it's awfully difficult to say, "Here's knowledge we don't
need!" It sounds like book burning, doesn't it? What we'd say is that
on the scale of priorities, we find undergraduate teaching to be more
important than all the research being done.
Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url
5More
What's Wrong With the American University System - Culture - The Atlantic - 6 views
-
-
Those people were teachers, in the true sense of the word. They were just as knowledgeable about their fields as anyone, but they had playful, imaginative minds. They could go on TV—Carl Sagan could talk about science, John Kenneth Galbraith could talk about economics. They weren't dumbing down their subjects. In fact, they were actually using their brains. The more you rely on lingo—"regressive discourses," "performativity"—the less you have to really think. You can just throw terms around and say, "Look, Ma, I'm a theorist!"
-
We believe the current criteria for admissions—particularly the SAT—are just so out of whack. It's like No Child Left Behind. It really is. It's one of the biggest crimes that's ever been perpetrated. I mean, you took the SAT! It's multiple choice, a minute and quarter per question. What does it really test? It tests how good you are at taking tests! At a big university like Berkeley, where there are going to be 30,000 applications, here's what they do. On top of each folder, without even reading through it, they write your SAT score. That's the first winnowing. So the 1600s get looked at first, and then down from there.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
One of the things that I find scariest at the moment is that so many bright people have no conception at all of life for any people but those in the upper middle class and above. They live a sheltered suburban life, go to college with other sheltered suburban kids, and assume that everyone's life has been like theirs. Some years ago a relative of mine graduated from Cambridge. I asked what his classmates would be doing after graduation and he said "management consulting." These were very bright people with zero experience in the business world who had spent the last three years barely able to manage their binge drinking, let alone manage any business. I'd trust the high school grad who rose through the ranks way more than these bright young things.
-
www.highereducationquestionmark.com
2More
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Facebook Photos: Your Delete Doesn't Mean "Delete" - 13 views
-
-
And that's exactly why we need to be telling our kids the importance of being good digital citizens! The issue isn't with sites like Facebook keeping inappropriate content, it's PEOPLE posting it in the first place.
-
-
Are you talking to students about the un-deletability of files?
24More
How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education le... - 16 views
-
has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future
-
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! -
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.
-
-
That's right. Socio-emotional learning, one of the most important kinds for the development of good citizens, defies standardized testing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
-
charter schools a truly viable option
-
2More
shared by Reuven Werber on 17 Oct 10
- Cached
City Brights: Howard Rheingold : Crap Detection 101 - Information evaluation - 13 views
www.sfgate.com/...detail
Infolit informationfluency assessment accuracy evaluation literacy information Internet crap detection informationliteracy information_literacy
shared by Reuven Werber on 17 Oct 10
- Cached
-
To me, the issue of information literacy could be even more important than the health or education of some individuals. Fundamental aspects of democracy, economic production, the discovery and use of knowledge might be at stake. Some of the biggest problems facing the world today seem to be far beyond the ability of any individual or community, or even the whole human race, to tackle.
12More
New Learners? New Educators? New Skills? - Emerging Technologies for Learning - 0 views
-
key skills required today
-
Are these the 21st century skills? While it's important to REFOCUS on literacies, it's the refocus and refinements of the literacies that enhances the 21st century skills.
-
-
Learning Activities
-
These are interesting, but do they REALLY work? How would you assess learning?
-
-
traditional activities of teachers and learners
-
- ...3 more annotations...
-
Augmented – the course takes place in a traditional classroom setting, but technology is used to enhance the learning experience
-
-
Subject matter expert
-
-
Planning for and fostering interaction The prominence of social technologies has created an opportunity for educators to increase the level of learner-learner and faculty-learner dialogue. Interaction can occur around ideas, content, or simply open discussions
-
Moore spoke of learner/content interaction. Technology quickly becomes the connection between learner and everything.
-
7More
Building an Internet Culture - 0 views
-
ten conclusions that might guide a country's development of a culturally appropriate Internet policy
-
Do not spend vast sums of money to buy machinery that you are going to set down on top of existing dysfunctional institutions. The Internet, for example, will not fix your schools. Perhaps the Internet can be part of a much larger and more complicated plan for fixing your schools, but simply installing an Internet connection will almost surely be a waste of money.
