The regulation calls for the state to provide 10 end-of-course exams, beginning with English literature, Algebra 1 and biology in 2010-11, with other English, math, science and social studies subjects being phased in through 2016-17.
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State's graduation exam passes latest test - 1 views
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School districts would be required to count the exams for at least one-third of a student's final grade or districts could use other options, including validated local assessments or Advanced Placement exams instead. Districts also could set up a project for students who failed exams.
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Opponents of the exams told the regulatory commission that the testing program would cost too much to administer and be unfair to otherwise good students who perform poorly on standardized tests.
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Some have said that the exams would discourage students who have a hard time taking tests and would prompt them to drop out.
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Strip clubs, marijuana eyed during budget crunch - CNN.com - 0 views
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One of the more controversial ideas is to legalize the sale of marijuana, as proposed in a bill introduced in California's state legislature by Democratic State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano this year. The bill proposed taxing pot by $50 per ounce. If legalized, marijuana could become California's No. 1 cash crop, bringing in an estimated $1 billion a year in state taxes.
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Schools should embrace cell phones - 0 views
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most high schools in the United States do not have enough computers for all students to use at once. By allowing cell phone usage, the ability to access the Internet will become much easier and will help schools save money. Since a cell phone uses a separate network to access the Internet, wireless networks will be spared the rugged strain all school wireless networks undergo. With a less stressed wireless network, fewer repairs will need to be made, thus relieving the IT staffs at schools.
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Many critics argue that kids will become distracted if cell phones are allowed in class. Cell phones, however, potentially create the same distraction that comes along with sitting next to a classmate.
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One of the many missions of the educational system in the United States is to prepare students for life as adults so they can be productive citizens in a vastly changing world. Technology has been around for decades and is only growing and advancing. So why are schools not informing students on how to use it safely and effectively?
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Graduation exam compromise earning mixed grades - 0 views
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The latest version of Keystone Exams calls for the state to provide 10 end-of-course exams, beginning with English literature, Algebra 1 and biology in 2010-11, with other subjects being phased in through 2016-17. The state would ask the federal government to permit the first three to be used to satisfy the No Child Left Behind Act beginning in 2012-13, thus enabling the state to discontinue the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams in 11th grade.
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For graduation purposes, school districts would need to count the exams for at least one-third of a student's final grade or districts could use validated local assessments or Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams instead.
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In defending this exam idea, one person said that she felt it was BETTER to give these tests than one PSSA test every three years. "Wouldn't you rather take the test when you can still remember the material?" Hmmm.... Does she know what she just said?
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In defending this exam idea, one person said that she felt it was BETTER to give these tests than one PSSA test every three years. "Wouldn't you rather take the test when you can still remember the material?"
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USA Geography - Map Game - Geography Online Games - 0 views
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Blogging helps encourage teen writing | Top News | eSchoolNews.com - 9 views
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Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.
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it and revise their writing on a computer, the report says. Nearly six in 10 students (57 percent) say they edit and revise more frequently when they write using a computer. Teens who use a computer in their non-school writing believe computers have a greater impact on the amount of writing they produce than on the overall quality of their writing. Yet, there is a great deal of ambiguity with respect to the impact of computers in each of these areas. Among teens who use computers in their non-school writing, four in 10 say computers help them do more writing, and a similar number believe they would write the same amount whether they used computers or not. In comparison, only three in 10 teens who write on computers for non-school purposes at least occasionally believe computers help them do better writing–and twice as many (63 percent) say computers make no difference in the quality of their writing. Parents are more likely than teens to believe that internet-based writing (such as eMail and instant messaging) affects writing skills overall, though both groups are split on whether electronic communications help or hurt. Nonetheless, 73 percent of teens and 40 percent of parents believe internet writing makes no difference either way. Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further–and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class. The telephone-based survey of 700 U.S. residents ages 12 to 17 and their parents was conducted last year from Sept. 19 to Nov. 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. Link: "Writing, Technology, and Teens" survey var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Blogging helps encourage teen writing"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://www.eschoolnews.com/2008/04/30/blogging-helps-encourage-teen-writing/"; Comments are closed &amp;lt;script language=JavaScript src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vj?z=eschool&amp;amp;dim=173789&amp;amp;pos=6&amp;amp;abr=$scriptiniframe"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/script&amp;gt;&amp;lt;noscript&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/cc?z=eschool&amp;amp;pos=6"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vc?z=eschool&amp;amp;dim=173789&amp;amp;pos=6&amp;amp;abr=$imginiframe" width="300" height="250" border="0"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/noscript&amp;gt; Recent Stories with Comments Kentucky offers cloud-based software to 700,000 school usersNo access for bad guysU.S. court weighs school discipline for lewd web postsParent video protesting state budget cuts goes viralEditorial: Threats to innovation <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;click=;ord=996778?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT> Educator Resource Centers Computing in the Cloud How technology can help with language instruction Communication and Collaboration for More Effective School Management Expert Blog: Security Insights Boost Student Achievement with Connected Teaching Private: Testing ERC Page Solving key IT challenges with virtualization Online Learning: One Pathway to Success Re-imagining Education One-to-one computing: The last piece of the puzzle Recent Entries Customers question tech industry’s takeover spree New rules bring online piracy fight to U.S. campuses Judge orders school newspaper to delete stories Ed-tech grant program aims to boost college readiness Lawmakers tra
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The Partnership for 21st Century Skills - Cyber Summit 2010 - 1 views
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The challenge of fusing the three Rs and the four Cs of education is more urgent than ever. From September 20-October 5, 2010, thousands will gather online for the Cyber Summit on 21st Century Readiness where we will learn about, discuss and advance 21st century readiness in the United States.
