Skip to main content

Home/ educators/ Group items tagged industrial

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Jeff Johnson

An Inconvenient Truth About Education: Rethinking the Way Things Are | Edutopia - 1 views

www.edutopia.org/nvenient-truth-about-education

Edutopia edutopia.org education crisis fundamental shift thinking learning process

shared by Jeff Johnson on 17 May 09 - Cached
  • Jeff Johnson on 17 May 09
     
    Watching the Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I was struck by the similarities between climate change and education change. These seemingly unrelated crises on our planet and in our schools are, in fact, connected. Both have taken many decades to develop and, at least in the United States, both originated in an industrial economy built on manufacturing. The effects of global warming and school decline are difficult to detect year to year, but over several generations, their impacts accumulate -- and are now converging to limit the future health of our economy and our society. To reverse these declines, similar fundamental shifts in thinking and behavior will be required at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. Consuming less, recycling more, and the ethic of caring for the environment should begin with our youngest children, as modeled by their parents, teachers, and caregivers. It's the same with literacy, curiosity, and a love of learning. Just as green technologies can make energy consumption more efficient, learning technologies can play a key role in modernizing the learning process.
Marc Safran

Thematic Map Collection - 0 views

images.google.com.au/imgres

maps socialstudies science resources thematic_maps thematicmaps globalstudies global_studies geography

shared by Marc Safran on 13 Aug 09 - No Cached
Teresa Breaux liked it
  • Marc Safran on 13 Aug 09
     
    Worldwide collection of thematic maps: climate, energy, ethnography, industry & economy, land use, military, population, links to other sites.
Gary Bertoia

Google - Internet Stats - 0 views

www.google.co.uk/...internetstats

google statistics stats ssis

shared by Gary Bertoia on 16 Sep 09 - No Cached
  • Gary Bertoia on 16 Sep 09
     
    This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time.
Maggie Verster

Using Games and Simulations in the Classroom - 0 views

www.mmischools.com/...MmisXtra.aspx

galsa school2.0 Games

shared by Maggie Verster on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Maggie Verster on 25 Jun 09
     
    A new, free white paper-"Best Practices for Using Games & Simulations in the Classroom"-that tackles the practical challenges teachers face when they use video games was released this past February by the Software & Information Industry Association's Education Division. In this article, Lee Wilson, the author of the paper and the co-chair of the working group that produced it, summarizes, excerpts from, and describes the main points of the report.
Vicki Davis

Legal Experts on How Murdoch's Threats May Impact "Fair Use" Doctrine | BNET Media Blog... - 2 views

industry.bnet.com/...s-may-impact-fair-use-doctrine

education law edu_news

shared by Vicki Davis on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Media industry titan Rupert Murdoch’s explicit threats this week to block Google from searching his content sites, and to sue the BBC for its use of content he says is “stolen” from his sites got me to wondering whether the head of News Corp. has, in fact, any basis in the law for launching these calculated attacks at this time and in this manner.
  • Murdoch perhaps does have at least a narrow legal perch to stand on.
  • he is not trying to grow his audience any longer, he says.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  • the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
  • he says he is re-tuning his business model around monetizing his content.
  • four factors in determining whether the reproduction of any copyrighted work qualifies as Fair Use
  • he’s trying to shrink his audience back to the people who will pay for his content
  • Therefore Google’s caching of his content would make it free even as he’s trying to charge for it
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 17 Nov 09
       
      So basically, Google is taking something he wants to charge for and making it free. But my question is, if he wants to charge for it, shouldn't it be bedhind some sort of firewall or is it Google's job to see which sites it is allowed to index? Aren't there certain protocols that make the Net what it is? Certain standards? Isn't one of those the open indexing or crawling of unprotected sites? I'm not sure but hoping someone will respond.
  • Google allows Murdoch, or any publisher, to “opt out” of allowing its pages to be indexed?
  • know how to use the Robots Exclusion Protocol
  • he wants a closer relationship with Google.
  • Vicki Davis on 17 Nov 09
     
    Excellent overview of Rupert Murdoch's taking on of Google and that they should not index his sites, even though he can easily opt out of indexing, that they are somehow demonetizing his work by searching since he wants to "reduce his audience to those who will pay" not "increase his audience." This is a fascinating read and case study for those following Fair Use.
Vicki Davis

