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5 Ways to Promote Student Agency - Cooper on Curriculum - 0 views

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    Ross Cooper talks about how his school is promoting student agency based on the book Education Reimagined. If you're having curriculum discussions, this is a great place to start.
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Obama Proposes Education Technology Agency Modeled After DARPA - ScienceInsider - 6 views

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    President Obama's newly proposed education agency - ARPA-ED.
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Featured Resources | ScratchEd - 0 views

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    "Best of both worlds: Issues of structure and agency in computational creation, in and out of school"
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In Education, Small Is Sensible « Deborah Meier on Education - 3 views

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    Why small, organic, agency-driven schools are important.  Addresses the extraneous factors important to school reform such as poverty, drugs, violence, etc.
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Positive school climate boosts test scores, study says | EdSource Today - 8 views

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    If you want plants to grow add rain, sunshine and warmth. The same works with children. A warm, caring environment where students and teachers have positive relationships, where they feel safe and have supports to help them succeed improves test scores. This is no surprise to good teachers. Those who put inordinate stress on teachers in ways that causes stress and harshness are likely hurting test scores and having the opposite effect, if one is to interpret this. Take a read and take action - on my blog I and many commenters have been discussing getting along with colleagues and having warm relationships with students. It isn't fluff but rather, is the stuff that test scores are made of. "It's the million-dollar question or, given the size of the California education budget, the $50-billion-dollar question: What makes extraordinarily successful schools different from other schools? The answer: school climate, according to a new study from WestEd, a San Francisco-based research agency. In recent years, the concept of school climate has gained increasing currency in education reform circles and the California Department of Education has received federal grants to evaluate school climate in 170 schools, as well as Safe and Supportive Schools grants to fund programs that enhance school climate. As defined by the WestEd study, a positive school climate includes caring relationships between teachers and students, physical and emotional safety, and academic and emotional supports that help students succeed. The goal of a positive school climate is "a sense of belonging, competence and autonomy" for both students and staff, the report said."
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Leak: Government spies snooped in 'Warcraft,' other games - CNN.com - 0 views

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    "Spies with surveillance agencies in the United States and United Kingdom may have spent time undercover as orcs and blood elves, infiltrating video games like "World of Warcraft" in a hunt for terrorists "hiding in plain sight" online." I find this very believable for this reason. I had a student in Teen Second life several years a go and he came across a "meeting" of sorts that was obviously something very strange. When he tried to interact with the players they had a way to throw him out and port him other places. It was obviously some sort of strange thing happening. I have no doubt that games are just another way to have "secret" meetings for those who want to hide. That said, it would be hard to tell the difference between those gaming and those doing other things as the games themselves have people plotting and planning so I'm thinking the language used would be hard to separate the real world from the game itself, which, in some ways makes it the perfect way to hide in plain sight.
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NASA Image Archive Now Available Online (Wired.com) - 0 views

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    A vast collection of NASA archival images, video and audio collections were made available to the public this past week. NASA Images is a five-year cooperative agreement between the space agency and Internet Archive, a non-profit online library. When complete, this database will contain twenty-one collections, featuring millions of images and thousands of hours of video footage.
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NCTE (National Centre for Technology in Education) - Home - 0 views

shared by Marie Coppolaro on 30 Dec 08 - Cached
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    The National Centre for Technology in Education is an Irish Government agency established to provide advice, support and information on the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education.
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Read the American Jobs Act (FULL TEXT) | The White House - 0 views

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    "TITLE II - PUTTING WORKERS BACK ON THE JOB WHILE REBUILDING AND MODERNIZING AMERICA Subtitle A - Veterans Hiring Preferences Sec. 201. Returning Heroes and Wounded Warriors Work Opportunity Tax Credits Subtitle B - Teacher Stabilization Sec. 202. Purpose Sec. 203. Grants for the Outlying Areas and the Secretary of the Interior; Availability of Funds. Sec. 204. State Allocation Sec. 205. State Application Sec. 206. State Reservation and Responsibilities Sec. 207. Local Educational Agencies Sec. 208. Early Learning Sec. 209. Maintenance of Effort Sec. 210. Reporting Sec. 211. Definitions Sec. 212. Authorization of Appropriations Subtitle C - First Responder Stabilization Sec. 213. Purpose Sec. 214. Grant Program Sec. 215. Appropriations Subtitle D - School Modernization Part I - Elementary and Secondary Schools Sec. 221. Purpose Sec. 222. Authorization of Appropriations Sec. 223. Allocation of Funds Sec. 224. State Use of Funds Sec. 225. State and Local Applications Sec. 226. Use of Funds Sec. 227. Private Schools Sec. 228. Additional Provisions Part II - Community College Modernization Sec. 229. Federal assistance for Community College Modernization"
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Spelling - If in doubt, circle it out! by @Lit4Pleasure - 1 views

