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Wade Ren

diigo? | Alex's reflecting pool - 0 views

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

UKEdChat Session 322: Good Behaviour Strategies - 0 views

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    Following on from the results of our online poll, #UKEdChat this week will focus on Good Behaviour Strategies used in schools. Whether in the Early Years, Primary, Secondary or beyond, the behaviour of students can positively or negatively impact the rest of the class as well as interfere with teaching and learning. The session will release six questions (see below), so join the session on Twitter from 8pm via the #UKEdChat hash-tag. Questions: What student behaviours to you find to be the most annoying when teaching? Where do you go for support when you are finding student behaviour a problem? What has been the most positive intervention made in helping build a positive classroom behaviour? What are the foundations in ensuring positive pupils behaviour in any classroom? What are the most effective consequences used when dealing with disruptive behaviour? Think back to when you were a school pupil. What was the worst behaviour you displayed?
Vicki Davis

Positive school climate boosts test scores, study says | EdSource Today - 8 views

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

The Positive Power of Negative Thinking - 0 views

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    "Fads in education come and go, with many settings being full of optimism, hope, and trying to instil a positive mindset among their pupils. Yet, all these positive, happy signals sometimes fall short of providing individuals the skills to think more critically within the world they engage in. Many people believe that thinking negatively is a bad thing, and do not consider it as a positive force for good. Expecting things to go wrong can be a great force for good, and with grades and expectations in schools set very high, what happens when things don't go to plan? People are completely stuffed. If exams scores do not reach expected levels, then deciding on a college, university, or vocational options can throw individuals off-course, but having considered the negative outcome options can provide a backup plan of which they still have some control."
Adrienne Michetti

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

  • 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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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
       
      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.
Martin Burrett

Positive school climates can narrow achievement gaps - 1 views

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    Positive school climates contribute to academic achievement and can improve outcomes for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, according to a new study published today in Review of Educational Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. In a comprehensive analysis of research published since 2000, U.S. and Israeli researchers found substantial evidence that schools with positive climates can narrow achievement gaps among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds and between students with stronger and weaker academic abilities...
Vicki Davis

12 Games of Christmas Free Teaching Pack - TES Topics - 0 views

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    These amazing 12 free games would be great for interactive whiteboard or laptop. I've played a few of the. I love #3 which lets you teach coordinates. You can choose one quadrant (x,y - positive numbers only), 2 quadrants (xy - positive and negatives) or 4 (xyz positive and negatives) - great game for reinforcement.  All of the games are math / numeracy games so spread this like crazy for your math classes. TES is a great site out of the UK for free stuff and is the largest network of English speaking teachers in the world.
vinay1 a

Institute of Computer Accountants - 1 views

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    account training becomes an added advantage if you do not wish to hire your personal accountant to manage your accounts. Accounting involves a lot of activities like book-keeping, preparing balance sheet, maintaining tax records and payroll and so on. There is no way you can avoid these tasks. Every functional organisation has to stick to these activities for the smooth functioning of the firm. Many organisations in the past have suffered from enormous losses only because their employees did not have the required accounting training and thus were unable to handle the accounting services and important financial documents and statements. For overall success, any firm should have a firm grip over the company's accounts and financial position. You can do a lot of things to ensure you are always informed about your company's financial position. First and foremost, you can ask experienced professionals from your company to undergo accounting training courses. By brushing up their knowledge through accounting training courses, these professionals will be in a better position to handle the accounting of the firm. Another option you have is to outsource the task to outside professionals who are competent enough to handle the accounting job. Apart from this, you can also hire accounting firms who can assure you transparency in all the dealings apart from impeccable services. By outsourcing your work to an outside firm, you can save a lot of time of your firm which can be utilised for other management tasks. However, you have to be ready to shell out a bomb to avail of these services and hence it is always a good thing to have your company's own professionals well versed in this task. Once your company professionals go through competent accounting training courses at a reputed accounting training centre, they can be ready to handle different tasks like preparing sales tax reports, creating monthly or mid-monthly reports, calculating reports with perfect sales figure,
Martin Burrett

Positive Attitude Toward Maths Predicts Maths Achievement in Children - 1 views

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    "For the first time, scientists have identified the brain pathway that links a positive attitude toward maths to achievement in the subject. In a study of elementary school students, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that having a positive attitude about maths was connected to the better function of the hippocampus, an important memory centre in the brain, during the performance of arithmetic problems. The findings will be published online Jan. 24 in Psychological Science."
Tony Richards

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

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    "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
Martin Burrett

Girls need more positive experiences of ball skills - 1 views

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    "Children's positive perception of moving is an important supporter for natural physical activity and developing motor skills. A study at the University of Jyväskylä suggests that children had high perceptions of motor skills. Some gender differences were identified, however: girls were better in locomotor skills and boys had higher perception and actual skills in ball skills. "Because ball skills are typically utilized in versatile surroundings and good ball skills are a predictor for more frequent physical activity levels in adolescence, we should encourage girls to play more with balls already in early education," says PhD student Donna Niemistö from Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences. "In boys, there could be more locomotor skills like galloping and hopping involved. Niemistö concludes, "All children regardless of gender have a right to have positive and encouraging experiences of movement.""
Martin Burrett