Schools Matter: Resolution submitted to NCTE opposing common core standards and nationa... - 4 views

www.schoolsmatter.info/...ubmitted-to-ncte-opposing.html

education standards edu_trends

shared by Vicki Davis on 01 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 01 Nov 11
     
    A resolution being submitted to the National Council of Teachers of English blaming current US problems on poverty not the education system. (On a note from me: The country is crying out for change in education. Change can be done to you or by you. To defiantly state there are no problems is to deny the truth. Every system has issues. No school is perfect. But right now, the national opinion is that there are problems. I'd be offering solutions you can live with or live with the solutions handed down to you by a clueless bureaucrat who only was in a classroom when he/she was a child. The one thing that is an advantage is that when industries standardize, we often see innovation. How much time is wasted in aligning with 50 different state standards?))
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.
carlos villalobos

10 Ways That Mobile Learning Will Revolutionize Education | Co.Design: business + innov... - 8 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...g-will-revolutionize-education

mobile_learning all_teachers

shared by carlos villalobos on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Patti Porto on 01 Jun 12
     
    "Every day people around the globe are absorbed in exciting new forms of learning, and yet traditional schools and university systems are still struggling to leverage the many opportunities for innovation in this area. Recently frog has been researching how learning models are evolving--and how they can be improved--via the influence of mobile technologies. We've found that the education industry needs new models and fresh frameworks to avoid losing touch with the radically evolving needs of its many current and potential new constituencies. "
Ed Webb

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? - WSJ.com - 19 views

online.wsj.com/...3806504577181351486558984.html

neuroscience children education

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.
  • Recent studies in the neuroscientist B.J. Casey's lab at Cornell University suggest that adolescents aren't reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards—or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do. The reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of either children or adults. Think about the incomparable intensity of first love, the never-to-be-recaptured glory of the high-school basketball championship. What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers. In a recent study by the developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, teenagers did a simulated high-risk driving task while they were lying in an fMRI brain-imaging machine. The reward system of their brains lighted up much more when they thought another teenager was watching what they did—and they took more risks.
  • What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.
  • first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that the emotionally intense combination of teenage sexuality and peer-induced risk could be tragic—witness "Romeo and Juliet." But, on the other hand, if not for fate, 13-year-old Juliet would have become a wife and mother within a year or two.
  • This control system depends much more on learning. It becomes increasingly effective throughout childhood and continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood, as we gain more experience. You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them. You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again. Expertise comes with experience.
  • Wide-ranging, flexible and broad learning, the kind we encourage in high-school and college, may actually be in tension with the ability to develop finely-honed, controlled, focused expertise in a particular skill, the kind of learning that once routinely took place in human societies. For most of our history, children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27
  • experience shapes the brain. People often think that if some ability is located in a particular part of the brain, that must mean that it's "hard-wired" and inflexible. But, in fact, the brain is so powerful precisely because it is so sensitive to experience. It's as true to say that our experience of controlling our impulses make the prefrontal cortex develop as it is to say that prefrontal development makes us better at controlling our impulses. Our social and cultural life shapes our biology.
Adrienne Michetti

