Bonnie Sutton
Contents contributed and discussions participated by Bonnie Sutton
Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) Program - 1 views
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8:42am Dec 21
Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) Program
Do you know a high school junior that is extremely intelligent and hard working? Has this student been restricted in their academic opportunities and you think the student would benefit from additional nurturing? Is the student interested in pursuing an engineering career or simply interested in what engineering is concerned with? Is studying at MIT something that piques the students' interests? Take a look at the Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) program.
History: The MITES Program was established in 1974 as part of a national effort sponsored by the Engineers' Council for Professional Development. The objective of the program was to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the engineering profession by exposing students to engineering during their high school years. What started as a two-week residential summer program on the MIT campus with 37 students with a focus on career orientation has evolved into a six-and-a-half week slice of MIT academic life with 60-80 participants from all walks of life.
Criteria:
· Must be a high school junior
· Must be a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident
· Must have a strong academic record
Cost: All MITES students participate in the program on full scholarship. Participants only have to provide their transportation to and from the program.
courses: Students take courses in calculus, physics, and humanities. They also take a course in biology, biochemistry, or chemistry, and an elective course in genomics, programming, electronics, or engineering design. They acquire a deeper knowledge of the subject matter and higher cognitive and analytical skills - qualities that are essential in any professional career, but crucial in engineering and the sciences.
Activities: The MITES program gives its participants the chance to experience a few once in a lifetime activities. For example, admission dinners with members of the MIT admissions officers, a college fair with representatives from top universities, field trips to nearby attractions, socials, and barbeques.
Impact: The students forge a persistent and extended network of friends and allies that affirms both their achievement motivation and cultural identity. While the MITES participants are strong students already, the program challenges them at a much higher level and gives them the confidence they need to succeed in science and engineering at a top university. In addition, most students credit MITES with giving them the best summer of their life.
If this sounds like something that would interest a student that you know, have them visit the program website at web.mit.edu/mites/. Applicants can also send questions about the program to mites@mit.edu.
index
web.mit.edu
MIT's Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (OEOP) in the School of Engineering (SOE) runs seven c...
MIT Will Offer Certificates to Outside Students Who Take Its Online Courses - 2 views
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December 19, 2011
By Marc Parry
Millions of learners have enjoyed the free lecture videos and other course materials published online through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare project. Now MIT plans to release a fresh batch of open online courses-and, for the first time, to offer certificates to outside students who complete them.
The credentials are part of a new, interactive e-learning venture, tentatively called MITx, that is expected to host "a virtual community of millions of learners around the world," the institute will announce on Monday.
Here's how it will work: MITx will give anyone free access to an online-course platform. Users will include students on the MIT campus, but also external learners like high-school seniors and engineering majors at other colleges. They'll watch videos, answer questions, practice exercises, visit online labs, and take quizzes and tests. They'll also connect with others working on the material.
The first course will begin around the spring of 2012. MIT has not yet announced its subject, but the goal is to build a portfolio of high-demand courses-the kind that draw more than 200 people to lecture halls on the campus, in Cambridge, Mass. MIT is investing "millions of dollars" in the project, said L. Rafael Reif, the provost, and the plan is to solicit more from donors and foundations.
Ten years ago, MIT galvanized the open-education movement by giving away free learning materials from 2,100 courses. But some universities are moving beyond publishing online syllabi and simple videos. They now provide virtual tutors and automated feedback through interactive projects like the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and the free online computer-science courses at Stanford University. MIT's new venture is a step in that direction.
If Stanford's experience is any indication, the potential pool of participants could be vast. Back in November, roughly 94,000 students enrolled in Andrew Ng's open course on machine learning there.
MIT's project could also help answer a big question facing open education: How do you sustain projects whose content is free?
Although access to MITx courses will carry no cost, the institute plans to charge a "modest" fee for certificates that indicate a learner has mastered the content. It's unclear exactly how the assessment will work.
What is clear is that any credentials "would not be issued under the name MIT," according to an MITx fact sheet. "Rather, MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within the institute that will offer certification for online learners of MIT course work," the sheet says. "That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion."
Mr. Reif stressed that the open-learning experiment "is not an easier version of MIT."
"For them to earn a credential, they have to demonstrate mastery of the subject," he said, "just like an MIT student does."
A 3-Tiered Ecosystem
Monday's announcement marks a shift for MIT. The institute does not offer a fully online education for conventional credits. And when the OpenCourseWare idea emerged, the thinking was to avoid credit-bearing courses so as not to "dilute the MIT brand," according to one official quoted in Unlocking the Gates, a book about open learning by Taylor Walsh of Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of technology in higher education.
But the new venture will apparently create a three-tiered ecosystem, with traditional MIT degrees, for residential students; cheaper MITx certificates, and free OpenCourseWare materials, said Roger C. Schonfeld, Ithaka's director of research.
"It seems like an effort to begin to expand the breadth of individuals who can claim an educational association with MIT," he said.
The project aims to "lower the existing barriers between residential campuses and millions of learners around the world," MIT says. But how much will outside individuals get to interact with MIT professors? That's unclear.
One way to promote such contact will be software that handles many questions, said Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
"Through voting and other mechanisms, you can create a funnel of requests so that the requests that come off the funnel at the very top can actually be answered by MIT professors and MIT TA's," he said. "A large number of questions at the lower parts of the funnel can actually be answered by other learners who may be slightly ahead."
MIT faculty members have also developed technology that can automatically grade essays. Other technologies that could come into play here include automatic transcription, online tutors, and crowdsourced grading.
The core idea of OpenCourseWare-free online content-spread far beyond MIT. The institute hopes this project will also catch on elsewhere. To help make that happen, it will release the MITx open-learning software at no charge, so other educational institutions can adopt it.
Education's job in a networked world - 2 views
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Education's job in a networked world
I can't presume to know education's main job in today's very different media environment, but I think Prof. Michael Wesch at Kansas State University is on to something. It goes beyond teaching media literacy in information-saturated lives, which itself is well past the 19th-century model of filling students' heads with information and having them "learn" it. It even goes beyond teaching the behavioral or social literacy needed in a social-media environment. In fact, it goes beyond teaching to inspiring (which includes modeling for an collaborating with students too, as Wesch does). The KSU anthropology professor suggests that the job of education now is to inspire curiosity and imagination, The Journal reports
"Consider how much further ahead a curious student will be, compared with a student who lacks curiosity, in an environment in which he or she can reach out and grab new knowledge anytime, anywhere on all kinds of devices," he told people attending a conference last July. "If you're a curious person, you'll learn and grow; if you're not, you could just drift along while others race ahead," The Journal quotes him as saying in his talk. So school can't just stop at helping students get to the signal amid all the noise but also want to figure out what to do with the signal once they've found it - help them be curious and excited about where the signal can take them. [That seems incredibly important in a world where school can't prepare students for jobs because jobs as we know them are going away (see this
they're to do their filtering and seeking (the media in which they're already doing all this outside of school).
Schools need to be clear that "today's media" doesn't just mean new devices such as laptops or iPads, or even Web sites, online games, or virtual worlds. Wesch, who teaches digital culture, explains that media are much more than communications tools or services. They "change what can be said, how it can be said, who can say it, who can hear it, and what messages will count as information and knowledge," he told his listeners. That's not just new media, but books and old media such as television and film as well. So we need to be focused less on technology and more on curiosity and literacies (social, media, and digital) and allowing and inspiring students to develop them in today's full range of media. Otherwise, we'll continue to have the stultifying kind of education that many of Wesch's students describe (and clearly want to be freed from) in the video VisionsofStudents.org.