Sun & Moon Scope - 10 views

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    A well designed science 3D simulation showing the position of the sun and moon from any position on the Earth in real time or at a certain time in the past or future. Also see the moon phase and sun rise and set times. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science
David Wetzel

Five Reasons Why Continuing Education is a Positive Career Step - 5 views

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    Many people make a decision about jobs and careers after leaving high school or college, some based on clear goals and others on need. However, there are many varied and often uncontrollable reasons why these initial occupations do not last. This leads to five reasons why continuing education must be considered as a positive investment for achieving success in a chosen occupation
Martin Burrett

Book: Wellbeing in the Primary Classroom by @AdrianBethune via @BloomsburyEd - 0 views

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    "In his new book, Adrian Bethune explores different angles of the life of children who are of primary-school age. For example, in a fascinating first chapter, Bethune examines our tribal roots, tapping into our pupils' primitive social instincts and their powerful effects on wellbeing and ability to learn. Citing the work of Louis Cozolino (Click here to view The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom by Louis Cozolino on Amazon UK - worthy of a read itself) a tribal classroom embodies tribal qualities including a tribal leader, cooperation, teamwork, equality, fairness, trust and strong personal relationships. Such qualities enable everyone to feel valued and a feeling of a big family, helping secure positive relationships - the role of the teacher in this relationship is to help pupils feel like they belong, which is fundamental to learning. Developing this tribal theme, Bethune the proceeds to share ideas to be implemented in the primary classroom to help cultivate such positive relationships, including the design of a team flag, greetings and endings, teaching social skills, and building humour and games into the setting."
Martin Burrett

The effect of depression on academic performance by @emma_rachels - 0 views

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    "During a person's lifetime they will experience a variety of life events, both positive and negative. Negative life events, such as a loved one dying, tend to be researched more extensively than positive life events due to the damaging effects it could have on a person's life. Negative life events can induce a great amount of emotion and a person's reaction to these life events determines how they process the event and overcome it. When this processing is detrimental, emotional deficits can occur such as depression."
Martin Burrett

Celebrating positives improves classroom behaviour and mental health - 0 views

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    "Training teachers to focus their attention on positive conduct and to avoid jumping to correct minor disruption improves child behaviour, concentration and mental health. A study led by the University of Exeter Medical School, published in Psychological Medicine, analysed the success of a training programme called the Incredible Years® Teacher Classroom Management Programme. Its core principles include building strong social relationship between teachers and children and ignoring low-level bad behaviour that often disrupts classrooms."
Martin Burrett

Research: Doing homework is associated with change in students' personality - 4 views

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    "Homework may have a positive influence on students' conscientiousness. Results of a study conducted by University of Tübingen researchers suggests that students who do more homework than their peers show positive changes in conscientiousness. Thus, in addition to education, schools may be effecting changes of student personalities. The study results were published in the Journal of Research in Personality."
Martin Burrett

Good, Great, Fantastic… by @keeponteeping - 3 views

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    "I was introduced to the Good/Great/Awesome techniques in some TEEP training in November last year. I immediately placed it in my "to-do right away" pile. As an intrinsically positive person, and teacher, who always strives to build students' self esteem and promote the growth mindset in all who pass through my classroom; I found the idea of offering 3 levels of positivity much more appealing that the previous wording. I implemented this strategy quickly and personally added in an overarching learning objective, so students could see each stage of G/G/F as building blocks. I coloured coded them, as is common, and occasionally colour coordinate to grades or tasks."
Martin Burrett

Books: Time to…by Penny Tassoni, via @BloomsburyEd - 0 views

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    "The series uses simple, positive language and gorgeous full-colour illustrations to teach children aged 0-5 important personal and social skills. From making friends and sharing, to eating and tidying up, this series will help explore positive behaviour with children in a fun and friendly way."
Vicki Davis

Resolution on the Importance of Journalism Courses and Programs in English Curricula - 1 views

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    If you need "proof" of the merit of journalism programs, look no further than the "enemy" that has been the excuse for killing many journalism programs -- test scores. Read this NCTE position paper about journalism in the curriculum which states: "It is important to note that a body of research provides data showing that students who participate in journalism programs do better on testing and college language arts courses. In Journalism Kids Do Better (Dvorak, Lain, Dickson), research shows students who take journalistic writing courses score higher on the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition exam than students who take only AP or honors English courses. They also score higher on college entrance exams such as the ACT. "We've done a number of research studies that show that high school journalism is equal to or exceeds standard English [courses], Dvorak said. "Journalism students' writing skills, their sensitivity to audience, their use of grammar, punctuation, spelling, their concern with accuracy, their use of sources -- all of these things tended to be significantly higher in their performances."" I would also argue that many students who are not reached by AP or honors courses can be highly engaged in journalistic pursuits. If you want a strong writing program, make sure you have a school newspaper. Share this with your newspaper and annual staff advisors to help reinforce the merit of journalism programs with your board of education and administrators.
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