-
Learning how to use the Internet is primarily a matter of institutional arrangements, not technical skills
- ...4 more annotations...
-
Build Internet civil society. Find those people in every sector of society that want to use the Internet for positive social purposes, introduce them to one another, and connect them to their counterparts in other countries around the world. Numerous organizations in other countries can help with this.
-
Conduct extensive, structured analysis of the technical and cultural environment. Include the people whose work will actually be affected. A shared analytical process will help envision how the technology will fit into the whole way of life around it, and the technology will have a greater chance of actually being used.
-
For children, practical experience in organizing complicated social events, for example theater productions, is more important than computer skills. The Internet can be a powerful tool for education if it is integrated into a coherent pedagogy. But someone who has experience with the social skills of organizing will immediately comprehend the purpose of the Internet, and will readily acquire the technical skills when the time comes
-
Machinery does not reform society, repair institutions, build social networks, or produce a democratic culture. People must do those things, and the Internet is simply one tool among many. Find talented people and give them the tools they need. When they do great things, contribute to your society's Internet culture by publicizing their ideas.
1More
Schools tap '21st-century skills' (csmonitor.com) - 0 views
-
Those are some of the capabilities known as "21st-century skills" - what everyone from CEOs to President-elect Obama says that today's students need for their fast-changing future. In a knowledge economy, the reasoning goes, the ability to articulate and solve problems, to generate original ideas, and to work collaboratively across cultural boundaries is growing exponentially in importance. The challenge for schools is to find ways to shift from traditional rote learning and teach these skills, while still doing due diligence to the three R's. The good news about 21st-century skills, advocates say, is that they can be integrated into core subjects.
3More
New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development - MacArthur Foundation - 0 views
-
parents and their children came together around gaming or shared digital media projects, where both kids and adults brought expertise to the table.
-
And wouldn't it be great if teachers and students could interact in the same way? Some of us do, of course, or at least try to.
-
-
an effort to inject grounded research into the conversation about the future of learning in a digital world.
2More
Teaching How to Learn | blog of proximal development - 0 views
-
his “context of public scrutiny” is of great importance here. The safety of the self-contained classroom, one separated (by walls and firewalls) from the rest of the world - the world we are supposed to prepare our students for - goes against everything that surrounds young people today and prevents them from learning how to navigate the complex online world.
-
What, I kept asking myself, can educators learn from this report? More importantly, how can these lessons then be applied in our classrooms and teacher education programmes?
1More
Common Core Event: What is the Proper Role of Skills in the Curriculum - 0 views
-
On February 24, Common Core held a panel discussion to critique the idea of 21st century skills. Discussants included: Diane Ravitch, E.D. Hirsch Jr., Daniel Willingham, and Ken Kay. Remarks from panelists can found be here. We knew that this topic is a contentious one that would peak lots of interest. It did: with more than 100 people in attendance, there was not an empty spot in the room (many attendees event found a semi-comfortable spot on the floor). Ravitch, Hirsch, and Willingham challenged Kay on the idea that learning skills is more important than understanding the content to which one applies skills.
18More
World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others | Edutopia - 0 views
-
We must also expand our ability to think critically about the deluge of information now being produced by millions of amateur authors without traditional editors and researchers as gatekeepers. In fact, we need to rely on trusted members of our personal networks to help sift through the sea of stuff, locating and sharing with us the most relevant, interesting, useful bits. And we have to work together to organize it all, as long-held taxonomies of knowledge give way to a highly personalized information environment.
-
-
What Will suggests here is rising complexity, but for this to succeed we don't need to fight our genetic heritage. Put yourself on the Serengeti plains, a hunter-gatherer searching for food. You are thinking critically about a deluge of data coming through your senses (modern folk discount this idea, but any time in jobs that require observation in the 'wild' (farming comes to mind) will disabuse you rather quickly that the natural world is providing a clear channel.) You are not only relying upon your own 'amateur' abilities but those of your family and extended family to filter the noise of the world to get to the signal. This tribe is the original collaborative model and if we do not try to push too hard against this still controlling 'mean gene' then we will as a matter of course become a nation of collaborative learning tribes.
-
-
Collaboration in these times requires our students to be able to seek out and connect with learning partners, in the process perhaps navigating cultures, time zones, and technologies. It requires that they have a vetting process for those they come into contact with: Who is this person? What are her passions? What are her credentials? What can I learn from her?
