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
Group items tagged
1More
Teach Plus: The Quantified Student - 0 views
-
Fascinating article from a teacher thriving in the standardized testing environment. Fascinating. "Last year, working with the same cohort of students (by then fifth graders), I tried to find more learning opportunities that focused on data. We used math websites like TenMarks that enable students to learn about their own learning even as they practice new skills. We analyzed information graphics and dove into ways of presenting numerical information. We explored how numbers shape our understanding of ourselves and the world. And much of their enthusiasm and curiosity for these tasks came out of their interest in numbers from standardized testing. I've thus come to believe there's a role for standardized testing within education. As a limited portion of a multiple measure evaluation system, it helps teachers understand how well we've taught over the course of a year. It also helps students understand how much they mastered over that year and makes them agents in their own learning."
1More
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Hardlink to the Future: QR Codes - 9 views
-
Teaching students with new tools, enthusiasm, and belief that teaching is a noble calling
1More
Book: How to be an Outstanding Primary School Teacher by @HeadTeachDunn - 2 views
-
"With so many expectations, requirements and scrutiny of primary school teachers, it is easy to become formulaic in your practice. This is a shame, as the initial enthusiasm for the job gets waned, and giving young students the opportunity to shine becomes less focused on whole-child development. However, to become an outstanding teacher demands consistency, focus and dedication. Outstanding teachers are always on the lookout for new ideas, but sometimes the tried-and-tested classroom activities and techniques can offer a strong system to help your pupils shine, despite curriculum restraints imposed."
1More
Top tips for re-engaging disengaged students - 1 views
-
"Ideas for re-engaging students who seemed disengaged acknowledged that disengagement is a mutli-dimensional construct and that it does not simply refer to behavioural engagement, but emotional / relational engagement (including relationship with peers, staff and home) and psychological and cognitive engagement (how challenging and relevant the content of the lesson is). Therefore, suggestions to improve engagement ranged from using music or movement at the start of the lesson to set a tone / pace and expected participation, to demonstrating your own enthusiasm or passion as a teacher, showing them ' you are there for them not the job…knowing them as a person" (@TheBenHornbury)"
1More
The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 14 views
-
"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
10More
shared by Ed Webb on 27 Feb 12
- No Cached
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
-
-
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.
10More
shared by Brendan Murphy on 05 Jun 10
- Cached
This is Not a Paper - 8 views
faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/...paper.1.html
paper early Internet writing revising arpanet authorship history edu_trends technology professionaldevelopment
shared by Brendan Murphy on 05 Jun 10
- Cached
-
November 1995
-
survey of journal editors in education, little enthusiasm for the idea of creating electronic versions
-
changing ideas about what constitutes a publication
- ...7 more annotations...
-
Questions immediately arise: When was this project published? When was it finished? Who deserves credit as author? Who were the reviewers and who were the audience?
-
In our view, it is not that electronic publication is a panacea or an obviously superior form of scholarly communication across the board; it is that these technologies are already upon us, they are for better or worse in increasing use, and they confront us with issues and choices we need to reflect upon.
-
On the other hand, when certain publications are only available digitally, lacking technological resources or skills will exclude certain audiences
-
Electronic publishing has provided an opportunity
-
Is it useful to have access to tens of thousands of documents, with no reliable way of culling the few dozen that one could actually have time to read?
-
As a result, current conventional notions of copyright would need to be profoundly rethought.
-
This fourth model undoes the very idea of a journal as a unidirectional avenue for dissemination of textual information
3More
shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jan 10
- Cached
My third-class life | Michael Morpurgo | Comment is free | The Guardian - 4 views
www.guardian.co.uk/...en-story-degree-secret-teacher
education teachers teaching testing qualifications
shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jan 10
- Cached
-
It is quite true that in countries with highly successful school systems such as Finland teachers do have to be much better qualified than they are here, and that they have higher status, more respect. But this is also because children have a higher status there, more respect. It is also quite true that the class of a degree may be a useful means as part of the selection process, but only as part of the process.It is aptitude, the ability to enthuse, to communicate, to motivate, that is far more important than whether a candidate has a first- or third-class degree. And with this ability must come a love of the subject he or she is teaching. It's the one thing that reaches children, touches their hearts, awakens their intellect, when they see that a teacher really means it.
