Thought-Provoking Articles and Posts

"Ted Dintersmith is a highly successful venture capitalist and father of two who is devoting most of his time, energy and part of of his personal fortune to education-related initiatives that call for a radical remaking of what and how students learn. He organized, funded and produced the documentary "Most Likely To Succeed," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015. He, along with co-author Tony Wagner, recently released a book titled "Most Likely To Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era." And he is conducting a 50-state tour to encourage communities all over the country to re-think the purpose of school. By Ted Dintersmith"

"WASHINGTON - American higher education is the envy of the world, with the most renowned universities attracting young men and women from around the globe. Stories from Our Advertisers As Americans consider college possibilities, the choices are terrific: large and small, public and private, in every region, along with a robust community-college system that is a gateway for many immigrants and for training older workers."

"In her new film, Our Brand Is Crisis, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, Sandra Bullock's character delivers--and receives--some legitimate leadership lessons. "

"Interested in writing for SmartBlogs? SmartBrief's SmartBlogs network welcomes ideas for original editorial content from guest bloggers. If you're interested to writing for SmartBlogs, follow the six easy steps below."

"As I begin my tenth year as superintendent, I take stock of the significant changes that have occurred in my school district. As Pascal Finette says, social media have turned the world into a participation culture linked by a global communication network. And mobile devices, with 500 times the computing power that put astronauts on the moon, rest in the hands, pockets, and backpacks of children, not just top executives. Smart technologies have moved onto some college campuses, and students now receive texts telling them when washers are open for laundry. No longer science fiction, driverless vehicles represent real stories in our daily newsfeeds."

"n the previous literacy post I identified a few take-away questions and related issues from my recent research on comprehension, and looked at some tips related to the 1st question: Do students understand the real point of academic reading? Do students understand that the aim of instruction is transfer of learning? Am I using the right texts for making clear the value of strategies? Do students understand the difference between self-monitoring understanding and knowing what they might do when understanding does not occur? Am I attending to the fewest, most powerful comprehension strategies for academic literacy? Am I helping them build a flexible repertoire instead of teaching strategies in isolation? Do students have sufficient general understanding of the strategies (which is key to transfer)? Am I doing enough ongoing formal assessment of student comprehension, strategy use, and tolerance of ambiguity?"

"Meanwhile, this occurred to me on my walk just now, after pondering recent chats with my two kids who are currently in college:"

"As the first phase of bringing closure to these blog posts on literacy at the secondary level, I want to offer a tentative list of recommendations that I believe follow from all the research cited in the previous posts. I will say more about each principle in follow-up posts, as well as offering brief bibliographic and graphic-organizer resources in support of each idea. (I offer some initial thoughts on Principle #1, below)."

"Yes, reading strategies - and explicit teaching of them - make a considerable difference, as my previous four blog posts here, here, here, and here make clear. And there is much to like about the idea of the gradual release of (teacher) responsibility in the teaching of those strategies for reading - or anything else where we want skillfulness. The approach is interactive, empowering for kids, easy for most teachers to grasp and implement, and grounded in research."

"A stack of research suggests that all the classroom technology in the world can't compare to the power of a great teacher. And, since we haven't yet figured out how to clone our best teachers, a few schools around the country are trying something like it: Stretching them across multiple classrooms. "We'll probably never fill up every single classroom with one of those teachers," says Bryan Hassel, founder of Charlotte-based education consulting firm Public Impact. But, he says, it's important to ask: "How can we change the way schools work so that the great teachers we do have can reach more of the students, maybe even all of them?""

"In the three previous posts on reading for understanding (here, here, and here) I looked at the general question: What can we say for sure (or not) in research on comprehension in reading? Here, I take a closer look at comprehension strategies and what the research does and doesn't say. In general, it supports many of the blunt comments I made here and here a few years ago: there is still a lack of clarity about what the right strategies are, how to teach them, and which ones work for older students (my focus in these current posts)."

"Twitter can be overwhelming, even for a seasoned Twitterer. We use tools, such as Tweetdeck, to help us organize the tweets coming in --we use #hashtags to filter and connect our conversations --we @mention, we RT, we DM, we #FF --we participate in #edchats --we give credit where credit is due --we take notes --we disseminate interesting information to our network --we amplify our voices to engage in conversation with people from around the world Yes, it can be overwhelming to follow a conference Twitter hashtag such as #AASSA15 (Association of American Schools in South America Annual Educators Conference . (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3). You will find a few sample sreenshots of Tweets from the AASSA conference in Curaçao. Unpacked and annotexted to make the value of Twitter as a Professional Development tool, a learning tool visible to the untrained eye."

"Whenever a college student asks me, a veteran high-school English educator, about the prospects of becoming a public-school teacher, I never think it's enough to say that the role is shifting from "content expert" to "curriculum facilitator." Instead, I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation's most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The "virtual class" will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country's best teachers (a.k.a. a "super-teacher"), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record. "

Worth Reading....

" Admit it: you only read the list of the six levels of the Taxonomy, not the whole book that explains each level and the rationale behind the Taxonomy. Not to worry, you are not alone: this is true for most educators. But that efficiency comes with a price. Many educators have a mistaken view of the Taxonomy and the levels in it, as the following errors suggest. And arguably the greatest weakness of the Common Core Standards is to avoid being extra-careful in their use of cognitive-focused verbs, along the lines of the rationale for the Taxonomy."

"Welcome to SmartBrief Education's original content series about the unique stories of teacherpreneurs. These are the innovative individuals confronting challenges, creating solutions and bringing them to market. Robert Ahdoot, a high-school math teacher and founder of yaymath.org, helps us kick off the series with a conversation with his mentor - and teacherpreneur - Bruce Powell. Powell is the founding Head of School of New Community Jewish High School in West Hills, Calif., where Ahdoot teaches."

"The Navigator tool is an online database that maps every lesson in the district's mathematics textbooks to the CCSSM. These linkages have been identified and reviewed by a team of CSC reviewers. This information is made available to teachers for their use in two ways: 1) textbook lessons are linked to the specific CCSSM standards addressed, and 2) any specific CCSSM standard is linked to all the textbook lessons that address it. This allows teachers to make informed decisions about which lessons to teach and in what sequence"

"One new product is coming from Schmidt and the Center for the Study of Curriculum: The Navigator - a web-based application that Schmidt said can tell teachers where in the math book they're using (as long as it's one of the 35 surveyed) they will find material on a particular standard and where else to look if the book doesn't have it."

"This year at iPadpalooza we were looking to do something a little different with all that "transition" time in between sessions. Often times, when you attend a conference, you find yourself in complete session-mode. You rush from session to session, never taking time to reflect, interact or collaborate with others at the event."

"Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m., Jason Zimba begins a math tutoring session for his two young daughters with the same ritual. His youngest, Claire, 4, draws on a worksheet while his oldest, Abigail, 7, pulls math problems written on strips of paper out of an old Kleenex box, decorated like a piggy bank with a pink snout on one end and a curly-cue tail on the other, and adds the numbers as fast as she can. If she gets the answer "lickety-split," as her dad says, she can check them off. If she doesn't, the problem goes back in the box, to try the following week."