Skip to main content

Home/ educators/ Group items tagged NYT

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Ed Webb

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing. “We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
  • The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
  • Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out. “With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
  • “The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
  • An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.
  • “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
  • “Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
  • The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,”
Vicki Davis

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web - New York Times - 0 views

  • Open Content Alliance
  • , a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.
  • Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • many in the academic and nonprofit world are intent on pursuing a vision of the Web as a global repository of knowledge that is free of business interests or restrictions.
  • Many prominent libraries have accepted Google’s offer — including the New York Public Library and libraries at the University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford and Oxford. Google expects to scan 15 million books from those collections over the next decade.
  • libraries and researchers worry that if any one company comes to dominate the digital conversion of these works, it could exploit that dominance for commercial gain.
  • “One is shaped by commercial concerns, the other by a commitment to openness, and which one will win is not clear.”
  • The Open Content Alliance is the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, which was created in 1996 with the aim of preserving copies of Web sites and other material.
  •  
    This New York Times article on the Open Content Alliance is an essential article for librarians and media specialists to read. It is also important for those following the fight for information and control of that information. In this case, the Open Content Alliance wants to make books that they scan available to any search engine while Microsoft and google are aggressively approaching libraries for exclusive access to their content. (which could be rescanned by another later, possibly.) Librarians and media specialists should understand this... when will people approach schools to scan annuals or student produced works? Maybe that is a while off, but for now, be aware that it is probably inevitable.
  •  
    An overview of the Open Content Alliance versus Google and Microsoft battling to take control of the content housed in libraries.
Bill Montana

Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding - NYTimes.com - 4 views

  • Since December, 20,000 teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade have introduced coding lessons, according to Code.org, a group backed by the tech industry that offers free curriculums. In addition, some 30 school districts, including New York City and Chicago, have agreed to add coding classes in the fall, mainly in high schools but in lower grades, too. And policy makers in nine states have begun awarding the same credits for computer science classes that they do for basic math and science courses, rather than treating them as electives.
  • coding looks less like an extracurricular activity and more like a basic life skill, one that might someday lead to a great job or even instant riches.
  • But the momentum for early coding comes with caveats, too. It is not clear that teaching basic computer science in grade school will beget future jobs or foster broader creativity and logical thinking, as some champions of the movement are projecting. And particularly for younger children, Dr. Soloway said, the activity is more like a video game — better than simulated gunplay, but not likely to impart actual programming skills.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “There’s a big demand for these skills in both the tech sector and across all sectors,” said Britt Neuhaus, the director of special projects at the office of innovation for New York City schools.
  • Then, in 2013, came Code.org, which borrowed basic Scratch ideas and aimed to spread the concept among schools and policy makers. Computer programming should be taught in every school, said Hadi Partovi, the founder of Code.org and a former executive at Microsoft. He called it as essential as “learning about gravity or molecules, electricity or photosynthesis.”
  •  
    NYT article on coding movement, focusing on Mill Valley, CA. Coding should be taught in all schools.
Michael Walker

Now Playing - Night of the Living Tech - NYTimes.com - 3 views

  • “Change has changed qualitatively,” says Janet Sternberg, an assistant professor at Fordham University and president of the Media Ecology Association, a research organization.
  • Adaptive innovation and experimentation, experts say, is the rule in a period of rapid change that can be seen as the digital-age equivalent of the ferment after the introduction of the printing press. “We’re experiencing the biggest media petri dish in four centuries,” observes Paul Saffo, a visiting scholar at Stanford University who specializes in technology’s effect on society.
  • Technology is by no means the only agent of change. Cultural tastes have a big influence, sometimes bringing quirky turns in the evolutionary dance.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Turntables have made a niche revival, and vinyl record sales have increased 62 percent over the last decade to 2.4 million last year, reports Nielsen, a market research firm.
  • Yet evolution — not extinction — has always been the primary rule of media ecology. New media predators rise up, but other media species typically adapt rather than perish.
Felix Gryffeth

