The Persistent Appeal of Technology in Learning. Image credit: iStockphoto Dr. Victor Frankenstein loved technology, and Mary Shelley's work of fiction was at once a cautionary and promotional tale of technology's incredible potential. In the iconic story, he took the pieces of a human being and stitched them together to create something monstrous -- but in many ways more human than the model he was hoping to produce.
Who doesn't love a little irony? Education loves technology, too -- and for good reason. Education & Technology: A Sometimes Awkward Marriage First off, people love technology, and people run education. The same goes with students. But there are other reasons why education consistently turns to technology -- important factors that can help us infer what it is that teachers, administrators and other stakeholders are truly after. An educational holy grail, of sorts. This applies to technology as well. Three Goals of Technology in Education Goal #1 Goal #2 Goal #3 Waiting for the Jumpstart In most ways that’s probably true. What Bullying Crisis?: Reconsidering Labels for Childhood Aggression.
Students can be mean and nasty to one another, producing all kinds of negative consequences. But I’m growing increasingly concerned with the anti-bullying movement, a well-intentioned cause adopted by many to address a hyped-up phenomenon that, despite what the media and some “experts” profess, isn’t nearly as clear-cut. Some of that complexity emerges for me when I come across an interesting YouTube video posted by YourTango, a news site that focuses on family, marriage and relationship issues. I don’t mean to suggest that bullying isn’t a big problem. Several weeks ago, I wrote about my own childhood bully, who tormented me at sleep-away camp. Now, years later, too many kids are still scared of social situations, fearful of being teased and ridiculed. I’m especially thankful to Sameer Hinduja, an internationally respected authority who codirects the Cyberbullying Research Center.
Bullying: a damaging, non-useful term Bullying and suicide: a misunderstood connection Interview transcript. Chasing the dream of quality education for all | Sunaina Kumar. Why the Sciences Need the Arts & Business. At the table there are four of you. All with your macbook’s open, typing away. You have a chemistry final tomorrow; the day will be dedicated to preparing for it. Across the table, Rachel pops up, “how can 47% of American’s not ‘believe’ evolution?” Surprised by the interruption, everyone looks up, pondering the question. For you, students of the sciences it’s obvious. “Yeah, and what about global warming? “Ugh…. “I just don’t get why people aren’t using it! “Is it useful?” We’ve all seen these situations, perhaps been in one of them. This is the fundamental void present in much of the sciences.
And of course we’ve all used programs which have been built with no thought to design. Embracing the liberal arts education and diversity in knowledge is a formula which will lead to success whichever field you’re in, but cursory classes in marketing are not the best answer. . * This is not to demean the lean startup movement. Creativity Now!:The Case for Curiosity. Why School?: A Conversation With Will Richardson.
Earlier this month, I attended the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Teachers of the Future conference at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. It was the single most rewarding experience of my career—never had I met such a collection of bright, passionate, and progressive educators. We tackled difficult issues, ranging from effective use of classroom technology to how to engage more teachers in online forums. NAIS President John Chubb even spent a morning with us, learning about our ideas on making a positive difference. Two weeks later, I still can’t shake the belief that what most teachers do, and the ways most schools operate are not only antiquated, but also sharply antithetical to how 21st-century students acquire knowledge.
More and more, our students are discovering how to use the Internet for self-directed learning, geared to individual interests. I couldn’t agree more. And why should they? How will that knowledge help them succeed after college? Under New Standards, Students See Sharp Decline in Test Scores. Bill Gates And His Foundation: Employers Should Focus On Skills -- NOT College Degrees. The Gates Foundation is encouraging employers to do something called “skills-based hiring” as an alternative to hiring based on college degrees.
By using a college degree as a requirement, employers are automatically overlooking people that are capable but have no degree. Ultimately, this isn’t helping the employer, the workforce or the economy, Angela Cobb argued in a blog posted by the Gates Foundation on Monday. Research from the Aspen Institute points out that despite the high unemployment rate, nearly 3 million U.S. jobs are unfilled because employers can’t find people with the right skills, Cobb points out. So the Gates Foundation, in connection with an organisation called Innovate+Educate, is working on a program called the New Options Project, lead by Cobb. It acts like an alternative to a traditional college education, somewhat like a cross between a vocational school and an exam.
