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Ed Webb

The academy's neoliberal response to COVID-19: Why faculty should be wary and... - 1 views

academicmatters.ca/eoliberal-response-to-covid-19

Canada education online neoliberalism capitalism opinion analysis pandemics

shared by Ed Webb on 29 May 20 - No Cached
  • In the neoliberal economy, workers are seen as commodities and are expected to be trained and “work-ready” before they are hired. The cost and responsibility for job-training fall predominantly on individual workers rather than on employers. This is evident in the expectation that work experience should be a condition of hiring. This is true of the academic hiring process, which no longer involves hiring those who show promise in their field and can be apprenticed on the tenure track, but rather those with the means, privilege, and grit to assemble a tenurable CV on their own dime and arrive to the tenure track work-ready.
  • The assumption that faculty are pre-trained, or able to train themselves without additional time and support, underpins university directives that faculty move classes online without investing in training to support faculty in this shift. For context, at the University of Waterloo, the normal supports for developing an online course include one to two course releases, 12-18 months of preparation time, and the help of three staff members—one of whom is an online learning consultant, and each of whom supports only about two other courses. Instead, at universities across Canada, the move online under COVID-19 is not called “online teaching” but “remote teaching”, which universities seem to think absolves them of the responsibility to give faculty sufficient technological training, pedagogical consultation, and preparation time.
  • faculty are encouraged to strip away the transformative pedagogical work that has long been part of their profession and to merely administer a course or deliver course material
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • remote teaching directives are rooted in the assumption that faculty are equally positioned to carry them out
  • The dual delivery model—in which some students in a course come to class and others work remotely using pre-recorded or other asynchronous course material—is already part of a number of university plans for the fall, even though it requires vastly more work than either in-person or remote courses alone. The failure to accommodate faculty who are not well positioned to transform their courses from in-person to remote teaching—or some combination of the two— will actively exacerbate existing inequalities, marking a step backward for equity.
  • Neoliberal democracy is characterized by competitive individualism and centres on the individual advocacy of ostensibly equal citizens through their vote with no common social or political goals. By extension, group identity and collective advocacy are delegitimized as undemocratic attempts to gain more of a say than those involved would otherwise have as individuals.
  • Portraying people as atomized individuals allows social problems to be framed as individual failures
  • faculty are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as competitors who must maintain a constant level of productivity and act as entrepreneurs to sell ideas to potential investors in the form of external funding agencies or private commercial interests. Rather than freedom of enquiry, faculty research is increasingly monitored through performance metrics. Academic governance is being replaced by corporate governance models while faculty and faculty associations are no longer being respected for the integral role they play in the governance process, but are instead considered to be a stakeholder akin to alumni associations or capital investors.
  • treats structural and pedagogical barriers as minor individual technical or administrative problems that the instructor can overcome simply by watching more Zoom webinars and practising better self-care.
  • In neoliberal thought, education is merely pursued by individuals who want to invest in skills and credentials that will increase their value in the labour market.
  • A guiding principle of neoliberal thought is that citizens should interact as formal equals, without regard for the substantive inequalities between us. This formal equality makes it difficult to articulate needs that arise from historical injustices, for instance, as marginalized groups are seen merely as stakeholders with views equally valuable to those of other stakeholders. In the neoliberal university, this notion of formal equality can be seen, among other things, in the use of standards and assessments, such as teaching evaluations, that have been shown to be biased against instructors from marginalized groups, and in the disproportionate amount of care and service work that falls to these faculty members.
  • Instead of discussing better Zoom learning techniques, we should collectively ask what teaching in the COVID-19 era would look like if universities valued education and research as essential public goods.
