A rational number is any number that can be written as a ratio of two integers (hence the name!). In other words, a number is rational if we can write it as a fraction where the numerator and denominator are both integers.
The term "rational" comes from the word "ratio," because the rational numbers are the ones that can be written in the ratio form p/q where p and q are integers. Irrational, then, just means all the numbers that aren't rational.
Every integer is a rational number, since each integer n can be written in the form n/1. For example 5 = 5/1 and thus 5 is a rational number. However, numbers like 1/2, 45454737/2424242, and -3/7 are also rational, since they are fractions whose numerator and denominator are integers.
So the set of all rational numbers will contain the numbers 4/5, -8, 1.75 (which is 7/4), -97/3, and so on.
Is .999 repeating a rational number? Well, a number is rational if it can be written as A/B (A over B): .3 = 3/10 and .55555..... = 5/9, so these are both rational numbers. Now look at .99999999..... which is equal to 9/9 = 1. We have just written down 1 and .9999999 in the form A/B where A and B are both 9, so 1 and .9999999 are both rational numbers. In fact all repeating decimals like .575757575757... , all integers like 46, and all finite decimals like .472 are rational.
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shared by Christophe Gigon on 09 Dec 08
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elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - 17 views
www.elearnspace.org/...connectivism.htm
connectivism MEMOIRE learning elearning theory collaboration technology community
shared by Christophe Gigon on 09 Dec 08
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Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn.
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I aggree that as teachers we need to realize that technology has changed instruction and the way that our students learn and the way that we learn and instruct. -
Technology has always changed the way we live. How did we respond to changes in the past? One thought is that some institutions, some businesses disappeared, while others, who took advantage of the new tech, appeared to replace the old. It will happen again and we as educators need to lead the way. -
With technology our students brains are wired differently and they can multi-task and learn in multiple virtual environments all at once. This should make us think about how we present lessons, structure learning and keep kids engaged. -
Rubbish. The idea that digital native are adept at multitasking is wrong. They may be doing many things but the quality and depth is reduced. There is a significant body of research to support this. Development of grit and determination are key attributes of successful people. Set and demand high standards. No one plays sport or an instrument because it is easy rather because they can clearly see a link between hard work and pleasure.
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Information development was slow.
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Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
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Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience.
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Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
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Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains.
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Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.
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Principles of connectivism:
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Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
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The organization and the individual are both learning organisms.
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Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness”
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So what does this look like? I feel that when I attempt this, evaluators and administrators don't necessarily understand. They want a neat, quiet, well-managed, orderly classroom.
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If new learning approaches are required, then why are we still being evaluated in a linear way?
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John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
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The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.
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Knowledge is growing exponentially
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amount of knowledge
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is doubling every 18 months
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To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
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(the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
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know-where
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learning
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a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”
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Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned.
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The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.
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knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner
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What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning
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An entirely new approach is needed.
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Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order.
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Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities.
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Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything.
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If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made.
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principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole.
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Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.
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Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual
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decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations
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The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital.
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Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.
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The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
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This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
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This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
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Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas
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An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
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As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
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Access is not enough. Prior knowledge and understanding is needed. Processing is needed. Evaluation of processing and outputs is needed. Feeding that back into the "system" is needed.
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learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
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learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity
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lso see http://www.connectivism.ca/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism_(learning_theory) -
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shared by paul lowe on 12 May 09
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A report says universities' use of virtual technologies is 'patchy' | Education | The G... - 1 views
www.guardian.co.uk/...computer-science-it
guardian education e_learning twitter social_media social_netwrking facebook melville
shared by paul lowe on 12 May 09
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The "Google generation" of today's students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online. Modern students are happy to share and participate but are prone to impatience - being used to quick answers - and are casual about evaluating information and attributing it, and also about legal and copyright issues. With almost weekly developments in technology and research added to increasingly web-savvy students' expectations, how are British universities keeping up? Pretty well, according to Sir David Melville, chair of Lifelong Learning UK and author of a new report into how students' use of new technologies will affect higher education.