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The schedule is here: http://www.p21.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=964&Itemid=63
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Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Save the Date for Wolfram|Alpha Homework Day: October 21, 2009 - 0 views
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During Homework Day, scholars, experts, and members of the Wolfram|Alpha team will explore a wide variety of subjects relevant for K–12 to college students. Segments throughout the day will be tailored for specific age groups and show how students and teachers are already using Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom
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"Join us on Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at noon CDT, for the start of Wolfram|Alpha Homework Day, a groundbreaking marathon live interactive web event that brings together students, parents, and educators from across the United States to solve their toughest assignments and explore the power of using Wolfram|Alpha for school, college, and beyond."
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Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:What Would Socrates Say? - 0 views
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The noted philosopher once said, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something.
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Socrates believed that we learn best by asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate. We need to approach the contemporary knowledge explosion and the technologies propelling this new enlightenment in just that manner. Otherwise, the great knowledge and communication tsunami of the 21st century may drown us in a sea of trivia instead of lifting us up on a rising tide of possibility and promise.
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A child born today could live into the 22nd century. It's difficult to imagine all that could transpire between now and then. One thing does seem apparent: Technical fixes to our outdated educational system are likely to be inadequate. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
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Every day we are exposed to huge amounts of information, disinformation, and just plain nonsense. The ability to distinguish fact from factoid, reality from fiction, and truth from lies is not a "nice to have" but a "must have" in a world flooded with so much propaganda and spin.
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For example, for many years, the dominant U.S. culture described the settling of the American West as a natural extension of manifest destiny, in which people of European descent were "destined" to occupy the lands of the indigenous people. This idea was, and for some still is, one of our most enduring and dangerous collective fabrications because it glosses over human rights and skirts the issue of responsibility. Without critical reflection, we will continually fall victim to such notions.
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A second element of the 21st century mind that we must cultivate is the willingness to abandon supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events.
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The third element of the 21st century mind must be the recognition and acceptance of our shared evolutionary collective intelligence.
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To solve the 21st century's challenges, we will need an education system that doesn't focus on memorization, but rather on promoting those metacognitive skills that enable us to monitor our own learning and make changes in our approach if we perceive that our learning is not going well.
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Metacognition is a fancy word for a higher-order learning process that most of us use every day to solve thousands of problems and challenges.
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We are at the threshold of a worldwide revolution in learning. Just as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the wall of conventional schooling is collapsing before our eyes. A new electronic learning environment is replacing the linear, text-bound culture of conventional schools. This will be the proving ground of the 21st century mind.
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We will cease to think of technology as something that has its own identity, but rather as an extension of our minds, in much the same way that books extend our minds without a lot of fanfare. According to Huff and Saxberg, immersive technologies—such as multitouch displays; telepresence (an immersive meeting experience that offers high video and audio clarity); 3-D environments; collaborative filtering (which can produce recommendations by comparing the similarity between your preferences and those of other people); natural language processing; intelligent software; and simulations—will transform teaching and learning by 2025.
