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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

We heard the President's ConnectED call-to-action, and here is our billion-dollar respo... - 1 views

blogs.technet.com/...f-u-s-students-nationwide.aspx

education news microsoft connected

shared by Vicki Davis on 04 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 04 Feb 14
     
    Microsoft has announced an initiative as part of the ConnectED movement in the US. Here are the details: "Windows 8.1 Pro Operating System: One of the most powerful and flexible operating systems for education, it provides the ability for students and teachers to use education apps and Microsoft Office, search for information across their device and the web, and is optimized for touch, education apps, research, productivity and digital inking, critical keys to better learning outcomes. Office 365 Education Communication and Collaboration Tool: Email, sites, online and offline document editing and storage, IM, and web conferencing capabilities for all you students for free. Plus 5 copies of Office for free for more than 12 million students at qualified institutions. Partners in Learning Network Teacher Training and Resources: Partners in Learning provides educators with a network of nearly 1 million educators from 136 countries. It offers them a forum where they can share ideas, find free lesson plans to inspire classroom learning and develop professionally. Bing for Schools Ad-free search: An ad-free digital literacy platform aimed at helping students learn important digital skills based on access to a connected computing device, daily common-core aligned lesson plans, and a safe, private environment where search history will not be mined for data. Student training and resources: Microsoft IT Academy: For roughly 2,000 high-needs schools, Microsoft is providing academic institutions and their educators, students, and staff with digital curriculum and certification for fundamental technology skills. Affordable Broadband from EveryoneOn: A critical component to connected learning, Microsoft's non-profit partner EveryoneOn is offering home Internet service for as low $10 to the 36 million Americans living in low-income communities."
Ed Webb

Liberal Education after the Pandemic | AAUP - 1 views

www.aaup.org/...beral-education-after-pandemic

LiberalArts liberal_arts education future US USA pandemics economy sustainability science climate opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Sep 20 - Cached
  • The current massive and unanticipated experiment in online education could transform higher education as we know it. We should begin these difficult conversations about the future of the liberal arts now, in cyberspace, before the new normal takes shape—whenever that may be. Even if we feel trapped in our own homes and beset with anxiety and cabin fever, we also have an opportunity to reconsider the aims of higher education not in the abstract but in this concrete historical moment, with attention to specific institutional needs, public policy proposals, ideological pressures, and the overarching economic crisis.
  • A genuine commitment to ethical, historically aware, egalitarian, or democratic principles can land an individual in a world of trouble. I am thinking, for example, of the basic scientific literacy, historical awareness, and ethical commitment that equip an individual citizen to recognize the expertise of infectious disease specialists and reject the common sense of neighbors or the priorities and demands of an employer—or to spot the bogus claims, fundamental incompetence, or ethical depravity of some elected leaders. Such scientific literacy and basic familiarity with statistical analysis allow nonexperts to understand the arguments of climatologists and reject the sophistry of coworkers or talk show hosts or governors who point out, for example, that “the climate has always been changing.”
  • The reason that individual institutions cannot pitch such potential outcomes under ordinary circumstances is that these intellectual faculties serve the public good but do not necessarily advance the economic interests or career objectives of individual prospective or current students, especially those incurring significant debt. Being a whistleblower, for example, is generally a costly, painful career move—but the public needs to know nonetheless if the US military is shooting civilians in the streets of Baghdad; or the pharmaceutical industry is engineering a profitable opioid epidemic; or the health insurance industry is denying legitimate claims.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • just as the current crisis represents an opportunity for the people who have been working hard to privatize everything imaginable, dismantle public education, sink net neutrality, and align higher education with the demands of prospective employers and industry moguls (think here of the interventions of the Koch brothers in higher education, for example), it also represents an opportunity to push for the basic conditions under which a liberal education might properly serve its public functions. We should use these months to advocate for the kinds of public policies, such as tuition-free higher education, that recognize liberal education as a common good. We must articulate the reasons why a liberal education is in fact a common good and why a liberal education is disfigured if it is made to promote the demands of prospective employers.
  • We need a society capable of devising new and more humane social contracts, new political economies, new food and energy grids, and sustainable use of resources—whether or not these projects produce financial dividends for individual graduates or for their employers. An accessible, publicly funded liberal education decoupled from the demands of industry and prospective employers is the best way to prepare people to do these things.
  • we should use these months of confinement to strategize about a long-term case for liberal education and for public investment in an educated citizenry. Now is the time to invest some of our intellectual capital in education advocacy that ultimately makes a difference not only in the lives of students but also for the collective well-being of our nation and the world
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:
Ruth Howard

TASITE free software - 0 views

www.tasite.tas.edu.au/freesoftware.htm

free software top tools teachers learning web 2.0

shared by Ruth Howard on 10 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Ruth Howard on 10 Jul 09
     
