Group items tagged

The Gateway to College National Network offers two major programs: for the 1/3 of high school students who earn their diploma but are not academically prepared for college work (Project DEgree) and for the 1/3 who don't graduate (Gateway to College).

Op-Ed by David Brooks in the New York Times, October 31 2011. Brooks finds that the disparity between college grads and non-grads is much more glaring than that of the "1%" who are the focus of the Occupy Wall Street and similar movements. And he finds that this disparity is seen in small cities and towns all over America. Not only does he cite income disparity, but also family structure and things like health risks.

This excerpt from an interview with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, PLP founder, captures critical points for PD online. "Will and I agreed that we would only work with teams of school-based educators because the research made it clear that it was collaborative teams within in a school, working together, that really brought about sustainable improvement. That would give us what we needed to anchor the virtual experience in a local context. We also wanted participants to experience a global community of practice-to be able to have conversations with people very different than themselves, with fresh perspectives. Our thinking was that if we put teams of educators who had different ideologies, different geography, different purposes and challenges, all together in the same space, then they could each bring what they did well to the table and people could learn from that. Ultimately that would mean public, private, Catholic, and other kinds of schools; educators teaching well-to-do, middle-class, and poor kids; educators in different states and nations, at different grade levels, and in different content areas and roles. What ultimately grew out of our brainstorming was a three-pronged model of professional development that emphasizes (1) local learning communities at the school/district level; (2) an online community of practice that's both global and deep; and (3) a third prong that is more personal-the idea of a personal learning network that each educator develops as a mega-resource for ideas and information about their particular interests and areas of practice. (These three prongs are described in depth in a new book, The Connected Educator, where PLP community leader Lani Ritter Hall and I tell the story of the evolution of our model and the very solid research base behind it.)

Title: Companies are Erecting In-House Social Networks, June 26, 2011, This article intrigued me from the get-go because: 1) it speaks to the desire for people to be connected socially in their work; 2) it provides forums (opportunities) for the distantly-connected worker(s)/network member(s) to 'trickle-up' by sharing innovative practice/ideas; 3) it resembles Facebook for its ease of participation and entry level; 4) it creates a social network, which is the beginning of conversation, which is the beginning of collaboration, no? :-) We know that high school students LOVE the SLI because it gives them the opportunity to meet and greet and sometimes talk about meaningful social justice issues. But the hook is social, then learning. We have been talking about trying Facebook this year to ease the way in for up to 200 kids, but many school districts do not allow students to access Facebook from school computers. Maybe we need to explore Yammer or Chatter or look to see if there is a comparable open source app?

Richard Byrne's blog on Free Technology for Teachers always comes up with excellent resources. This one is the Story of Bottled Water produced in 2010. I noticed below on this page videos about plastic and how 1 cheeseburger=15,000 Googles. I assume the last one is about the environmental costs of technology.

Educational videos on wide range of subjects for students grade 1-college

While I didn't see anything that would work for Habitat and Humanity, other videos looked really good, such as the disappearance of bees and why that matters, domestic abuse in the Artic and how they deal with it, children with abilities instead of disabilities, etc.

very interesting article on Forsyth County schools in GA (I just drove through there the other day and had no idea of their innovativeness!) encouraging students to bring their own technology to classrooms to use in project and inquiry based learning. Amazing!

I stumbled across this trailer called One Day on Earth where people around the world filmed examples of humanity. There is apparently an 11/11/11 worldwide event planned. Two ideas: any desire to alert schools of its existence so they could participate in November? Or select a date in time for kids at SLI schools to do their own 1 minute videotaping of humanity in their communities to have it come together in a 3 minute composite at the Conference? Or use it for an even bigger project unifying SLI students? http://vimeo.com/26378195

Book on Collaborative Learning Techniques; seems well regarded; already 7 years old

Second edition of Engaging Ideas by John C. Bean

Teaching concise writing

A free resource that delves into Google's lesster known search tools. Google Books, Google Scholar, Google News. How to access Google Books advanced search.

Sounds like EC and then some...the story of Perry County in Alabama and how they are succeeding at producing high school graduates at a much higher rate than everyone else in this demographic group PLUS they place 75% of their students in college. Reference is made also to students needing but one semester to get a nursing degree when they graduate from high school. They start the concentrated learning in kindergarten.

The impact of the Middle College experience from the student's point of view published in an article by the Contra Costa Times.

I love this video--it gives me the terminology to explain this new age learning approach to IL teachers--orient, declare, network, cluster, focus--for the long trip and shorter side-trips.

This is a member organization (whole districts join) that works to help "America's urban public schools to educate the nation's most diverse student body to the highest academic standards and prepare them to contribute to our democracy and the global community."

Written by Elisabeth Barnett, Kristen Bucceri, Claudia Hindo and Jennifer Kim. Published by National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST), October 2011.

In The What of Proof (data) of Early College Success, this paper was cited, with special mention of page 37 (Decision 10: How Will We Know if We're Succeeding).