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So imagine that a group of teachers and middle school students decides to tackle the question, What is justice? Young adolescents' discovery of injustice in the world is a crucial moment in their development. If adults offer only self-serving answers to this question, students can become cynical or despairing. But if adults treat the problem of injustice truthfully and openly, hope can emerge and grow strong over time. As part of their discussion, let's say that the teachers and students have cocreated a middle school earth science curriculum titled Water for the World. This curriculum would be a blend of classroom, community, and online activities. Several nongovernmental organizations—such as Waterkeeper, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Water for People—might support the curriculum, which would meet national and state standards and include lessons, activities, games, quizzes, student-created portfolios, and learning benchmarks.
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The goal of the curriculum would be to enable students from around the world to work together to address the water crisis in a concrete way. Students might help bore a freshwater well, propose a low-cost way of preventing groundwater pollution, or develop a local water treatment technique. Students and teachers would collaborate by talking with one another through Skype and posting research findings using collaborative filtering. Students would create simulations and games and use multitouch displays to demonstrate step-by-step how their projects would proceed. A student-created Web site would include a blog; a virtual reference room; a teachers' corner; a virtual living room where learners communicate with one another in all languages through natural language processing; and 3-D images of wells being bored in Africa, Mexico, and Texas. In a classroom like this, something educationally revolutionary would happen: Students and adults would connect in a global, purposeful conversation that would make the world a better place. We would pry the Socratic dialogue from the hands of the past and lift it into the future to serve the hopes and dreams of all students everywhere.
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There has never been a time in human history when the opportunity to create universally accessible knowledge has been more of a reality. And there has never been a time when education has meant more in terms of human survival and happiness.
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To start, we must overhaul and redesign the current school system. We face this great transition with both hands tied behind our collective backs if we continue to pour money, time, and effort into an outdated system of education. Mass education belongs in the era of massive armies, massive industrial complexes, and massive attempts at social control. We have lost much talent since the 19th century by enforcing stifling education routines in the name of efficiency. Current high school dropout rates clearly indicate that our standardized testing regime and outdated curriculums are wasting the potential of our youth.
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If we stop thinking of schools as buildings and start thinking of learning as occurring in many different places, we will free ourselves from the conventional education model that still dominates our thinking.
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Poof! 'Template writing' on FCAT shows up in 12 districts- - 0 views
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Writing exams from 49 schools were found to have "template writing" -- instances in which students from the same school used identical or similar phrases on FCAT essays, such as "Poof! Now I'm in dragon land." The patterns were discovered when the exams were scored. Some educators blame the problem on FCAT, the state's high-stakes test, and the pressure to score well. The phrases found repeatedly seem an attempt to showcase colorful, creative writing, and they might be viewed that way if they were used by individual children. But when many youngsters in a school write the same way, the department suspects that rote memorization, rather than good writing, is at play.
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Grades K-12 + Lesson Plans + Activities + videos + current events | SchooNoodle - 0 views
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Educational Uses of Facebook - Ecademy - 0 views
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This blog explores the idea of using Facebook for education purposes. It always goes over some pros and cons of it. The blog has links to some interesting articles related to this topic including one about a professor using Facebook to teach a class at Penn State. I really found this blog valuable for the debate about Facebook in education. I personally support some of these methods like using it for important notifications in regards to safety alerts.
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10 awesome iPad / iPod apps - 0 views
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This blog post in History Tech shares several great tools for the iPad and iPod that educators could use. The most interesting tools I feel would be helpful for a Social Studies Teacher would be the US Historical Documents as well as the World Fact Book. My favorite Web 2.0 tool on this list which I have used is the My Congress application where you can learn more about those who represent you in the United States Congress. This tool would be great for government classes! All of these resources appear to be very helpful for educators.
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Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - 4 views
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Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn.
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The life of knowledge was measured in decades.
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Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
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A central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside a person. Even social constructivist views, which hold that learning is a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual (and her/his physical presence – i.e. brain-based) in learning. These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations
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Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
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Constructivism suggests that learners create knowledge as they attempt to understand their experiences
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Decision-making is itself a learning process.
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Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.
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Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people (undated).”
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Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.
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Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
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"Editor's Note: This is a milestone article that deserves careful study. Connectivism should not be con fused with constructivism. George Siemens advances a theory of learning that is consistent with the needs of the twenty first century. His theory takes into account trends in learning, the use of technology and networks, and the diminishing half-life of knowledge. It combines relevant elements of many learning theories, social structures, and technology to create a powerful theoretical construct for learning in the digital age."