    2009, Tasmanian educators shared ideas on free software for education. A list of useful software was assembled and an online survey was developed. Iinterested educators began to rate the free tools, and new suggestions were added. Finally, after several weeks, a list of the "Top 10" free tools for education had emerged based on rankings by Australian teachers. And so, colleagues, to the top 15 (there were several cases where the difference in votes was too close to call, so the 10 became 15)
Claude Almansi

Open Culture - 1 views

www.openculture.com

education culture web2.0 podcasts Audiobooks Audio blog technology free open

shared by Claude Almansi on 29 Sep 11 - Cached
  • Claude Almansi on 29 Sep 11
     
    "The best free cultural & educational media on the web Essentials Free Courses Free Audio Books Free Movies Free Textbooks Free Language Lessons Great Science Videos Smart YouTube Channels Intelligent Video Sites Life Changing Books Get our Daily Email Our Free iPhone App Archive About Us"
Fred Delventhal

Free Educational Software And Games - 11 views

www.educational-freeware.com/category-All.aspx

software free games educational education apps applications

shared by Fred Delventhal on 06 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Fred Delventhal on 06 Nov 10
     
    Welcome to educational-freeware.com! We find and review high-quality free educational software and websites - mostly for kids, but also for grown-ups. We have a large selection of web-based software (check the Online tab), as well as Windows educational software to download (under the Downloads tab).
Vicki Davis

NFTE | The Teacher's Entrepreneurship Center - 3 views

www.nfteconnect.org

Education teaching entrepreneurship

shared by Vicki Davis on 03 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 03 Jan 12
     
    new, free website from Pearson Foundation to support the free entrepreneurship education program from the US. "Connect is your online resource for entrepreneurship education, a fast-growing approach that helps young people place their educational goals in the context of real-world success. Entrepreneurship education helps students learn by exploring the principles of business development and creating functioning, profitable enterprises.
David Wetzel

10 Online Programs Which Support Learning in Adult Education - 4 views

adult-education.suite101.com/...rt-learning-in-adult-education

online programs adult education free technology smartphone social bookmarking mobile applications internet tools web 20

shared by David Wetzel on 09 May 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 09 May 10
     
    Free online technologies are changing adult education by offering the ability to use free online tools to support collaboration and completing class work. The list is long in regards to the number of online programs which support adult students in their quest for learning in adult education. The sheer number of these online software programs continues to grow almost daily. A review of several of these programs has narrowed the list down to a few which are beneficial to adult students, because they ease their work load and collaboration efforts with fellow classmates.
Vicki Davis

Integration Focus: EDU Sunset - 1 views

www.sliderocket.com/...integration-focus-edu-sunset

education news presentation bestpractices

shared by Vicki Davis on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 04 Nov 13
     
    If you've integrated sliderocket (now becoming ClearSlide) into Google apps for edu, you'll no longer have Google integration or free accounts past the end of the year. Sliderocket was acquired by clear slide. "Thank you to everyone who has inquired about SlideRocket's free educational initiative through Google Apps. As the integration of SlideRocket into ClearSlide has progressed, it has become apparent that a shift in our approach toward educational accounts is necessary and appropriate. Specifically, due to both technical and practical reasons, we will no longer be integrating with Google Apps or offering free educational accounts beyond the end of the year."
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.
Vicki Davis

Floe animation for Open Education Week | Open Education Week - 3 views

www.openeducationweek.org/mation-for-open-education-week

education opened news teaching specialed spedchat technology

shared by Vicki Davis on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 12 Apr 12
     
    If you want to understand what FLOE does and how it can help you use free resources to help all learners, then you can watch this video. This is for everyone in special education and especially those developing curriculum for those in special education. The first year it is free and after that they do charge for the service, I believe.
Vicki Davis

Wolfram Technology for STEM Education: Virtual Conference for Education 2013 - 3 views

www.wolfram.com/...stem-education-2013

education math news wolfram alpha teachers

shared by Vicki Davis on 09 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 09 Sep 13
     
    This September 17, Wolfram Alpha has a Virtual Learning Education Conference. I suggest that math teachers everywhere should take advantage of this free conference. They have 2 tracks - one where you learn how to use their technologies in the classroom and the other is emerging methods of using it in STEM education. All of this is online and free.
Martin Burrett

39 new special free schools to open in England - 0 views

ukedchat.com/...special-free-schools

free schools schools

shared by Martin Burrett on 14 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 14 Mar 19
     
    "Thousands of new school places are being created for children with special educational needs or those facing additional challenges in mainstream education, providing tailored support to help children thrive. Every region in the country will benefit from a new school, which include 37 special free schools and two alternative provision free schools. This will create around 3,500 additional school places, boosting choice for parents and providing specialist support and education for pupils with complex needs such as autism, severe learning difficulties or mental health conditions, and those who may have been or are at risk of being excluded from mainstream schools."
Vicki Davis

