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The Future of Learning: An Interview with Alfred Bork - 82 views

net.educause.edu/...erm9946.html bork adaptive learning
shared by maureen greenbaum on 29 May 11 - No Cached
  • nteraction should be frequent
  • as in human conversation
  • active environment maintains student interest for a long period of time, even with difficult learning material.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • the computer, keeping detailed records on student performance and using these records in making decisions about what is next to be presented to the student.
  • In our traditional learning environments, some students learn and some do not. It is this second group of students that we want to help.
  • problem of almost all modern learning is the lecture, a noninteractive way of learning
  • , on a moment-to-moment basis, just what the student knows and just what learning problems are occurring
  • It begins immediately with a question, with no preceding text.
  • experience the joy of discovery.
  • tutorial approach to learning makes it possible for everyone to learn.
  • critical factor is that we can react to individual student problems
  • key concept for structuring highly interactive learning experiences is the Benjamin Bloom concept of mastery learning.
  • goal is for everyone to learn everything to the mastery level, grades will no longer be useful
  • A student who has not learned in one way probably needs a different approach, rather than another go-round with the material that was not previously successful in assisting learning.
  • In such an environment, learning and evaluation are no longer separate activities but are part of the same process, intimately blended. So the student is not conscious of taking tests, and we avoid the problems of cheating.
  • highly interactive learning is intrinsically motivating. Motivation is particularly important in a distance-learning environment, since none of the "threats" of the classroom, such as low grades, are available.
  • mastery-based computer segment could also offer human contact. Small groups could work together, either locally or remotely via electronic communication.
  • existing authoring systems. Since they were, and still are, mostly directed toward supplying information, these were inadequate for creating highly interactive software.
  • Bertrand Ibrahim at the University of Geneva,
  • omputer stores much of the information as the students progress through the material.
  • Teaching faculty, in the sense that we know them today, may cease to exist, except for in smaller, advanced courses. But their skills and experiences will be important in the design of learning modules.
  • High costs of development can lead to low costs per student, if many students use the material.
  • $30,000 per student-hour of high-quality learning material
  • highly effective highly interactive distance-learning courses would have a large potential market, making them much cheaper per student than current courses, and if well developed, they will be much superior for almost all students
  • The typical approach is to give some released time to faculty and to give limited support for programming and media production. It is unlikely, almost impossible, that good learning material will be developed this way.
  • Universities are too stuck in their current ways of doing things to be able to compete with well-developed material from "outside." Most university faculty and administrators do not appreciate the current problems of learning and so are not prepared for these future directions.
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CITE Journal - Language Arts - 94 views

www.citejournal.org/...article1.cfm 21stcenturyliteracy 307 teachered_21stcentury
shared by Cynthia Sarver on 31 Oct 11 - Cached
  • Since it is through communication that we exercise our political, economic and social power, we risk contributing to the hegemonic perpetuation of class if we fail to demand equal access to newer technologies and adequately prepared teachers for all students
    • Cynthia Sarver
      Cynthia Sarver on 31 Oct 11
       