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    "A strategy to support pupils improve their spelling strategies, by circling words which they think require attention. The Standards & Testing Agency have in some ways made the marking of spellings more problematic than it's ever been. They state quite clearly, that individual spellings should no longer be pointed out to children if you wish to mark it as an independent piece. This, coupled with Ofsted's move away from heavy amounts of marking needing to be seen in books, could make the marking of spelling seem tricky."
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The threat to our universities | Books | The Guardian - 0 views

  • It is worth emphasising, in the face of routine dismissals by snobbish commentators, that many of these courses may be intellectually fruitful as well as practical: media studies are often singled out as being the most egregiously valueless, yet there can be few forces in modern societies so obviously in need of more systematic and disinterested understanding than the media themselves
  • Nearly two-thirds of the roughly 130 university-level institutions in Britain today did not exist as universities as recently as 20 years ago.
  • Mass education, vocational training and big science are among the dominant realities, and are here to stay.
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  • it is noticeable, and surely regrettable, how little the public debate about universities in contemporary Britain makes any kind of appeal to this widespread appreciation on the part of ordinary intelligent citizens that there should be places where these kinds of inquiries are being pursued at their highest level. Part of the problem may be that while universities are spectacularly good at producing new forms of understanding, they are not always very good at explaining what they are doing when they do this.
  • talking to audiences outside universities (some of whom may be graduates), I am struck by the level of curiosity about, and enthusiasm for, ideas and the quest for greater understanding, whether in history and literature, or physics and biology, or any number of other fields. Some members of these audiences may not have had the chance to study these things themselves, but they very much want their children to have the opportunity to do so; others may have enjoyed only limited and perhaps not altogether happy experience of higher education in their own lives, but have now in their adulthood discovered a keen amateur reading interest in these subjects; others still may have retired from occupations that largely frustrated their intellectual or aesthetic inclinations and are now hungry for stimulation.
  • the American social critic Thorstein Veblen published a book entitled The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Businessmen, in which he declared: "Ideally, and in the popular apprehension, the university is, as it has always been, a corporation for the cultivation and care of the community's highest aspirations and ideals." Given that Veblen's larger purpose, as indicated by his book's subtitle, involved a vigorous critique of current tendencies in American higher education, the confidence and downrightness of this declaration are striking. And I particularly like his passing insistence that this elevated conception of the university and the "popular apprehension" of it coincide, about which he was surely right.
  • If we are only trustees for our generation of the peculiar cultural achievement that is the university, then those of us whose lives have been shaped by the immeasurable privilege of teaching and working in a university are not entitled to give up on the attempt to make the case for its best purposes and to make that case tell in the public domain, however discouraging the immediate circumstances. After all, no previous generation entirely surrendered this ideal of the university to those fantasists who think they represent the real world. Asking ourselves "What are universities for?" may help remind us, amid distracting circumstances, that we – all of us, inside universities or out – are indeed merely custodians for the present generation of a complex intellectual inheritance which we did not create, and which is not ours to destroy.
  • University economics departments are failing. While science and engineering have developed reliable and informed understanding of the world, so they can advise politicians and others wisely, economics in academia has singularly failed to move beyond flat-Earth insistence that ancient dogma is correct, in the face of resounding evidence that it is not.
  • I studied at a U.K. university for 4 years and much later taught at one for 12 years. My last role was as head of the R&D group of a large company in India. My corporate role confirmed for me the belief that it is quite wrong for companies to expect universities to train the graduates they will hire. Universities are for educating minds (usually young and impressionable, but not necessarily) in ways that companies are totally incapable of. On the other hand, companies are or should be excellent at training people for the specific skills that they require: if they are not, there are plenty of other agencies that will provide such training. I remember many inclusive discussions with some of my university colleagues when they insisted we should provide the kind of targeted education that companies expected, which did not include anything fundamental or theoretical. In contrast, the companies I know of are looking for educated minds capable of adapting to the present and the relatively uncertain future business environment. They have much more to gain from a person whose education includes basic subjects that may not be of practical use today, than in someone trained in, say, word and spreadsheet processing who is unable to work effectively when the nature of business changes. The ideal employee would be one best equipped to participate in making those changes, not one who needs to be trained again in new skills.
  • Individual lecturers may be great but the system is against the few whose primary interest is education and students.
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International Engagement Through Education: Remarks by Secretary Arne Duncan at the Cou... - 6 views