  • while there are still some advocates for the democratic potential of online teaching, there are strong criticisms that pedagogies rooted in well-established understandings of education as a collective, immersive, and empowering experience, through which students learn how to deliberate, collaborate, and interrogate established norms, cannot simply be transferred online
  • Humans learn through narrative, context, empathy, debate, and shared experiences. We are able to open ourselves up enough to ask difficult questions and allow ourselves to be challenged only when we are able to see the humanity in others and when our own humanity is recognized by others. This kind of active learning (as opposed to the passive reception of information) requires the trust, collectivity, and understanding of divergent experiences built through regular synchronous meetings in a shared physical space. This is hindered when classroom interaction is mediated through disembodied video images and temporally delayed chat functions.
  • When teaching is reduced to content delivery, faculty become interchangeable, which raises additional questions about academic freedom. Suggestions have already been made that the workload problem brought on by remote teaching would be mitigated if faculty simply taught existing online courses designed by others. It does not take complex modelling to imagine a new normal in which an undergraduate degree consists solely of downloading and memorizing cookie-cutter course material uploaded by people with no expertise in the area who are administering ten other courses simultaneously. 
  • when teaching is reduced to content delivery, intellectual property takes on additional importance. It is illegal to record and distribute lectures or other course material without the instructor’s permission, but universities seem reluctant to confirm that they will not have the right to use the content faculty post online. For instance, if a contract faculty member spends countless hours designing a remote course for the summer semester and then is laid off in the fall, can the university still use their recorded lectures and other material in the fall? Can the university use this recorded lecture material to continue teaching these courses if faculty are on strike (as happened in the UK in 2018)? What precedents are being set? 
  • Students’ exposure to a range of rigorous thought is also endangered, since it is much easier for students to record and distribute course content when faculty post it online. Some websites are already using the move to remote teaching as an opportunity to urge students to call out and shame faculty they deem to be “liberal” or “left” by reposting their course material. To avoid this, faculty are likely to self-censor, choosing material they feel is safer. Course material will become more generic, which will diminish the quality of students’ education.
  • In neoliberal thought, the public sphere is severely diminished, and the role of the university in the public sphere—and as a public sphere unto itself—is treated as unnecessary. The principle that enquiry and debate are public goods in and of themselves, regardless of their outcome or impact, is devalued, as is the notion that a society’s self-knowledge and self-criticism are crucial to democracy, societal improvement, and the pursuit of the good life. Expert opinion is devalued, and research is desirable only when it translates into gains for the private sector, essentially treating universities as vehicles to channel public funding into private research and development. 
  • The free and broad pursuit—and critique—of knowledge is arguably even more important in times of crisis and rapid social change.
  • Policies that advance neoliberal ideals have long been justified—and opposition to them discredited—using Margaret Thatcher’s famous line that “there is no alternative.” This notion is reproduced in universities framing their responses to COVID-19 as a fait accompli—the inevitable result of unfortunate circumstances. Yet the neoliberal assumptions that underpin these responses illustrate that choices are being made and force us to ask whether the emergency we face necessitates this exact response.
  • The notion that faculty can simply move their courses online—or teach them simultaneously online and in person—is rooted in the assumption that educating involves merely delivering information to students, which can be done just as easily online as it can be in person. There are many well-developed online courses, yet all but the most ardent enthusiasts concede that the format works better for some subjects and some students
  • Emergencies matter. Far from occasions that justify suspending our principles, the way that we handle the extra-ordinary, the unexpected, sends a message about what we truly value. While COVID-19 may seem exceptional, university responses to this crisis are hardly a departure from the neoliberal norm, and university administrations are already making plans to extend online teaching after it dissipates. We must be careful not to send the message that the neoliberal university and the worldview that underpins it are acceptable.
Ed Webb