      What is being done??
  • They can benefit their students by developing and then teaching their students to develop expertise in evaluation of search engines and critical analysis of Web site credibility. Well-prepared teachers, with a deep and broad understanding of language, linguistics, literature, rhetoric, writing, speaking, and listening, can complement those talents by studying additional semiotic systems that don’t rely solely on alphabetic texts.
  • Not only will teachers need to understand “fair use” policies, they are likely to need to integrate units on ethics back into the curriculum to complement those units on rhetoric.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Students should be counseled not only on the risks to their physical safety, but also on the ways that the texts they are composing today, and believe they have eliminated, often have lives beyond their computers, and may reappear in the future at a most inopportune time.
  • learn methods of critically analyzing the ways in which others are using multiple semiotic systems to convince them to participate, to buy, to believe, and to resist a wide range of appeals
  • It also implies the process of uncovering one’s own cultural, social, political and personal (e.g. age, gender) backgrounds and understanding how these backgrounds can and often do influence one’s own ways of communicating and interacting with others in virtual and face-to-face encounters.
  • nstances of anti-social behavior in online communication such as using hurtful language and discriminating among certain members of virtual communities have been reported.
  • allows their members to construct and act out identities that may not necessarily be their real selves and thus lose a sense of responsibility toward others
  • Professional development for teachers and teacher educators must be ongoing, stressing purposeful integration for the curriculum and content, rather than merely technical operation. It also needs to provide institutional and instructional support systems to enable teachers to learn and experiment with new technologies. Offering release time, coordinating student laptop initiative programs or providing wireless laptop carts for classroom use, locating computer labs in accessible places to each teacher, scheduling lab sessions acceptable for each teacher, and providing alternative scheduling for professional development sessions so that all teachers can attend, are a few examples of such systems. Finally, teachers and students must be provided with technical support as they work with technology. Such assistance must be reliable, on-demand, and timely for each teacher and student in each classroom.
  • educators must address plagiarism, ownership, and authorship in their classrooms.
  • strategies to assess the quality of information and writing on the Web
  • help students develop netiquette
  • Such netiquette is thus not only about courtesy; more importantly, it is about tolerance and acceptance of people with diverse languages, cultures, and worldviews.
  • Teachers and teacher educators must examine with students the social processes through which humans grow individually and socially, and they must expose the potentially negative consequences of one’s individual actions. In doing so, teachers and educators will be able to reinforce the concept of learning as a social process, involving negotiation, dialogue, and learning from each other, and as a thinking process, requiring self-directed learning as well as critical analysis and synthesis of information in the process of meaning-making and developing informed perceptions of the world.
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Why Teens Don't Tweet - 0 views

mashable.com/...why-teens-dont-tweet twitter tweet teens
shared by Tony Baldasaro on 06 Aug 09 - Cached
  • that 84% of Twitter users are over 24 years old, and that 90% of TweetDeckTweetDeck users are over that age as well.
  • that 84% of Twitter users are over 24 years old, and that 90% of TweetDeckTweetDeck users are over that age as well.
  • that 84% of Twitter users are over 24 years old, and that 90% of TweetDeckTweetDeck users are over that age as well.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • that 84% of Twitter users are over 24 years old, and that 90% of TweetDeckTweetDeck users are over that age as well.
  • that 84% of Twitter users are over 24 years old, and that 90% of TweetDeckTweetDeck users are over that age as well.
  • is not about your friends
  • Teenagers are notorious for being terrible at social engagement,
  • A lot of the value comes from following interesting people and celebrities.
  • Tony Baldasaro on 06 Aug 09
     
    We struck a nerve with a lot of people this morning with our article Stats Confirm It: Teens Don't Tweet. In it, we explained how a recent Nielsen report shows that only 16 percent of TwitterTwitterTwitter users are under 25. The response was overwhelming - especially from teenagers who currently use Twitter. While the entire debate is a healthy one, there's been a lack of focus on the most important question of all: Why aren't teens using Twitter? The answer to this question is essential to not only understanding why Generation Y has not embraced microblogging, but to the very future of the medium. Let's take a look at the statistics and the thoughts of my fellow under 25-ers to understand just why there's a shortage of teen tweeters:
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The Principal of Change - 0 views

georgecouros.ca/blog principal change leadership learning education
shared by Jennie Snyder on 27 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The schools that have someone (or a group of people) helping to push the boundaries of what can be done in schools seem to move a lot quicker with a larger amount of “buy-in” through the process.
  • I do not believe change is solely dependent upon their skills, but also the culture in which they exist.
  • So although a change agent can trigger growth in an organization, the culture in which they exist or are brought into has a huge bearing on their success.  If a school embodies itself as a true learning organization, change will happen much quicker.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • individuals that are really successful in helping to be a catalyst for change certainly embody some similar characteristics
  • a “change agent” does not have to be the person in authority, but they do however have to have a clear vision and be able to communicate that clearly with others.
  • it is essential to tap into the strengths of the people you work with and help them see that there are many ways to work toward a common purpose.
  • To have sustainable change that is meaningful to people, it is something that they will have to embrace and see importance.
  • he persistence comes in that you will take opportunities to help people get a step closer often when they are ready, not just giving up on them after the first try.
  • When that solution is someone else’s, there is no accountability to see it through.
  • character and credibility”; they are not just seen as good people but that they are also knowledgeable in what they are speaking about.
  • If you want to create “change”, you have to not only be able to articulate what that looks like, but show it to others.
  • How can you really know how “kids learn” or if something works if you have never experienced it?
  • All of the above, means nothing if you do not have solid relationships with the people that you serve.
  • People will not want to grow if they do not trust the person that is pushing the change.
  • Trust is also built when you know someone will deal with things and not be afraid to do what is right, even if it is uncomfortable.
  • positive change is not reserved to be the responsibility of any position.
  • The best leaders may have all of these qualities but also empower others to be those “change agents” as well to build a culture of leadership and learning.
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Occupy Your Brain - 111 views

