Every Student Should Have A Digital Portfolio. Every student should have a collection of personal bests–a cloud-based story of their development and artifacts of accomplishment that’s easily shareable in full or in part and organized for presentation. At their most basic level portfolios can simply be a storage strategy. They can also be an active work, collaboration and reflection space including a blog and feedback from teachers and peers. Active use cultivates habits of lifelong learning by promoting reflection on what to learn and how to learn. The third level of use is portfolio as showcase around a set of learning outcomes–an achievement documentation system–such as high school graduation. Development of a digital portfolio is at the heart of a college and career readiness program at Grandview High School, which is located in Central Washington’s wine country.
Following are eight tools that schools are using to promote deeper learning by encouraging students to build a collection of personal bests. Google Drive portfolios. New Research Shows Digital Content Increases Student Achievement. Key findings include: 1) High quality digital content positively impacted student content knowledge and critical thinking practices when integrated into existing curriculum. Across subject areas (English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies), student performance on content assessments showed significant improvement, increasing by eight percentage points. 2) On average, students outperformed national assessment norms by 10 percentage points, and students also outperformed state assessment norms, by an average of 11 percentage points. 3) More than half (56 percent) of students also showed an increase in the frequency with which they engaged in critical thinking practices. 4) Teachers overwhelmingly reported that PBS LearningMedia made positive contributions to their classroom practices, with many saying they are more likely to integrate digital media into their lessons.
All Student Hand-Outs From Larry Ferlazzo's New Student Motivation Book Now Online For Free. Let's Look At The Wonky Logic Behind Less B.C. Student Funding, More Jail Investment | Sarah Miller #bced. When you hear parents, the B.C. Teachers' Federation (BCTF) and school boards call for better funding for our public schools, the biggest argument you will hear from Premier Christy Clark and Education Minister Peter Fassbender is often the declining enrolment.
After all why invest more money into a system that has less people then last year? Let's forget about the fact that every province in Canada, with the exception of Alberta and Saskatchewan, has seen declining enrolment over the years, yet EVERY province except B.C. continues to hire more teachers and invest more in per student funding. Let's forget about salaries, inflation, rising costs such as hydro, medical services plan (MSP) and other operating costs. Forget about the growing need for schools to keep up to date with today's ever growing technology based world. Let's talk about the criminal justice system in B.C. for a minute. I recently talked to a teacher who saw an old student on the news being arrested for armed robbery. Why Has Technology Failed To Substantially Improve Student Achievement? -- THE Journal. Being Mobile Blog Why Has Technology Failed To Substantially Improve Student Achievement? Why has technology not enabled students to experience a significant increase in achievement?
To answer that question, let’s first look at the business world. During the early days (1975-1986) of computers, studies from various businesses showed no gains in productivity, and the notion of the “productivity paradox” surfaced. But then, in the early 1990’s, business figured it out. Shoshana Zuboff, in her book In the Age of the Smart Machine, talked about automating versus informating. Let’s use the above analysis from business to understand K-12’s situation. K-12 has been using the computer to automate direct instruction, the pedagogy that has dominated K-12 for the past 120+ years.
There you have it, sports fans! The Evidence is Clear. Cell Phones Support Student Learning. 5 Utterly Fascinating History Education Resources | MakeUseOf. History just keeps happening – there’s nothing you can do about that. But learning as much as possible is deeply rewarding, and helps you better understand the world. This week Cool Websites and Apps digs into five sites that give you a better idea of history. Explore maps from other ages, see where people are moving to and from, then work out one way of discovering who the most famous people in history are.
Let’s get stared. Geacron: See the World Map for Any Year The nations of today didn’t always exist: almost all of them didn’t take their current shape until relatively recently. Geocron is the perfect site to explore this with. Recent examples, like South Sudan, are obvious to imagine, but some other bits of history are downright unintuitive until you explore them. What other weird facts like this can you find?
It’s fascinating to see how the world took shape over the years, with countries as we know them today slowly taking shape. Orbis: Google Maps for Ancient Rome. K-12 Librarians' Roles Shift to Meet Digital Demands | Education Week. A Washington state district treats librarians as digital mentors By Carol Brzozowski School libraries across the country are trying to forge a new identity, prompted largely by the need to re-establish their relevance in the age of blended learning. In the Vancouver, Wash., school district, those efforts are being guided by Mark Ray, a librarian who has worked to transform the school library program in his 23,000-student system from feeling outdated and irrelevant into one of the most exemplary programs in the United States, served by 35 “teacher-librarians.”