The threat to our universities | Books | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...threat-to-our-univerisities

universities university academia opinion analysis education

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • 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.
J Black

More Tuition-Free Education Courses for Teachers - 0 views

www.dynamitelessonplan.com/education-courses-for-teachers

professionaldevelopment professional_development education educator free_online_courses

shared by J Black on 04 Apr 09 - Cached
  • J Black on 04 Apr 09
     
    In a recent post about Tuition-Free Education Courses for Teachers, I pointed out a number of online education courses that are free to self-learners around the world. Most of these courses are provided through well-known colleges and universities. While these courses are an excellent way to broaden your knowledge of specific topics, they aren't the only sources of free teacher education on the web. There are many other organizations that provide tuition-free education courses to teachers. A few more worth checking out include:
Vicki Davis

Introduction to Management - 3 views

management.ou.edu

education news mooc

shared by Vicki Davis on 13 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 13 Apr 13
     
    Another Mooc, I got an email from Jeremy Short, the professor leading this course. I was a management major at Georgia tech, I love the incorporation of graphic novels into this course. Here's what Dr. Short sent me: "I'm a professor at the University of Oklahoma. My co-authors and I conducted a study that will soon be published in Business Communication Quarterly where we find that graphic novels are more effective than traditional textbooks for direct recall of material. The study used material about human motivation commonly taught in introductory management courses. In addition to the superior recall associated with the graphic novel version of the material, more than 80% of students indicated the graphic novel format compared favorably to traditional textbooks. Now anyone in the world can conduct their own study to see if their experiences match our findings, as I will be teaching a class beginning June 10 and ending July 15, that is free under the MOOC format and will feature a graphic novel textbook as well as a traditional principles of management text - both books I've co-authored. OU students can enroll through regular registration and take the course for credit, but anyone interested in the class can enroll for free under the non-credit option. The only cost of the class under the second option is the cost of the two texts, which can be purchased for under $100 total."
Ed Webb

The Rise of the SuperProfessor | World Future Society - 1 views

www.wfs.org/...rise-superprofessor

education future

shared by Ed Webb on 14 May 12 - No Cached
  • Professors are also being left out of marketing decisions, personal branding campaigns, and how the intellectual capital of their life’s work get’s disseminated.
  • In addition to academic prowess, future SuperProfessors will be ranked according to attributes like influence, fame, clout, and name recognition. Future criteria for winning the FacultyRow SuperProfessor designation will likely include benchmarks for the size of social networks, industry influencer rankings, and gauges for measuring effectiveness of personal branding campaigns.
  • Currently we are seeing a tremendous duplication of effort. Entry-level courses such as psychology 101, economics 101, and accounting 101 are being taught simultaneously by thousands of professors around the globe. Once a high profile SuperProfessor and brand name University produces one of these courses, what’s the value of a mid-tier school and little-known teacher also creating the same course? As Ball Corporation executive, Drew Crouch puts it, “Education is definitely moving from a history of scarcity to a future of abundance. Just like Gutenberg freed the written word, the Internet has freed information.”
  • Ed Webb on 14 May 12
     
    This seems stuck in the notion of the 'course' as a transferrable, replicable unit of education, without acknowledging all kinds of educational interactions that happen around courses, in one-on-one conversation etc. If a course is a knowledge dump, then it can be replaced with recorded equivalents, it seems to me. But if it is an interactive experience, a conversation among learners with the instructor as lead/expert learner, then reproducing it on a mass scale simply won't work.
Dennis OConnor

Illinois Educator Free Online Professional Development (Moodle Based) - 8 views

www.illinoiseducator.illinois.edu/default.asp

moodle e-learning online classes math science

shared by Dennis OConnor on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Dennis OConnor on 28 Sep 09
     
    Are you a middle or high school math or science teacher? If so, check out these new and innovative online professional development courses from the University of Illinois and the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Courses are available free of charge for Fall 2009.
  • Dennis OConnor on 28 Sep 09
     
    Are you a middle or high school math or science teacher? If so, check out these new and innovative online professional development courses from the University of Illinois and the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Courses are available free of charge for Fall 2009.
Julie Shy

Coursera - 6 views

www.coursera.org

online_courses elearning

shared by Julie Shy on 19 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Julie Shy on 19 Sep 12
     
    We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students. Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. Our Courses Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material. When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by world-class professors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge, and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When you join one of our classes, you'll also join a global community of thousands of students learning alongside you.
Vicki Davis

ELT Techniques: LISTENING and PRONUNCIATION: Online Course - 4 views

www.wiziq.com/...es-listening-and-pronunciation

education news ell elt

shared by Vicki Davis on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 30 Oct 13
     
    Here's the page where you sign up for the MOOC. There are already 83 enrolled in the class. "ELT-T consists of virtual classes, collaborative work by participants, and social engagement around content. It is designed for anyone teaching children or adults, in large or small groups, and in public or private schools. It is also appropriate for teachers-in-training. Whether you are working part-time, full-time, or not at all, you'll find that ELT-T easily suits your schedule. You do NOT need to have special knowledge of technology to participate in this course. ELT-T is overseen by Jason R Levine (Fluency MC) with the help of Sylvia Guinan, Dr. Nellie Deutsch, and a team of passionate English teacher facilitators from around the world.   Course Presenters: Jack Askew of Teaching ESL Online Drew Badger of EnglishAnyone Sean Banville of Breaking News English Kip Boahn of Virtlantis Dr. Christel Broady of Georgetown College Mau Buchler of Tripppin Dr. Nellie Deutsch of IT4ALL and WizIQ Adir Ferreira of Transparent Language Charles Goodger of English FunSongs Sylvia Guinan of ESLbrain and WizIQ Tony Gurr of Momentum Learning Solutions Vicki Hollett of Simple English Videos Jennifer Lebedev of English with Jennifer Jason R. Levine of ColloLearn and WizIQ Paul Maglione of English Attack! Stephen Mayeux of ESLhiphop Justin Murray of Real Life English Carissa Peck of mELTing Activities Chuck Sandy of iTDi Rachel Smith of Rachel's English Shelly Sanchez Terrell of The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators Teresa Hecht Valais of University of Dayton Center for Intl. Programs Andrew Weiler of Strategies in Language Learning Jason West of English Out There"
Wade Ren

