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Deron Durflinger

Waukee school board studies calendar issues through survey | Des Moines Register Staff ... - 0 views

  • d rather have school start late on professional development days, rather than ending early. “In another words, let kids have some sleep, sleep in a couple of times a month or whatever instead of getting home early, which doesn’t do them any good. I’ve heard a lot of that from parents,” Duncan said. Cindi McDonald, Waukee’s associate superintendent, said mornings are the prime learning time for students. Tags: calendar, Cindi McDonald, Dave Duncan, Duane Magee, Lance Mouw, school calendar, Waukee, Waukee Community School District, Waukee School Board, Waukee School District, West Des Moines .AR_1 .ob_what{text-align:right;clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_dual_container{ clear:both; } .AR_1 .ob_dual_left,.AR_1 .ob_dual_right { float:left; width:46%; padding:0 2%; } .AR_1 .ob_empty{ display:none; } YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN Firm apologizes for ethanol gas mistake in Iowa (DesMoinesRegister.com) Driver of Firebird in Greene County triple fatality was not licensed to drive (Des Moines Register) Parents of Waukee middle-schoolers can attend ‘Assessment for Learning’ class (Des Moines Register) Parents can learn about assessments (DesMoinesRegister.com) Boys' basketball: Friday night's statewide scoreboard, area highlights | Altoona Herald | desmoinesregister.com (altoonaherald.com) SPONSORED LINKS Romney’s ‘Charlie Crist’ Problem Could Hurt with GOP (Newsmax.com) FBI warns of new banking scam (Bankrate.com) NFL: The Most Classless Player on Every Team (BleacherReport)
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Does this sound familiar?
Deron Durflinger

The No. 1 Leadership Trait You Really Need to be Successful - 0 views

  • Leaders who are truly (1) servant-hearted; (2) able to put others and the organization first ; and, (3) willing to listen with humility to other points of view are the ones that people will follow. Thus, if you want to win in today’s hyper-competitive world of work you should (1) hire, promote and retain people who fit that description; and, (2) strive to fit it yourself.
Deron Durflinger

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National -... - 0 views

  • Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher.
  • There's no word for accountability in Finnish,"
  • "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
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  • what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility.
  • If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
  • And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable
  • There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.
  • school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all.
  • In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."
  • It was equity
  • the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
  • schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
  • Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.
  • When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy. 
  • is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind
  • Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."
  • Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
  • The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.
Deron Durflinger

"No thanks. I choose to do nothing." | Dangerously Irrelevant - 0 views

  • All administrators have to do is LOOK AROUND and they can see the changes in their students. In society at large. In the many institutions that are dying in the face of these transformative technologies.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      This is a great point.
Deron Durflinger

A New Era Of Learning - 0 views

  • And it’s no surprise why. Change is hard—especially the kind of change I’m talking about here. It’s not about learning how to do PowerPoint; it’s about teaching students to use technology to teach themselves, to learn for themselves. In essence, it’s about teaching ourselves out of a job.
  • No Choice
Deron Durflinger

The Five Dimensions of Learning-Agile Leaders - Forbes - 0 views

  • At the same time, we need to have the confidence to make decisions on the spot, even in the absence of compelling, complete data.  The qualities needed at the top—openness, authentic listening, adaptability—also indicate that leaders need to be comfortable with and able to embrace the “grayness” that comes from other people’s ideas or situations that arise.
  • Learning Agility is a reliable indicator of leadership potential because learning agile people “excel at absorbing information from their experience and then extrapolating from those to navigate unfamiliar situations.
  • In short, Learning Agility is the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly morphing conditions.
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  • Problem Solvers; Thought Leaders; Trailblazers; Champions; Pillars; Diplomats; and Energizers. The researchers wrote: “People who are learning agile: Seek out experiences to learn from; enjoy complex problems and challenges associated with new experiences because they have an interest in making sense of them; perform better because they incorporate new skills into their repertoire. A person who is learning agile has more lessons, more tools, and more solutions to draw on when faced with new business challenges.” (Hallenbeck, Swisher, and Orr, July 2011)
  • Mental Agility
  • People Agility
  • Change Agility
  • Results Agility:
  • Self-Awareness
  • The world of leadership belongs to the most learning agile
  • To succeed in our volatile, complex, ambiguous world, we have no choice but to master our ability to adapt and learn.
Deron Durflinger