In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The study of the humanities evolved during the 20th century “to focus almost entirely on personal intellectual development,” said Richard M. Freeland, the Massachusetts commissioner of higher education. “But what we haven’t paid a lot of attention to is how students can put those abilities effectively to use in the world. We’ve created a disjunction between the liberal arts and sciences and our role as citizens and professionals.”Mr. Freeland is part of what he calls a revolutionary movement to close the “chasm in higher education between the liberal arts and sciences and professional programs.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently issued a report arguing the humanities should abandon the “old Ivory Tower view of liberal education” and instead emphasize its practical and economic value.
  • Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard and the author of several books on higher education, argues, “The humanities has a lot to contribute to the preparation of students for their vocational lives.” He said he was referring not only to writing and analytical skills but also to the type of ethical issues raised by new technology like stem-cell research. But he added: “There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy. I think that is one of the worst mistakes that policy makers often make — not being able to see beyond that.” Anthony T. Kronman, a professor of law at Yale and the author of “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” goes further. Summing up the benefits of exploring what’s called “a life worth living” in a consumable sound bite is not easy, Mr. Kronman said. But “the need for my older view of the humanities is, if anything, more urgent today,” he added, referring to the widespread indictment of greed, irresponsibility and fraud that led to the financial meltdown. In his view this is the time to re-examine “what we care about and what we value,” a problem the humanities “are extremely well-equipped to address.”
Angela Maiers

Essay - At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  •  
    NYT article on tech- It is about the teaching not the technology!
nate stearns

Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices - New York Times - 0 views

  • That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.)
  • Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
    • nate stearns
       
      Yes! Only problem. Why isn't the study linked to from the NYT article?
Brian C. Smith

Basics - So Young, and So Gadgeted - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • and be withheld as punishment that really works.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      You don't say!
  • Piaget would probably advise parents that for a young child, everything — whether it has batteries or not — is a discovery waiting to happen. But toys work best when they are matched to a child’s level of development.
Dave Truss

Brain Power - Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them - Series - NYTimes.com - 10 views

  •  
    *Need a free NYT account. For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready. But recent research has turned that assumption on its head - that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class.
Dave Truss

The Tell-All Generation Learns When Not To, at Least Online - NYTimes.com - 10 views

  • Younger teenagers were not included in these studies, and they may not have the same privacy concerns. But anecdotal evidence suggests that many of them have not had enough experience to understand the downside to oversharing.
    • Dave Truss
       
      This is why we need to have social networking sites at school, so that we can help teach about safety/security/privacy!
  • But in many cases, young adults are teaching one another about privacy.
  • Ms. Liu is not just policing her own behavior, but her sister’s, too. Ms. Liu sent a text message to her 17-year-old sibling warning her to take down a photo of a guy sitting on her sister’s lap. Why? Her sister wants to audition for “Glee” and Ms. Liu didn’t want the show’s producers to see it. Besides, what if her sister became a celebrity? “It conjures up an image where if you became famous anyone could pull up a picture and send it to TMZ,” Ms. Liu said. Andrew Klemperer, a 20-year-old at Georgetown University, said it was a classmate who warned him about the implications of the recent Facebook change — through a status update on (where else?) Facebook. Now he is more diligent in monitoring privacy settings and apt to warn others, too.
    • Dave Truss
       
      Great examples of peers leading peers, but not the kind we usually read about when media describes social networking sites.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • He has learned to live out loud mostly by trial and error and has come up with his own theory: concentric layers of sharing.
    • Dave Truss
       
      Like my "Worlds Collide" post: http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/google-buzz-and-george-costanza-worlds-collide/ but I still think there is too much of a perception that you can have 'private' or 'hidden' digital lives (which you can't) rather than thinking about it as being appropriate to your audience, and always "appropriate" and thoughtful about your image.
  • The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.
  • more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry. They are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves.
  • In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves.
Laura Deisley