schoolingtheworld.org/...occupy education education reform education system schooling pedagogy indigenous indigenous pedagogies knowledge alternative education standardization state standards national standards global standards power authority intellect
shared by Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13 - No Cached
Ant Heald liked it
  • One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority.
  • Once learning is institutionalized under a central authority, both freedom for the individual and respect for the local are radically curtailed.  The child in a classroom generally finds herself in a situation where she may not move, speak, laugh, sing, eat, drink, read, think her own thoughts, or even  use the toilet without explicit permission from an authority figure.
  • In what should be considered a chilling development, there are murmurings of the idea of creating global standards for education – in other words, the creation of a single centralized authority dictating what every child on the planet must learn.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • In “developed” societies, we are so accustomed to centralized control over learning that it has become functionally invisible to us, and most people accept it as natural, inevitable, and consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.   We assume that this central authority, because it is associated with something that seems like an unequivocal good – “education” – must itself be fundamentally good, a sort of benevolent dictatorship of the intellect. 
  • We endorse strict legal codes which render this process compulsory, and in a truly Orwellian twist, many of us now view it as a fundamental human right to be legally compelled to learn what a higher authority tells us to learn.
  • And yet the idea of centrally-controlled education is as problematic as the idea of centrally-controlled media – and for exactly the same reasons.
  • The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect all forms of communication, information-sharing, knowledge, opinion and belief – what the Supreme Court has termed “the sphere of intellect and spirit” – from government control.
  • by the mid-19th century, with Indians still to conquer and waves of immigrants to assimilate, the temptation to find a way to manage the minds of an increasingly diverse and independent-minded population became too great to resist, and the idea of the Common School was born.
  • We would keep our freedom of speech and press, but first we would all be well-schooled by those in power.
  • A deeply democratic idea — the free and equal education of every child — was wedded to a deeply anti-democratic idea — that this education would be controlled from the top down by state-appointed educrats.
  • The fundamental point of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that the apparatus of democratic government has been completely bought and paid for by a tiny number of grotesquely wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbying groups.  Our votes no longer matter.  Our wishes no longer count.  Our power as citizens has been sold to the highest bidder.
  • Our kids are so drowned in disconnected information that it becomes quite random what they do and don’t remember, and they’re so overburdened with endless homework and tests that they have little time or energy to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around them.
  • If in ten years we can create Wikipedia out of thin air, what could we create if we trusted our children, our teachers, our parents, our neighbors, to generate community learning webs that are open, alive, and responsive to individual needs and aspirations?  What could we create if instead of trying to “scale up” every innovation into a monolithic bureaucracy we “scaled down” to allow local and individual control, freedom, experimentation, and diversity?
  • The most academically “gifted” students excel at obedience, instinctively shaping their thinking to the prescribed curriculum and unconsciously framing out of their awareness ideas that won’t earn the praise of their superiors.  Those who resist sitting still for this process are marginalized, labeled as less intelligent or even as mildly brain-damaged, and, increasingly, drugged into compliance.
  • the very root, the very essence, of any theory of democratic liberty is a basic trust in the fundamental intelligence of the ordinary person.   Democracy rests on the premise that the ordinary person — the waitress, the carpenter, the shopkeeper — is competent to make her own judgments about matters of domestic policy, international affairs, taxes, justice, peace, and war, and that the government must abide by the decisions of ordinary people, not vice versa.  Of course that’s not the way our system really works, and never has been.   But most of us recall at some deep level of our beings that any vision of a just world relies on this fundamental respect for the common sense of the ordinary human being.
  • This is what we spend our childhood in school unlearning. 
  • If before we reach the age of majority we must submit our brains for twelve years of evaluation and control by government experts, are we then truly free to exercise our vote according to the dictates of our own common sense and conscience?  Do we even know what our own common sense is anymore?
  • We live in a country where a serious candidate for the Presidency is unaware that China has nuclear weapons, where half the population does not understand that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, where nobody pays attention as Congress dismantles the securities regulations that limit the power of the banks, where 45% of American high school students graduate without knowing that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.   At what point do we begin to ask ourselves if we are trying to control quality in the wrong way?
  • Human beings, collaborating with one another in voluntary relationships, communicating and checking and counter-checking and elaborating and expanding on one another’s knowledge and intelligence, have created a collective public resource more vast and more alive than anything that has ever existed on the planet.
  • But this is not a paeon to technology; this is about what human intelligence is capable of when people are free to interact in open, horizontal, non-hierarchical networks of communication and collaboration.
  • Positive social change has occurred not through top-down, hierarchically controlled organizations, but through what the Berkana Institute calls “emergence,” where people begin networking and forming voluntary communities of practice. When the goal is to maximize the functioning of human intelligence, you need to activate the unique skills, talents, and knowledge bases of diverse individuals, not put everybody through a uniform mill to produce uniform results. 
  • You need a non-punitive structure that encourages collaboration rather than competition, risk-taking rather than mistake-avoidance, and innovation rather than repetition of known quantities.
  • if we really want to return power to the 99% in a lasting, stable, sustainable way, we need to begin the work of creating open, egalitarian, horizontal networks of learning in our communities.
  • They are taught to focus on competing with each other and gaming the system rather than on gaining a deep understanding of the way power flows through their world.
  • And what could we create, what ecological problems could we solve, what despair might we alleviate, if instead of imposing our rigid curriculum and the destructive economy it serves on the entire world, we embraced as part of our vast collective intelligence the wisdom and knowledge of the world’s thousands of sustainable indigenous cultures?
  • They knew this about their situation: nobody was on their side.  Certainly not the moneyed classes and the economic system, and not the government, either.  So if they were going to change anything, it had to come out of themselves.
  • As our climate heats up, as mountaintops are removed from Orissa to West Virginia, as the oceans fill with plastic and soils become too contaminated to grow food, as the economy crumbles and children go hungry and the 0.001% grows so concentrated, so powerful, so wealthy that democracy becomes impossible, it’s time to ask ourselves; who’s educating us?  To what end?  The Adivasis are occupying their forests and mountains as our children are occupying our cities and parks.  But they understand that the first thing they must take back is their common sense. 
  • They must occupy their brains.
  • Isn’t it time for us to do the same?
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    Carol Black, creator of the documentary, "Schooling the World" discusses the conflicting ideas of centralized control of education and standardization against the so-called freedom to think independently--"what the Supreme Court has termed 'the sphere of intellect and spirit" (Black, 2012). Root questions: "who's educating us? to what end?" (Black, 2012).
  • Andrew McCluskey on 11 Feb 13
     
