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Deron Durflinger

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

www.salon.com/...internet_will_not_ruin_college

mooc education learning transformation reform meter van paradigm shift online learning online online education

shared by Deron Durflinger on 12 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • 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
      Deron Durflinger on 12 Feb 13
       
      How do these changes in how the internet is being used impact K-12?
Deron Durflinger

Reinventing Education, Revisited | eSchool News - 0 views

www.eschoolnews.com/...2

education redesign transformation vanmeter van meter learning

shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • “This is [about an entire] environment; you can’t say it’s [only] about technology,” Allen said of the city’s efforts. “When you merge good teaching and good curriculum using i21 tools as the platform, then things really start to happen.” She added that the project requires all of these elements working together in order to succeed: “It is [about] all of the above in changing the environment, and how we do things, and how we think differently.”
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 30 Sep 11
       
      It's not about the technology, it's about the learning and the quality of instruction students receive each day.
Deron Durflinger

Study: Teacher hiring should be more scientific | Local & Regional | Seattle News, Weat... - 0 views

www.komonews.com/...more-scientific-280826622.html

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shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The ability to work well with others - flexibility and interpersonal skills - seemed to be a bigger factor in teacher retention than where the teacher went to college. Other things like experience and instructional skills also were big factors.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 30 Oct 14
       
      #1 thing we look for in people
  • Our research suggests that teacher workforce improvements can be derived from more careful hiring decisions,
  • such as whether a teacher would be good at teaching students to be good citizens, Goldhaber said.
Deron Durflinger

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

www.theatlantic.com/...250564

finland Education edreform reform transformation van meter vanmeter jason glass learning

shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • 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."
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • 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.
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