Bringing Science To Education. Thursday, November 15, 2012 Why do we still base the education of children on tradition and habit, or on unfounded and unproven theories? There’s another alternative: science, says Pooja Agarwal, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. As she writes in the journal Education Psychology Review: “Currently, we are witnesses to profound educational ‘experimentation,’ for example with charter schools, voucher programs, educational technology, new standards and assessments, revamped educator evaluations, and the growth modeling and analysis of student data.
Year after year, decade after decade, we implement new initiatives for our nation’s education system, yet we often fail to obtain significant improvements. In the current era of flexibility and experimentation, we have a golden opportunity as cognitive and educational scientists to take what we have learned over the course of at least 100 years about human learning and memory and apply it to the ‘real world’ of education. About. I am a learning & teaching geek.
Unapologetically so. I adore all aspects of creative thinking and reflective practice to stimulate new ideas and thinking. This blog is a mixture of reflections on my own learning and acts as a repository for those sparkling gems I come across and don’t immediately know what to do with. But, like any ideas magpie worth their beak, if it catches my eye, I can’t resist collecting it. Most importantly, this blog is an invitation to you to get involved and share your thinking with me. And if it encourages you to start your own blog, then that’s fabulous too. I write, coach, research, practice and, well, basically live and breathe learning. All views expressed here are very much a personal affair. I have another blog “Teducation” that I use to collect my learning-related reflections on the wonderful ideas, words and people to be found at www.TED.com. Half-echoes of the past. The Labour Party, founded in 1900, has been in existence for 112 years. But there have been Labour governments for just 32 of those years; for another eight years, Labour participated in wartime national unity governments.
During the remaining 72 years, it was in opposition. Why has so much of Labour’s existence been spent in opposition? There are three reasons. The first is factionalism. After the defeat of 1970, too, Labour threatened to descend into factionalism, but Harold Wilson skilfully contained it. Labour’s defeat in 2010 was worse than those of 1951, 1970 or 1979. The second reason for Labour’s long years in opposition is that it has, since 1918, seen itself as the sole party of the left, and has been intolerant of competition from other claim ants.
In the 1930s, the Labour leadership stood firmly against a Popular Front, an alliance with Liberals and anti-appeasement Conservatives which might have brought about a change of government policy. Liberal friends The better life. Reasons for EBacc Subjects (and reasons why I don’t agree) | Laura McInerney. *If you are looking for basic info on the EBacc (e.g. subjects included, how it affects certification) this post about ‘what is the ebacc’ might be more appropriate). If you want to know the reasons for the subjects included, read on! * Schools must now publish on their websites the % of pupils passing the ‘English Baccalaureate’ – a set of 5 GCSEs that must include English, Maths, Science, a Modern Foreign Language and either History or Geography. While I agree with Eng, Maths & Sci, I remain sceptical on MFL and entirely bemused by the inclusion of ‘History or Geography’.
I’ve never fully understood why this group of subjects was chosen and below are some of the reasons I have heard for the choice and why, so far, I have found them entirely unconvincing. 1. The Russell Group universities say they are facilitating subjects: Which means you need to do two of them at A-Level in order that you are in the best position to get onto an RG course. 2. 3. 4. 5. 5. 6. Like this: Like Loading... Welcome to Parent View | Ofsted Parent View. In-what-other-profession-by-david-reber. NAHT Warwick Mansell. 7 Apps to Organize Your Life | Cioccolanti Blog. I’m writing you from my new laptop ~ the Macbook Pro with Retina. It used to take me a couple of days to set up a new computer, but now I’m getting better and picker about what I put into my workplace. Clutter is not good and too many apps can slow or freeze your computer.
I want to share with you the Top 7 aps I use to organize my life and go paperless. But first, I want to tell you why it should be relevant to your life. If you don’t know how to have a good day, you can’t have a good life. I spoke at our church about the “12 Ingredients of a Perfect Day”. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Btw, you cannot download Document To Go desktop application from the Mac App Store, so to save you time, I’ve pasted the link here: Dataviz’s Desktop App. 6. 7. As a sermon writer, speaker and author, I need a Bible app that allows me to work offline, take lots of notes, and extract those notes easily.
Our ministry worked with him to make Wayne Cordeiro’s Life Journal Reading Plan available for the BLB. Party Poopers. Creative Curriculum Design: Our inspiration. Becoming an innovative school? My top 10 ideas. Northern Beaches Christian School: one of the most innovative in the world. Thanks to everyone for great day of discussion …from @wethink When one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation described Northern Beaches Christian School as “one of the most innovative in the world” we were amazed and honoured. Charlie Leadbeater (@wethink), is a former adviser to the British government and author of We-think: The Power Of Mass Creativity. Leadbeater ran a one day seminar with us in June 2011. His TED Talk Education innovation in the Slums has more than 300,000 views and he was described as: early to notice the rise of “amateur innovation” – great ideas from outside the traditional walls, from people who suddenly have the tools to collaborate, innovate and make their expertise known.
We are often asked about the distinctives that have led to Charles Leadbeater, and other leading educators and thinkers, to make such comments when they spend some time at Northern Beaches Christian School. How to Create Your Own Textbook — With or Without Apple. By Dolores Gende Apple’s iBooks2 and authoring app has created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks. As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks. It might seem daunting, but the availability of quality materials online and the power of tapping into personal learning networks should make it easier.
Here’s how to create a digital textbook and strategies for involving the students in its development in three steps. 1. Teachers can work with colleagues within their subject area departments and beyond the walls of the classroom to aggregate resources through social bookmarking. 2. One of the most user-friendly tools to post resources for your course is LiveBinders. Summer gloom. Ofsted put in Special Measures: the blind leading the sighted. The title of this blog is a headline you are unlikely to ever read. But before anything is invented, it is first an idea, so let's at least entertain the idea and aspire to its subsequent genesis.
Why so serious? Because, like the rotten apple of Gotham City, the people tasked with directing and protecting education have become as wanton and derelict as any flatfoot with a roll of fifties and a guilty conscience. The Office for Standards in Teaching, has been caught in flagrante delicto. Who are the Watchmen? Ofsted.
Reports in the TES indicate that: Tribal, one of the major firms that carries out inspections on behalf of the watchdog, employs at least five lead inspectors who do not have qualified teacher status (QTS), it has emerged. Of course, it's easy and unfair to demonise; there are many fine inspectors who bring a Rolodex of experience and wisdom to their role. I believe Dame Wilshaw when he says that he wants to root this out; that he wants to raise the game of his teams. Born to Learn ~ You are Born to Learn. The Wing to Heaven.
The Difference Between Learning And Instruction. More pedagogic change in 10 years than last 1000 years – all driven by 10 technology innovations. Pedagogy - one of those words that’s used when people want to sound all academic. So let’s just call it learning practice. Of one thing we can be sure; teaching does not seem to have changed much in the last 100 years. In our Universities, given the stubborn addiction to lectures, it has barely changed in 1000 years.
So what’s the real source of pedagogic change? It’s not education departments who peddle the same old traditional, teacher training courses or train the trainer courses. Suddenly we had Google, then in the last ten years Facebook, Twitter, BBM, MSN Messenger, Wikipedia, YouTube, iTunes, Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox. 1. Education and training have been tied to the tyranny of time and location. 2. The simple hyperlink encourages curiosity and is a leap to more learning. 3. Google aren’t kidding when they state their mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. 4. Jimmy Wales should get the Nobel Prize. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education. The Nerdy Teacher. For the love of learning. Stump The Teacher.