    This is a must read. Carol Black echoes here many of the ideas of Paulo Freire, John Taylor Gatto and the like.
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Who's running Quality Control and Fact Checking in a Tech Rich, Differentiated, Persona... - 10 views

mgleeson.edublogs.org/...ntiated-personalised-classroom differentiated personalised quality
shared by Mark Gleeson on 04 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Mark Gleeson on 04 Nov 12
     
    At first glance, teachers may point to the fact that today's curriculum is not about content knowledge any more. It's about skill development, creativity, collaboration and communication. At a simplistic level, that may be partly true. We can't escape the fact, though, that accuracy and understanding is still paramount. While an 8 year old will survive making the odd misinterpretation or copying the wrong information down, a 20 year old medical student can't be confusing a pharynx with a larynx or thinking a 3:4 ratio means 3/4 and 1/4. So the question needs to be asked - How well are we dealing with Quality Control and Fact Checking in the Differentiated, Personalised Classroom? This one question brings up a whole lot more questions that every teacher needs t0 consider.
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Basic item analysis for multiple-choice tests. Kehoe, Jerard - 1 views

pareonline.net/getvn.asp assessment socy201 multiple choice evaluation item-analysis psychometric
shared by smilex3md on 19 Aug 13 - Cached
  • smilex3md on 19 Aug 13
     
