"In the end, you can track this back to high school math. We're very good at the high end, but math is the place most students fail … that's the biggest challenge of them all. How do we get young people to learn math?"
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Demand, Pay for STEM Skills Skyrocket - STEM Education (usnews.com) - 0 views
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 22 May 13
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What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...u-s-schools-not-what-you-think
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The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school
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If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
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Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
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It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
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But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
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First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools
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the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair.
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In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results
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Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
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I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning.
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onversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 12 Feb 13
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The Internet will not ruin college - Salon.com - 0 views
www.salon.com/...internet_will_not_ruin_college
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What happens to the people who make their livings from teaching, when their jobs are replaced by online courses available for free? All we need is one superb remedial algebra course that can be effectively delivered online and, theoretically, the demand for a zillion remedial algebra courses taught at a zillion community colleges suddenly drops off a cliff. Ask the music business what happens when you can get good stuff for free instead of paying for crap. Daily newspaper journalists learned a similar lesson all too well over the past two decades. The Associated Press business model — licensing the same story to multiple outlets, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense once a single news outlet puts that AP story online for free.
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My own daughter is a freshman at a U.C. campus, and has already experienced lectures attended by more than 500 students with sections led by teaching assistants who are utterly uninterested in doing their job. For dollar paid, the value received is questionable, and whenever that kind of situation exists, the status quo is ripe for disruption. (It’s also worth noting, perhaps, that over 60,000 students applied for spots in a freshman class that ended up enrolling only 4,500 applicants, a sign, I think, that the brick-and-mortar university is in no imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaur.)
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Education, I’d argue, has always been the most likely sector of society to get transformed by the Internet, because the thing the Internet does better than anything else is distribute information.
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ut how could anyone argue against the premise that our ability to educate ourselves, on just about any topic, has vastly expanded in tune with the maturation of a global network of computers?
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kind of amazing that it’s taken this long to start figuring out how to offer truly high-quality college level courses over the Web — isn’t this exactly what the damn thing is for?
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browsing some of the various course offerings available at edX and Udacity and Coursera, I had to restrain myself from suddenly diving into The Ancient Greek Hero, Professor Gregory Nagy’s spring 2013 edX offering that promises “to use the latest technology to help students engage with poetry, songs, and stories first composed more than two millennia ago.” It strikes me as a profound realization of the fundamental goal of the university — any university — that a course taught by an icon at one of the most elite institutions in the world would be accessible to me for just the cost of a few clicks.
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But what’s absolutely clear is that a vast number of people can’t afford a good education, and many of those who are paying through the nose aren’t getting a good education, and that kind of situation provides a clear opportunity for the Internet to do what it does best: spread knowledge at low cost.
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For years we’ve just been scratching at the surface of what the Net can deliver. Now we’re beginning to dig deep.
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I barged into my son’s room on Wednesday afternoon to ask him when he wanted dinner, and discovered him watching a Khan Academy video to help with his chemistry homework. And I thought: that story I’ve been working on about the backlash against MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)? Why am I even bothering? The war is already over. Debating the value of online education at the current moment in history makes about as much sense as questioning the tactics of the losing Roman generals in the great third century B.C. battle of Cannae. Perhaps of some interest to academics, but moot. Hannibal kicked ass. End of story.
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utting their teeth on Khan Academy videos for help with their chemistry and calculus homework will grow up correctly assuming that there will always be low-cost or free educational opportunities available to them online in virtually any field of inquiry.
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Apr 12
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Iowa universities adjust to burst of interest in online learning | The Des Moines Regis... - 0 views
www.desmoinesregister.com/...burst-interest-online-learning
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“I work almost full time while getting my master’s degree,” he said. “As an undergraduate, it allowed me a better balance between school, my work and my social life.”
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online courses are a cost-effective way for universities to meet increased demand while coping with steep reductions in state funding in recent years, administrators say.
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The number of online courses offered at Iowa’s three public universities has grown by nearly 25 percent from 2005-06 to 2010-11, data from the Iowa state Board of Regents show.
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Last year, Iowa’s universities launched an effort to share language courses online. The first was in classic Greek, which an ISU student took from a U of I professor in Iowa City. This year, three ISU students enrolled in classic Greek. The universities may expand to Arabic or Chinese, officials said.
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“the octopus room.” The classroom’s brain is a motion-sensing camera that follows an instructor around the room. Microphones triangulate the location of a voice so that the camera can focus on the person speaking. Six black arms with video monitors are attached to the “brain” in the center. This allows students in the class and those taking it online to see and hear each other.
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They do a very good job of simulating the classroom experience,” he said. “But you have to have the discipline to stay up with it. If you get a week or so behind, it’s hard to catch up
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blend of in-person and online instruction. Students taking finals at the U of I’s secure testing rooms, for example, might be enrolled in a daily Spanish language course where two days of class every week are completed online. That allows the instructor to focus classroom time on refining conversation and reading skills, faculty said.
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Offering experienced faculty teachers and classroom space filled with well-equipped laboratories is a key way for Iowa’s universities to differentiate themselves from online-only colleges, officials said.
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However, disciplines that don’t require physical space may one day be based mostly or entirely online, said Marcus Haack, a U of I professor who teaches future principals and superintendents in an education leadership program that many participants take online.
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In 40 years in this business, I’ve learned we will never put the brakes on technology. It’s always going to expand our opportunities, our thinking and creativity
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 29 Dec 11
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Three Trends That Define the Future of Teaching and Learning | MindShift - 0 views
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Watch for: (1) Department of Education working to establish a one-stop shop for teacher networks. (2) Commonly accepted guidelines for using YouTube, Facebook, and other social media in schools.
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Watch for: The explosive growth of high-tech companies and venture capitalists investing ever-more capital in the education market.
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Teachers’ and students’ relationships are changing, as they learn from each other. Teachers roles are shifting from owners of information to facilitators and guides to learning. Educators are finding different ways of using class time. Introverted students are finding ways to participate in class discussions online. Different approaches to teaching are being used in the same class. Students are getting a global perspective.
Some Schools Embrace Demands for Education Data - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 21 Oct 11
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Educational Leadership:Coaching: The New Leadership Skill:Every Teacher a Coach - 0 views
www.ascd.org/...Every-Teacher-a-Coach.aspx
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Great coaches ask young athletes to go to "great heights" to challenge themselves. They take care to prepare the athlete for each stage of development, but they cannot eradicate risk because it's inseparable from growth. They can, however, intervene to ensure that the risk isn't so great that it outweighs the reward of accomplishment
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The best coaches encourage young people to work hard, keep going when it would be easier to stop, risk making potentially painful errors, try again when they stumble, and learn to love the sport. Not a bad analogy for a dynamic classroom.
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individual and team skills, they continually attend to the growth patterns of each team member as well as the group
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analyze what the athletes do and adjust both training and the game plan as a result of what they see
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precise feedback along with individualized training that enables athletes to use this feedback productively
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tailor practice drills to the individual, but they also know that individuals are motivated in different ways
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realize that sideline drills are less motivating than the game itself, so they ensure that players grasp the link between drills and the game and that everyone gets to play the game to test their developing skills
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address interpersonal problems on a team as vigorously as problems with skills execution or a game pla