including grades, which teach students that learning is just a means to an end.
  • Another thing that’s happened is teaching that’s meant primarily to raise test scores.
  • inner-city kids get the worst of the sort of schooling that’s not about exploring and discovering and questioning but only about working hard (often at rote tasks) and being nice (read: obedient).
  • “Motivation is weak because more students…don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well.”  But why don’t they like school (which is the key to understanding why, assuming his premise is correct, they don’t succeed)?  What has happened to their desire to figure out how things work, the hunger to make sense of things, with which all children start out? 
  • if you want to see (intrinsically) motivated kids, you need to visit classrooms or schools that take a nontraditional approach to education, places where students are more likely to be absorbed and frequently delighted, where what they’re doing is not merely “rigorous” (a word often applied to very difficult busywork) but meaningful.
  • Jason Schmidt on 17 Nov 10
     
    Alfie Kohn's commentary on an article written by Robert J. Samuelson. Samuelson argues in his article that the problem with education reform is not the usual suspects like ineffective teachers, but kids who are lazy and unmotivated. Interesting read with thoughtful information about student motivation.
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Hate Speech and Hate Crime | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues - 4 views

www.ala.org/...hate civil civil rights
shared by Tara Heath on 28 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • There is no legal definition of "hate speech" under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for evil ideas, rudeness, unpatriotic speech, or any other kind of speech that people might condemn. Generally, however, hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin. 1 In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear. (The Supreme Court's decision in Snyder v. Phelps provides an example of this legal reasoning.) Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group. Hate Crime For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” including skin color and national origin.  Hate crimes are overt acts that can include acts of violence against persons or property, violation or deprivation of civil rights, certain "true threats," or acts of intimidation, or conspiracy to commit these crimes. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that either criminalize these acts or impose a harsher punishment when it can be proven that the defendant targeted the victim because of the victim's race, ethnicity, identity, or beliefs.  A hate crime is more than than offensive speech or conduct; it is specific criminal behavior that ranges from property crimes like vandalism and arson to acts of intimidation, assault, and murder.  Victims of hate crimes can include institutions, religious organizations and government entities as well as individuals.
  • Tara Heath on 28 Feb 23
     
    "Hate Speech There is no legal definition of "hate speech" under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for evil ideas, rudeness, unpatriotic speech, or any other kind of speech that people might condemn. Generally, however, hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin. 1 In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear. (The Supreme Court's decision in Snyder v. Phelps provides an example of this legal reasoning.) Under current First Amendment jurisprudence, hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group. Hate Crime For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity," including skin color and national origin.  Hate crimes are overt acts that can include acts of violence against persons or property, violation or deprivation of civil rights, certain "true threats," or acts of intimidation, or conspiracy to commit these crimes. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that either criminalize these acts or impose a harsher punishment when it can be proven that the defendant targeted the victim because of the victim's race, ethnicity, identity, or beliefs.  A hate crime is more than than offensive speech
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School Email: 9 Top Tips for Teachers & Students by @musictheoryguy - 25 views

ukedchat.com/...ers-students-by-musictheoryguy email school
shared by Martin Burrett on 07 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 07 Feb 17
     
    "Staff and students are expected to be fully conversant with school email. Not only do users need to check their email regularly enough so that they don't miss important announcements but they also have to understand and apply the complex landscape of netiquette, respond to emails quickly (and politely) and action any instructions that they receive. Being on top of your email inbox has never been so important in schools. So why, whenever I help a member of staff or a student, do they have an email account that is bursting at the seams with often more than 1000 emails in their inbox? It seems that how email is managed in schools is, well, often not managed well."
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Project SKIP: Screening Kids for Intervention and Prevention - 16 views

www.projectskip.com project skip screening kids intervention prevention
shared by Carole Redline on 15 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Carole Redline on 15 Sep 14
     
     The author is my grandson ,Shane's, advocate. Without her he would be up the creek without a paddle.  Will My Child Grow Out of It written by Dr. Bonny Forrest is an important book for parents, educators and practitioners. The succinct, accurate description of learning differences and mental health issues is based on extensive research as well as personal case study experience. The topics discussed and suggestions given are realistic yet always positive. The expanded appendix provides resources for action, effective therapies for consideration and medications commonly in use. Most importantly there is a direct link to ProjectSkip, http://www.projectskip.com/. A special code is given for use of this tool, a first step in the decision of whether to seek professional help. While this book is an excellent resource for parents, it could also be an important textbook for educators as well as those studying in the field of psychology
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Modern Spaces for Contemporary Learning - The Learner's Way - 31 views

thelearnersway.net/...aces-for-contemporary-learning modern spaces education teaching
shared by Nigel Coutts on 01 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Nigel Coutts on 01 Oct 17
     