    Basic Item Analysis for Multiple-Choice Tests. Jerard Kehoe, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University This article offers some suggestions for the improvement of multiple-choice tests using "item analysis" statistics. These statistics are typically provided by a measurement services, where tests are machine-scored, as well as by testing software packages. The basic idea that we can capitalize on is that the statistical behavior of "bad" items is fundamentally different from that of "good" items. Of course, the items have to be administered to students in order to obtain the needed statistics. This fact underscores our point of view that tests can be improved by maintaining and developing a pool of "good" items from which future tests will be drawn in part or in whole. This is particularly true for instructors who teach the same course more than once.
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OATS - oats - 29 views

www.oatsoft.org technology accessibility opensource software assistivetechnology freeware assistive source
shared by Jessica Smith on 15 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Jessica Smith on 15 Apr 10
     
    Open-sourcing offers great potential for AT software users. However, currently there are a number of barriers that stop its wider use within the AT community. It is generally difficult to find on the Internet and, until the OATS Project, there have been no specific websites dedicated to developing or downloading AT software. Open-source software can also be unfriendly to install, often obliging the user to download many different packages before it can be set up and used. Often it is still "under-development", poorly documented or technically demanding, something that the end user finds frustrating and irritating. To see just how complicated this can be for the lay enquirer, one need only visit the most well-known source of mainstream open-source products, Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/). Finding OATS products here is like experiencing death by a thousand cuts! The OATS Project's repository will strip away all the technical complexity and provide via its database and search engine an efficient and intuitive way to access good quality OATS. By removing these barriers to open-source AT software, users will not only have a single point of contact for obtaining open-source software but volunteer developers will also discover a forum where they can develop ideas and write software that meets the real needs of specific end users.
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Every School needs a School Library by @ElizabetHutch - 10 views

ukedchat.com/...school-library librarians library libraries
shared by Martin Burrett on 29 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 29 Nov 18
     
    "I love school libraries! Well you would, I hear you say, you're a librarian. My love of school libraries is not about being able to work in a room in a school with a lot of books, or my ability to sit and read books all day (I wish) or even being able to play with the bleepy scanny thing (that is one of the many names for the book issue scanner). Nor is it my love for school libraries based on sorting out photocopier jams, or peeling the plastic from yet another laminator jam, or being called the library lady, shelf sorter or any other name that teachers or students can think of when what they are looking for is the librarian. Joking aside my love of school libraries is their ability to support and create literate, independent learners and this is why teachers should love them too."
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Can AI improve the way we test literacy rates? - 2 views

ukedchat.com/...ai-literacy literacy test
shared by Martin Burrett on 28 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 28 Feb 19
     
    "Imagine being a child who's given a school note to take home and realising all your friends can read it, but you can't. Or being asked to complete an assignment in class that has been written on the whiteboard but having no idea what it says. Or opening up a book and seeing all the letters jump around. For the one in 10 children in the UK who are dyslexic, this may well simply be part of their everyday life."
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Teaching Creative Thinking - 21 views

ukedchat.com/...teach-creative-think ukedchat discussion creative thinking creativity thinking
shared by Martin Burrett on 11 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 11 Oct 17
     
    Too often, our students don't get the chance to think beyond the narrow constraints of a curriculum. The focus can be purely on developing the pupils to pass their exams, and not to creatively think how they can overcome challenges that they may soon be faced with. Teaching creative thinking is now, more than ever, crucial to prepare young people for future jobs, societal changes, and life situations which we cannot predict accurately. One thing is for sure, being able to creatively think is a life skill that will support them through the uncertain future ahead, and allowing space and time to develop this capability is essential, with schools well-placed to encourage growth.
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Making Time for Quiet Contemplation - The Learner's Way - 27 views

thelearnersway.net/...g-time-for-quiet-contemplation education teaching learning contemplation time
shared by Nigel Coutts on 17 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Nigel Coutts on 17 Sep 17
     
    In our busy and highly connected lives it can be difficult to find time to slow down, to deliberately and mindfully engage in reflective contemplation. Taking the time to do so can be significant for success, creativity, mental well-being and learning and yet we seem to struggle to commit time to this valuable practice. Schools, in particular seem to offer little time for students to slow down and think, and with the busy lives students lead such time is often entirely absent.
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(32) (PDF) An Overview and Study on the Use of Games, Simulations, and Gamification in ... - 14 views

www.academia.edu/...mification_in_Higher_Education paper 2016 wiggins gamification
shared by Mark Glynn on 24 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Mark Glynn on 24 Oct 19
     