Why Women Still Can't Have It All - www.theatlantic.com - Readability - 7 views

www.readability.com/...r0vjb0pp

shared by Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Just about all of the women in that room planned to combine careers and family in some way. But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      and this is what bothers me. SO MUCH.
  • when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.
  • I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed.
  • ...67 more annotations...
  • I had the ability to set my own schedule most of the time. I could be with my kids when I needed to be, and still get the work done.
  • the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be
  • having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had.
  • having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.
  • “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.”
  • Yet the decision to step down from a position of power—to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States.
  • “leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired.
  • Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else.
  • it cannot change unless top women speak out.
  • Both were very clear that they did not want that life, but could not figure out how to combine professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.
  • many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that “having it all” is, more than anything, a function of personal determination.
  • there has been very little honest discussion among women of our age about the real barriers and flaws that still exist in the system despite the opportunities we inherited.
  • But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks.
  • women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men.
  • The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap:
  • Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.
  • We must clear them out of the way to make room for a more honest and productive discussion about real solutions to the problems faced by professional women.
  • These women cannot possibly be the standard against which even very talented professional women should measure themselves. Such a standard sets up most women for a sense of failure
  • A simple measure is how many women in top positions have children compared with their male colleagues.
  • Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children.
  • women hold fewer than 30 percent of the senior foreign-policy positions in each of these institutions.
  • “You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present system, she noted, is based on a society that no longer exists—one in which farming was a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. Yet the system hasn’t changed.
  • “Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, and constant pressure to be in the office are common features of these jobs.”
  • I would hope to see commencement speeches that finger America’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media.
  • assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      This is fascinating. Really. 
  • I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      This. This is SO TRUE. I think this is the same.
  • To many men, however, the choice to spend more time with their children, instead of working long hours on issues that affect many lives, seems selfish.
  • It is not clear to me that this ethical framework makes sense for society. Why should we want leaders who fall short on personal responsibilities?
  • Regardless, it is clear which set of choices society values more today. Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      This disconnect has ALWAYS bothered me. SO MUCH.
  • having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient
  • Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time, then the choices would get a lot easier.
  • Given the way our work culture is oriented today, I recommend establishing yourself in your career first but still trying to have kids before you are 35—or else freeze your eggs, whether you are married or not.
  • But the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      exactly this -- men do not have to make this choice. Thus, it will always be unequal.
  • You should be able to have a family if you want one—however and whenever your life circumstances allow—and still have the career you desire.
  • If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions. And if more women were in leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce. The rest of this essay details how.
  • I have to admit that my assumption that I would stay late made me much less efficient over the course of the day than I might have been, and certainly less so than some of my colleagues, who managed to get the same amount of work done and go home at a decent hour.
  • Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.
  • Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments.
  • Changes in default office rules should not advantage parents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can improve relations among co-workers by raising their awareness of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fairness.
  • The policy was shaped by the belief that giving women “special treatment” can “backfire if the broader norms shaping the behavior of all employees do not change.”
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      This is so progressive.
  • Our assumptions are just that: things we believe that are not necessarily so. Yet what we assume has an enormous impact on our perceptions and responses. Fortunately, changing our assumptions is up to us.
  • One of the best ways to move social norms in this direction is to choose and celebrate different role models.
  • If we didn’t start to learn how to integrate our personal, social, and professional lives, we were about five years away from morphing into the angry woman on the other side of a mahogany desk who questions her staff’s work ethic after standard 12-hour workdays, before heading home to eat moo shoo pork in her lonely apartment.
    • Adrienne Michetti
      Adrienne Michetti on 23 Jun 12
       
      UGH.
  • Women have contributed to the fetish of the one-dimensional life, albeit by necessity. The pioneer generation of feminists walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment to their work.
  • It seems odd to me to list degrees, awards, positions, and interests and not include the dimension of my life that is most important to me—and takes an enormous amount of my time.
  • when my entire purpose is to make family references routine and normal in professional life.
  • This does not mean that you should insist that your colleagues spend time cooing over pictures of your baby or listening to the prodigious accomplishments of your kindergartner. It does mean that if you are late coming in one week, because it is your turn to drive the kids to school, that you be honest about what you are doing.
  • Seeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all.
  • Indeed, the most frequent reaction I get in putting forth these ideas is that when the choice is whether to hire a man who will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value to the company.
  • In 2011, a study on flexibility in the workplace by Ellen Galinsky, Kelly Sakai, and Tyler Wigton of the Families and Work Institute showed that increased flexibility correlates positively with job engagement, job satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health.
  • Other scholars have concluded that good family policies attract better talent, which in turn raises productivity, but that the policies themselves have no impact on productivity.
  • What is evident, however, is that many firms that recruit and train well-educated professional women are aware that when a woman leaves because of bad work-family balance, they are losing the money and time they invested in her.
  • The answer—already being deployed in different corners of the industry—is a combination of alternative fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms, and the outsourcing of discrete legal jobs to other jurisdictions.
  • Women, and Generation X and Y lawyers more generally, are pushing for these changes on the supply side; clients determined to reduce legal fees and increase flexible service are pulling on the demand side. Slowly, change is happening.
  • In trying to address these issues, some firms are finding out that women’s ways of working may just be better ways of working, for employees and clients alike.
  • “We believe that connecting play and imagination may be the single most important step in unleashing the new culture of learning.”
  • “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note.
  • the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work—whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas.
  • Men have, of course, become much more involved parents over the past couple of decades, and that, too, suggests broad support for big changes in the way we balance work and family.
  • women would do well to frame work-family balance in terms of the broader social and economic issues that affect both women and men.
  • These women are extraordinary role models.
  • Yet I also want a world in which, in Lisa Jackson’s words, “to be a strong woman, you don’t have to give up on the things that define you as a woman.”
  • “Empowering yourself,” Jackson said in her speech at Princeton, “doesn’t have to mean rejecting motherhood, or eliminating the nurturing or feminine aspects of who you are.”
  • But now is the time to revisit the assumption that women must rush to adapt to the “man’s world” that our mothers and mentors warned us about.
  • If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal.
  • We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us.
  • But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all.
Bill Montana