  • two important trends that inform our drive to transform education in America. The first is increased international competition. The second is increased international collaboration
  • cultural awareness of all our students
  • education reform
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  • We haven't been compelled to meet our global neighbors on their own terms, and learn about their histories, values and viewpoints. I am worried that in this interconnected world, our country risks being disconnected from the contributions of other countries and cultures. Through education and exchange, we can become better collaborators and competitors in the global economy
  • The President said that "education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century."
  • In this way, Secretary Clinton said, "We will exercise American leadership to build partnerships and solve problems that no nation can solve on its own." This view of smart power and U.S. leadership applies to the work of improving educational attainment and partnerships around the globe.
  • International collaboration cuts across nearly every office in our agency
  • Such collaboration can inform and strengthen our reform efforts nationally, even as it helps improve standards of teaching and learning—and fosters understanding—internationally.
  • We must improve language learning and international education at all levels if our nation is to continue to lead in the global economy; to help bring security and stability to the world; and to build stronger and more productive ties with our neighbors.
  • we have never been more aware of the value of a multi-literate, multi-lingual society: a society that can appreciate all that makes other cultures and nations distinctive, even as it embraces all that they have in common.
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    Speech given by Arne Duncan, May 17, 2010 regarding international collaboration and engagement in US Education
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AAUP: Free Higher Education - 0 views

  • Deeper loan debt means more profits for the financial sector, particularly suppliers of student loans. Executives of SLM Corporation, the giant student loan company known as Sallie Mae, have said that the rising costs of education will swell its bottom line for some time to come. Sallie Mae, as a quasi-federal agency, was supposed to make money available so that college would be affordable. But under the Clinton administration, Sallie Mae became a private corporation, and it is profiting.
  • This state of affairs is unacceptable and an affront to any reasonable notion of a fair and democratic society. We believe that the appropriate response is to articulate, and mobilize in support of, a clear vision of how a fair and just society should provide access to higher education. We propose that all academically qualified students who desire an education should be able to get one—without constraint by cost or the need to amass crippling debt
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Do You Read Blocked Blogs? at Change Agency - 0 views

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    great buttons and gear for "I read blocked blogs" from stephanie sandifer!
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Shift Happens - Now What? at Change Agency - 0 views

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    More than a digital literacy manifesto-21st century learners all.#educhat
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John Dewey: School and Society: Chapter 4: The Psychology of Elementary Education - 0 views

  • To refuse to try, to stick (97) blindly to tradition, because the search for the truth involves experimentation in the region of the unknown, is to refuse the only step which can introduce rational conviction into education.
    • Marisa P
       
      great quote
  • It should also be stated that practically it has not as yet been possible, in many cases, to act adequately upon the best ideas obtained, because of administrative difficulties, due to lack of funds —difficulties centering in the lack of a proper building and appliances, and in inability to pay the amounts necessary to secure the complete time of teachers in some important lines. Indeed, with the growth of the school in numbers, and in the age and maturity of pupils, it is becoming a grave question how long it is fair to the experiment to carry it on without more adequate facilities.
  • The aim, then, is not for the child to go to school as a place apart, but rather in the school so to recapitulate typical phases of his experience outside of school, as to enlarge, enrich, and gradually formulate it.
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  • Since the aim is not "covering the ground," but knowledge of social processes used to secure social results, no attempt is made to go over the entire history, in chronological order, of America
  • His experiments are modes of active doing—almost as much so as his play and games. Later he tries to find out how various materials or agencies are manipulated in order to give certain results. It is thus clearly distinguished from experimentation in the scientific sense—such as is appropriate to the secondary period —where the aim is the discovery of facts and verification of principles.
  • means to ends
  • These subjects are social in a double sense. They represent the tools which society has evolved in the past as the instruments of its intellectual pursuits. They represent the keys which will unlock to the child the wealth of social capital which lies beyond the possible range of his limited individual experience. While these two points of view must always give these arts a highly important place in education, they also make it necessary that certain conditions should be observed in their introduction and use. In a wholesale and direct application of the studies no account is taken of these conditions. The chief problem at present relating to the three R's is recognition of these conditions and the adaptation of work to them.
  • 1) The need that the child shall have in his own personal (105) and vital experience a varied background of contact and acquaintance with realities, social and physical. This is necessary to prevent symbols from becoming a purely second-hand and conventional substitute for reality.
  • The need that the more ordinary, direct, and personal experience of the child shall furnish problems, motives, and interests that necessitate recourse to books for their solution, satisfaction, and pursuit. Otherwise, the child approaches the book without intellectual hunger, without alertness, without a questioning attitude, and the result is the one so deplorably common: such abject dependence upon books as weakens and cripples vigor of thought and inquiry, combined with reading for mere random stimulation of fancy, emotional indulgence, and flight from the world of reality into a make-belief land.
  • The final use of the symbols, whether in reading, calculation, or composition, is more intelligent, less mechanical; more active, less passively receptive; more an increase of power, less a mere mode of enjoyment.
  • third period of elementary education
  • the second period
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Change Agency - Advocating a better education system for the 21st Century. » ... - 1 views