Related links
* In Professor Wesch's own blog post on VisionofStudents.org, a "'video collage' about student life created by students themselves," he writes that "there is a wide gulf between the static stale world of traditional education and the visceral emotional worlds of our students, and there is no shortage of revolutionary ideas now being pursued to close this gulf"
* My last post on Wesch: "Watch this video, parents"
+ = + = + = +
Misunderstanding Race and the Digital Divide - 2 views
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Misunderstanding Race and the Digital Divide
by Joseph Miller Guest Contributor on December 16, 2011
"One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down." -Pauline Kael
What is to blame for digital age inequality? The digital divide behind door number one? Or the digital divide behind door number two? These seem like silly questions. That's because they are. But no matter what the reason is, some advocates always manage to find a way to misunderstand the lifestyle choices of people of color.
Last week was a busy week for progressives. On December 3rd, The New York Times published an op-Ed by Susan Crawford, a long time net neutrality advocate, professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of law, and former special assistant to President Obama on science, technology, and innovation policy. Crawford wrote that smartphones-the devices that African-Americans and Latinos overwhelmingly prefer for accessing the internet-provide a "second class" tier of Internet service, as compared to the high-speed wired internet access that middle-class urbanites and suburbanites are able to enjoy via computers connected directly to the Internet. In a blog post in Colorlines-a blog focusing on issues affecting minorities-Colorlines News Editor Jamilah King reiterated Crawford's thesis, then went the extra mile of calling out the NAACP and National Urban League for taking funding from telecommunications companies like AT&T and Sprint.
The problem with Crawford and King's approach is that they cast wireless broadband and smartphones in their worst possible light. High-speed broadband and wireless broadband each have a distinct set of unique advantages over the other, making neither of them superior to the other in all respects. If wireless were a substitute for high speed internet access, there would be no competition.
This dichotomy is not a race issue. I have not seen any minority groups make the argument that wireless broadband is a complete substitute for high speed internet. I have heard them say that, in the absence of high speed internet, or where high speed internet is not affordable, wireless is a lifeline. However, I have not seen any organizations say that we should forget about high speed Internet access for communities of color and focus exclusively on ensuring that communities of color have smartphones. So the idea that there is some grand conspiracy to "trick" minorities into using mobile devices instead of computers sounds specious to me.
High speed internet access is critical for exposing people of color to the culture of innovation from which they have largely been excluded. In this context, wireless internet access is not a substitute for high speed internet access. Nor is it a substitute for some of the uses that Crawford mentions in her article, such as writing resumes, using remote healthcare applications, or for earning a degree online (although the current success rate of online learning for minorities is dismal). But the exclusionary culture of Silicon Valley is not something that mainstream media advocates have addressed. If corporations are really "D.C.'s most truly bipartisan, non-ideological lobbying force, spreading their money around everywhere from the halls of Congress to the advocacy organizations that represent communities' interests there," as King asserts in her article, wouldn't minority organizations have a more diverse funding base? Why not attack the technology companies that don't fund them? Why not attack free market groups more often? Why are minority-oriented groups such easy targets?
Mainstream media advocates pooh-pooh minorities' use of smartphones, but at the same time we debate about why so few African-Americans are participating in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, even though African-Americans are among those racial and ethnic groups most affected by socioeconomic disparities. "Protesters" are Time magazine's Person of the Year. Could anyone plausibly question whether the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street protests would have been as successful as they have been were it not for wireless broadband?
From the outset of the digital divide debate in 1995, the Department of Commerce's National and Information Administration (NTIA) has expressed the need to evaluate more than just telephones to determine who are the "haves and have nots" when it comes information access and participation. NTIA's report stated, "While a standard telephone line can be an individual's pathway to the riches of the Information Age, a personal computer and modem are rapidly becoming the keys to the vault." But in 1995, according to CTIA, the Wireless Industry trade association, there were just 33.8 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. By 2009, that number had grown to 277.6 million. Just as it was important to avoid allocating excessive resources toward universal telephone service as computers began to take hold, it is equally important to acknowledge that wireless offers a different value proposition vis-à-vis wireline broadband.
High-speed internet access and bandwidth are absolutely essential for supporting American innovation in Silicon Valley. But commoditizing minorities to bolster that underlying argument is patently irresponsible. There is no "new" digital divide-we are faced with the same digital divide that we have been faced with since at least 1940. Wireless broadband has helped to close part of that gap, but we still have a long way to go.
This article by Joseph Miller, Esq., Deputy Director and Senior Policy Director of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, originally appeared on joemillerjd.com.
Technology Cannot Disrupt Education from the Top Down - 2 views
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Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From The Top Down
Patrick Gibbon
Education
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/18/education-technology-disrupt/
Editor's note: Guest contributor Patrick Gibbons is a Las Vegas-based writer and researcher focusing on education policy and reform.
Computer technology has penetrated the classroom for thirty years with little impact. After hundreds of "disruptive" education startups, the best innovation in education is still the chalkboard. This isn't the fault of the entrepreneurs, but the fault of an education system which resists innovation at every turn.
Many K-12 education technology startups target teachers and administrators by offering tools to become more productive: Lesson plan sharing, gradebooks, training tools, whiteboards and more. Devin Coldewey called them "practical" in his TechCrunch post "If I Were A Poor Black Kid" Inadvertently Touches On Sad Education And Tech Truths." Coldewey concludes that education needs top-down reforms that utilize these practical technologies. He sincerely believes these technologies can improve teacher and administrator efficiency so the "overworked" staff can gain control of their "oversized" classes in the "pitifully insufficient" resourced schools.
Unfortunately, the top down "practical" approach won't work for some very good reasons. Essentially, the education establishment doesn't want to be disrupted and they will leverage the $597 billion spent annually on K-12 public education to prevent true disruption.
To innovate in education, entrepreneurs need to understand some key education statistics. The fact is, despite thirty years of technological progress and innovation, American schools provide the same results with more resources at their disposal. Between the 1959-60 and 2007-08 school year, per pupil spending grew from $2,741 (in 2009 dollar values) to $11,134-an inflation-adjusted increase of 306%. Over that same period the number of students per teacher fell from 26 to 15.3 while the number of students per school employee fell from 16.8 to 7.8.
Finally, while Devin believes public schools have "few computers" the data shows the number of pupils per computer fell from 12.1 in 1998 to 3.8 by 2005.
Despite more money, more teachers and more computers per pupil, student achievement in K-12 education has been stagnant for forty years. So why hasn't money, teachers and technology worked?
American public education is a monopoly where the bureaucracy and administrators act more like Soviet commissars than corporate CEOs and entrepreneurs. They don't want to be disrupted-they like things just the way they are.
Let me give you an example from my research in Clark County Nevada (you may know it as Las Vegas) home of the fifth largest school district in the nation (operating budget of over $2 billion!).
In 2009, I interviewed several local principals. One principal discussed how his purchase request for new Dell computers was denied by the district bureaucrats because the computers came with 21 inch monitors. District rules prohibited monitors larger than 19 inch-despite the fact that Dell was selling the 21 inch monitors for less than the 19 inch. There were many similar stories of frustration.
Anyone who has ever run their own business should immediately see the problem. Principals have little control over the resources in their school. Everything from teachers to textbooks is rationed by a central office commissar - sometimes approval requires the rubber stamp of several bureaucrats (up to seven in Clark County). The central control of public schools is an essential ingredient to prevent disruption-it allows the establishment to build alliances by co-opting players from the teacher union to the for-profit corporation.
The result means technology is treated as a cost, not a means to increase productivity and reduce costs. Using technology to actually increase productivity and reduce costs would mean reducing the demand for teachers, administrators and central office commissars. Co-opted for-profit corporations also prefer the larger, less competitive market because it is easier, and cheaper, to sell to the "edublob" than hundreds of thousands of autonomous and competitive schools.
In other words, you can't sell technology that increases productivity and truly disrupts-only technology that pretends to do both.
For the disruptive education startups, forget about selling to the public school districts. Take your products to the entrepreneurial schools-private schools, virtual schools, charter schools, home school networks or even directly to the students. These schools and organizations only exist by convincing parents to enroll their children-they are hungry for ways to improve.