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

mobile.nytimes.com/...thmetic-and-lately-coding.html

coding computer science

shared by Bill Montana on 11 May 14 - No Cached
  • Since December, 20,000 teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade have introduced coding lessons, according to Code.org, a group backed by the tech industry that offers free curriculums. In addition, some 30 school districts, including New York City and Chicago, have agreed to add coding classes in the fall, mainly in high schools but in lower grades, too. And policy makers in nine states have begun awarding the same credits for computer science classes that they do for basic math and science courses, rather than treating them as electives.
  • coding looks less like an extracurricular activity and more like a basic life skill, one that might someday lead to a great job or even instant riches.
  • But the momentum for early coding comes with caveats, too. It is not clear that teaching basic computer science in grade school will beget future jobs or foster broader creativity and logical thinking, as some champions of the movement are projecting. And particularly for younger children, Dr. Soloway said, the activity is more like a video game — better than simulated gunplay, but not likely to impart actual programming skills.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “There’s a big demand for these skills in both the tech sector and across all sectors,” said Britt Neuhaus, the director of special projects at the office of innovation for New York City schools.
  • Then, in 2013, came Code.org, which borrowed basic Scratch ideas and aimed to spread the concept among schools and policy makers. Computer programming should be taught in every school, said Hadi Partovi, the founder of Code.org and a former executive at Microsoft. He called it as essential as “learning about gravity or molecules, electricity or photosynthesis.”
  • Bill Montana on 11 May 14
     
    NYT article on coding movement, focusing on Mill Valley, CA. Coding should be taught in all schools.
Vicki Davis

Museum of Science and Industry | GoREACT - 7 views

www.msichicago.org/...goreact-1

education science scichat news all_teachers

shared by Vicki Davis on 21 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Vicki Davis on 21 Oct 13
     
    This is a very cool app. You look at the periodic table and drag elements to mix them together and see what happens in the app. The GoReact app is a "drag and drop" laboratory. If you introduce the periodic table, you'll want to see this.
David Wetzel

2 Year Programs Offer Opportunity for Quicker Career Advancement - 1 views

continuingeducation.suite101.com/...for-quicker-career-advancement

2 year programs associate degrees healthcare technical service industry physical therapist assistant pharmacy environmental engineering technicians fire science

shared by David Wetzel on 15 Jun 10 - Cached
  • David Wetzel on 15 Jun 10
     
    Two-year programs offered by junior and community colleges are quicker and less expensive than four-year programs. Contrary to popular belief, the path to advancement does not always travel through a bachelor or master's degree program. Two-year associate degrees are more convenient because most offer part-time, evening, weekend, and online classes. This convenience provides advantages for those who have full-time jobs, especially adults with families.
Stephanie Sandifer