shared by Reggie Ryan on 29 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Equipment: 1 Apple MacBook Pro 1 Canon Elura DV Camera 1 Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (webcam) Software: Ustream (web-based) CamTwist
  • Ustream Set-up: After clicking on “Broadcast Now”, I made the following adjustments to the controls: Video Source = CamTwist (note: CamTwist had to be already running in order to do this.) Audio source = Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (The audio from the webcam sounded better than the audio from the built-in microphone. The “built-in audio input” didn’t seem to work for my configuration even though I did have a nice mic plugged into the input on my computer ) I adjust the audio and video quality as needed, and under “advanced” features I increased the frame-rate for the video since I was connected via ethernet cable (not recommended if connected wirelessly.)
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    Good%2C%20basic%20description%20of%20tech%20side%20of%20hosting%20UStream%20event
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    Detailed UStream setup on Mac side
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Cheating? at Change Agency - 0 views

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    Great points from Stephanie Sandifer on cheating - when she talked about how she cheats every day by using a copy of something from a coworker - I may have already linked to this but it is so powerful, I came back to it! Here were my thoughts for Stephanie: "I love how you say that you're "cheating every day." Certainly LEARNING is important, but to me, learning how to find answers and solve problems is the MOST important skill. Some teachers and I were discussing how some kids have book knowledge but fumble at doing science experiments! The practical knowledge eludes many that are good memorizers and what is a good education. To me, rote memorization precludes many from "feeling" educated (because of their poor grades) and makes many think they ARE educated (because of their great grades) when in fact we are indeed testing the wrong thing! Great points here!"
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Internet as Playground and Factory :: Intro - 6 views

  • Large corporations then profit from this interaction by collecting and selling this data.  Social participation is the oil of the digital economy. Today, communication is a mode of social production facilitated by new capitalist imperatives and it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between play, consumption and production, life and work, labor and non-labor.  
  • The revenues of today's social aggregators are promising but their speculative value exceeds billions of dollars. Capital manages to expropriate value from the commons; labor goes beyond the factory, all of society is put to work. Every aspect of life drives the digital economy: sexual desire, boredom, friendship — and all becomes fodder for speculative profit.
  • Free Software and similar practices have provided important alternatives to and critiques of traditional modes of intellectual property to date but user agency is not just a question of content ownership. Users should demand data portability, the right to pack up and leave the walled gardens of institutionalized labor à la Facebook or StudiVZ. We should ask which rights users have beyond their roles as consumers and citizens.
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  • How much should Google pay them to tag an image? Such payment could easily become more of an insult than a remuneration. Currently, there are few adequate definitions of labor that fit the complex, hybrid realities of the digital economy.
  • The Internet as Playground and Factory poses a series of questions about the conundrums surrounding labor (and often the labor of love) in relation to our digital present:
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Commentary - 10 views

  • it is a powerful teaching and learning methodology.
    • David Warlick
       
      A link to an interview with a teacher who has used service learning would be good here.
  • thoughtfully organized service experiences
  • structured time to reflect
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  • clear connections to academic curriculum
  • a great deal of time and learning takes place before the service even happens
  • National Youth Leadership Council
    • David Warlick
       
      It can be found here -- http://www.nylc.org/
  • Essential Elements of Service Learning
    • David Warlick
  • Practitioners that utilize service-learning understand that the process of identifying community needs, giving students an active role in designing, implementing, and evaluating the project and encouraging students to reflect on their learning allows young people to develop new understandings and applications beyond what they would gain from typical classroom instruction.
  • Cleaning up a river is service.Sitting in a science classroom, looking at water samples under a microscope is learning.Students taking samples from local water sources, analyzing the samples, documenting the results and presenting scientific findings to a local pollution control agency is service-learning.
    • David Warlick
       
      This is important and it should be formatted appropriately...
    • David Warlick
       
      It might be interesting to stop here, and as reader to write down, from this brief explanation, what they think are the essential elements of "service-learning."
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