Finally, if you are up to the challenge, figure out ways to improve access to high quality teachers. In a country where it is almost impossible to fire bad teachers, the teacher quality gap in the United States is a major problem. According to Eric Hanushek at Stanford University a good teacher averages 1.5 years of learning gains from their students while a bad teacher averages just 0.5 year gains. In other words, a good teacher gives a 1 year learning advantage for their students compared to bad teachers. Now multiply those results over several years.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of education startups trying to attack the problem from the bottom up. Several tutoring services like WizIQ, Udemy and BlueTeach (to name a few) connect teachers with students. At the other end you have peer-to-peer education networks like Student of Fortune and OpenStudy. There are also startups mixing tutoring with adaptive-learning (the program adapts to provide lessons covering the subjects where the student is most deficient) like Grockit and Sophia Pathways. There are even specialization services like CodeAcademy which provide students a platform to develop computer programming skills.
Finally there is, Khan Academy, a free service offering more than 3,000 lessons on YouTube. Khan also integrates quizes to assess student ability and redirects students to the relevant lesson when they struggle.
Not all of these programs will succeed, but they're all bypassing the flawed school system to offer education services whenever, wherever to whoever. This is the only way to have a chance at disrupting education.
Image credit: Getty Images/Sean MacEntee.
Ravitch: What Scrooge might think of modern school reform - 4 views
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Ravitch: What Scrooge might think of modern school reform
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement that she just updated.
Dear Deborah,
As we enter the holiday season, our thoughts naturally turn to family celebrations, but also to those who do not share the advantages and blessings we enjoy. We all know Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the story of Scrooge. It's played regularly on television at this time of year, and we see how Scrooge comes to understand the plight of Tiny Tim and his family and realizes that he must strive to be kinder and more generous to others.
If I could update this tale for today's school reformers, I would begin by asking them to read a very important paper by Helen F. Ladd titled "Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence." A professor of economics at Duke University, Ladd is one of the nation's leading experts on issues of accountability. The paper was delivered at an academic conference last month. I recommend it to you and to all our readers. Aside from footnotes, it is only 25 pages long. (Coincidentally, Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske published an opinion piece, summarizing her paper, in The New York Times on Sunday. Read the full paper for the citations.)
I read Professor Ladd's paper and planned to summarize the key points, but when I finished, I realized that my copy was studded with underlining, asterisks, and stars. So let me quote from Ladd's abstract:
"Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers and the promotion of competition, are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little-and are not likely to contribute much in the future-to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools."
A proponent of evidence-based policymaking, Ladd shows that our current school reform policies are not based on evidence. She cites research demonstrating that the gaps between the most affluent and the least affluent children more than doubled in the past half-century, and that the income-based achievement gap is now much larger than the racial achievement gap. She points out that the racial achievement gap narrowed from the 1970s to the 1980s and has remained stagnant since then.
Children from low-income households are more likely to experience poor health and low birth weight, more likely to change residences more frequently and move from school to school, have less access to books and language experiences, and less access to high-quality preschool or to after-school programs and summer activities that middle-income families take for granted. As every testing program reveals, the average test scores of low-income students are likely to be lower than those of their middle-income and high-income peers.
Poverty makes a difference in test scores, and Ladd shows that this is the case not only in the U.S., but in other nations as well, even in such high-performing nations as South Korea, Finland, and Canada. But our impoverished students seem to do "particularly badly" compared with their peers in other countries, "while U.S. students from more advantaged backgrounds perform reasonably well by international standards."
It is disturbing that we have so many more impoverished students - "more than 2-and-a-half times that in Finland and Canada and 50 percent more than in the Netherlands," and this disparity is reflected in our national performance. We should be paying more attention to meeting the needs of our poorest students, not just to raise their test scores but to improve their lives.
The public rhetoric of school reform refers to global competition but Professor Ladd says: "Perhaps even more important, a well-educated populace is essential for a functioning democracy and for the nurturing of a culturally rich and innovative society."
So what does she recommend?
First, we could reduce poverty directly, but she recognizes that this is unlikely in the current economic and political environment.
Second, we could deny that there is any correlation between poverty and educational achievement and expect the schools alone to solve the problems of inequality. She writes: "That is, in fact what our current federal policy, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), does." She asks what possible reasons policymakers would have to deny a correlation that is so obvious and suggests the following possible reasons:
1) Policymakers believe that schools should be able to overcome the effects of poverty, thereby overlooking the difference between what is desirable and what is feasible;
2) Policymakers refuse to acknowledge that some children won't reach 100 percent proficiency. She recalls that former president George W. Bush liked to say that we should not accept "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Thus, in theory, all children should reach 100 percent proficiency, but as Ladd points out, "Simply wanting something to be true does not make it so."
3) Policymakers claim that if some schools can achieve high academic results for disadvantaged children, then all schools should be expected to do so. Ladd points out that the few schools that appear to have done so usually have significant additional resources, longer hours, and the type of motivated parents who seek out such schools. And, "believing that one can simply extrapolate from these few success stories to the system as a whole requires a willful denial of the basic empirical relationship between [socioeconomic status] and educational achievement."
4) Undoubtedly, some who deny the correlation between poverty and academic outcomes have "the desire to discredit schools and generate pressure for greater privatization of the education system." The No Child Left Behind Act, she notes, leads "either to large numbers of failing schools or to dramatic lowering of state standards. Both outcomes serve to discredit the public education system and lend support to arguments that the system itself is failing and needs to be changed in major ways."
Ladd criticizes the current vogue to judge teachers by their students' test scores. Such evaluations, she writes, "are likely to do more harm than good because they start from the assumption that teachers are shirking rather than the assumption that they need support and constructive counseling."
Ladd suggests that what is needed are positive policy interventions, such as early-childhood and preschool programs; school-based health clinics and social services; after-school programs and summer programs; and paying more attention to inputs such as school quality and school processes than to outcome measures such as test scores.
She concludes: "The most productive step for the federal government in the short run would be to eliminate No Child Left Behind."
Helen Ladd's paper is so rich with data, evidence, research, logic, common sense, and humanity that even Scrooge might be persuaded to pay attention. Even Scrooge might agree that our current efforts at school reform are ignoring the needs of the neediest children. Even Scrooge might wake up and realize that schools alone cannot equalize vast income gaps and cannot reinvent our social order.
Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all!
And warm wishes for a great 2012!
Diane
http://benton.org/node/107159 - 0 views
The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics - 1 views
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Alice E. Marwick
Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research New England; Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
danah boyd
Microsoft Research; New York University (NYU) - Department of Media, Culture, and Communication; University of New South Wales (UNSW); Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011
Abstract:
While teenage conflict is nothing new, today's gossip, jokes, and arguments often play out through social media like Formspring, Twitter, and Facebook. Although adults often refer to these practices with the language of "bullying," teens are more likely to refer to the resultant skirmishes and their digital traces as "drama." Drama is a performative set of actions distinct from bullying, gossip, and relational aggression, incorporating elements of them but also operating quite distinctly. While drama is not particularly new, networked dynamics reconfigure how drama plays out and what it means to teens in new ways. In this paper, we examine how American teens conceptualize drama, its key components, participant motivations for engaging in it, and its relationship to networked technologies. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork, we examine what drama means to teenagers and its relationship to visibility and privacy. We argue that the emic use of "drama" allows teens to distance themselves from practices which adults may conceptualize as bullying. As such, they can retain agency - and save face - rather than positioning themselves in a victim narrative. Drama is a gendered process that perpetrates conventional gender norms. It also reflects discourses of celebrity, particularly the mundane interpersonal conflict found on soap operas and reality television. For teens, sites like Facebook allow for similar performances in front of engaged audiences. Understanding how "drama" operates is necessary to recognize teens' own defenses against the realities of aggression, gossip, and bullying in networked publics.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 25
Keywords: drama, bullying, gender, internet, aggression, teens, youth
Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: September 13, 2011
Suggested Citation
Marwick, Alice E. and boyd, danah, The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics (September 12, 2011). A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926349
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Contact Information
Alice E. Marwick
Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research New England ( email )
One Memorial Drive, 12th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States
Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society ( email )
Harvard Law School, Baker House
1587 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
Danah Boyd (Contact Author)
Microsoft Research ( email )
One Memorial Drive, 12th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States
HOME PAGE: http://research.microsoft.com/
New York University (NYU) - Department of Media, Culture, and Communication ( email )
239 Greene St., 7th Floor
New York, NY 10003-1836
United States
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Sydney , NSW 2052
Australia
Harvard University - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School, Baker House
1587 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
State High School Tests: Changes in State Policies and the Impact of the College and Ca... - 1 views
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Last week, the Center on Education Policy released its 10th annual report on state high school testing policies. State High School Tests: Changes in State Policies and the Impact of the College and Career Readiness Movement finds that fewer states are requiring students to pass an exit exam to receive a high school diploma than last year, yet assessments that measure a student's readiness for college and/or a career are gaining in popularity. The report and profiles for states with high school exit exam policies, college entrance exams (such as the ACT or SAT), and/or college and career readiness assessments can be downloaded free-of-charge from CEP's Web site at www.cep-dc.org.