Jodi Beggs: How Video Will Likely Create Rather Than Kill the Classroom "Star" - 5 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-will-likely-cre_b_636114.html

online learning virtual school education technology edtech elearning

shared by Stephanie Sandifer on 07 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Technology has enabled inexpensive reproduction of a wide variety of media, which has in turn radically transformed the structures of a number of industries.
  • It's hard to dispute the hypothesis that the higher instructor quality would likely overcome the modest benefits of face-to-face instruction, and I would be willing to bet that this form of virtual instruction would come as a welcome change for those students taught by instructors who are teaching merely to fulfill university requirements, are using courses to push their own agendas, or just plain don't speak English
  • The traditional model of education is not altogether different from the old-time theater or concert model. On the up side, customers enjoy a live experience where they can potentially interact with the performer or instructor. On the down side, this model is limited in its scalability (especially where simply increasing venue or classroom size is not reasonable) and thus more expensive than its virtual counterpart. Given the skyrocketing cost of college education, the potential appeal of virtual instruction is becoming quite significant.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Virtual instruction has the potential not only to give a large number of students access to top instructors at lower cost but also to provide the incentives to attract and retain top teaching talent in the first place.
  • Stephanie Sandifer on 07 Jul 10
     
    Virtual instruction has the potential not only to give a large number of students access to top instructors at lower cost but also to provide the incentives to attract and retain top teaching talent in the first place. 
Brendan Murphy

How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education le... - 16 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010100705078.html

shared by Brendan Murphy on 08 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future
    • Michael Walker
      Michael Walker on 08 Oct 10
       
      Why are district's impotent? If administrators do their job and a) mentor young teachers and b) remove them if they are ineffective the system can work!
    • t jaffe-notier
      t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
       
      Yes. In the districts where administrators work the system does work. Unfortunately these mega-district administrators think that their job consists only of firing bad teachers. The hardest work is giving the good teachers the resources they need to continue excellent work!
  • District leaders also need the authority to use financial incentives to attract and retain the best teachers.
    • Michael Walker
      Michael Walker on 08 Oct 10
       
      And yet, studies show that merit pay doesn't work!
    • t jaffe-notier
      t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
       
      That's right. Socio-emotional learning, one of the most important kinds for the development of good citizens, defies standardized testing.
    • Brendan Murphy
      Brendan Murphy on 20 Oct 10
       
      How about we raise starting pay for teachers to $60,000 per year. Make teaching a profession more top notch students want to major in.
  • but let's stop pretending that everyone who goes into the classroom has the ability and temperament to lift our children to excellence.
    • t jaffe-notier
      t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
       
      Wow. Straw man. Who's pretending? Let's stop flogging our administrators and stop slapping our policemen too...
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • We must equip educators with the best technology available to make instruction more effective and efficient. By better using technology to collect data on student learning and shape individualized instruction, we can help transform our classrooms and lessen the burden on teachers' time.
    • Michael Walker
      Michael Walker on 08 Oct 10
       
      Yes, the most effective way to use technology in the classroom is to gather data...NOT! What about providing the technology so the students can create meaning and learn?
    • t jaffe-notier
      t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
       
      I've found that administrators aren't too interested in individualized instruction, even though they say so. What they want is higher scores on "common assessments" whether or not this benefits individual learners. Humanities teachers have always been frustrated by this, and now science teachers are frustrated too. They're not allowed to help students achieve excellence in areas that are exactly the right amount of challenge for each student. Instead, they're still forced to "cover everything" for each student, in spite of the fact that this does not benefit students who haven't mastered the material to a point of competence. Weird.
  • For the wealthiest among us, the crisis in public education may still seem like someone else's problem, because those families can afford to choose something better for their kids. But it's a problem for all of us -- until we fix our schools, we will never fix the nation's broader economic problems. Until we fix our schools, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will only grow wider and the United States will fall further behind the rest of the industrialized world in education, rendering the American dream a distant, elusive memory.
    • t jaffe-notier
      t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
       
      How can we recruit excellent teachers to schools that need them the most when our best proposed solutions don't reward teachers for taking on a challenge?
  • taking advantage of online lessons and other programs
    • Brendan Murphy
      Brendan Murphy on 20 Oct 10
       
      This is code for let's pay online educators $12 an hour to teach and remove the cost of those expensive buildings.
  • replace or substantially restructure persistently low-performing schools that continuously fail our students.
    • Brendan Murphy
      Brendan Murphy on 20 Oct 10
       
      Can we start at the very top and fire the superintendents?
  • charter schools a truly viable option
    • Brendan Murphy
      Brendan Murphy on 20 Oct 10
       