-
"We look forward to having you here. But there is one thing: as a teacher, you will have to curb your enthusiasm and exuberance."
13More
shared by Ed Webb on 18 Jul 19
- 
Cached
Seventy-One Stories About Being Trans in School - 0 views
grace.substack.com/...-one-stories-about-being-trans
LGBT LGBTQ education college colleges universities university
shared by Ed Webb on 18 Jul 19
- Cached
-
(a) some of the biggest challenges trans students face are infrastructural, both bricks-and-mortar structures (the housing of trans students; bathroom facilities), and digital architecture (course information software, transcripts, diplomas and email databases all routinely misidentify students);(b) an overwhelming majority of students and graduates described the experience of being misgendered and/or deadnamed by their professors as an extremely common experience.
-
I do think there’s real value in hearing stories of what it feels like to be misgendered or deadnamed
-
Anti-trans academics who claim that their rights are being infringed are heard far more frequently in the mainstream media than are the students who are apparently doing the infringing.
- ...10 more annotations...
-
academic freedom is a value of deep institutional importance to the independence of the University from entrenched power. Free speech demands no such institutional defense, and is rightly deprioritized when in conflict with other interests such as equity of access to education, or the health and wellbeing of students
-
To listen to trans students and graduates is to be sure that, whatever the British gender critical academics argue, the training of the professoriate on this issue is woefully inadequate
-
Many trans and non-binary students reported challenges finding built environments where they could feel safe at college. “They keep housing me with men,” wrote one trans woman; another trans woman reported that, despite being roomed with “transphobic students,” her administrators “weren’t, in general, willing to cut me a whole lot of slack because I hadn’t legally changed my gender marker.” A trans man reported being “placed on an all-girls floor even though I stated clearly on my housing form that I’m a trans guy.” Another student described the non-accommodation of trans students as an official policy: “my school matches roommate based on assigned sex, and refuses to accommodate trans students.”
-
Many students wrote with great enthusiasm about LGBTQ support centers on campus, which provide trans students with community and guidance. One writes that “younger uni empoyees and employees who were queer or allies were actually pretty great”; another says “the campus LGBT centers at two of the institutions where I experienced […] discrimination were amazing”; another writes that “the gender equality center is really working to help students and we have queer profs and Pride programming.” Another describes the vibe at the LGBTQ center as “quite tumblr but very supportive.” Students reported valuing the opportunity to invite speakers and guests themselves, though some report a wish that more resources for such programming were available.
-
A number of students wrote to express their dismay at the poverty of counselling resources for trans students
-
A large majority of respondents – close to all - explicitly reported experiences with “deadnaming” and “misgendering” by their academic advisors – their professors and mentors. Some of these instances were “deliberate,” “malicious,” “continued,” or “transphobic,” while others were merely “ignorant” or “accidental.” One respondent reported having been taught by two kinds of teacher: “profs who never asked for pronouns and always misgendered me, and profs who asked for pronouns but would still misgender me every time and apologize every time under the guise of ‘trying their best’.”
-
Sometimes being misgendered at a key moment in one’s school career throws students into emotional disarray at an inopportune moment.
-
colleges and universities are failing to establish adequate infrastructure for trans and non-binary students (especially in respect of digital architecture, which perhaps receives less attention than bricks-and-mortar)
-
staff and faculty, far from being the mindwiped drones of the gender critical academics’ fantasy, are mostly pretty incompetent at addressing and discussing trans students
-
I have a responsibility as a teacher to ensure minimum standards of care and equitable access to education for all my trans students, but also that I have a responsibility to push back against those institutional disincentives