Report: http://www.cep-dc.org/displayDocument.cfm?DocumentID=385
State Profiles: http://www.cep-dc.org/page.cfm?FloatingPageID=23
XSEDE Project - 1 views
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Shodor Announces XSEDE Project
BY Hillary Stoker, Staff
A partnership of 17 institutions, including Shodor, has committed to developing the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). XSEDE will be the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world.
Scientists and engineers use these resources and services-things like supercomputers, collections of data, and new tools-to propel scientific discovery and improve our lives. They are a crucial part of research in fields such as earthquake engineering, materials science, medicine, epidemiology, genomics, astronomy, and biology.
"Enabling scientific discovery through enhanced researcher productivity is our goal, and XSEDE's ultimate reason for being," explained Barry Schneider, a program director in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF will fund the XSEDE project for five years at $121 million.
"For this sort of cyberscience to be truly effective and provide unique insights, it requires a cyberinfrastructure of local computing hardware at sites around the country, advanced supercomputers at larger centers, generally available software packages, and fast networks. Ideally, they should all work together so the researcher can move from local to national resources transparently and easily."
XSEDE will replace and expand the TeraGrid project that started more than a decade ago. More than 10,000 scientists used the TeraGrid to complete thousands of research projects, at no cost to the scientists.
Shodor staff and student interns will be working to bring its computational science education projects to XSEDE, to help develop new curricular resources, to train faculty to approach computational thinking from a parallel perspective, and to build an outreach program capable of attracting more young people into the field by continuing its efforts in workshops, apprenticeships, and internships.
Shodor's role in TeraGrid started with providing digital library expertise for disseminating the best training materials through a new web resource, hpcuniversity.org.
"Once again, Shodor has a great chance to partner with some of the nation's leading institutions to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education at all levels. We will leverage our National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) for faculty and teacher training; our National Science Digital Library (NSDL) pathway, the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD), for materials development and dissemination; and our Computing MATTERS efforts reaching students in the Triangle area and across North Carolina," said Dr. Robert Panoff, Executive Director of Shodor.
As the only institution in North Carolina selected as a full partner in XSEDE, Shodor will leverage its more than $1M share of the project to bring NC K-12 schools, NC community colleges, the whole UNC system, and other organizations into the project with new opportunities for collaboration.
"Through the XSEDE project Shodor will be doing important work with educators across the country to incorporate computational science and engineering into undergraduate and graduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses across the nation," said Scott Lathrop, the new director of Education and Outreach Services for XSEDE. "This effort will include preparing tomorrow's K-12 teachers to make computational thinking an integral component in their courses. As a result of Shodor's efforts, the nation's workforce will be better prepared to advance scientific discovery and scholarly research."
Initially, XSEDE will support 16 supercomputers across the country. It also includes other specialized digital resources and services to complement these computers. These resources will be expanded throughout the lifetime of the project.
The XSEDE partnership includes: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Virginia, Shodor Education Foundation, Southeastern Universities Research Association, University of Chicago, University of California San Diego, Indiana University, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Purdue University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, University of California Berkeley, Rice University, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It is led by the University of Illinois's National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Cyberlearning Research Summit - 2 views
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Cyberlearning Research Summit
Check out this Cyberlearning Summit: http://cyberlearning.sri.com/w/index.php/Main_Page
Program: http://cyberlearning.sri.com/w/index.php/Cyberlearning:January_2012_Program
Speakers: http://cyberlearning.sri.com/w/index.php/Cyberlearning:Speakers
January 18, 2012
National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street Northwest, Washington D.C.
Summit Program
Speaker Abstracts
Like our Facebook Page Follow us on Twitter
Announcements
Program announced: See the Summit Program and Speaker Abstracts
Live web cast of the event will be available (details coming).
Want to help us define Cyberlearning Topic Areas?
NSF has the potential to lead a new wave of STEM initiatives through its CyberLearning: Transforming Education program and its cross-cutting initiatives in cyberinfrastructure. To continue to lead in an increasingly crowded space of contributors from other agencies, corporations, and interest groups, however, the community NSF funding fosters will need to realize the "transformative potential" called for. Realizing this transformative potential requires vision, strategy, engagement, talent, and commitment to moving forward.
The Cyberlearning Research Summit is a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies, in the style of the TED conferences. Building on those visions, participants will gather as birds-of-a-feather to crystallize a sense of the unique opportunities that should be the focus of the research community now. We seek a community sense of how to couple the learning sciences with related fields of innovation to leverage new technology affordances for the deepest learning outcomes. Through the contributions of diverse participants, the summit seeks to exemplify the "transformative potential" of cutting edge research and development to dramatically advance learning - and is expected to be influential in identifying promising directions for advanced R&D efforts.
To facilitate collegial participation at the physical location of the summit, in-person attendance is limited. The talks will be webcast live on the day of the event, allowing a broader audience to watch and interact.
Agenda
8:00 am - 5:00 pm, with a reception immediately following until 7 pm.
The Summit Program includes about 30 Speakers presenting short, lively TED-style talks on a variety of Cyberlearning Topics.
Conference Hotel and Shuttle
Free shuttle transportation between the conference hotel and the National Geographic Society will be provided on the day of the Summit.
Questions
Questions? Contact cyberlearning-info@sri.com
The summit is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Grant #1132393) as a means to engage the community in accelerating the focus on transformative R&D in Cyberlearning and related programs, and is hosted by SRI International, the National Geographic Society, and the Lawrence Hall of Science, signaling a strong commitment to innovative STEM learning both in schools and beyond schools. Additional support is also provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Conference Overview
NSF has the potential to lead a new wave of STEM initiatives through its CyberLearning: Transforming Education program and its cross-cutting initiatives in cyberinfrastructure. To continue to lead in an increasingly crowded space of contributors from other agencies, corporations, and interest groups, however, the community NSF funding fosters will need to realize the "transformative potential" called for. Realizing this transformative potential requires vision, strategy, engagement, talent, and commitment to moving forward.
The Cyberlearning Research Summit is a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies, in the style of the TED conferences. Building on those visions, participants will gather as birds-of-a-feather to crystallize a sense of the unique opportunities that should be the focus of the research community now. We seek a community sense of how to couple the learning sciences with related fields of innovation to leverage new technology affordances for the deepest learning outcomes. Through the contributions of diverse participants, the summit seeks to exemplify the "transformative potential" of cutting edge research and development to dramatically advance learning - and is expected to be influential in identifying promising directions for advanced R&D efforts.
To facilitate collegial participation at the physical location of the summit, in-person attendance is limited. The talks will be webcast live on the day of the event, allowing a broader audience to watch and interact.
Learn more about the objectives of the Summit.
Agenda
8:00 am - 5:00 pm, with a reception immediately following until 7 pm.
The Summit Program includes about 30 Speakers presenting short, lively TED-style talks on a variety of Cyberlearning Topics.