      No they aren't a viable option, they are labratories.
  • Michael Walker on 08 Oct 10
     
    This article is ripe for Diigo commentary!
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Dean Mantz on 08 Oct 10
     
    New York Times "How we can fix our schools"
  • t jaffe-notier on 11 Oct 10
     
    This article is ripe for Diigo commentary!
  • Brendan Murphy on 20 Oct 10
     
    This article is ripe for Diigo commentary!
Vicki Davis

Speculation on the future of Google Reader - 0 views

mashable.com/...google-reader-future

education Google learning edu_news

shared by Vicki Davis on 16 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Last night, Google announced the shutdown of many experimental products that weren’t really generating any revenue: Notebook, Dodgeball, Catalog Search, and Jaiku. One product that survived the ravaging but shares many of the same characteristics as the discontinued services also happens to be one of our favorites: Google Reader
  • Now, I think the answer to that question is unequivocally “no,” (and a Google exec has since confirmed as much) as Google has too many smart people that are connected enough to the industry to know that Reader is an essential product for many of the company’s biggest enthusiasts.
  • Vicki Davis on 16 Jan 09
     
    Google reader - is it next?
  • Vicki Davis on 16 Jan 09
     
    As Google shuts down unprofitable services, this thought that they'll shut down Google Reader - my trusty and favorite RSS reader just sends chills down my spine - I use it to generate my reader lists on my blogs. I have to question that Google is not looking at the affect of what we call "penetration rate" into the services people use - if they push us to ZohoNotebook (which is what they've done) and force us to another reader, what else will we start using. Just thought Google was going in the right direction with things and now... well, they just seem to be pooping lots of parties.
Terry Elliott

Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning » Blog Archive » We have the ideas and the te... - 0 views

www.pontydysgu.org/...-do-we-need-for-open-education

ple

shared by Terry Elliott on 27 Dec 08 - Cached
  • I argued that our present systems are unable to keep up with the requirements of society and of industry for learning and knowledge development
  • Open Educational Resources
  • One of the barriers to such self driven and social learning has been centrally controlled and regulated curricula
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Put all the parts together and we have a new model, a model which can extend learning to all those who want it and support lifelong learning. A model which is affordable and scalable. But of course it requires imagination and change to implement such a model.
    • Terry Elliott
      Terry Elliott on 27 Dec 08
       
      Only imaginatinion and change? I think this would make an excellent practicum. A thought experiment on how to use tech to create a parallel track for new learning. Where is the research base for this? Is it possible to have such a research base?
  • The first is in the role of teachers
  • he main point of this post was to say that we have the ideas and the technologies to support an alternative to the present education systems, systems which are failing so many indiviidals and failing society as a whole.
  • The third is the role of schools and the design of learning environments.
  • The final change is in accreditation
  • The second is assessment
  • four key changes
Vicki Davis

ASCD - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...9dee008f99653fb85516f762108a0c