Librarians have traditionally served an important role in school systems as teachers, particularly in teaching students how to access information. Now, in Vancouver and elsewhere, librarians’ roles are evolving, as districts count on them to help teachers use technology to improve instruction, and to troubleshoot problems with digital systems as they emerge. Teacher-librarians are hired and evaluated by Vancouver’s school principals. New Teachers: Working With Parents. 7 questions to ask regarding whether education technology improves learning. Does education technology improve learning? The intuitive answer to those of us involved in education technology is “of course it does”.
However, the evidence from research is not conclusive. I think the reason is that it’s actually very difficult to carry out robust research in this area. As the impact of education technology has often been a topic for discussion in the Naace and Mirandanet mailing lists, I thought it might be useful to try and clarify the issues as I see them. But is she learning better? The question “Does education technology improve learning?” What education technology? The question as stated is too broad. What other factors are present? Education technology doesn’t happen in a vacuum. What is the education technology being used for?
What is being taught? How is the impact of the education technology being evaluated? There are several ways in which this might be done, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. What exactly is being measured? Conclusion. 7 questions to ask regarding whether education technology improves learning. Why Schools Need Collaborative Learning Spaces | Emerging Education Technologies. Creative Commons license image source We’ve converted a few classrooms to more collaborative spaces over the last few years at The College of Westchester, and faculty reaction has generally been quite positive. These initial room changes have revolved around modifying the layout of a few classrooms from the row-by-row footprint of the traditional lecture room to a more interactive, group-oriented layout of round tables. We are now looking to move towards the next iteration of this evolution by creating a technologically enabled space for collaborative learning.
I had the good fortune of sitting through several sessions at the recent UB Tech conference focused on successful implementations of flexible learning spaces. As a next step, I searched out and reviewed some of the many articles and resources available on the Web that focus on this topic. There are many reasons why collaborative, flexible learning spaces are advantageous. Learning spaces impact learning! Flexibility. College is a con: The savage truth about your bachelor’s degree. This article originally appeared on AlterNet. Higher education wears the cloak of liberalism, but in policy and practice, it can be a corrupt and cutthroat system of power and exploitation.
It benefits immensely from right-wing McCarthy wannabes, who in an effort to restrict academic freedom and silence political dissent, depict universities as left-wing indoctrination centers. But the reality is that while college administrators might affix “down with the man” stickers on their office doors, many prop up a system that is severely unfair to American students and professors, a shocking number of whom struggle to make ends meet. Even the most elementary level of political science instructs that politics is about power. Power, in America, is about money: who has it?
Who does not have it? Who is accumulating it? The result of their investigation reads as if Charles Dickens and Franz Kafka collaborated on notes for a novel. Five Principles for Securing Student-Data Privacy | Education Week. 10 reasons teachers do NOT use education technology. I often find myself in meetings about curriculum projects. I am usually invited to either share my thoughts on the technology components or explain the technology options for tracking the curriculum. Sometimes the topic is sharing resources and making sure core documents can be managed and properly versioned.
In all cases, I am required to have a broad overview of the K-12 curriculum. I am also required to have an understanding of the end-users and how they will apply the curriculum content to their various specialities. Aside from two or three other people, I generally find I have the most objective overview of how things are connected and the areas that need the most support. The problem is because I am working within the department of technology, my opinions of curriculum topics are often politely disregarded.
All opinions aside concerning who may have the most objective outlook on curriculum, there is one fact that is nearly impossible to argue. But who is listening? Here is a test. School Libraries: the best bang for your education buck | MinervaReads. Next week marks the end of Malorie Blackman’s tenure as Children’s Laureate. I will be sad about this, not only because Malorie has been a terrific laureate, but because she strongly advocated for school libraries. She has asked on numerous occasions why it is mandatory in this country for every prison to have a library, but not every school. In fact this month also marks a year passing since the publication of the report, The Beating Heart of the School, by the Libraries All Party Parliamentary Group about improving educational attainment through school libraries and librarians.