The summit is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Grant #1132393) as a means to engage the community in accelerating the focus on transformative R&D in Cyberlearning and related programs, and is hosted by SRI International, the National Geographic Society, and the Lawrence Hall of Science, signaling a strong commitment to innovative STEM learning both in schools and beyond schools. Additional support is also provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
From the River to the Sea Chesapeake Bay to the Ocean - 1 views
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From the River to the Sea- and Ocean Literacy
By bonniebraceysutton
The Chesapeake Bay
Today, the Chesapeake yields more fish and shellfish than any other estuary in the country, close to 45,000 tons annually. But due to increasing acidity in some parts of the bay, the shells of young oysters are growing as thick as in the past, making them easy prey for crabs.
According to a study conducted at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science , acidity is increasing in some parts of the Chesapeake Bay faster than it is occurring in the open ocean. The study should be of interest to citizen scientists.
When I was a small child, long ago, the sea was where the beach was. I had no conceptual framework of the idea of the ocean.
The science that I was taught was not the kind of science I learned about in deep kinds of learning. I went to a Catholic school and we did not have much science. I was an adult before I understood much about the Chesapeake Bay. Because of fear, and segregation we rarely visited any but the "Black" beaches. They were not the best. So when I was a new teacher and learned a lot about water, and specifically the Chesapeake Bay; I was fascinated to learn the history of the Chesapeake Bay. The book by Michener helped to frame my ideas of the region.
My family has native American roots, so we were interested in the history of the people native to the region.
HISTORY
Back in the day, Blacks and Native Americans lived in Freetowns. ( where they were allowed to live.) That history and that of the people who helped slaves and Native Americans was interesting as well.
The storyline, like much of Michener's work, depicts a number of characters over a long time period. Each chapter begins with a voyage which provides the foundation for the chapter plot. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves through English settlers throughout the 17th century, slavery and tobacco growing, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation and attempted assimilation, to the final major event being the Watergate scandal. The last voyage, a funeral, is in 1978.
http://www.amazon.com/Chesapeake-James-Michener/dp/0449211584
First I studied at the National Aquarium in Baltimore with Dr. Valerie Chase, as we created the "Living in Water" curriculum.
IntroductionProcess-Orientated Science in the ClassroomThe Hands-on Approach: What Research SaysScience process skills used in theis curriculumTeaching hands-on science
http://www.forsea.org/LIWTOC.HTML
I had a lot to learn. Before working with Dr. Chase, my science learning about the Bay was reading science. What a wonderful experience I had learning ecosystems, and adaptations and all about The first several days were headache days, because I had never heard of most of what she was talking about and I had a lot of vocabulary, ideas, and information to review.
This is their mission.
Through transforming experiences, the National Aquarium Institute inspires people to enjoy, respect, and protect the aquatic world.
But hard science became fun science. I loved the work at the Aquarium and we were in the field, and behind the scenes at the Aquarium. I treasured the learning experience and became a better teacher.
Here is the home page of the Aquarium , http://www.aqua.org/http://www.aqua.org/
You can take a virtual tour here
http://www.aqua.org/virtual-tour-baltimore/
This is important because there is a cost associated with the visit and there were parents who did not want to pay it. So the kids and I applied for grants that would make this tour a part of our learning.
Ever hear of Anoxia Mae?You do know what Anoxia is , don't you?
Here is a history tour of Solomon's Island
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.470228176326.256778.593996326&type=1&l=9909fdada8
This is a tour of Wye Mills
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150350735691327.396859.593996326&type=1&l=0c6755aaf9
This is an awesome place on the Rhode River.
The Learning Lab at SERC.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.115870491326.129996.593996326&type=1&l=48b6eab680
SERC Canoe Trip
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.115866001326.129992.593996326&type=1
http://www.aqua.org/
Never mind that my principal was not into hands on science. I did it. It was wonderful. Parents loved the idea that we were being active scientists.
But now there are even better ways to study the Bay.
This from the National Geographic
http://www.fieldscope.org/
More?
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/projects/cbfieldscope.html
Sea Rise and the Chesapeake Bay
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/news/sea-rise-and-storms-chesapeake-bay/?ar_a=4&ar_r=3
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay FieldScope Project is a "citizen science" initiative in which students investigate water quality issues on local and regional scales and collaborate with students across the Bay to analyze data and take action. Chesapeake Bay FieldScope is a project of National Geographic's Education Programs in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office.
For more on the Chesapeake Bay FieldScope project, visit the National Geographic site here.
Chesapeake Bay FieldScope consists of four project-based learning modules that leverage the FieldScope tool:
Connecting to the Watershed with Maps
Field Investigation & Data Collection
Data Sharing and Analysis
Taking Action
I was one in a workshop at the University of Illinois when this project was shared as well as ESRI information.
I believe in STEAM, but it is a part of the way in which I teach. I think Eat a Crab Lab is both science , and a culinary tour.
I know the songs of the Chesapeake Bay and we as teachers read the saga of the bay by Skipjacks and in children's literature.
I went to the National Geographic for a Summer Workshop. I was lucky enough to be one of two people selected to participate from the state of Virginia.
I had so much to learn. People talk about STEAM. Well I suppose if you have never been taught well, you have to insert the arts into your work.
I was taught to include a cross section of subjects into my work and we actually wrote lesson plans and tested them in front of an audience of our geographic peers. Years later I am still trying to repay that wonderful summer by teaching as best as I can and sharing the knowledge. I learned the history of, saw a wonderful film produced by the National Geographic and we actually traveled to several places on the Chesapeake Bay. With the National Geographic you take a look at many ways of thinking about a subject.
Maybe the reason most people have to think of STEAM is because they are not rooted in geography. A geo-literate population can make far-reaching decisions about their health, their environment, and their community.
Geography is the study of natural and human constructed phenomena from a spatial perspective. Geography has two main sub disciplines:
Human geography includes such subjects as demography, human settlements, transportation, recreation and tourism, resources, religion, social traditions, human migration, agriculture, urban systems, and economic activities
Physical geography is concerned with the study of the Earth's atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere from theoretical and applied viewpoints.
Sometimes the disciplines of human and physical geography combine knowledge to create a more holistic synthesis.
Dr. Danny Edelson shared his ideas in this essay.
By Daniel C. Edelson, PhD
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Whether they realize it or not, every member of our modern society makes far-reaching decisions every day. A far-reaching decision is one that has impacts far beyond the time and place where the decision is being made. For example, when commuters choose between driving or taking public transportation, when corporate boards consider whether they should shift manufacturing from one country to another, and when troops in the field translate orders into actions, they are all making far-reaching decisions.
While the impacts of any particular far-reaching decision may be small, the cumulative impact of the decisions made by millions of people is enormous. The National Geographic Society is working to prepare our young people for the far-reaching decisions they will face throughout their lives. To be prepared for these decisions, they must be able to recognize the far-reaching implications of the decisions they make, and they must be able to take those impacts into account when making decisions. This requires that they have three forms of understanding:
How our world works. Modern science characterizes our world as a set of interconnected physical, biological, and social systems. These systems create, move, and transform resources. For example, in ecosystems, nutrients are created, transformed, and transported through food chains. Similarly, in economic systems, people transform natural resources into objects with economic value, which can be transported, used, traded, and sold. Every human decision is affected by these systems and has effects on them.
How our world is connected. Today more than ever, every place in our world is connected to every other place. To understand the far-reaching implications of decisions, one must understand how human and natural systems connect places to each other. For example, in the 1980s, scientists discovered that the prevailing winds that speed flights from Chicago to Boston were also carrying power plant emissions from the Midwest that were causing acid rain in New England.
How to make well-reasoned decisions. Good decision-making involves systematic analysis of outcomes based on priorities. For example, in deciding where to build a road, a planner will establish priorities for cost, capacity, and impact on communities and the natural environment. He will then predict the outcomes of different options based on those criteria, and will weigh the tradeoffs between these options based on values associated with the different criteria.