shared by Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08 - No Cached
  • first 60 seconds of your presentation is
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      How many of us emphasize the first 60 seconds of a presentation students give?
  • Summers and other leaders from various companies were not necessarily complaining about young people's poor grammar, punctuation, or spelling—the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools
  • the complaints I heard most frequently were about fuzzy thinking and young people not knowing how to write with a real voice.
  • ...35 more annotations...
  • Employees in the 21st century have to manage an astronomical amount of information daily.
  • There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively it almost freezes them in their steps.”
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Buidling a PLN using an RSS Reader is ESSENTIAL to managing information. THis is part of what I teach and do and so important!
  • rapidly the information is changing.
  • half-life of knowledge in the humanities is 10 years, and in math and science, it's only two or three years
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Personal learning networks and RSS readers ARE a HUGE issue here. We need to be customing portals and helping students manage information.
  • “People who've learned to ask great questions and have learned to be inquisitive are the ones who move the fastest in our environment because they solve the biggest problems in ways that have the most impact on innovation.”
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      How do we reward students who question teachers -- not their authority but WHAT They are teaching? Do we reward students who question? Who inquire? Who theorize? Or do we spit them out and punish them? I don't know... I'm questioning.
  • want unique products and services:
  • developing young people's capacities for imagination, creativity, and empathy will be increasingly important for maintaining the United States' competitive advantage in the future.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      IN a typical year, how often are your students asked to invent something from scratch?
  • The three look at one another blankly, and the student who has been doing all the speaking looks at me and shrugs.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      When teachers tell students WHY withouth making them investigate, then we are denying them a learning opportunity. STOP BEING THE SAGE ON THE STAGE!.
  • The test contains 80 multiple-choice questions related to the functions and branches of the federal government.
  • Let me tell you how to answer this one
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Drill and test is what we've made. Mindless robots is what we'll reap. What are we doing?
  • reading from her notes,
  • Each group will try to develop at least two different ways to solve this problem. After all the groups have finished, I'll randomly choose someone from each group who will write one of your proofs on the board, and I'll ask that person to explain the process your group used.”
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Every time I do a team project, the "random selection" is part of it. Randomly select -- classtools.net has a random name generator -- great tool - and it adds randomness to it.
  • a lesson in which students are learning a number of the seven survival skills while also mastering academic content?
  • students are given a complex, multi-step problem that is different from any they've seen in the past
  • how the group solved the problem, each student in every group is held accountable.
  • ncreasingly, there is only one curriculum: test prep. Of the hundreds of classes that I've observed in recent years, fewer than 1 in 20 were engaged in instruction designed to teach students to think instead of merely drilling for the test.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Not in my class, but in many classes - yes. I wonder how I'd teach differently if someone made me have a master "test" for my students at the end of the year. I'd be teaching to the test b/c I"m a type "A" driven to succeed kind of person. Beware what you measure lest that determine how you grow.
  • . It is working with colleagues to ensure that all students master the skills they need to succeed as lifelong learners, workers, and citizens.
  • I have yet to talk to a recent graduate, college teacher, community leader, or business leader who said that not knowing enough academic content was a problem.
  • critical thinking, communication skills, and collaboration.
  • seven survival skills every day, at every grade level, and in every class.
  • College and Work Readiness Assessment (www.cae.org)—that measure students' analytic-reasoning, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and writing skills.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Would like to look more at this test, however, also doing massive global collaborative projects requiring higher order thinking is something that is helpful, I think.
  • 2. Collaboration and Leadership
  • 3. Agility and Adaptability
  • Today's students need to master seven survival skills to thrive in the new world of work.
  • 4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
  • 6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
  • 7. Curiosity and Imagination
  • I conducted research beginning with conversations with several hundred business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and education leaders. With a clearer picture of the skills young people need, I then set out to learn whether U.S. schools are teaching and testing the skills that matter most.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Background on the research done by Tony Wagner.
  • “First and foremost, I look for someone who asks good questions,” Parker responded. “We can teach them the technical stuff, but we can't teach them how to ask good questions—how to think.”
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      This is a great aspect of project based learning. Although when we allow students to have individual research topics, some teachers are frustrated because they cannot "can" their approach (especially tough if the class sizes are TOO LARGE,) students in this environment CAN and MUST ask individualized questions. This is TOUGH to do as the students who haven't developed critical thinking skills, whether because their parents have done their tough work for them (like writing their papers) or teachers have always given answers because they couldn't stand to see the student struggle -- sometimes tough love means the teacher DOESN'T give the child the answer -- as long as they are encouraged just enough to keep them going.
  • “I want people who can engage in good discussion—who can look me in the eye and have a give and take. All of our work is done in teams. You have to know how to work well with other
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Last Saturday, my son met Bill Curry, a football coach and player that he respects. Just before meeting him, my husband reviewed with my son how to meet people. HE told my son, "Look the man in his eyes and let him know your hand is there!" After shaking his hand, as Mr. Curry was signing my son's book, he said, "That is quite a handshake, son, someone has taught you well." Yes -- shaking hands and looking a person in the eye are important and must be taught. This is an essential thing to come from parents AND teachers -- I teach this with my juniors and seniors when we write resumes.
  • how to engage customers
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Engagi ng customers requires that a person stops thinking about their own selfish needs and looks at things through the eyes of the customer!!! The classic issue in marketing is that people think they are marketing to themselves. This happens over and over. Role playing, virtual worlds, and many other experiences can give people a chance to look at things through the eyes of others. I see this happen on the Ning of our projects all the time.
  • the world of work has changed profoundly.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      Work has changed, school hasn't. In fact, I would argue that schools are more industrial age than ever with testing and manufacturing of common knowledge (which is often outdated by the time the test is given) at an all time high. Let them create!
  • Over and over, executives told me that the heart of critical thinking and problem solving is the ability to ask the right questions. As one senior executive from Dell said, “Yesterday's answers won't solve today's problems.”
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      We give students our critical questions -- how often do we let them ask the questions.
  • I say to my employees, if you try five things and get all five of them right, you may be failing. If you try 10 things, and get eight of them right, you're a hero. You'll never be blamed for failing to reach a stretch goal, but you will be blamed for not trying.
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      If our students get eight out of 10 right, they are a low "B" student. Do we have projects where students can experiement and fail without "ruining their lives." Can they venture out and try new, risky things?
  • risk aversion
    • Vicki Davis
      Vicki Davis on 28 Oct 08
       