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shared by Christine Schlitt on 05 Sep 11
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Lesson Plans: Name & Word Wall Activities, Building Blocks (Kindergarten, Building Blocks) - 32 views
teachers.net/...2466.html
lesson plans kiundergarten kindergarten lesson lessons alphabet plans name word wall teaching
shared by Christine Schlitt on 05 Sep 11
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Word Walls and The Name Game Each day we have one person who is our helper and we focus onher name. When everyone has had a turn, we start another round.I find it easiest to go in alphabetical order by first names. I write the students names on sentence strips, using one colorfor boys, and another for girls.First round: We reveal one name each day, beginning with a cheer:?Gimme a B (B), Gimme an i (i), Gimme an l (l), Gimme another l(l), Gimme a y (y). What?s that spell? (Billy). One more time!(Billy). Then I ask if anyone ?notices? anything about Billy?s name andwe look for letters in common with other names, or count lettersand look for other names with the same number of letters. Thenwe take a good look at the student, discussing colors ofclothing, so each child can draw a picture of the helper. Iwrite the helper?s name on the board and encourage everyone totry to write that person?s name and then draw a picture of thehelper. The helper gets to take home the pictures drawn byothers, his is put up on the bulletin board with the name cardI?ve made. 2nd Round: The self-portraits are put into a class book and thename cards are transferred to an alphabet word wall. Each day weread the alphabet and names, then take the helper?s name off tocheer and ?notice? letters about this name and others. We formthe helper?s name in magnetic letters, scramble them up and taketurns putting them in the right order. 3rd Round: When we read the alphabet, we say the sounds inaddition to the letters and names. This time we cheer, writethe letters in the helper?s name on the board and then count howmany of those letters are in the names on the word wall. Thenwe talk about which letter has the most, least, etc. We havealso added another name cheer: ?Bryan, Bryan, that?s his name.It starts with B, it ends with n, hooray, Bryan! We stillscramble the name with magnetic letters. At some point we begin to add sight words to the names on thewall, usually starting with go and we. In December, or after wecome back from Christmas, we take the names off the word walland put them in a pocket chart for the kids to use duringcenters. We continue to add sight words the rest of the year,reading the alphabet, and saying the sounds and words each day. Here are additional name ideas; some I?ve tried, some I haven?t.*Count the syllables.*Write the names like a rainbow.*Name poems from the website Korky?s Kool rhyme machine (http://www.literacyhour.co.uk/learning_activities/rhyme/rhyme.html)*Think of words that begin the same as the name.*Make up tongue twisters.*Fill out an interview sheet.*Mystery person (hangman type game where you draw blanks for theletters and the kids guess letters until they know the name.* Use the letters in the name and look for smaller words. *Cut up name puzzles to keep in a literacy center.*Change the initial consonant and play with the word (Sue, Bue,Lue, etc.).*Another name cheer: No matter what I do or say,My name will always be the same,It starts with_____It ends with ____Now count to 3 and say my name,1,2,3,_______.