Geo-literacy
We call the combination of skills and understanding necessary to make far-reaching decisions geo-literacy. The three components of geo-literacy are understanding human and natural systems, geographic reasoning, and systematic decision-making.
Understanding human and natural systems: A geo-literate individual is able to reason about the creation, movement, and transformation of materials in human and natural systems.
Geographic reasoning: A geo-literate individual is able to reason about the characteristics of a location and its connections to other locations.
Systematic decision-making: A geo-literate individual is able to articulate decision-making criteria, project outcomes of alternatives, and evaluate those outcomes in terms of the established criteria.
To be geo-literate is to be able to combine these three abilities to make decisions in real-world contexts. Systems understanding and geographic reasoning enable a geo-literate individual to analyze the options in a decision. Systematic decision-making enables a geo-literate individual to weigh those options carefully.
But back to the Chesapeake Bay
Estuary? Do you know what it is? Most don't. I read an essay about a
skip
Estuaries are bodies of water formed where freshwater from rivers or streams connect with salt ocean water. The mixed water is called brackish, and the salinity may fluctuate dramatically for example depending on freshwater input from rains and waves and tides influences from the ocean. Estuary areas include river mouths, bays, lagoons and salt marshes Source http://www.untamedscience.com/biology/world-biomes/estuaries-biome
Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, boundary map. (Source:NOAA)
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and is roughly divided between the states of Maryland and Virginia. In the Maryland portion there are some 6,945 miles of shoreline, encompassing a wide variety of habitats fromsalt marshes to riverine systems to tidal, freshwater marshes.
The multi-component Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Maryland reflects this diversity of habitat, geography, population and culture. Each component is unique, but the goals of research, monitoring, education and stewardship remain consistent throughout. Components (sites) are located at Otter Point Creek in Harford County, Jug Bay in Anne Arundel and Prince Georges Counties and Monie Bay in Somerset County.
A component is a part of the whole. In the Maryland Reserve there are three "components" which are listed above. Each component represents a different habitat found within the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay.
The Maryland Reserve is one of 27 within the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS), forming a partnership between coastal states and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect valuable estuarine habitats.
A cooperative management approach is used involving the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which promotes long-term research, education and stewardship.
Here is an exciting project for teachers to use. http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/program/chesapeake-water-quality/
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and is home to unique biodiversity. The Bay plays an important role in local commerce, history, and is a critical environmental resource.
The Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Project is a project-based, citizen science educational initiative that engages students in 21st century investigations of watershed health using real-time geospatial technology. The project provides students with a dynamic experience that combines classroom learning with outdoor field experiences and technology-supported inquiry. Students use Fieldscope, a web-based interactive mapping tool, to share and analyze data they collect on the health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Through this project, students will gain a better understanding of water quality issues and the interconnectedness between humans and their environment. Students are encouraged to embark upon their own projects to put their learning into action through watershed clean-up activities, participation in Bay restoration projects, and the like..
How we know that online technology works is that I can offer this to you and Google Maps, and ESRI resources to share observing the ocean.
Hopefully this will lead to Ocean Literacy.
The ocean is the defining feature of our planet. Ocean Literacy means understanding the ocean's influence on you and your influence on the ocean. There are 7 principles of Ocean Literacy - ideas scientists and educators agree everyone should understand about the ocean. Join the Network to build a more ocean literate society!
Explore the Site
The Ocean Literacy Framework comprises the seven principles and the Scope and Sequence.
The Ocean Literacy Network showcases the work of the community.
Research links to current research in ocean sciences and learning.
Ocean Literacy News for the latest on ocean literacy activities.
How Mobile Technology is Reshaping the Global Landscape - 0 views
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How Mobile Technology is Reshaping the Global Landscape
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/120...
With smart phones now outnumbering personal computers, there has been a sea change in the way people access and share information. On December 8, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum exploring how mobile technology can ease the everyday lives of Americans, enabling use…
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2011/1208_mobile_technology/20111208_mobile_technology.pdf
computer education week events - 1 views
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Third Annual Computer Science Education Week Spotlights Importance of Standards and Local Efforts to Ensure Strong Workforce
http://thejournal.com/Articles/2011/12/05/Overhauling-Computer-Science-Education.aspx?Page=2
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- While current labor projections show the creation of 800,000 new computing jobs by 2018, our nation's education system is doing little to prepare students for these future careers. Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), celebrating its third year from December 4-10, 2011, focuses on the need to build strong computer science education programs in schools, giving students the opportunity to explore this growing field and supporting the country's need for a workforce skilled in computing.
A main focus of this year's CSEdWeek is to demonstrate how local, grassroots efforts can raise the status and quality of computer science education. Fewer than ten states count high school computer science courses as a core academic subject in graduation requirements, and computer science education suffers from a lack of teacher professional development, quality curriculum, student diversity and teacher certification.
"We're using this week in December, and other year-round efforts, to call attention to the need for stronger computer science education throughout the nation," said Debra Richardson, Chair of CSEdWeek and Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine.
"We're mobilizing the computing community and grassroots partners-everyone from parents to teachers to CEOs-to encourage local policy changes and instructional reforms to provide broader access to computer science education so that all students can succeed in our information-driven world."
To address the challenges in computer science education, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), founded by ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), is releasing a revised version of its computer science education standards, CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards, during CSEdWeek. These learning standards, which have evolved from the models released in 2003 and 2006, will serve as a catalyst for widespread adoption of computer science education for all K-12 students.
"These standards represent the work of experts across all educational levels. They are our community's best effort to identify the computer science skills that students need at every stage of their K-12 education to ensure that they are prepared to thrive in the new global economy," said Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of CSTA. "We decided that the release of our standards should coincide with CSEdWeek because this week is all about celebrating the importance of computing and our commitment to ensuring that our students have the skills and knowledge they need."
To date, CSEdWeek has registered over 2,000 pledges of support by individuals, with support from organizations such as Microsoft, CA Technologies, Google, Change the Equation, National Science Foundation, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Inc. and the American Association of Engineering Education and others. Some of the local celebrations include:
Friday, Dec. 2: A mobile app boot camp for high school students hosted at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Mass.; additional events will take place throughout the week of Dec. 5 at Bristol Community College, Hampshire College and MassBay Community College.
Monday, Dec. 5: Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary offering career guidance and guided tours of top Canadian research labs, as well as the university's computer science facilities, for high school students and teachers.
Tuesday, Dec. 6: CA Technologies launch of a new national initiative, Tech Girls Rock, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, in New York, N.Y.
University of California Berkeley hosting a day-long celebration for high school teachers and students to inform and inspire all participants about the possibilities of computing.
Wednesday, Dec. 7: Cool Computing at Georgia Tech event for high school students showcasing the "cool" things taking place in computing.
Thursday, Dec. 8: 200 third-graders learning hands-on programming and web site development at "Techie Club," an ongoing outreach effort supported by Columbus, Ohio's TECH CORPS.
Friday, Dec. 9: CSEdWeek, CSTA and National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) representatives honored at the White House as "Champions of Change," which is part of President Obama's Winning the Future initiative (whitehouse.gov/champions).
"At a time when the country is talking about jobs - where they are, and how to create them - the computing industry is desperate to fill thousands of vacancies," said Computing in the Core (CinC) Representative Della Cronin. "Computer science is where the jobs are, and through efforts such as CSEdWeek, we aim to eliminate misperceptions about the discipline and to educate young people, their parents, educators and others about how important it is to include computer science in K-12 education in this country."
CSEdWeek is a collaborative activity of CinC, a non-partisan advocacy coalition of associations, corporations, scientific societies, and other non-profits that strive to elevate computer science education to a core academic subject in K-12 education. CSEdWeek's core partners are the Association for Computing Machinery, Microsoft, Google, Computer Science Teachers Association, NCWIT, IEEE Computer Society, Computing Research Association, College Board, Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, SAS, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and National Science Teachers Association.