    Think back to how you felt after the last day you spent at a conference or course. If things went well you probably came out feeling enthused by new ideas but also exhausted and fatigued in ways that you don't after a regular day at work. If the presenters have done their job well and you choose your workshops wisely, the day should have been full of learning that resulted from you having to think. Days like this should work our brains hard and it should be no surprise when we are fatigued by such an experience. - So how might our students be coping?
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Teaching Document Design, Not Formatting Requirements - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of H... - 69 views

chronicle.com/...29041 design teaching formatting document education publishing
shared by Mr. Stanley on 03 Dec 10 - No Cached
    • LuAnne Holder
      LuAnne Holder on 03 Dec 10
       
      This would be a great activity for introductions.
  • One of my colleagues asks her students to sketch their names using a typeface that conveys something about themselves
  • One thing I do is bring in the style manuals from different local companies and show students how each company expects different things
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Students in all disciplines are more than capable of producing and analyzing visual work in amazingly rich and complex ways.
  • many faculty members continue to specify detailed formatting requirements for student writing.
  • Your paper must be double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, with one-inch margins.
  • Such draconian formatting requirements stifle students’ creativity and cut off any critical thinking about what should be a crucial part of any writing-intensive classroom, namely visual design.
  • Teaching Document Design, Not Formatting Requirements
  • well-meaning and thoughtful teachers establish hard and fast formatting rules that may make their lives easier, but do a disservice to their students.
  • By making these requirements, we are telling them not to think critically—or even at all—about the visual layout of their documents.
  • We are telling them we value conformity over creativity, practicality over originality, our needs over theirs.
  • It all starts with students recognizing that design is a part of what they do when they write.
  • the rules we give our students should be negotiable, and in order for them to be negotiable, we need to talk to our students about those rules, why they exist, what the consequences of breaking or following them are, and so on.
  • Your paper should be readable and take into consideration the needs of your audience.  Most importantly, though, you should have fun and be creative with your design.
  • Mr. Stanley on 05 Dec 10
     
    Teachers need to allow their students more room to creatively use visual design, and at the same time, teach students to be aware. Forcing students to follow exact formatting requirements is counterproductive.
16More

Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic | The Economist - 27 views

www.economist.com/17723223 phd academia university education doctoral degrees
shared by sha towers on 31 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
  • A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009
  • America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days.
  • In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
  • About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.
  • In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%.
  • in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.
  • The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%
  • PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees
  • the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.
  • In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting.
  • The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records.
  • Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience.
  • Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else.
  • sha towers on 13 Apr 11
     
    article from the Economist "The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
55More

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

www.newyorker.com/...personal-best coaching teaching professional development
shared by anonymous on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
Xiaojing Kou liked it
  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      PROFOUND!!!
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • always evolving
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      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!
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      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.
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • 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.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • 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.
  • anonymous on 14 Dec 16
     
    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
11More

Freakonomics » What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests? A Freakonomics Q... - 42 views

www.freakonomics.com/...ed-tests-a-freakonomics-quorum education
shared by Sarah Schaller Welsh on 08 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Gaston Caperton
  • Standardized tests have much in common with French fries. Both of them differ in composition as well as quality. French fries are available in numerous incarnations, including straight, curly, skins-on, skins-off, and, in recent years, with sweet potatoes. Regarding quality, of course, the taste of French fries can range substantially – from sublime to soggy. It’s really the same with standardized tests.
  • Take the No Child Left Behind Act, for instance, a federal accountability law requiring scads of standardized tests to be used in evaluating schools. Do you know that almost all of the standardized tests now being employed to judge school quality are unable to distinguish between well taught and badly taught students?
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • all schools – kindergarten through college – should employ exit exams allowing us to determine what students have actually learned. We owe it to our students to make sure that they’ve been properly taught.
  • Then there are the questions of what to do with the results. I have actually sat through an extended discussion of how we could use regression analysis to parse out the contribution different teachers made to a group of students’ performance on a set of standardized tests. The answer was, yes it was possible, and could in fact be used to award merit pay increases. But nobody left the room feeling very comfortable that there would be any gain in what we knew made for good teaching.
  • Roughly half of the nation’s students are taking tests under NCLB that are completely free of open-ended questions.
  • educators have a strong incentive to “teach to the test.” In this case, that means teaching low level skills at the expense of the more demanding material that everyone says students need to master in today’s complicated world.
  • But is it fair to give students what amounts to a counterfeit passport to college or work? And do such tests spur high school teachers and principals to aim high with their students? To both questions, the answer is, “No.” In most states today, high school exit tests serve the same role as the standardized tests mandated by NCLB: they try to jack up the floor of student achievement in the nation’s schools. The best high school exit tests would be end-of-course exams akin to the “comprehensive” exams that many colleges and universities require students to pass in their majors before graduation – tests, that is, that would raise the ceiling of student achievement.
  • High-stakes testing has narrowed and dumbed down curricula; eliminated time spent on untested subjects like social studies, art, and even recess; turned classrooms into little more than test preparation centers; reduced high school graduation rates; and driven good teachers from the profession. Those are all reasons why FairTest and other experts advocate a sharp reduction in public school standardized testing and a halt to exit exams.
  • igh school grade
  • point average is a better predictor of college success than either the SAT or the ACT.
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