The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.
Why House Republicans are rushing to slash NPR funding - 13 views
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Texas Legislators Seek to Pare Standardized Tests - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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Texas is going to cut down testing. This is a wise move for many reasons. Some states are cutting out teachers and the same time increasing spending on test taking. Such decisions harm learning no matter what test you take. ""Testing companies are in the business of making a profit, but let's not confuse their mission - their mission is to create as many tests as they can and then grade them at as little cost as possible," the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Dan Patrick, Republican of Houston, said Tuesday at a hearing on a comprehensive education bill that would reduce the number of high-stakes tests students must pass to graduate."
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Some faculty distressed by Pawlenty's online ed vision - USATODAY.com - 8 views
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When Jon Stewart asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty last week for some examples of how he intended to administer "limited and effective" government, the Republican governor did not roll out boilerplate rhetoric on welfare or farm subsidies. Instead, he took square aim at traditional higher education. "Do you really think in 20 years somebody's going to put on their backpack, drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keister across campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about econ 101 or Spanish 101?" Pawlenty asked Stewart, host of "The Daily Show."
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Idaho Teachers Fight a Reliance on Computers - NYTimes.com - 8 views
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To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators.
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And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
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OK, several comments here. 1. I have no problem with "less a lecturer." However, I do not advocate the elimination of lecture. It is one of many methods for teacher and learning. 2. The implication of the last part of the sentence is that the computer is becoming the/a teacher, delivering instruction. I do not agree with this characterization of technology. It is a tool for helping students learn, not for teaching them (with some exceptions). It extends the learners access to knowledge and skills...
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And some say they are opposed to shifting money to online classes and other teaching methods whose benefits remain unproved.
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My question here is, "Why are the requiring online classes?" If it is part of the "high-tech vangard" thing, then I don't really understand. If it is because they believe that it is more effective for learning, well, that's a complex issue that depends on so many things that have NOTHING to do with the state's legislature. If it is because students will be taking online courses in their future, and then need to learn to take online courses while in high school, then I can support that. I do not believe that it is appropriate to compare online courses to face-to-face courses. Fact is, sometime online is the only way you can access the knowledge/skills that you need. We need to be comfortable with that. But it has little to do with technology. It's learning!
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improve student learning.
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This is a phrase that irks me. I think that we should be using contemporary information and communication technologies for teaching and learning, because our prevailing information environment is networked, digital, and info-abundant. We should be using tech to make learning more relevant to our time...
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“I fought for my country,” she said. “Now I’m fighting for my kids.” Gov. C. L. Otter, known as Butch, and Tom Luna, the schools superintendent, who have championed the plan, said teachers had been misled by their union into believing the changes were a step toward replacing them with computers. Mr. Luna said the teachers’ anger was intensified by other legislation, also passed last spring, that eliminated protections for teachers with seniority and replaced it with a pay-for-performance system. Some teachers have also expressed concern that teaching positions could be eliminated and their raises reduced to help offset the cost of the technology. Mr. Luna acknowledged that many teachers in the state were conservative Republicans like him — making Idaho’s politics less black and white than in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, where union-backed teachers have been at odds with politicians.
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The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace.
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This is so far off the mark that I do not know where to begin. OK, here's what I would say. "Our children live in a time of rapid change. Therefore, they must become resourceful and relentless learners. Being a teacher in such classrooms requires an expanding array of skills and activities, among them, being resourceful and relentless learners in front of their students -- adapting to today's prevailing information environment and the information and communication technologies that work it." Probably need to find a simpler way to express this.
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The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits
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Mr. Luna said this would allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something he said was increasingly common in college
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becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.
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Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.
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That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions — the Socratic method — as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through “The Book Thief,” a novel about a family in Germany that hides a Jewish girl during World War II.
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This is a wonderful method for teaching and timeless. However, if the students are also backchanneling the conversation, then more of them are participating, sharing, agreeing and disagreeing, and the conversation has to potential to extend beyond the sounding of the bell. I'm not saying, this is a way of integrating technology, I'm saying that networked collaboration is a relevant way for students to be learning and will continue to learn after school is over.