Many Schools Teach Engineering in Early Grades - NYTimes.com - 6 views

  • “Just giving kids an engineering problem to solve doesn’t mean it will lead to learning,” said Janine Remillard, an associate education professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is not opposed, but believes that good teaching is essential to making any curriculum work well.
    • Brian C. Smith
       
      I think it goes deeper than leading to "learning" in the sense of curriculum. It's more that students are learning to learn. Far too often we assume that students actually know how to learn. We know how to plan learning experiences and disseminate information, but how often do we stop to think whether or not a student has developed the skill to learn?
    • Laura Deisley
       
      Good point, Brian. I think more than anything the iterative process builds the skills of a learner that are applicable far beyond whether they learn "engineering." Process matters.
  • “You’re not really learning what I would call engineering fundamentals,” he said of such programs. “You’re really learning about engineering.”
anonymous

Building a Better Teacher - NYTimes.com - 7 views

  • There was no shortage of prescriptions at the time for how to cure the poor performance that plagued so many American schools. Proponents of No Child Left Behind saw standardized testing as a solution. President Bush also championed a billion-dollar program to encourage schools to adopt reading curriculums with an emphasis on phonics. Others argued for smaller classes or more parental involvement or more state financing.
  • This record encouraged a belief in some people that good teaching must be purely instinctive, a kind of magic performed by born superstars.
Claude Almansi

EU_Educators on Matt Ritchel's article about the Kyrene school - 1 views

  •  
    Started by Joel Josephson, Sept. 4, 2011 See also the various links provided in the discussion.
Claude Almansi

Now You See It // The Blog of Author Cathy N. Davidson » Stagnant Future, Sta... - 0 views

  •  
    Sept. 6, 2011 "Matt Richtel's panoramic essay, "In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores." weighs in this morning on the topic of "Grading the Digital School." I found myself cheering and jeering alternately throughout this piece. Why? Because it so quickly confuses "standards" with "standardized test scores" and technology put into classrooms with "preparing kids for a digital future (actually, the digital present: it's here, it's now, like it or not). These confusions are so pervasive in our culture and so urgent that I want to take a moment to focus on them. "
Claude Almansi

Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • scores in reading
  • scores in reading
  • Kyrene School District
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 1
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The report’s
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 3
  • scores in reading
  • iPhone
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 4
  • found that math performance
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 6
  • Mr. Share told The Arizona Republic
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 5
  • Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 7
  • in an essay.
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 8
  • review by the Education Department
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 9
  • A division
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 10
Claude Almansi

Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • recession
  • Civil War
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 11
  • National Education Technology Plan
    • Claude Almansi
       
      link 13
Dennis OConnor

John Quincy Adams, Twitterer? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • They may be two centuries old, but, written with staccato-like brevity, entries from one of Adams’s diaries resemble tweets sufficiently that they began appearing Wednesday on Twitter.
  • The diary, which Adams maintained until April 1836, is a rarity among the many he kept, in that the description for each day is no more than one line long. Historians believe he used the descriptions as references to longer entries in other journals.
  • Word spread, and the society decided to tweet the entries. They average 110 to 120 characters, below the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter, and there is nary an LOL or BFF among them.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The posts will link to maps that, using the latitude and longitude coordinates from his entries, pinpoint his progress across the ocean. There will also be links to the longer entries of other Adams diaries, which can be found on the society’s Web site, http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/.
  • The idea appears to be working. As of Wednesday evening, only nine hours after the first entry was Twittered, the post had more than 4,800 followers, and Mr. Dibbell said the number was climbing.
  •  
    Clever use of social networking tech. The initial take on twitter was that it just broadcast mindless sort personal observations. This use turns that idea around. Interesting way to teach a bit of history. What if we started tweeting Basho & Issa, the great Japanese haiku poets? Hmmm sounds like a fun lit project doesn't it?
1 - 20 of 21 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page