-
Aye, aye, captain. This is the classic problem of identity and authenticity. Can I trust this person on all the levels that are important for this particular collaboration? A hidden assumption here is that students have a passion themselves to learn something from these learning partners. What will be doing in this collaboration nation to value the ebb and flow of these learners' interests? How will we handle the idiosyncratic needs of the child who one moment wants to be J.K.Rowling and the next Madonna. Or both? What are the unintended consequences of creating an truly collaborative nation? Do we know? Would this be a 'worse' world for the corporations who seek our dollars and our workers? Probably. It might subvert the corporation while at the same moment create a new body of corporate cooperation. Isn't it pretty to think so.
-
-
Likewise, we must make sure that others can locate and vet us.
- ...9 more annotations...
-
technical know-how is not enough. We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching).
-
All of these skills are technical know how. We differentiate between hard and soft skills when we should be showing how they are all of a piece. I am so far from being an adequate coach on all of these matters it appalls me. I feel like the teacher who is one day ahead of his students and fears any question that skips ahead to chapters I have not read yet.
-
-
The Collaboration Age comes with challenges that often cause concern and fear. How do we manage our digital footprints, or our identities, in a world where we are a Google search away from both partners and predators? What are the ethics of co-creation when the nuances of copyright and intellectual property become grayer each day? When connecting and publishing are so easy, and so much of what we see is amateurish and inane, how do we ensure that what we create with others is of high quality?
-
Partners and predators? OK, let's not in any way go down this road. This is the road our mainstream media has trod to our great disadvantage as citizens. These are not co-equal. Human brains are not naturally probablistic computer. We read about a single instance of internet predation and we equate it with all the instances of non-predation. We all have zero tolerance policies against guns in the school, yet our chances of being injured by those guns are fewer than a lightning strike. We cannot ever have this collaborative universe if we insist on a zero probability of predation. That is why, for good and ill, schools will never cross that frontier. It is in our genes. "Better safe than sorry" vs. "Risks may be our safeties in disguise."
-
-
Students are growing networks without us, writing Harry Potter narratives together at FanFiction.net, or trading skateboarding videos on YouTube. At school, we disconnect them not only from the technology but also from their passion and those who share it.
-
The complexities of editing information online cannot be sequestered and taught in a six-week unit. This has to be the way we do our work each day.
-
The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly -- a frontier that traditional schools have rarely crossed.
-
Look no further than Wikipedia to see the potential; say what you will of its veracity, no one can deny that it represents the incredible potential of working with others online for a common purpose.
-
The technologies we block in their classrooms flourish in their bedrooms
-
Anyone with a passion for something can connect to others with that same passion -- and begin to co-create and colearn the same way many of our students already do.
-
I believe that is what educators must do now. We must engage with these new technologies and their potential to expand our own understanding and methods in this vastly different landscape. We must know for ourselves how to create, grow, and navigate these collaborative spaces in safe, effective, and ethical ways. And we must be able to model those shifts for our students and counsel them effectively when they run across problems with these tools.
2More
Interviews: Six important forces that will shape 2009 - Trends in the Living Networks - 0 views
-
-
This is a great read -- I particularly think that Constant Partial Attention (CPA) is something that we should be aware of in our classrooms. Excellent article. Also I find it interesting how he shares that some kids who have gotten constant positive reinforcement in schools are going to have a tough time w/ competition. Competition is part of life.
1More
shared by Maggie Verster on 17 Feb 09
- Cached
Next Generation User Skills - 1 views
blog.core-ed.net/...xt-generation-user-skills.html
school2.0 digitalnatives 21st century skills digitalcitizenship
shared by Maggie Verster on 17 Feb 09
- Cached
-
Amid the rhetoric about the validity of concepts such as Digital Natives, GenY, Net Gen etc. an important issue is often overlooked - the need to address the development of skills and competencies required to work, learn and live online in the future. Too often this debate polarises people and disintegrates into arguments over skills vs integration etc.