Employers in a region can work with the program to develop a skills-based credentialing system. Next Generation Science Standards In Kentucky Draw Hostility From Religious Groups. Supporters and opponents of the Next Generation Science Standards sparred during hearings in Kentucky last week, as critics took issue with the standards’ teaching of evolution and climate change. The new standards were developed with input from officials in 26 states –- including Kentucky –- and are part of an effort to make science curricula more uniform across the country.
While supporters feel the standards will help beat back scientific ignorance, some religious groups take issue because the standards treat evolution as fact and talk about the human role in climate change. The Kentucky Board of Education adopted the standards in June and held hearings to get public feedback on the standards last week before they were presented to the state legislature for official approval. Matt Singleton, a Baptist minister, is one of the opponents who spoke to the board about why the standards should not be adopted, according to The Courier-Journal. Earlier on HuffPost: Changing the Educational Paradigm. By Trinity Bourne Contributing Writer for Wake Up World As a home schooling parent, it’s been clear to me for many many years that there is something wrong with the education system. Someone, somewhere has decided what we are going to learn and how we are going to learn it.
Some one set the bench mark of who is smart and who is not. It’s a ‘controlling, factory like’ system that ‘processes’ our kids in batches. If you don’t conform, then you are labelled or at worst drugged! Over the years, I’ve seen so many children with the most extraordinary gifts, that have been totally down graded in school.
Most stimulating era in human history Our children today are immersed in the most stimulating era of human history. What’s the point? My 13 year old son has a mantra: “I can’t see the point of learning that – how is it going to help me in life?” We take time with things. He wants to learn. Home educating perplexes me to this day. Learning together I have a plethora of resources at hand. Social life. The passion gap SmartBlogs. “Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.” — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher, 1832 I recently spoke at the Dell Innovation in Education Panel at the Texas Association of School Administrators 2013 Conference in Austin.
When we were invited to sum up at the end, I realized that one guest had not been invited to the table: Passion. I was the first to interject this word, saying that “passion should not be the number one thing on the agenda, it IS the agenda.” The #TASA13 hashtag on Twitter, which had been moving moderately, exploded, with several dozen tweets supporting my statement. At any other conference in any other industry, passion is on the lips of nearly every participant, but at some education conferences, you are far more likely to hear the words “assessment,” “standardize,” “common core” and “pedagogy” than you are to hear the word “passion.”
There is a passion gap in education, and students are falling through it and drowning in ennui. What parents really think about school reform. School reformers like to talk about giving parents “choices” in public education because that’s what parents want. But a new national survey says that most parents with students in public schools want something different. The two big questions are: What do and don’t parents want? And do reformers care what parents want when it turns out parents don’t actually want what they are offering? The poll, commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers and conducted by Hart Research Associates, says that most parents want strong neighborhood schools — not choices of schools for their children to attend. They don’t want public money diverted to private-school vouchers, or low-performing schools to be closed, or resources being taken away from traditional public schools to be used for public charter schools, the poll says. *Fifty-eight percent of parents polled said they view public schools as the single most important institution for the future of their community and of their nation.
Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids…and How to Correct Them. Recently, I read about a father, Paul Wallich, who built a camera-mounted drone helicopter to follow his grade-school-aged son to the bus stop. He wants to make sure his son arrives at the bus stop safe and sound. There’s no doubt the gizmo provides an awesome show-and-tell contribution. In my mind, Paul Wallich gives new meaning to the term “helicopter parent.” While I applaud the engagement of this generation of parents and teachers, it’s important to recognize the unintended consequences of our engagement. We want the best for our students, but research now shows that our “over-protection, over-connection” style has damaged them.
Let me suggest three huge mistakes we’ve made leading this generation of kids and how we must correct them. 1. We live in a world that warns us of danger at every turn. Author Gever Tulley suggests, “If you’re over 30, you probably walked to school, played on the monkey bars, and learned to high-dive at the public pool. 2. 3. “You’re awesome!” Further, Dr. How much time do school districts spend on standardized testing? This much. The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year. The United States has the second-highest child poverty rate among the world’s richest 35 nations, and the cost in economic and educational outcomes is half a trillion dollars a year, according to a new report by the Educational Testing Service.