diigo? | Alex's reflecting pool - 0 views

etap687.edublogs.org/...diigo

diigo review technology

shared by Wade Ren on 08 Apr 08 - Cached
  • I believe there is something very powerful  in this tool. I am in the process evaluating it for instructional and professional development purposes. So far these are my thoughts: I think I can easily mark up online student work with this tool. I think online students can mark up each other’s online work with this tool. and discuss. One of the course activities is to use a rubric to evaluate an online course that the students will each be building as the main project for the course. The course review, I think, can be done using diigo. I think… not sure yet. Online students can easily create annotated bibliographies of web resource in directed learning activities AND share and discuss them with others in the class. This resource can grow and be available for the online course from term to term. In addition, for webenhanced courses, this is an awesome, easy, slick, cool way to incorporate some very cool online enhancements to a f2f course that completely bypasses all the extra unnecessary flotsam you get with a full on CMS/LMS. you get a lot of functional features bang for the “buck” in this tool. It is a slick tool with a lot of functionality to suport interaction/collaboration, etc. When i have my university administrator’s hat on i also see great potential as a tool to facilitate and enhance community and for professional development. I have an extended staff of 50-100 online instructional designers that i could use this tool with to aggregate links and info and resources and networking. We have over 3,000 online faculty that we could use this with to support them with info and resources and networking - differenciating between the needs of new online faculty and experienced online faculty… there is potential for discipline specific resources and info for online faculty… and it goes on.
Martin Burrett

Gold, silver and bronze - A new rating system for university courses proposed - 0 views

ukedchat.com/...rating-proposed-uni

university

shared by Martin Burrett on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 12 Mar 18
     
    "Universities Minister Sam Gyimah has launched a new tool that will rate universities either gold, silver or bronze by subject - holding them to account for the quality of their teaching, learning environment and graduate outcomes."
Claude Almansi

College-Made Device Helps Visually Impaired Students See and Take Notes - Wired Campus ... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...32527

Chronicle of Higher Education Wiseman Note-Taker visually impaired NFB Arizona State University

shared by Claude Almansi on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Claude Almansi on 29 Sep 11
     
    "August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."
anonymous

50 Open Courseware Collections for Musicians - 0 views

www.matchacollege.com/...ware-collections-for-musicians

Open Courseware Music Musicians Internet Courses Education Learning

shared by anonymous on 13 Nov 08 - Cached
  • anonymous on 13 Nov 08
     
    The following open courseware collections include classes, entire courses, and lessons that are sure to please the musician in you. Select from college courses from some of the top-ranked universities, educational open courseware collections, music schools, and many more.
Ed Webb

Times Higher Education - Dummies' guides to teaching insult our intelligence - 0 views

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Aug 09 - Cached
  • When I started, largely out of exasperation, to investigate the educational research literature for myself, I was pleasantly surprised to find there was some genuinely useful and scholarly work out there, which recognised the demands of different subjects and even admitted that university lecturers aren't all workshy and stupid... It's a shame that this better stuff doesn't seem to have fed through into the generic courses that most institutions offer. My personal advice to anyone starting out as a university teacher: find a few colleagues who take their teaching seriously (there are almost certain to be some in the department) and ask them for advice; sit in on their classes if possible; remember you'll never teach perfectly but you can always teach better; and close your ears to well-meaning interference from anybody who's never actually spent time at the chalkface!
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 25 Aug 09
       