Why online education is mostly a fantasy - 9 views

pandodaily.com/...-education-is-mostly-a-fantasy

education news mooc onlinelearning edu_news

shared by Vicki Davis on 26 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 26 Apr 13
     
    NOTE: The linked article is NSFW - it has a word of profanity where the author quotes Good Will Hunting. But the points are right. Some teachers worry they will be outdated or not needed with the online education movement. This article has some great points that I agree with. I do think online learning is part of our future but perhaps not the savior some make it out to be. "The online education utopians ignore the fact that free learning has existed for decades in the form of the public library and despite that availability, every kid within bicycling distance to his local branch didn't turn into a self taught entrepreneur. Suggesting that online courses are the cure-all for our educational needs is like saying all you have to do to teach kids in the ghetto is give away textbooks on the corner. Recent studies have shown there is a significant gap between the completion rates of online students compared to classroom based students. When you consider that online learning is often promoted as a cost effective solution for at-risk learners who don't have the financial resources for face-to-face instruction, it becomes clear that the online movement is offering a product that makes it easier to drop out to students who are already more prone to quitting in the first place."
Vicki Davis

SEM Image Galley by ASPEX - 2 views

www.aspexcorp.com/...send_sample.html

science education edu_news

shared by Vicki Davis on 19 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 19 Apr 10
     
    This is fascinating. Ms. Davis, I found your website not too long ago and wanted to tell you that I really enjoy your blog. Loved the posts about your "Daily Spotlight on Education." You make an a lot of important information easy to follow and it definitely seems like you got a great thing going for you. Keep up your great work and best of luck to you in the future. My name is Jeffrey and I'm with ASPEX, a leading producer of Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) and Microanalysis software. Our company recently kicked off a "Send Us Your Sample" campaign, which allows anyone to mail us an object of their choosing and have it scanned for free under one of our powerful desktop SEMs. Since your blog primarily deals with education, this would be a great opportunity for some of your educators to get some samples done for their class. People can send us a broken iPhone, an old toothbrush, or even a dead insect...anything they want to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. It's pretty cool. Once we receive the samples, we'll notify senders of their results via email. You can view other reports we've done here: http://www.aspexcorp.com/resources/send_sample.html Since we started this campaign, we've seen a lot of interest from professionals, educators and students all around the globe. Given the focus of your website, I wanted to contact you about posting the information about "Send Us Your Sample" on your blog. We have recently posted a YouTube video that shows how we go about sampling and how to demo our SEM. We would love to partner with you to spread the word about this offer in a blog post so more people get the unique opportunity to have something scanned by an SEM. We also have our "Name That Sample" Campaign in which we put up a sample and the person who guesses correctly, or closest, wins a Brand New Netbook! Just another way of interactivity within your blog. Encourage your readers to Name That Sample! We can talk about details if you're interested. Thanks
Ted Sakshaug

AWS in Education - 0 views

aws.amazon.com/education

education online online teaching

shared by Ted Sakshaug on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Ted Sakshaug on 30 Apr 09
     
    AWS in Education provides a set of programs that enable the worldwide academic community to easily leverage the benefits of Amazon Web Services for teaching and research. With AWS in Education, educators, academic researchers, and students can apply to obtain free usage credits to tap into the on-demand infrastructure of Amazon Web Services to teach advanced courses, tackle research endeavors and explore new projects - tasks that previously would have required expensive up-front and ongoing investments in infrastructure.
Martin Burrett

Prowise Presenter entirely free of charge - 0 views

ukedchat.com/...prowise-free

prowise resources

shared by Martin Burrett on 12 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 12 Nov 18
     
    "Prowise has made all the unique education possibilities that Prowise Presenter has to offer accessible to everyone, for free. This applies to non-paying, paying and new users. From now on, everyone has free access to all the functionalities the education software has to offer. This way the company, based in Birmingham, makes progress towards their ambition to make digital education accessible for everyone, globally."
Martin Burrett

Pora Ora : The Online 3D Educational Game for Children - 13 views

www.poraora.com/home.html

games English maths virtual environment collaboration

shared by Martin Burrett on 27 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 27 Dec 11
     
    This is a MUST TRY site. It's not often that I'm amazed be an educational resource, but I am with this one. Pora Ora is a stunning educational virtual world for Primary school aged students. Play truely fun educational games which practise skills in English, maths and many other subjects. The graphics and useably is superb. Online safety is at the heart of this site. The parential admin account can set the student's account to free chat with everyone to completely locked down where they have the world to themselves and everything in between. The site has a language filter and users can report any incidents of trouble. Also, the first task requires the user to complete an online safety task. The site is free with a few premium features coming out later. You have got to try this one! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
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