Group items tagged

Brookings voucher study

"For every charter school that has opened in New York in the past decade, a parochial school has closed, Lackman states in the report that will be published next month in the Albany Law Review." I find charter schools particularly interesting from a political perspective. There's been a lot of research on charter schools. Here's an article about one more study.

This paper presents the findings of a study on the current knowledge and attitudes of pre-service teachers on the use of scenario-based multi-user virtual environments in science education. The 28 participants involved in the study were introduced to Virtual Singapura, a multi-user virtual environment, and completed an open-ended questionnaire.

Study findings suggest that integration of 1:1 laptop computing positively impacts student academic engagement and student learning. Therefore, there is need for teachers to implement appropriate computing practices to enhance student learning. Additionally, teachers need to collaborate with their students to learn and understand various instructional technology applications beyond basic Internet browsing and word processing. Based on the study findings, the following conclusions were reached. First, the findings suggest that the integration of 1:1 laptop computing increased student engagement and learning, motivation, and ability to work individually. Secondly, the data provided evidence to suggest that the implementation of 1:1 laptop computing increased the use of technology in the classroom and in the home by students. Finally, the data provided evidence to indicate that faculty believed that the integration of 1:1 computing improved traditional, at-risk, and high-achieving students learning experiences.

A study in Education Next tackles the question of how principals affect student achievement.

Anyone want to put this one through the Willingham heuristic?  Also, anyone going to show your students cute images before the SOL exams? :)

I WILL be showing my 7th grade students pictures of cute animals before the SOL. I totally agree that looking at cute images makes one better able to concentrate......better able to concentrate at looking at more time-wasting, cute images until you pull yourself away from the wormhole of forwards from an elderly aunt. This is an example of when I would take Willingham's advice and look at the science of the study, is "cuteness" objective? P.S. the 7th graders are studying life science so the pictures are related to that, not because I think it will gain them a few points on the SOL.

Mostly sharing this to test if Diigo is working again... That said, any article that cites the Hart & Risley study is worth sharing...

"Matthews cited three studies, none of which shows the relationship he alleges, or purports to."

Does this Mathews character carry any weight. It seems he is more interested in self promotion and recognition as an educational reformist than actually improving our schools. I hope I'm in the "ballpark" with other educators' reactions/ point of view. It's is frustrating when folks mislead the public about policies that are meant to support teachers. Granted not all policies are flawless, but they often seem to be the ones getting attacked the most.

Tyler, Matthews writes for The Washington Post. That give him a huge audience and, therefore, immense power to persuade. And, as you know, with great power comes great responsibility. So, yeah...

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a scale used to assess in-class use of laptops in higher education. The Laptop Evaluation Scale consisted of four constructs: academic use, non-academic communication, playing games, and watching movies. All scale items showed acceptable internally reliability. A principal components factor analysis demonstrated good construct validity. Correlation among the LES constructs were significant but small enough to support the existence of four distinct constructs. All four LES constructs were correlated with average grade, time spent on non-academic activities, and perceptions of laptop helpfulness in class, thereby proving evidence for convergent validity. Finally, content validity was supported by frequencies of laptop behaviours reported as well as student comments. However, student comments indicate that the content of the LES may need to be expanded to include more specific academic and non-academic behaviours.