      Sounds like excellent advice
  • Magueijo's could acknowledge that some people teaching these courses are genuinely concerned about improving teaching, and they need academics' help in designing better courses that do so. Sotto's side should acknowldge that however much they talk about how important teaching is (as if they discovered this, and academics did not know), they are not listening to the people attending their courses if those people feel utterly patronised and frustrated at the waste of their time. If academics treated their students like educationalists treat their student academics they'd be appalling teachers. A simple course allowing us to learn from a video of our own lectures would be immensely useful. Instead whole empires of education have developed that need to justify themselves and grow, so they subject us to educational jargon and make us write essays on the educationalist's pet theory.
  • I would have preferred that David Pritchard had written it; his comments above are perfect.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Most colleagues with excellent teaching reputations seem not to oppose training per se, but bad training.
Vicki Davis

Mooc rival OERu puts accreditation on menu | News | Times Higher Education - 5 views

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/...2008571.article

education news mooc bestpractices

shared by Vicki Davis on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 31 Oct 13
     
    Stephen Downes pointed out this great resource that is planning to be the "alternative" to MOOCS. "Open Educational Resources University course will be able to pay a fee to have their work assessed for academic credit, which would then be recognised by all the universities participating in the OERu."
Tony Richards

The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 14 views

www.theatlantic.com/...good-teaching

what makes a good teacher good article read

shared by Tony Richards on 04 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Tony Richards on 04 Feb 10
     
    "What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo
Vicki Davis

Chemicals found in phones are a no-no for kids - Cincinnati Business Courier - 1 views

www.bizjournals.com/...und-in-phones-are-a-no-no.html

education news research kinderchat health tumblr

shared by Vicki Davis on 03 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 03 Jul 13
     
    I saw this on Fran Drescher's Twitter account from the Cincinnati Business courier and am quite floored by it. Am I the only one who doesn't know this? How about all of the little kids I see where parents are handing them their ipad and smart phones for play purposes. I jusst need to know more but it is based on a study presented at the Pediatric Academic societies meeting in DC. Of course, they recommend hand washing. But pregnant women should be careful - a 10x increase in maternal PBDE's is associated with a 4 point IQ deficit. Of course, we also have the age old question here of causation or correlation.  I do think we need to know more and also if the equipment we're purchasing to use with young children has PBDEs in them.  If you know more, please leave comments. It does say that some manufacturers are voluntarily phasing these out. "Small children should not touch electronic items such as TVs, mobile phones, computers and other products, according to University of Cincinnati researchers. Chemicals found in such items and in many other products, including older carpets and furniture, can cause behavioral and cognition problems, they have found."
Vicki Davis

Anis Bawarshi and Steven Corbett - Learning & Scholarly Technologies - 1 views

www.washington.edu/...ewp

education research news efolio

shared by Vicki Davis on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 30 Dec 11
     
    Overview of the use of efolios in the Expository Writing course at the University of Washington. along with some sample portfolios. Currently the electronic portfolios are optional although having a portfolio is not. "The six TAs who chose to teach with electronic portfolios discovered many advantages to introducing this technology. They found that students learned to write for a wider audience and were able to better connect to the course outcomes by showing a greater variety of examples such as graphics and links to relevant Web pages. The electronic portfolios also simplified some logistics, allowing the instructors to easily show examples of online portfolios and students to review each other's work. "
Vicki Davis

Will MITx Disrupt Higher Education? - Casting Out Nines - The Chronicle of Higher Educa... - 3 views

chronicle.com/...-mitx-disrupt-higher-education

education highered credentials edu_trends

shared by Vicki Davis on 22 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 22 Dec 11
     
    MIT will launch MITx in Spring 2012 credentials. Certificates will be offered for those who pay for an MITx course with NO admissions requirements. (wonder how they will confirm someone is actually taking the course and not have it taken for them by another.) Fascinating developments that should have all universities standing up and taking note.
Angela Maiers

A New Type of University Writing Course - 0 views

news.duke.edu/...hammer_oped.html

course duke university writing

shared by Angela Maiers on 11 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Angela Maiers on 11 Sep 08
     
    Now this is what a call teaching writing-the course should be named...writing for real!
yc c

EC&I 831 - 6 views

eci831.wikispaces.com

internet socialsoftware tutorial lesson_plans

shared by yc c on 17 May 10 - No Cached
  • yc c on 17 May 10
     
    This is the main page for EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education, an open access graduate course from the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. This course is available to both for-credit and not-for-credit students. It features openly available, live, and recorded presentations from notable educators & theorists.
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