The report, called “Poverty and Education, Finding the Way Forward,” says that 22 percent of the nation’s children live in relative poverty, with only Romania having a higher rate in the group of 35 nations. (Next are Latvia, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Japan and Portugal, it says; the country with the lowest child poverty rate is Iceland, and the second lowest is Finland.) The report notes, though, that the official U.S. poverty rate is incomplete, and that other data show that 48 percent of the population had incomes in 2011 that are considered inadequate or not livable. (Relative poverty rates refer to people with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty threshold.) The report was written by Richard J. Education Roadmap | A+ NYC. The PS 2013 Education Roadmap for the Next Mayor is a document created by thousands of New Yorkers to drive the education agenda for the next mayor's first 100 days in office and first term. Over the last year the A+ NYC coalition held countless workshops and visited every corner of the city in a big blue bus, using a charrette model to gather perspectives on how to create a world-class school system where every student can succeed.
The result is the PS 2013 Education Roadmap for the Next Mayor—an unparalleled set of recommendations that sketch an inspiring vision of an education system that treasures the complexity of children and their communities; equips schools with the tools to prepare students for a range of destinies; and works interdependently to leverage the city's vast resources in service of schools.
This roadmap was presented to the community at the PS 2013 Education Action Summit in July. Click herefor the full report. Click here for the short 12-page version of the report. The Perils of Giving Kids IQ Tests - Jessica Lahey. Whether you call a child "gifted" or "disabled," labels can influence future behavior in subtle and insidious ways.
Scott Barry Kaufman knew he was different from his classmates. The evidence was overwhelming: he was about to enter the third grade for the second time, and he was subjected to beatings on the bathroom floor, doled out by bullies who regularly reminded him that he would never, ever be anything other than a failing third grader. As Kaufman recounts in a book released this spring, his family finally had his intelligence tested, and that afternoon with the school psychologist would change the course of his life. "OK, well what if he discovers that I'm really stupid and I have to go to a really special school? " Mom sighs and does her best to alleviate my fears, but they are still there. I know what's at stake. Kaufman, writing of his experience in Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. I've got to hide. I stare at the history exam.
An IQ score is a lovely, simple, and tidy number. Five basic lessons on public education (short and long versions) So most American parents think highly of their own schools, the U.S. prospered the last half century despite never dominating the international exams, and countries outperforming us on international exams see valuable qualities in our students that are missing in their own. If this all sounds too good to be true, it is because conventional wisdom insists that U.S. education is in decline since some Golden Age in the past. In “Schools Cannot Do it Alone,” Jamie Vollmer contends this line of thinking suffers from “nostesia,” the combination of nostalgia for the past and amnesia for what the past was actually like.
Today, 90% of the nation’s adults between the ages of 25 and 29 have attained at least a high school education. This record high for the U.S. compares to 57% of the same population in 1971. The United States may not boast perfect public schools, but we apparently have strengths generally ignored in the national dialogue. Zhao’s message should give Americans reason to pause. Transformational Teaching In Test-Crazy America. I loathe state testing. It’s ridiculous and damaging when for much of the school year—but especially in the spring—caring, intelligent, and creative teachers are forced to “drill-and-kill” their students. For this reason I work at Palmer Trinity, a great private school in Miami, Florida. Here, nobody is a slave to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). I create my own curriculum, and I’m encouraged to embrace unique approaches to teaching and assessing. I don’t have “Big Brother” looking over my shoulder, nor am I beholden to how well students perform on one silly test.
“There is no substitute for learning basic skills, enforcing academic rigor, holding high expectations for learners, and measuring educational progress,” writes Thomas R. Rosebrough goes on to reference the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Content alone will not create passionate learners, nor will it develop students’ sense of connectedness to the learning process or their communities,” Rosebrough writes.