But in the past year I’ve seen more and more school librarians being made redundant, and visited more schools in which the library space is simply a bookshelf in the middle of a corridor, or schools in which the sole person looking after the library is a mealtime supervisor who merely ‘tidies shelves’. I’ve banged on before about how reading improves a child’s chances in life. What an NDP regime change means for Alberta education. “This government firmly believes that Alberta’s students deserve the best education we can deliver and, by restoring funding for kindergarten to Grade 12 students, we are taking swift action to making this vision a reality.” The government is: Providing enrolment growth funding for the 2015-16 school year to ensure that every student in Alberta classrooms is funded. About 12,000 additional students are expected in schools this fall. Restoring funding to previously announced reductions to school and classroom resources, such as transportation, inclusive education, and First Nations, Metis and Inuit, among other support services.
Maintaining funding to cover the two per cent salary increase and one per cent lump sum payment under the previously negotiated Teacher Agreement. The fiscal year cost to restore this funding is $103 million. School boards require this information as they prepare budgets for the 2015-16 school year, which are due to Alberta Education by June 30. 8 Top Global Education Thinkers. Meet 8 Top Global Education Thinkers you should know. John Connell (@I_Am_Learner) is an education expert and strategist with wide experience across all the key sectors and at all levels in education, and is founder of the ‘I Am Learner’ international education consultancy ( He counts UNESCO, European Schoolnet, Promethean, Education Fast Forward, Skills Development Scotland and Pearson amongst his clients. In 2001, Connell initiated, and then led for 6 years the design, procurement and initial implementation of the Scottish Schools Digital Network project, now known as Glow.
This is Scotland’s national connected schools program, digitally linking all of Scotland’s 3,000 schools across a national broadband network and national web-based learning and collaborative platform. While the growing mobile networks are already having an unmistakable impact on education around the world, mobile learning (m-learning) is still fundamentally an emerging phenomenon. New Trends in e-Learning Education System. 20 new education products for tech-savvy students | Daily Genius. The economics of both state-provided and private education are always making life difficult for those who spend their days balancing budgets. Schools don’t have a lot of money.
Even the rich ones. We get that. The result is that, right across the industry, even in the private sector where the institution itself is dedicated to its own margins, there is a suspicion about suppliers who chase a profit. This isn’t about the profit motive in private schools – that’s an issue that bears longer discussion than this piece – but about how those running schools, somehow, seem to live in a world where they assume that everyone – from those who drive the buses to those who make the lunches to those who make the apps that keep children educated even on their mobiles – are all doing it from higher motives.
Surely, the thought goes, no-one does this for the money, no-one would exploit the education of a child in that way? TechnoKids Computer Curriculum For K-12 (Not Free) | Computer Curriculum. Choosito!: A New Education Focused Search Engine. OpenEd wins Open Education Award for Excellence - BCcampus. BCcampus OpenEd was recently recognized for creative innovation by the Open Education Consortium, a worldwide community of higher education institutions and organizations devoted to open education and global education Last fall, the B.C. Open Textbook Project was named a regional finalist for the Premier’s Award for Public Service Excellence, and this spring we were recognized for excellence in creative innovation by the Open Education Consortium.
“We’re grateful to be honoured by the Open Education Consortium for this award,” shared Mary Burgess, Acting Executive Director at BCcampus. “This award reinforces our philosophy and confirms we’re moving in the right direction to provide Open Educational Resources to learners in B.C. and around the world.” 2015 is bound to be a busy year for Open Education, with the Open Education Global Conference planned for next month, the Open Textbook Summit scheduled for May, and OpenEd15: The Impact of Open arranged for the fall.
Notable Quotes Learn More. Daphne Bramham: B.C. continues its massive restructuring of public education. Geoff Johnson: Education is plagued by the ‘New Stupid’ The battle for education - Learning with 'e's. How Do We Learn? How Should We Learn? Permanently Disrupting Education - With Cellphones | Te@chThought. Putting a Dent in College Costs With Open-Sourc... February’s Selected Innovative Learning and Education Technology Videos. 5 Ways Google Tools Can Make Education More Exciting. Daphne Bramham: Why aren’t the Liberals defending public education? #bced. Managing iPads in Education.
Tom Bennett: it's time to tackle the myths in education. Education Technology Integration – You’re Doing it Wrong. Teachers' Guide to Google Books. The Complete Guide To Twitter Hashtags For Education. For Education: Your one-stop shop for class content. 4 Education Technology Myths to Leave Behind in 2015 | Top Hat Blog.
Resources On The Social Side Of Education Reform. Differentiation Doesn't Work | Education Week.