11More
Play It Safe: Hackers use the back door to get into your computer; a strong, well-chose... - 0 views
-
For the home user, however, password safety requires more than on-the-fly thinking. Pacheco suggests a system built around a main word for all instances. The distinction is that the name of the site is added somewhere. For example, if the main word is "eggplant," the password might be "eggyyplant" Yahoo, "eggplantgg" for Google or "wleggplant" for Windows Live. He suggests listing the variations in an Excel spreadsheet.
-
Password security is a big deal, and if you don't think it is, then someone might be hacking into your computer even as you read this. A strong password isn't foolproof, but it proves that you're no fool. And it might protect you from compromised data, a broken computer or identity theft. Your bank account, your personal e-mails and lots of other stuff are at risk with weak passwords.
-
"A good password is the most important part of Internet security," said Robert Pacheco, the owner of Computer Techs of San Antonio. "It's the beginning and end of the issue. You can't stop it (hacking). You do what you can do to prevent it. You just try to stop most of it." A strong firewall, as well as spyware -- and virus-detection software -- protect a computer's so-called "back door," Pacheco said, where a hacker can gain access through various cyber threats. Those threats include infected e-mail attachments; phishing Web pages that exploit browser flaws; downloaded songs or pictures with hidden trojans; or plain ol' poking-and-prodding of a computer's shields. But passwords protect information from a frontal assault by way of the computer's keyboard.
- ...7 more annotations...
-
Other people use easy-to-remember passwords. Trouble is, Rogers said, they're easy-to-guess passwords, too. Good examples of bad passwords are your name, your family's names, your pet's name, the name of your favorite team, your favorite athlete or your favorite anything. Get to know the person -- a technique that geeks refer to as "social engineering" -- and the password is easy to guess. There are message-board stalkers who can guess passwords in a half-dozen tries. Hackers rely on a lot of methods. Some, Rogers said, employ "shoulder surfing." That means what it sounds like -- looking over someone's shoulder as that person is typing in a password.
-
Other people use easy-to-remember passwords. Trouble is, Rogers said, they're easy-to-guess passwords, too. Good examples of bad passwords are your name, your family's names, your pet's name, the name of your favorite team, your favorite athlete or your favorite anything
-
The type of hardware being used can be a clue, said Rogers, a senior technical staffer in the CERT Program, a Web security research center in Carnegie-Mellon University's software engineering institute. It's easy to find a default password, typically in the user's manual on a manufacturer's Web site. If the user hasn't changed the default, that's an easy break-in.
-
Hackers rely on a lot of methods. Some, Rogers said, employ "shoulder surfing." That means what it sounds like -- looking over someone's shoulder as that person is typing in a password
-
Most of the password hacking activity these days goes on at homes, in school or in public settings. These days, many workplaces mandate how a password is picked.
-
The idea is to choose a password that contains at least one uppercase letter, one numeral and at least eight total characters. Symbols are good to throw in the mix, too. Many companies also require that passwords be changed regularly and that pieces of older ones can't be re-used for months. And user names cannot be part of the password. Examples: Eggplant99, 99eggpLanT, --eggp--99Lant. For the next quarter, the password might change to variations on "strawberry.
-
The idea is to choose a password that contains at least one uppercase letter, one numeral and at least eight total characters. Symbols are good to throw in the mix, too. Many companies also require that passwords be changed regularly and that pieces of older ones can't be re-used for months. And user names cannot be part of the password. Examples: Eggplant99, 99eggpLanT, --eggp--99Lant. For the next quarter, the password might change to variations on "strawberry."
-
Password security is a big deal, and if you don't think it is, then someone might be hacking into your computer even as you read this. A strong password isn't foolproof, but it proves that you're no fool. And it might protect you from compromised data, a broken computer or identity theft. Your bank account, your personal e-mails and lots of other stuff are at risk with weak passwords.
2More
ConverStations: Wallflowers: An Important Part of the Conversation - Still - 0 views
-
-
I really enjoyed reading Mike Sansone's blog post about Wallflowers and how they are part of the conversation. He has a great way of putting this. I think it is a good read for those trying to understand blogging and social media.
3More
The Power of Educational Technology: Ten Tips for Growing Your Learning Network - 0 views
-
10. Participate, don't just lurk, you have to give to get. Don't be afraid to share your ideas, comments and links. We are all both leaders and followers. Let your voice be heard.
-
1More
A Conversation with Martin Scorsese: The Importance of Visual Literacy | Edutopia - 0 views