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"Word Walls and The Name Game Each day we have one person who is our helper and we focus on her name. When everyone has had a turn, we start another round. I find it easiest to go in alphabetical order by first names. I write the students names on sentence strips, using one color for boys, and another for girls. First round: We reveal one name each day, beginning with a cheer: ?Gimme a B (B), Gimme an i (i), Gimme an l (l), Gimme another l (l), Gimme a y (y). What?s that spell? (Billy). One more time! (Billy). Then I ask if anyone ?notices? anything about Billy?s name and we look for letters in common with other names, or count letters and look for other names with the same number of letters. Then we take a good look at the student, discussing colors of clothing, so each child can draw a picture of the helper. I write the helper?s name on the board and encourage everyone to try to write that person?s name and then draw a picture of the helper. The helper gets to take home the pictures drawn by others, his is put up on the bulletin board with the name card I?ve made. 2nd Round: The self-portraits are put into a class book and the name cards are transferred to an alphabet word wall. Each day we read the alphabet and names, then take the helper?s name off to cheer and ?notice? letters about this name and others. We form the helper?s name in magnetic letters, scramble them up and take turns putting them in the right order. 3rd Round: When we read the alphabet, we say the sounds in addition to the letters and names. This time we cheer, write the letters in the helper?s name on the board and then count how many of those letters are in the names on the word wall. Then we talk about which letter has the most, least, etc. We"
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shared by Glenn Hervieux on 19 Jan 15
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Edu Change & Advocacy: Is High School Ready For A Major Makeover? Think 'Yes' In A Big Way - 29 views
changingislearning.blogspot.com/...-ready-for-major-makeover.html
CTE education reform edreform blogpost
shared by Glenn Hervieux on 19 Jan 15
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"As learners, we are sometimes challenged (not often enough fortunately) to think big. We are able to ask the question 'what if' when looking at a challenge. We are tasked with redesigning, recreating, reimagining or rethinking the entire thing. Maybe these are more 22nd century ideas. Well, when it comes to our high school system and overall student experience, here are my suggestions:" (Get ready for some out of the box ideas)
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The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 48 views
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there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
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“Creativity can be taught,”
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it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children
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Students are labeled as "creative" if they display a knack for art or music, and sometimes in writing, however, they are rarely recognized as creative in math or science where a lot of creativity is not only needed, but excellent for learning within those very two disciplines. -
This is precisely why creativity education is important. It is needed everywhere, not just in the arts. Those teaching outside of arts education need to start recognizing the importance of creative thinking as well.
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When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”
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The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process.
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When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions. Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with. Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.
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those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better
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Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
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Likely because it was out of necessity and the hardships of life. Not that we don't have hardships and necessities, but innovation has solved a lot of problems and automation has made skills and tasks easy.
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What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.
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Everyday process of work or school... over time, consistent and non-prescriptive.
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kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.
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project-based learning
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highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.
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When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates. They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.
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solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others
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The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.
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When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.
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The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach
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those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.
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The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer
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The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function.
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“As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”
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In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.
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fact-finding
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problem-finding
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Next, idea-finding
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there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
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For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it.
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shared by Frederick Eberhardt on 03 Oct 09
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Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods |... - 85 views
www.edutopia.org/uiry-project-learning-research
Collaborative Learning Powerful Student as Researcher
shared by Frederick Eberhardt on 03 Oct 09
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Dennis OConnor liked it
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In essence, students must learn how to learn, while responding to endlessly changing technologies and social, economic, and global conditions.
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students learn more deeply if they have engaged in activities that require applying classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems.
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developing inquiring minds
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Studies of problem-based learning suggest that it is comparable, though not always superior, to more traditional instruction in teaching facts and information. However, this approach has been found to be better in supporting flexible problem solving, reasoning skills, and generating accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations.
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design challenges need to be carefully planned, and they emphasized the importance of dynamic feedback.
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When students have no prior experience with inquiry learning, they can have difficulty generating meaningful driving questions and logical arguments and may lack background knowledge to make sense of the inquiry.
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Absolutely true. I discovered this when I used inquiry-based methods with my students in Qatar who were used to rote learning. They truly did not know where to start. They first needed to learn *how* to be inquisitive.
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Requiring students to track and defend their thinking focused them on learning and connecting concepts in their design work
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All the research arrives at the same conclusion: There are significant benefits for students who work together on learning activities.
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groups outperform individuals on learning tasks and that individuals who work in groups do better on later individual assessments.
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In successful group learning, teachers pay careful attention to the work process and interaction among students.
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"It is not enough to simply tell students to work together. They must have a reason to take one another's achievement seriously.
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She and her colleagues developed Complex Instruction, one of the best-known approaches, which uses carefully designed activities requiring diverse talents and interdependence among group members.
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They require changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices -- changes that are often new for teachers and students.