    "This article examines the use of both game-based learning (GBL) and gamification in tertiary education. This study focuses specifically on the use of games and/or simulations as well as familiarity with gamification strategies by communication faculty. Research questions concentrate on the rate, frequency, and usage of digital and non-digital games and/or simulations in communication courses, as well as instructor familiarity with gamification. A survey was constructed with questions emerging from the game-based learning and gamification literature. It was distributed to communication faculty at public institutions of higher education in a southern state. In this context, the author argues that while the term gamification is novel, the approach is not. Based on the results, current gamification strategies appear to be a repackaging of traditional instructional strategies."
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Students tap into technology - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - 1 views

www.pittsburghlive.com/...s_612698.html
shared by Gregory Louie on 23 Feb 09 - Cached
  • use their laptops to read "Don Quixote" and Dante's "Divine Comedy" on the Internet
  • Technology is the wave of the future
  • a computer program
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • "Most jobs require computers," noted Brittnee Stephen, 16, as she assembled a slideshow on her HP Mini laptop. "It's good that we're learning it now."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      The technology is still very visible, if students are talking in terms of 'computers' rather than the skills involved. We don't talk about 'paper' but writing, critical reading etc. Yet here the platform itself is emphasized. Early days, I guess.
  • has just begun incorporating technology
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      Uh, no. They have been using 'technology' forever, in the form of, say, books.
  • students seem far more interested in learning via interactive technology than they had been with a chalkboard and an overhead projector
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      Well, the problem here is that some of that can be ascribed to novelty. Once every class uses 'interactive technology' (yuk) then how much difference will there be? The tools are great. All tools can be useful. But focus on the pedagogy, people!
    • Scott Merrick
      Scott Merrick on 25 Feb 09
       
      I'm for focusing on understanding. I love the word "pedagogy" because most lay people don't really know what it entails--theory (which can be anything institutional or community deems effective or correct), practice (which, as we know, can be summed up with the phrase "mileage will vary"), and some third thing which if I could come up with it I'd have the magic 3 elements in an effective argument. I think effective tools used effectively by effective teachers (there! 3 uses of one adjective!) will remain effective as long as they are used to promote understanding. No argument here, Ed, just sayin'...
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 26 Feb 09
       
      Perhaps the magic third thing would be 'attitude' or 'state of mind'? Alternatively, perhaps another of those non-transparent terms, 'praxis'. The point I was trying to make, of course, was that it ain't what you use, it's the way that you use it.
  • "I think the kids that have turned school off because it's boring to them will come here and see something familiar,"
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      Boring and familiar seem to me to be closely related, not opposites. I suspect that often when students say their learning environment is 'boring' they mean 'challenging'.
  • Educational technology does not come cheaply
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      The cost of books is astronomical!
  • "Learning is changing,"
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Feb 09
       
      Was it EVER the case that we could "just deliver a lecture and expect all the kids to get it"?
    • Gregory Louie
      Gregory Louie on 26 Feb 09
       
      Computer technology in my classroom has revolutionized my teaching of biology. Instead of static images on a printed page, or talk and chalk, my students can manipulate 3-D images of DNA, RNA and proteins. These have even been embedded in a research-based learning progression that leads the students to a robust understanding of the foundational elements of molecular literacy. 1. Atoms and molecules are constantly in motion. (A visualization is not possible on a 2-3 printed page.) 2. All atoms and molecules have a 3-D structure that determines how they interact with other particles. 3. Charges and other intermolecular forces play a role in atomic and molecular interactions. My students can see these for themselves, change the number of particles in a box, or the distribution of charge on a large particle or the temperature of the box and other thought experiments which they can follow in real-time. There is no way, I could do that without the computer!
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The Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics | The Heritage Fou... - 33 views