      He says risk aversion is a problem in companies -- YES it is. Although upper management SAYS they want people willing to take risks -- from my experience in the corporate world, what they SAY and what they REWARD are two different things, just ask a wall street broker who took a risky investment and lost money.
Todd Suomela

Dissent Magazine - Debt Education - 0 views

www.dissentmagazine.org/article

academic debt education money policies

shared by Todd Suomela on 14 Apr 08 - Cached
  • First, debt teaches that higher education is a consumer service. It is a pay-as-you-go transaction, like any other consumer enterprise, subject to the business franchises attached to education.
  • Second, debt teaches career choices. It teaches that it would be a poor choice to wait on tables while writing a novel or become an elementary school teacher at $24,000 or join the Peace Corps. It rules out culture industries such as publishing or theater or art galleries that pay notoriously little or nonprofits like community radio or a women’s shelter. The more rational choice is to work for a big corporation or go to law school
  • Fourth, debt teaches civic lessons. It teaches that the state’s role is to augment commerce, abetting consuming, which spurs producing; its role is not to interfere with the market, except to catalyze it. Debt teaches that the social contract is an obligation to the institutions of capital, which in turn give you all of the products on the shelves.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Third, debt teaches a worldview. Following up on the way that advertising indoctrinates children into the market, as Juliet Schor shows in Born to Buy, student loans directly conscript college students. Debt teaches that the primary ordering principle of the world is the capitalist market, and that the market is natural, inevitable, and implacable. There is no realm of human life anterior to the market; ideas, knowledge, and even sex (which is a significant part of the social education of college students) simply form sub-markets. Debt teaches that democracy is a market; freedom is the ability to make choices from all the shelves. And the market is a good: it promotes better products through competition rather than aimless leisure; and it is fair because, like a casino, the rules are clear, and anyone—black, green, or white—can lay down chips.
  • Fifth, debt teaches the worth of a person. Worth is measured not according to a humanistic conception of character, cultivation of intellect and taste, or knowledge of the liberal arts, but according to one’s financial potential. Education provides value-added to the individual so serviced, in a simple equation: you are how much you can make, minus how much you owe. Debt teaches that the disparities of wealth are an issue of the individual, rather than society; debt is your free choice.
  • Last, debt teaches a specific sensibility. It inculcates what Barbara Ehrenreich calls “the fear of falling,” which she defines as the quintessential attitude of members of the professional middle class who attain their standing through educational credentials rather than wealth. It inducts students into the realm of stress, worry, and pressure, reinforced with each monthly payment for the next fifteen years.
Jeff Johnson

Former FCC Chairmen Join Task Force Calling For New Digital Kids Initiative - Common Se... - 0 views

www.commonsensemedia.org/...press-releases.php

children digital_native education fcc media

shared by Jeff Johnson on 22 May 08 - Cached
  • Joined by a bipartisan group of former FCC chairmen and leading media industry executives and educators from across the country, Common Sense Media today announced the launch of the Digital Kids Task Force, a group that will organize a national campaign to fund efforts aimed at helping parents and teachers better manage the growing impact of digital media on kids and teens.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 46 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page