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A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
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A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
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Vocational Education meets Research in the dynamic classroom of Linda Darling-Hammond, 2008. The students are doing the research, teaching and learning. They control their own destiny and they are taking the world by storm! They are not waiting to be taught, they are teaching each other and themselves as teams of researchers. Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Powerful learning: what we know about teaching for understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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How do I make multimedia accessible? | AccessComputing - 9 views
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Multimedia presentations can enrich education and enhance learning for many students, but it can also pose barriers for others. Audio and video are inaccessible to people who are unable to hear, and video is inaccessible to people who are unable to see critical information that is presented visually. Other students are impacted by low bandwidth Internet connections. Multimedia players can pose barriers as well if the player controls require use of a mouse or if they are not labeled sufficiently to be usable by screen reader users.
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Response: Advice From The "Book Whisperer," Ed Week Readers & Me About Teaching Reading... - 1 views
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Highlighting text is really easy with Diigo. And adding a sticky note is very simple is well. It can be made private or shared with groups of people who are working with the same document
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Other ways I encourage these kinds of discussions includes having students choose their own groupings and books for independent book "clubs" and using the Web as a vehicle to create audio and/or video "book trailers."
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From a technology end, our kids are beginning to do more and more with tools like voicethread, animoto, imovie, etc. Digital storytelling is a great way for students to be creative, share insights and show what they know and can do.
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One facet of our reading instruction that cannot be overlooked is the importance of teacher readers in building a classroom reading community. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school."
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I wonder how open ALL teachers are about what they are reading? How much conversation do teachers as a whole have about what they are reading?
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If we don't read, why should our students?
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Share your reading life with your students. Show your students what reading adds to your life. If you are reading a nonfiction book at the moment, tell them what you are learning. Pass the children's books you are reading to them when you are done. Describe the funny, sad, or interesting moments in the books you read. When you read something challenging, talk with your students about how you work through difficult text. It will surprise them that you find reading hard at times, too, but choose to read, anyway.
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Many students in today's world do not read books outside of school. When they do read, it is text-messages, web pages or homework assignments. For students who did not grow up in homes with books, with adults who read and who read to them, this time to read in school is both necessary and pleasurable. Many of my students need catch-up time when it comes to "hours-in" reading. The 10 minutes at the beginning of each period that I allow my juniors each day equals hours of reading across the months of the school year. My most dedicated readers begin books in the classroom, finish them at home, and return to the classroom/school library to check out new books.
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This is an important distinction in that I believe (and research indicates) that our kids arE reading more than ever before. But it comes in non-traditional forms. We must acknowledge that web based reading is still reading, but it differs. Research also indicates that when kids read digitally, they read in a different pattern. In traditional reading, they read in a z pattern down a page. Digital reading is more of an F pattern,indicating skim and scan.
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Many-to-One vs. One-to-Many: An Opinionated Guide to Educational Technology - The Ameri... - 9 views
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MOOCs do not benefit most of those who try them. Students differ in their cognitive abilities and learning styles. Even within a relatively homogenous school, you will see students put into separate tracks. If we do not teach the same course to students in a single high school, why would we expect one teaching style to fit all in an unsorted population of tens of thousands?
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I believe that the future of teaching is not one-to-many. Instead, it is many-to-one. By many-to-one, I mean that one student receives personalized instruction that comes from many educators. To make that work, technology must act as an intermediary, taking the information from the educators and customizing it to fit the student's knowledge, ability, and even his or her emotional state.
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I am optimistic about tablets in large part because I believe that a magic bullet in educational technology is the adaptive textbook. By that, I mean an electronic textbook that adjusts to the cognitive ability and learning style of the student. Adaptive textbooks will query students in order to make sure that they understand what they have been studying. They will also respond to student queries. Adaptive textbooks will implement the many-to-one teaching model.
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There are many horses in the educational technology race. The ones to bet on are adaptive textbooks and independent certification.