SOURCE Computer Science Education Week
Computer Science Education Week - 2 views
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About CSEdWeek
http://www.csedweek.org/about
KEY FACTS | NEWSROOM | PARTNERS
CSEdWeek 2011, December 4 to 10, 2011, is a highly distributed celebration of the impact of computing and the need for computer science education.
Last year, with leadership from Congressman Vernon Ehlers and Congressman Jared Polis, the US House of Representatives endorsed December 5 to 11, 2010 - the week of Grace Hopper's birthday (December 9, 1906) - as Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) to recognize the critical role of computing in today's society and the imperative to bolster computer science education at all levels. Going forward, CSEdWeek will always be held the week containing December 9th.
Kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) education has fallen woefully behind in preparing students with the fundamental computer science knowledge and skills they need for 21st century careers. Click here to learn more about how your state is doing.
Computer Science is:
Computing
Computer Engineering
Informatics
Information Technology
Software Engineering
Information Systems
CSEdWeek recognizes that computer science is ubiquitous:
It touches everyone's daily lives and plays a critical role in society
It drives innovation and economic growth
It provides rewarding job opportunities
Computer science education is essential for:
Exposing students to critical thinking and problem solving
Instilling understanding of computational thinking for success in the digital age
Preparing students to attack the world's most challenging problems from a computation perspective
As the role and significance of computing has grown, the teaching of computer science has dramatically declined:
There is insufficient innovative computing curricula for students at all levels
Few students have the opportunity to study computer science in an engaging and rigorous way
The lack of ethnic and gender diversity among those who take computer science courses is unacceptable
Teachers have few opportunities for professional development in computing
Certification for computer science teachers is virtually nonexistent nationwide
Computer Science Education Week 2011 is once again being Chaired by Debra J Richardson, Professor of Informatics and Founding Dean of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Ruthe Farmer, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, is serving as Vice Chair for CSEdWeek 2011.
This week is an activity of the Computing in the Core coalition
I can Grow Youth Garden Award - 2 views
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Burpee Home Gardens® is now accepting applications for the 2012 "I Can Grow" Youth Garden Award through Friday, Dec. 23, 2011.
http://www.burpeehomegardens.com/ICanGrow/_YouthGardenAward.aspx
The 2012 "I Can Grow" Youth Garden Award will be presented to established or start-up school and community gardens that demonstrate well-developed and staffed plans for a youth-centered educational program, with an emphasis on nutrition and food production, environmental awareness, social responsibility and scholastic integration.
Two grand-prize winners will be awarded up to 500 vegetable and herb plants, including:
The Burpee BOOST high-nutrition collection
$2,500 in garden supplies
On-site assistance for garden layout and installation from the experts at Burpee Home Gardens
5 gallons of Daniels® Plant Food and one hose-end sprayer
A Flip Video™ camera to document the garden's progress throughout the year.
Three runner-up winners will receive 500 vegetable and herb plants, including the Burpee BOOST collection, 5 gallons of Daniels® Plant Food, one hose-end sprayer and a Flip Video camera.
STEAM - 1 views
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STEAM = Science & Technology interpreted through Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements.
Recent News about STE@M
DECEMBER 2011
Georgette Yakman, founder of STEAM Education, was just announced as an invited speaker for the Big Ideas Fest in Half Moon Bay, CA on December 5, 2011. This fest is a project of The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). The title of her talk is: "STEAM: Learning That is Representative of the Whole World and How it Works Naturally "
See the line-up of chosen speakers: http://bigideasfest.org/2011-big-ideas-fest/2011-speakers-big-ideas-fest
"The annual Big Ideas Fest is an extraordinary immersion into collaboration and design that focuses on transformational change in K-20 education. Creative doers and thinkers from diverse levels of education gather to learn from and share with each other. Breaking down silos and empowering champions, Big Ideas Fest places learning at the front and center of all that we do. The participants are inspirational. The work is dynamic. And the results are revolutionary.
Big Ideas Fest believes answers and innovation are all around us. The event gathers top minds to share their work and ideas in an environment that encourages risk-taking and overall imagining of the impossible.
Big Ideas Fest's unique format includes RapidFire talks from leading innovators; interactive networking with education's movers and shakers; and Action Collab design-thinking labs that engage groups to brainstorm, prototype, and ultimately create scaleable solutions to cumbersome issues in education."
AUGUST 11, 2011
Southwest Times, Pulaski, VA newspaper article about former teacher's work being recognized internationally: http://www.southwesttimes.com/news.php?id=6192
JUNE 2011
STE@M will be formally introduced at the first two STEM/STEAM conferences in Korea at two universities in Daegu and Seoul, Kyungpook National University and Ewha Woman's University. G. Yakman will co-keynote the conferences attended by: professors, teachers, businesses and governmental education leaders from around the country. STEAM has been declared by the minister of education as the new way to teach K-12 nationwide starting next year. It is very exciting, humbling and an honor for those involved in STEAM from the beginning to see six years of research and small scale implementation take off at a national level in one of the most advanced countries in the world! Thank you to Dr. Hjuksoo Kwon and Dr. Hyongyung Lee for creating the avenues and arranging the details of this opportunity for me to come and meet with others developing STE@M programs.
JANUARY, 2011
STE@M has just been approved by the Korean Ministry of Education to be an integral part of a K-12 initiative to have a new creative way to teach science education across the nation. A link to one of the many Korean newspaper articles announcing this news can be seen by clicking here.
DECEMBER, 2010
The concept of STE@M is published in the MassTEC December Newsletter on Page 5 (MassTEC = Massachusetts Technology Education Engineering Collaborative) -- you can visit http://masstec.org or click here to see the article.
How to Rescue Education Reform - 1 views
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How to Rescue Education Reform
Gracía Lam
By FREDERICK M. HESS and LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND
Published: December 5, 2011
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THE debate over renewing No Child Left Behind, the education reform act that will be 10 years old in January, has fallen along partisan lines even though school improvement is one of the few examples of bipartisan cooperation over the last decade.
Related in Opinion
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Though the law was initiated and signed by a Republican president, presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who once supported it, now talk about getting the federal government out of education, echoing Tea Party members who deem federal involvement a constitutional travesty. Democratic reformers, meanwhile, insist that the federal government has a role in telling states how to identify, punish and fix low-performing schools - despite little evidence that Washington has been good at any of these tasks. To existing mandates, they would add heavy-handed, unproven teacher-evaluation requirements that could stifle innovative teaching and school design.
We sorely need a smarter, more coherent vision of the federal role in K-12 education. Yet both parties find themselves hemmed in. Republicans are stuck debating whether, rather than how, the federal government ought to be involved in education, while Democrats are squeezed between superintendents, school boards and teachers' unions that want money with no strings, and activists with little patience for concerns about federal overreach.
When it comes to education policy, the two of us represent different schools of thought. One of us, Linda Darling-Hammond, is an education school professor who advised the Obama administration's transition team; the other, Rick Hess, has been a critic of school districts and schools of education. We disagree on much, including big issues like merit pay for teachers and the best strategies for school choice.
We agree, though, on what the federal government can do well. It should not micromanage schools, but should focus on the four functions it alone can perform.
First is encouraging transparency for school performance and spending. For all its flaws, No Child Left Behind's main contribution is that it pushed states to measure and report achievement for all students annually. Without transparency, it's tough for parents, voters and taxpayers to hold schools and public officials accountable. However, No Child Left Behind also let states use statistical gimmicks to report performance. Instead of the vague mandate of "adequate yearly progress," federal financing should be conditioned on truth in advertising - on reliably describing achievement (or lack thereof) and spending. To track achievement, states should be required to link their assessments to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or to adopt a similar multistate assessment). To shed light on equity and cost-effectiveness, states should be required to report school- and district-level spending; the resources students receive should be disclosed, not only their achievement.