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Her room mostly lacks high-tech amenities. Homework assignments are handwritten on whiteboards. Students write journal entries in spiral notebooks. On the walls are two American flags and posters paying tribute to the Marines, and on the ceiling a panel painted by a student thanks Ms. Rosenbaum for her service
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Ms. Rosenbaum did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. “I’m teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can’t do that.”
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She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master’s degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes.
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The group will also organize training for teachers. Ms. Cook said she did worry about how teachers would be trained when some already work long hours and take second jobs to make ends meet
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For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.
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“There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.”
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If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she’s missing the boat.
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Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.” Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.”
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Brainstorm: Junk Analysis of Higher Ed by the 'Times' - Chronicle.com - 0 views
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This isn’t good for anyone’s education: The only virtue of the arrangement is its cheapness, and that cheapness hasn’t lowered tuition; it’s simply served to provide money pots for high-rolling administrators to spend on favored projects and the expansion of the business curriculum. It’s also created a need to expand the ranks of management to train and supervise the constantly-churning mass of student and other casual workers.
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journalists are living the same permatemping as the faculty, under the same quality management gutting the public sphere under both Republicans and Democrats
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What about Joel Westheimer, who they illegally fired for supporting the grad student union, despite having the support of his entire discipline? Or any of the grad students themselves, who are doing better analysis of their employment than Stimpson.
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Weblogg-ed » The Obama Speech - 0 views
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I have read the President’s speech and I agree with his comments. I am a conservative republican and I did not find any problem with what the President will say in his speech to the students. There is no brainwashing or indoctrination in his comments. We have problems in our schools and that needs to change.
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The Republicans' Hypocritical Response to Atonin Scalia's Death - 1 views
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""the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice." Of course, the American people already had such a voice. They exercised it in 2012 when they re-elected Barack Obama to the Presidency, a position which -- on this issue -- comes with a written job description -- called the Constitution -- entitling the holder to nominate justices to the Supreme"
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shared by Ed Webb on 01 Mar 22
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What Cliff? Data and the Destruction of Public Higher Ed | Just Visiting - 2 views
www.insidehighered.com/...d-destruction-public-higher-ed
education future futures demographics data policy politics neoliberalism analysis opinion
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That higher education institutions are facing a “demographic cliff” in the coming years has become conventional wisdom. But what if there is no cliff? What if we’ve instead been subjected to a narrative rooted in limited data that serves the interests of corporations and is doing real damage to our public institutions?
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Currently, the NCES projects relatively constant numbers of high school graduates through 2030, with total graduates expected to increase in the mid-2020s, followed by a modest decline, making the projected 2029–30 number slightly greater than in 2016–17. Further, it is important to note that since the 1970s, the total number of high school graduates in the U.S. has declined several times before. More importantly for higher education, the NCES projects modest increases in higher education enrollments through 2029.
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WICHE is an interest group with an explicit policy agenda—“focus areas”—which includes “developing and supporting innovations in technology and beyond that improve the quality of postsecondary education and reduce costs.”
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The purported demographic crisis is being used around the country to fundamentally remake higher education. For example, this is the main argument being advanced by Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature seeking to radically reshape the University of Wisconsin system. This plan calls for the significant expansion of online education, regionalization of the comprehensive campuses, increased campus specialization and program consolidation and elimination, among other long-standing priorities.
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The current context of higher education provides fertile ground for the uncritical acceptance of the demographic cliff. Higher education enrollments have declined since reaching historic highs in 2010. And decades of political decisions have made higher education tuition-driven, one state budget cycle at a time. We are vulnerable to the demographic cliff framing because of the politically imposed financial crunch in which we exist. Enrollments dictate everything we do.
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the demographic cliff is an austerity-driven narrative that assumes that public funding will never—and should never—come back
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Programs must be eliminated, online education must be expanded and, if necessary, even entire campuses must be closed. Higher education must be agile because tax increases are off the table, even as stock markets reach new highs and the income and wealth of the highest earners skyrockets. The interests of corporations and the wealthy will dictate public policy.
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official population and education data—which come with no political assumptions, narrative or products for sale—show a slowly increasing population, including higher education enrollments, in the coming years.
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takes advantage of a tuition-dependent higher education system to implement even greater austerity while imposing an education policy agenda that could never be adopted through normal political means