How do Finnish kids excel without rote learning and standardized testing? My Helicopter Ride with a Principal. Succeeding With Dyslexia. Hey, Kid: Thoughts For The Young Oddballs We Need So Badly : Monkey See. Mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdf. The Unspoken Key To Finding Meaningful Work. The best and worst regions for education revealed. How To Become More Unstoppable Every Day. Knowledge currency | The New Economics Party. Ited Nations News Centre - At UN, Malala Yousafzai rallies youth to stand up for universal education. This school teaches students how to fail.
Why aren't you doing what really makes you happy? Why small is beautiful in education. Gen Y needs to try harder. The Differentiated Classroom: Doing What’s Fair. Bringing the Kiwi classroom into the digital age - Story - Campbell Live - TV Shows. Planting dreams Growing blessings: A child is not a vase to filled but a fire to be lit. Charter School Legislation Passes Final Hurdle. First charter school set to open next year. The Perils of Standardized Testing: 6 Ways It Harms Learning - InformED. Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom (9781571104243): Rick Wormeli.
Students Who Take Tougher Graduation Exams Are More Likely To Wind Up In Jail. Taking the Caring Out of Teaching. Inside the multimillion-dollar essay-scoring business - Page 1 - News. The Curriculum of Necessity or What Must an Educated Person Know? Should Schools Still Teach Cursive? STARNES: DOJ: Tolerance Trumps Right to Homeschool. Unschooling has its appeal. But can it work? The Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL) The intellectual benefits of the real old-fashioned summer | Project Based Homeschooling. Forced vs. Natural Milestones. The Perils of Standardized Testing: 6 Ways It Harms Learning : InformED. Progressive Charter School Doesn’t Have Students. Brycen R. R. Couture: Unschooler, Musician, Activist for Children, All People; the World: My First Reaction to Ron Clark's Article, "What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents"
MA Education Reform at 20: What Lies Ahead? | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity. The Gaze of Educators | In Finland’s Schools, Less is More | LearnNow. How Many Teachers Really Understand Dialogue? | Quickwrite: Why Teachers Don’t Read | Don't Go Back to School: How to Fuel the Internal Engine of Lifelong Learning. In Alarming Film, Director Cevin Soling Explores School vs. Prison. Studying vs learning. Manga and anime declared good study tools for kids. Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond. The 12 Must-Have Skills Of Modern Learners. Hacker School: Where Students and Instructors Learn Together.
Malcolm Gladwell: Albert O. Hirschman and the Power of Failure. Utterly Shameless, Unabashed Self-Promotion That I Hope You Will Thank Me For Later, and My Apologies in Advance | The 12 Must-Have Skills Of Modern Learners. Smashing Silos! 54 Serious Reasons WHY YOU SHOULD HOMESCHOOL. People behind World’s Largest Solar Cooking Project, First Green School in Nepal & upcoming Green Initiatives !!!! | urvishdave.
(263) Hacking into the Indian Education System - On the Stepping Stone - Quora. Google HR Boss Explains Why GPA And Most Interviews Are Useless. Survival of the Nicest? A new theory of our origins says cooperation-not competition-is instinctive. EDUCATION NEWS & RESOURCES. What we can learn from Finland’s successful school reform. Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education | Education | The Observer. Leap Year Project: A Prototype for Radically Experiential Learning | Education on GOOD. How Can We Fix Education? Listen to Young People | Education on GOOD.
The 60/30/10 Principle to Strengths-Based Learning | The Right Side of Normal. Theory U | Sustainability Thinking. Innovative assignment gets SMS students thinking far into the future. Teaching Kids About “Stress” | Kids at SWiTCH. Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor With Educators. How Can We Fix Education? Listen to Young People | Education on GOOD. Hacking into the Indian Education System - On the Stepping Stone - Quora. Camp Creek Blog | Project Based Homeschooling. HappyerAtHome: show me what you're working with.
The Fundamental Problem of Education is Philosophical | Riot after Chinese teachers try to stop pupils cheating. Sugata Mitra: Slum chic? 7 reasons for doubt. Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School - Jessica Lahey. Only The Lonely. Ten ways to help your kids pick themselves | Project Based Homeschooling. The Decline and Fall of the English Major. Video Games: A Blessing or a Curse? | The Right Side of Normal.