The Internet will not ruin college - Salon.com - 0 views

  • 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.
  • 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.)
  • 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?
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • For years we’ve just been scratching at the surface of what the Net can deliver. Now we’re beginning to dig deep.
  • 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.
  • he tidal wave is already here
  • 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.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      How do these changes in how the internet is being used impact K-12?
Deron Durflinger

Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Now, I’m an old English professor who taught the Joyce course here at Madison two years ago,” he says. “The idea that you can’t understand Joyce unless you take it from Reilly three hours a week — that we faculty own the knowledge and anyone who’s going to be well educated has to get it from us — the world has changed so much that that’s no longer true.”
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Love this quote from a veteran professor
Deron Durflinger

Class sizes are getting bigger, but does it really matter? - USATODAY.com - 1 views

  • Conventional wisdom says the smaller the classes, the better the education, because teachers can pay more attention to each child. But while smaller classes are popular, decades of research has found that the relationship between class size and student outcomes is murky.
  • A study released in May by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University found that the Florida program had no effect on student achievement.
  • "They intuitively believe that small class sizes will allow more individual attention."
Deron Durflinger

L.A. teacher ratings: L.A. Times analysis rates teachers' effectiveness - latimes.com - 0 views

  • No one suggests using value-added analysis as the sole measure of a teacher. Many experts recommend that it count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      I think it has to be part of the discussion though. We all agree that the most important factor to student learning is the quality of instruction the student receives.
Deron Durflinger

Education Week: All of My Favorite Students Cheat - 0 views

  • Savvy students denigrate that plagiarist. “It’s stupid to get caught taking things from the Internet,” one told me. “No one should be doing that” because it lacks subtlety. They rationalize other forms of cheating as more acceptable. Some claim thoughtless pedagogy justifies their own copying of homework. “We aren’t going to respect teachers who give us photocopied worksheets as ‘busywork.’ We’re not going to waste our time doing that.” Others assert they are “sticking it to the man,” who makes them overwork. Still others say that “as long as we do well on the tests, the homework doesn’t matter.” Grades are “the bottom line.”
  • They would not do it, they say, “if the school worked better.”
Deron Durflinger

Schools: The Disaster Movie - 0 views

  • Whereas the best public-school systems in the world—Finland, Singapore, South Korea—recruit all of their teachers from the top third or better of their college graduates, in America the majority come from the bottom two-thirds, with just 14 percent of those entering teaching each year in high-needs schools coming from the upper third. And the numbers may be getting worse. According to a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, a meager 9 percent of top-third graduates have any interest in teaching whatsoever.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      What needs to change to get more of the top-level college students interested in teaching?
  • teacher quality is a national priority: Educators are paid competitively; education schools are highly selective; jobs are guaranteed for those credentialed; and professional development is ample and subsidized.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      What are we doing at Van Meter to make these characteristics part of the culture?
  • “If you want to change public education, you have to do something that feels like a threat to the status quo,” says Canada. “If we don’t fight about this, if we can shake and be friends, we ain’t going to change. And if we don’t change, huge numbers of kids ain’t going to make it. There is no Superman coming to save them. All they have is us.”
Deron Durflinger

When differentiating instruction makes little sense | Clayton Christensen - 0 views

  • content-rich guaranteed curriculum that is consistently well delivered and clear lessons that have frequent checks for understanding.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Frequent check for understanding of clear expectations
  • The best online learning works on a mastery-based system—where students do not advance until they have mastered a concept (as opposed to the current system where everyone moves on no matter if they have mastered the concept) and thus there are frequent check-ins to see how much a student understands and to cycle back into more learning opportunities where appropriate
Deron Durflinger

Survey: Supportive leadership helps retain top teachers - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • To retain good teachers, 68 percent called supportive leadership "absolutely essential," 45 percent said the same of higher salaries and 8 percent listed performance pay. Many of those surveyed also described "relevant" professional development as essential, along with "clean and safe" working conditions, time for teachers to collaborate and access to high-quality curriculum. In addition, 71 percent said monetary rewards for teacher performance would have moderate or no impact on student achievement.
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