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I do not believe that educators fully understand the process of social learning in the classroom. We do not know exactly what factors make the difference between a classroom where students are of significant help to one another and one where students provide little assistance or even hold one another back
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"This essay will explain why I label various technologies as winners, losers, and magic bullets in the table below. My opinions are not based on exhaustive research. They are based on my experience both as a high school teacher and as an entrepreneur." My evaluations are based on whether I view these technologies as supporting a model of education that is one-to-many or a model that is many-to-one. The latter is the model I prefer, as will become clear in the rest of this essay.
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CBI: Change is possible - but we must be clearer about what we ask schools to develop i... - 1 views
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Question: What are the goals set out on the political level? What does Gove want to achieve?
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lacks
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guardrails
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which makes transformational change
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ifficult
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In Finland, the goals of education are explicitly linked to competitiveness, research and innovation.
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nowhere in the UK do they really drive the terms under which schools are assessed.
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In England, the government has defined its approach as being based on curriculum rigour.
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This lack of a comprehensive statement of the achievement we are looking for schools to deliver is a key failing.
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best schools
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areas of high disadvantage
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define the outcome they need
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in the face of the complex and inconsistent demands the system places on them.
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Clear indication that the system as a whole is not supporting a generally accepted set of goals. Instead, the schools are trying to achieve a goal they see as important at worst while fighting the systemic demands.
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One such school leader told us they had taken a conscious decision with one group of young people to focus on five key subjects and some life skills, knowing that the accountability system would score them down for it, as it expected eight qualifications from all students at that time.
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Our system should reward schools making brave decisions which focus on boosting long-term outcomes for pupils, not punish them.
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It should be able to survive changes of government and provide the test against which policy changes and school actions are judged
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shine the light on whether the system is truly addressing the needs of all students, rather than just the few required to meet a government target.
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Focus on raising the ambition and attainment for every child as far as their abilities permit
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guide young people effectively on their choice of enabling subjects…
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thos and culture that build the social skills also essential to progress in life and work, and allow them time to focus on this
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Have a school accountability and assessment framework that supports these goals rather than defining them.
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social literacy
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a range of core subjects
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ncluding critically maths, English, the sciences
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effective use and understanding of computer science.
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‘enabling subjects’
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humanities, languages, arts, technical and practically-based subjects
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equip a young person to move on
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o university, or to an apprenticeship or vocational qualification
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a set of behaviours and attitudes,
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An exclusive focus on subjects for study would fail to equip young people with these, though rigour in the curriculum does help
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‘employability skills’
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Behaviours can only be developed over time, through the entire path of a young person’s life and their progress through the school system.
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right context at school
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A supportive culture, pastoral care and the right ethos are all needed to make the difference.
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a long tail of pupils failing to achieve the desired outcomes can no longer be accepted.
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enable all of our young citizens to reach the desired standards.
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conflicting expectations placed on schools.
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renewed system should be able to judge performance against the goals based on more complex metrics.
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judgement
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on overall culture and ethos, teaching and governance
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group of data points, including testing but also outcomes data.
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Development of a clear, widely-owned and stable statement of the outcome that all schools are asked to deliver.
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beyond the merely academic, into the behaviours and attitudes schools should foster
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basis on which we judge all new policy ideas, schools, and the structures we set up to monitor them
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Ofsted
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asked to steward the delivery of these outcomes
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resourcing these bodies to develop an approach based on a wider range of measures and assessments than are currently in use,
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shared by Javier E on 10 May 13
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Money Cuts Both Ways in Education - NYTimes.com - 19 views
www.nytimes.com/...10iht-letter10.html
education youth prospect inequality competition meritocracy self-image
shared by Javier E on 10 May 13
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If you doubt that we live in a winner-take-all economy and that education is the trump card, consider the vast amounts the affluent spend to teach their offspring.
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This power spending on the children of the economic elite is usually — and rightly — cited as further evidence of the dangers of rising income inequality.
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But it may be that the less lavishly educated children lower down the income distribution aren’t the only losers. Being groomed for the winner-take-all economy starting in nursery school turns out to exact a toll on the children at the top, too.