Second is ensuring that basic constitutional protections are respected. No Child Left Behind required states to "disaggregate" assessment results to illuminate how disadvantaged or vulnerable populations - like black and Hispanic students and children from poor families - were doing. Enforcing civil rights laws and ensuring that dollars intended for low-income students and students with disabilities are spent accordingly have been parts of the Education Department's mandate since its creation in 1979. But efforts to reduce inequities have too often led to onerous and counterproductive micromanagement.
Third is supporting basic research. While the private market can produce applied research that can be put to profitable use, it tends to underinvest in research that asks fundamental questions. When it comes to brain science, language acquisition or the impact of computer-assisted tutoring, federal financing for reliable research is essential.
Finally, there is value in voluntary, competitive federal grants that support innovation while providing political cover for school boards, union leaders and others to throw off anachronistic routines. The Obama administration's $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition tried to do some of this, but it ended up demanding that winning states hire consultants to comply with a 19-point federal agenda, rather than truly innovate.
Beyond this list, the federal government is simply not well situated to make schools and teachers improve - no matter how much ambitious reformers wish it were otherwise. Under our system, dictates from Congress turn into gobbledygook as they travel from the Education Department to state education agencies and then to local school districts. Educators end up caught in a morass of prescriptions and prohibitions, bled of the initiative and energy that characterize effective schools.
The federal government can make states, localities and schools do things - but not necessarily do them well. Since decades of research make it clear that what matters for evaluating employees or turning around schools is how well you do it - rather than whether you do it a certain way - it's not surprising that well-intentioned demands for "bold" federal action on school improvement have a history of misfiring. They stifle problem-solving, encourage bureaucratic blame avoidance and often do more harm than good.
Perhaps No Child Left Behind's most enduring lesson is the value of humility - a virtue that must be taken to heart in crafting a smarter, more coherent federal role in schooling.
Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Linda Darling-Hammond is a professor of education at Stanford.
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Information Literacy | Digital Learning Environments| Judy Salpeter | Into the Driver's Seat | Scoop.it
Call it information literacy, media literacy, or network literacy, the ability to access, evaluate, synthesize, and build upon information and media are crucial skills. The following suggestions can help give your students the basic skills to be both technology-proficient and info-savvy.
Information Literacy
Remember typewritten card catalogs, multi-volume print encyclopedias, and dusty library shelves with outdated topics and material for classroom research? Today's students don't. Why resort to such antiquated methods when almost any subject will be found on Wikipedia or by googling it?
Educators know that answer. Many students cannot discriminate between posts that are accurate and attributable and those that are undocumented and misleading. This fact leads teachers to limit online research to subscription services like netTrekker or Web directories like Awesome Library. While sites like these certainly play an important role in the classroom, there remains a larger challenge for schools: how to develop a new generation of knowledgeable digital citizens who can operate in the unregulated online world.
Call it information literacy, media literacy, or network literacy, the ability to access, evaluate, synthesize, and build upon information and media are crucial skills. The following suggestions can help give your students the basic skills to be both technology-proficient and info-savvy.
Teach them to search
Researchers at the British Library recently confirmed what most teachers understand: Young people, while perfectly comfortable using computers and the Internet, are not naturally adept at search strategies. Left to their own devices, students will depend on natural language to search rather than analyze keywords that would be more effective. They also tend to rely entirely on a single search tool such as Yahoo or Google for obtaining information.
Challenge students to search using a variety of strategies and tools (see "21st-Century Literary Terms and Definitions") and report back on the most and least effective search approaches. As students prepare for a major research project, require them to include a number of keywords and search options they used along with their traditional, footnoted attributions.
Get meta about it
Much attention is paid to inaccuracies found in the Wikipedia Web site and other collaboratively created online sources, prompting certain educational organizations to ban their use for research. Why not treat the site itself as a subject of study? Recent analysis reports Wikipedia's accuracy to be comparable to that of Britannica's and Encarta's. Have students do their own accuracy analysis as they explore a topic with which they are particularly knowledgeable-their home community, for example, or a favorite sport or hobby. Do they find any misleading, inaccurate, or missing information in Wikipedia? How does it compare to overviews they find elsewhere?
Also encourage students to responsibly edit Wikipedia articles. Go over the site's own policies and guidelines. Discuss what makes a reliable source and what makes a piece of information verifiable. Also, read together the "discussion" section of Wikipedia, where editors pose questions, raise concerns, and explain why they think certain items should be added, deleted, or modified.
What makes a source viable?
Another interesting learning opportunity for users of Wikipedia is the site's explanation of what it is not-a dictionary, a blog, a Web directory, a vanity press, an online newspaper, a soapbox for opinion-sharing, or a publisher of original work. Analyzing such a list and getting students to define for themselves what makes an encyclopedia, a newspaper, and various other sources is a useful exercise. Such conversations might also involve a look at the advantages and disadvantages of various resources-not only with regard to the accuracy issues discussed earlier but also in terms of the fluidity and speed at which information is updated.
Students' use of the Internet for scholarship has moved beyond browsing. Bookmarks no longer suffice as the sole organizational tool needed to manage and organize information. Forward-thinking teachers are encouraging students to explore the new generation of options designed to connect them with digital media as well as with other human beings-tools such as del.icio.us (for organizing and sharing links with others), Flickr (for photo sharing), or aggregators such as Bloglines (for consolidating information based on RSS tags). Such tools help support an important National Council of Teachers of English literacy recommendation: the need for students to learn to manage "multiple streams of simultaneous information." (See sidebar).
Being aware of different media and their effectiveness at conveying information is another important component of 21st-century literacy. Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Are there times when video or music-or simple text, even-would be more effective? Having students compare diverse treatments of a single subject and critique the effectiveness of the media used is one way of exploring such issues. Encouraging them to experiment with more than one way of presenting their own research or ideas is another.
Who owns the words?
Copyright is a huge topic that goes beyond the scope of this article, but it is important for students living and interacting online to have a clear understanding of the legal issues involved in copying and redistributing the work of others. Some key concepts worth reiterating here include:
The creator of an original work-whether a student or a professional artist-automatically owns all rights to its use, with certain exceptions, including the exception for "fair use."
Fair use allows people to use copyrighted materials, without paying or getting special permission, if they are using the materials for the purpose of education, review, satire, or journalism, and are taking into consideration the following criteria:
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Barring some drastic redefinition or legal precedent, fair use does not apply to educational materials posted on the public Internet for others to access and redistribute at will.
The copyright holder can always choose to grant to others some or all rights to their work.
Learning to share
Creative Commons provides a powerful tool for students and teachers in today's digital universe. CC licenses allow authors to specify which rights they are granting the general public-such as the right to copy, make derivative works, distribute the work, or make money from it-and how they want to be credited for it. An understanding of Creative Commons not only allows students to determine the conditions under which they want to share their own work but also gives them an understanding of the legal and ethical issues involved in reusing the work of others in situations that do not qualify as fair use. It transforms copyright from an abstract concept, or one that is seen as protecting big commercial producers, to a set of less restrictive rules that allow for the free sharing of creative content and ideas online.
While digital materials circulated via e-mail or posted at sites such as YouTube frequently lack adequate information about the copyright holder, CC licensing-with the attribution requirement that typically accompanies it-is raising new awareness about the importance of identifying and citing one's sources. Fortunately, a number of media sharing tools, including Flickr and the Creative Commons music site, ccMixter, now offer easy options for posting and tracking authorship and giving credit.
The ease by which we all cut and paste these days raises many questions about the definition of the word "plagiarism." But by expecting students to provide attribution to the best of their ability, and discussing the challenges they encounter as they try to do this, the education world can help redefine what it means to be an ethical and active participant in collaborative authoring ventures.
"Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups," writes the NCTE Executive Committee. "As society and technology change, so does literacy." While there's no telling what next year's technologies will bring in the way of literacy opportunities and challenges, today's educators can lay the groundwork for whatever is to come by preparing students to be critical thinkers, savvy researchers, and ethical contributors to the Participation Age.
By Judy Salpeter