www.heritage.org/...formation-of-american-politics progressive politics constitution
shared by Richard Bradshaw on 30 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Government had to be limited both because it was dangerous if it got too powerful and because it was not supposed to provide for the highest things in life.
  • In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. First, government must protect the poor and other victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production: i.e., dictating at what prices things must be sold, methods of manufacture, government participation in the banking system, and so on. Second, government must become involved in the "spiritual" development of its citizens -- not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment ("conservation"), education (understood as education to personal creativity), and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
  • Progressives therefore embraced a much more active and indeed imperialistic foreign policy than the Founders did.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The trend to turn power over to multinational organizations also begins in this period, as may be seen in Wilson's plan for a League of Nations, under whose rules America would have delegated control over the deployment of its own armed forces to that body.
  • The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. They had confidence that modern science had superseded the perspective of the liberally educated statesman. Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing.
  • Government, it was thought, needed to be led by those who see where history is going, who understand the ever-evolving idea of human dignity.
  • Politics in the sense of favoritism and self-interest would disappear and be replaced by the universal rule of enlightened bureaucracy.
  • Today's liberals, or the teachers of today's liberals, learned to reject the principles of the founding from their teachers, the Progressives.
  • That is the disparagement of nature and the celebration of human will, the idea that everything of value in life is created by man's choice, not by nature or necessity.
  • Liberal domestic policy follows the same principle. It tends to elevate the "other" to moral superiority over against those whom the Founders would have called the decent and the honorable, the men of wisdom and virtue. The more a person is lacking, the greater is his or her moral claim on society. The deaf, the blind, the disabled, the stupid, the improvident, the ignorant, and even (in a 1984 speech of presidential candidate Walter Mondale) the sad -- those who are lowest are extolled as the sacred other.
  • The first great battle for the American soul was settled in the Civil War. The second battle for America's soul, initiated over a century ago, is still raging. The choice for the Founders' constitutionalism or the Progressive-liberal administrative state is yet to be fully resolved.
  • The Progressive system managed to gain a foothold in American politics only when it made major compromises with the Founders' constitutionalism.
  • Sober liberal friends of the Great Society would later admit that a central reason for its failure was precisely the fact that it was an expertise-driven engineering project, which had never sought the support or even the acquiescence of popular majorities.
  • Seth Roberts on 31 Dec 10
     
    I hope you know better than to use any resource from such a biased source in the classroom without one from the opposite side, say the Brookings Institution in this case. I found your posting of this article from this anti- free thought organization that is a puppet of big business and the far right on an education site plain wrong.
  • Richard Bradshaw on 31 Dec 10
     
    Well, the truth is I did not intend to share this bookmark with Diigo Education, but somehow it was posted in the group. I had intended it only for myself as part of research I am doing.
32More

The Creativity Crisis - Newsweek - 48 views

www.newsweek.com/...the-creativity-crisis.html
shared by Marianne Hart on 13 Jul 10 - Cached
  • 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.
  • “Creativity can be taught,”
  • it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      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.
    • Bill Genereux
      Bill Genereux on 23 Aug 10
       
      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.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • 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.’ ”
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 23 Jul 10
       
      Surely, "more quickly"?
  • 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.
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      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.
  • 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.
    • Brian C. Smith
      Brian C. Smith on 26 Jul 10
       
      Everyday process of work or school... over time, consistent and non-prescriptive.
  • 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.
  • project-based learning
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others
  • The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer
  • The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function.
  • “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.”
  • 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.
  • fact-finding
  • problem-finding
  • Next, idea-finding
  • 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.
  • Christian Howd on 13 Jul 10
     
    For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong-and how we can fix it.
1More

Kim Garst: 4 Reasons Why Social Media Should be Taught in Our School Systems - 59 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...why-social-medi_b_3327957.html social media learning teaching
shared by A Gardner on 28 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • A Gardner on 28 Jul 13
     
    *Archived tweets Library of Congress - what "say" online does live forever *just another tool to be used, should be taught how to use it well
5More

How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful? | Edutopia - 170 views