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There is a lively debate among politicians and professors about whether the economy is becoming more polarized and about the importance of education. Dismissing the value of a college education is one of the more popular clever-sounding contrarian ideas of the moment. And there are still a few die-hards who play down the social significance of rising income inequality.
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When you translate these abstract arguments into the practical choices we make in our personal lives, however, the intellectual disagreements melt away. We are all spending a lot more money to educate our kids, and the richest have stepped up their spending more than everyone else.
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spending on children grew over the past four decades and that it became more unequal. “Our findings also show that investment grew more unequal over the study period: parents near the top of the income distribution spent more in real dollars near the end of the 2000s than in the early 1970s, and the gap in spending between rich and poor grew.”
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But it turns out that the children being primed for that race to the top from preschool onward aren’t in such great shape, either.
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“What we are finding again and again, in upper-middle-class school districts, is the proportion who are struggling are significantly higher than in normative samples,” she said. “Upper-middle-class kids are an at-risk group.”
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troubled rich kids. “I was looking for a comparison group for the inner-city kids,” Dr. Luthar told me. “And we happened to find that substance use, depression and anxiety, particularly among the girls, were much higher than among inner-city kids.”
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“I Can, Therefore I Must: Fragility in the Upper Middle Class,” and it describes a world in which the opportunities, and therefore the demands, for upper-middle-class children are infinite.
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“It is an endless cycle, starting from kindergarten,” Dr. Luthar said. “The difficulty is that you have these enrichment activities. It is almost as if, if you have the opportunity, you must avail yourself of it. The pressure is enormous.”
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these parents and children are responding rationally to a hyper-competitive world economy.
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“When we talk to youngsters now, when they set goals for themselves, they want to match up to at least what their parents have achieved, and that is harder to do.”
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we live in individualistic democracies whose credo is that anyone can be a winner if she tries. But we are also subject to increasingly fierce winner-take-all forces, which means the winners’ circle is ever smaller, and the value of winning is ever higher.
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Harvard Education Letter - 27 views
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Learning to see all behavior as a form of communication, for example, is a key principle that helps when teachers are frustrated or confused by how students are acting. Even though students’ behavior can look bizarre or disruptive, their actions are purposeful and are their attempts to solve a problem.
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About 10 percent of the school population—or 9–13 million children—struggle with mental health problems. In a typical classroom of 20, chances are good that one or two students are dealing with serious psychosocial stressors relating to poverty, domestic violence, abuse and neglect, or a psychiatric disorder. There is also growing evidence that the number of children suffering the effects of trauma and those with autism-related social deficits is also on the rise.
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If teachers are supported to set up classrooms to promote success, these students (and other challenging students who have similar behaviors but may not have individualized education plans, or IEPs) can improve their performance in school and in life.
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Making positive attention more predictable in the classroom can help break the cycle of negative attention-seeking behaviors. Putting one-on-one time on the student’s personal visual schedule (even if it’s only a couple minutes to read a student’s favorite page in a book) or setting a timer for 10 minutes and telling the student that’s when you will be back are just two strategies that can help.
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Teachers who work with challenging students need support from administrators and others in the school. It is very stressful to have a student in class who is constantly disruptive. In order to make the necessary investment, the teacher needs substantive support from administrators to avoid frustration and burnout and to garner the energy to provide effective interventions. When administrators delegate some of the teacher’s responsibilities to other people in the building, the teacher can devote more time to finding solutions. Regularly meeting with consultants (e.g., special educators, mental health professionals, and behavior analysts) can be essential for designing how the student progresses, but it also takes up the teacher’s prep time. If possible, the administrator can arrange coverage so that the teacher can meet with consultants at times other than lunch and prep. Support staff can instruct small groups of children while the teacher works with the student with behavior challenges. And since there are usually so many people involved with a struggling student, delineating a clear coordination plan is also critical. It can be helpful, as a team, to make a list of responsibilities and indicate who is responsible for what.
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The more intensely the student is taught the underdeveloped skills, and the more the environment is changed to encourage appropriate behavior, the more quickly the student’s behavior is likely to change.
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shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 02 Dec 11
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The Innovative Educator: Ideas for Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) Even If You Are Poor - 107 views
theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/...ging-your-own-device-even.html
byod mlearning technology poverty equity
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 02 Dec 11
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When we shift our thinking from demanding the government provides one-size-fits-some solutions and move it to let's empower families to take ownership of securing tools for their learning, change can happen.
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When the topic of bring your own device comes up, one of the first complaints we often hear, is "What about the have nots." Yes, there are have nots. However, students should not only be given the freedom to do what those who have the least can do. Students are not prisoners and they are not widgets. They are people with minds, choices, and parents or guardians who can make decisions and should be empowered to use the learning devices they choose.
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shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 21 Nov 11
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There Are No Technology Shortcuts to Good Education « Educational Technology ... - 73 views
edutechdebate.org/...gy-shortcuts-to-good-education
technology education edutech hardware funding schools edutechdebate
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 21 Nov 11
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“At its best, the fascination with ICT as a solution distracts from the real issues. At its worst, ICT is suggested as substitute to solving the real problems, for example, ‘why bother about teachers, when ICT can be the teacher’. This perspective is lethal.”
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some uses of computers in education can be justified, although with the ever-applicable caution that while technology can augment good schools, it hurts poor schools.
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Though children are naturally curious, they nevertheless require ongoing guidance and encouragement to persevere in the ascent. Caring supervision from human teachers, parents, and mentors is the only known way of generating motivation for the hours of a school day
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There are no technology shortcuts to good education. For primary and secondary schools that are underperforming or limited in resources, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on better teachers and stronger administrations. Information technology, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses or limited to well-funded schools whose fundamentals are not in question.
Diigo in Education - 108 views
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20 reasons why students should blog | On an e-journey with generation Y - 181 views
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It is FUN! Fun!….. I hear your sceptical exclamation!! However, it is wonderful when students think they are having so much fun, they forget that they are actually learning. A favourite comment on one of my blog posts is: It’s great when kids get so caught up in things they forget they’re even learning… by jodhiay authentic audience – no longer working for a teacher who checks and evalutes work but a potential global audience. Suits all learning styles – special ed (this student attends special school 3days per weeek, our school 2 days per week, gifted ed, visual students, multi-literacies plus ‘normal‘ students. Increased motivation for writing – all students are happy to write and complete aspects of the post topic. Many will add to it in their own time. Increased motivation for reading – my students will happily spend a lot of time browsing through fellow student posts and their global counterparts. Many have linked their friends onto their blogroll for quick access. Many make comments, albeit often in their own sms language. Improved confidence levels – a lot of this comes through comments and global dots on their cluster maps. Students can share their strengths and upload areas of interest or units of work eg personal digital photography, their pets, hobbies etc Staff are given an often rare insight into what some students are good at. We find talents that were otherwise unknown and it allows us to work on those strengths. It allows staff to often gain insight to how students are feeling and thinking. Pride in their work – My experience is that students want their blogs to look good in both terms of presentation and content. (Sample of a year 10 boy’s work) Blogs allow text, multimedia, widgets, audio and images – all items that digital natives want to use Increased proofreading and validation skills Improved awareness of possible dangers that may confront them in the real world, whilst in a sheltered classroom environment Ability to share – part of the conceptual revolution that we are entering. They can share with each other, staff, their parents, the community, and the globe. Mutual learning between students and staff and students. Parents with internet access can view their child’s work and writings – an important element in the parent partnership with the classroom. Grandparents from England have made comments on student posts. Parents have ‘adopted’ students who do not have internet access and ensured they have comments. Blogs may be used for digital portfolios and all the benefits this entails Work is permanently stored, easily accessed and valuable comparisons can be made over time for assessment and evaluation purposes Students are digital natives - blogging is a natural element of this. Gives students a chance to show responsibility and trustworthiness and engenders independence. Prepares students for digital citizenship as they learn cybersafety and netiquette Fosters peer to peer mentoring. Students are happy to share, learn from and teach their peers (and this, often not their usual social groups) Allows student led professional development and one more…… Students set the topics for posts – leads to deeper thinking
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Good reasons to allow student blogging Point being if it's fun they will love doing it, while enriching their knowledge at the same time.\nA great slant on multitasking.