www.edutopia.org/...ningful-heather-wolpert-gawron assessment rubric learning edutopia classroom teaching howto
shared by Tracy Tuten on 09 Aug 12 - Cached
  • Criteria for a Meaningful Classroom Assessment To address these requirements, I ask myself the following guided questions: Does the assessment involve project-based learning? Does it allow for student choice of topics? Is it inquiry based? Does it ask that students use some level of internet literacy to find their answers? Does it involve independent problem solving? Does it incorporate the 4Cs? Do the students need to communicate their knowledge via writing in some way? Does the final draft or project require other modalities in its presentation? (visual, oral, data, etc...)
  • So how can high-stakes assessments be meaningful to students? For one thing, high-stakes tests shouldn't be so high-stakes. It's inauthentic. They should and still can be a mere snapshot of ability. Additionally, those occasional assessments need to take a back seat to the real learning and achievement going on in every day assessments observed by the teacher. The key here, however, is to assess everyday. Not in boring, multiple-choice daily quizzes, but in informal, engaging assessments that take more than just a snapshot of a student's knowledge at one moment in time. But frankly, any assessment that sounds cool can still be made meaningless. It's how the students interact with the test that makes it meaningful. Remember the 4 Cs and ask this: does the assessment allow for: Creativity Are they students creating or just regurgitating? Are they being given credit for presenting something other than what was described? Collaboration Have they spent some time working with others to formulate their thoughts, brainstorm, or seek feedback from peers? Critical Thinking Are the students doing more work than the teacher in seeking out information and problem solving? Communication Does the assessment emphasize the need to communicate the content well? Is there writing involved as well as other modalities? If asked to teach the content to other students, what methods will the student use to communicate the information and help embed it more deeply?
  • Another way to ensure that an assessment is meaningful, of course, is to simply ask the students what they thought. Design a survey after each major unit or assessment. Or, better yet, if you want to encourage students to really focus on the requirements on a rubric, add a row that's only for them to fill out for you. That way, the rubric's feedback is more of a give-and-take, and you get feedback on the assessment's level of meaningfulness as soon as possible.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Download the example (left) of a quick rubric I designed for a general writing assessment. I included a row that the participants could fill out that actually gave me quick feedback on how meaningful or helpful they believed the assessment was towards their own learning.
  • Tracy Tuten on 09 Aug 12
     
    Worthwhile article on designing meaningful assessments
1More

Book: Dare to be different by @WillRyan3 - 13 views

ukedchat.com/...dare-different book book review
shared by Martin Burrett on 09 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 09 Feb 18
     
    "Let me introduce you to Brian. Brian is a (fictional) primary school head teacher in England, UK. Well, maybe not fictional, as many working in schools will relate to the story created by Will Ryan in his 'Dare to be Different' book. Following the internal dialogues, reflections and incidents that Brian is faced with on a daily basis, the story unfolds telling how an individual can strive to take back ownership of what happens in the classroom and build vibrant curriculum with which to hook the imaginations of pupils. How? Will has cleverly inserted over 100 tips based on exciting primary practice, along with nearly fifty significant ideas to strengthen leadership, and accompanied a similar number of inspiring quotations throughout the story that encourages head-teachers to be brave and follow their own rules for what is best for that school community."
14More

Purposeful Professional Learning (Professional Learning That Shifts Practice- Part 1) -... - 10 views

katielmartin.com/...ctice-series-part-1-purposeful
shared by anonymous on 25 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • allow learners to solve relevant issues that matter to them
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Apr 17
       
      If it doesn't seem to matter to the learners, it will be wasted time for them. Sometimes teachers are only in a PD session for the hours. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the facilitator to make sure there is at least one nugget of info that matters to them.
  • the team determined a specific goal that they wanted to accomplish by the end of the day
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Apr 17
       
      Good practice to ask what individuals hope to gain but also should ask what hope to gain via collaborative efforts. Maybe should ask them to share their top three strengths to give us a place for building upon.
  • To guide the work time, we observed some classrooms and discussed what we noticed. Based on our goals, we set clear targets and some time boundaries to check in on progress.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Apr 17
       
      We do this with teachers as we begin work with them. Maybe we need to be more transparent and have this in writing as well for them to reference- menu.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • each teacher shared what they had learned, what they had created, and their actionable next steps.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Apr 17
       
      Probably the most important step of the day!
  • The more you empower learners, the more they will be invested in the work.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Apr 17
       
      Profound statement!
  • society evolves and schools work to meet the needs of learners
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Apr 17
       
      I think one of the keys here is to acknowledge that society is evolving and we need to evolve to meet the needs of society - for example, just because research shows that, for some things, handwriting helps people remember something better or reading a hard copy is easier for comprehension than a digital copy - just because research at this point confirms these concepts, that doesn't mean we don't need to provide opportunities for practice and teach learners to recall digitally written info or comprehend digital text. If that is the trend the world is moving toward, we have to move in that direction as well - or be left behind.
  • purposeful
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Apr 17
       
      We know that when learning is purposeful, students are more engaged and grasp more. So, why wouldn't we want professional learning to be the same?
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