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Imagining College Without Grades :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for N... - 0 views
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A professor who tells his students that “grades are the death of composition.” Another said: “Grades create a facade of coherence.”
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Interesting. I agree. I wish that we didn't have to grade student writing and could just give written or oral feedback. I love the "facade of coherence" comment.
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politically impossible
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grades were squelching intellectual curiosity.
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growing use of e-portfolios
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I like portfolios for demonstrating learning, but I haven't learned how to effectively integrate them into my own classroom.
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most professors and students are much more likely to complain about grading than to praise its accuracy or value.
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Done right, she said, eliminating grades promotes rigor.
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the elimination of grades — if they are replaced with narrative evaluations, rubrics, and clear learning goals — results in more accountability and better ways for a colleges to measure the success not only of students but of its academic programs.
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This strikes me intuitively as correct. Grades are a substitute for thoughful assessment of learning outcomes, not an equivalent to it.
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the idea of consistent and clear grading just doesn’t reflect the mobility of students
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Absolutely. My own institution, Dickinson College, sends ~70% of its students abroad for at least a semester, and most often a year. I have experience in education in different national contexts, and grading conventions simply do not translate.
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ending grades can mean much more work for both students and faculty members.
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Aye, there's the rub. Those of us who are serious about learning - students and faculty - have to recognize that better learning is more work. On the other hand, it's more fun, too.
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When faculty members are providing written, detailed analyses of multiple course objectives and are also — for majors — relating performance to larger goals for the major, so much more is taking place she said, than in a letter grade.
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the training that colleges provide to professors before they start producing narrative evaluations, and officials of the no-grades colleges all said that training was extensive, and that faculty members needed mentors as they started out.
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they end up favoring the evaluation system
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This is the point. Users have to be educated in the advantages of the system - once they have been, they are likely to favor it over grading.
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A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 40 views
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at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years."
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What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?
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students in math, science, humanities, and social sciences—rather than those in more directly career-oriented fields—tend to show the most growth in the areas measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the primary tool used in their study. Also, students learn more from professors with high expectations who interact with them outside of the classroom. If you do more reading, writing, and thinking, you tend to get better at those things, particularly if you have a lot of support from your teachers.
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Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area but often arrive with strong convictions about their abilities.
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It has become difficult to give students honest feedback.
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As the college-age population declines, many tuition-driven institutions struggle to find enough paying customers to balance their budgets. That makes it necessary to recruit even more unprepared students, who then must be retained, shifting the burden for academic success away from the student and on to the teacher.
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Although a lot of emphasis is placed on research on the tenure track, most faculty members are not on that track and are retained on the basis of what students think of them.
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Students gravitate to lenient professors and to courses that are reputedly easy, particularly in general education.
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It is impossible to maintain high expectations for long unless everyone holds the line in all comparable courses—and we face strong incentives not to do that.
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Formerly, full-time, tenured faculty members with terminal degrees and long-term ties to the institution did most of the teaching. Such faculty members not only were free to grade honestly and teach with conviction but also had a deep understanding of the curriculum, their colleagues, and the institutional mission. Now undergraduate teaching relies primarily on graduate students and transient, part-time instructors on short-term contracts who teach at multiple institutions and whose performance is judged almost entirely by student-satisfaction surveys.
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Contingent faculty members, who are paid so little, routinely teach course loads that are impossible to sustain without cutting a lot of corners.
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Many colleges are now so packed with transient teachers, and multitasking faculty-administrators, that it is impossible to maintain some kind of logical development in the sequencing of courses.
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Students may be enjoying high self-esteem, but college teachers seem to be suffering from a lack of self-confidence.
