It’s late 2015, we’re still overblocking the Internet, and the blame is on us as administrators… I read a post recently that stressed yet again how access to the wide range of the Internet is an equity issue. Like library and textbook censorship, not only does blocking video services, social media, online interactive content, and other Web resources restrict students’ intellectual freedom, it also prohibits them from engaging in powerful conversations and learning opportunities (and, incidentally, also sends messages to your most technology-fluent educators that you’re outdated).
Source: It’s late 2015 and we’re still overblocking the Internet | Dangerously Irrelevant
As with many words, the word “connected “ can be used for many things. At one point in time “being connected” implied a criminal connection to some sort of organized crime. Being connected has also meant having ties to the higher ups in an organization for the purpose of favors and perks. The word connection, simply stated, means to be united, or linked.
Brianne Bolin has taught English at Columbia College in Chicago for 10 years. She also often buys her groceries with food stamps. She is on Medicaid. Perhaps worst of all, she lives with constant uncertainty about how much work she’ll have in the following semester, as classes can be added or taken away without her say.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2015
Teachers in the digital world
by Katarzyna Kubacka
Analyst, Education and Skills Directorate
Rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have made it an important part of our daily lives, from staying in contact with people, to checking traffic and booking tickets. However, ICT can also be a useful tool for teachers in advancing 21st century learning. As the new Teaching in Focus (TIF) brief ‘Teaching with technology’ reports, the use of ICT for students’ projects or class work is an active teaching practice that promotes skills for students’ lifelong success.
So how common is the use of ICT in the classrooms? Across the countries and economies participating in the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), it seems that ICT is still used less frequently than more passive teaching methods, such as working in exercise books. For example, over 70% of TALIS teachers report checking students’ exercise books frequently, while only 38% report frequently using ICT. This is surprising given the prevalence of ICT in most students’ lives across TALIS countries and economies.
May 22
This gallery contains 9 photos.
Engage Their Minds Our school Maker Club has been working with electric circuits: Squishy Circuits, Makey Makey, Circuit Scribe, and Little Bits. Since it seems important that a Maker Club actually make something, paper circuit greeting cards became a goal. As usual, the project was harder than I anticipated. For some reason, I thought that there […]
A dominant narrative of the past decade and a half of education reform has been to highlight alleged persistent failures of our education system. While this tale began long ago with the Reagan Administration report A Nation at Risk, it has been put into overdrive in the era of test based accountability that began with the No Child Left Behind Act. That series of amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act mandated annual standardized testing of all students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, set a target for 100% proficiency for all students in English and mathematics, and imposed consequences for schools and districts that either failed to reach proficiency targets or failed to test all students. Under the Obama administration, the federal Department of Education has freed states from the most stringent requirements to meet those targets, but in return, states had to commit themselves…
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On Saturday, April 25, 2015, University of Oregon education professor Yong Zhao gave a keynote address at the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education (NPE). Zhao’s entire 55-minute speech can be found here.
I thought this speech worthy of preservation as a Word document; so, I decided to transcribe it.
I am pleased to say that I am finished. The full transcription of Zhao’s speech is available here for any and all who wish to read it:
However, the remainder of this post consists of the last of my five installments of Zhao’s speech, for those who have been patiently waiting for this, Part V, after having read Parts I, II, III, and IV.
At the conclusion of Part IV, I ended with Zhao’s discussion of Asian officials’ wondering how it is that their students score so well on…
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I think we also abrogate our personal responsibility when we use this phrase. If our practices in school are different than practices “in the real world” (outside of school), why is that? Is there a good reason for it, or not? When we choose to be more “lenient” in school (typical use #1), there’s hopefully a good reason for that practice. When we choose to operate in school in the same fashion as outside of school (typical use #2), there’s hopefully a good reason for that as well. And we conveniently seem to forget who has created the “non-real” world of school: we have. So if the world “in school” is different, either in a positive or negative way, we need to own that.
There’s no doubt that students find making to be a creative and engaging activity. But as they tinker, design, and invent, are they actually learning anything?
Making is too young a phenomenon to have generated a broad research base to answer this question. The literature that does exist comes from enthusiastic champions of making, rather than disinterested investigators. But there are two well-established lines of research within psychology and cognitive science that can inform how we understand making and help us ensure that making leads to learning. Taken together, these two strands of empirical evidence provide the best guide we presently have for maximizing the learning potential of maker activities.
via How to Ensure that Making Leads to Learning | School Library Journal.
I loved reading your post! I am an avid gamer as well as an educator. It probably boils down to the
Glad that some schools offer is right after the summer. Ipad applications does really help.
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I use civics as part or my 4th grade social studies curriculum...what better way to explore the stat
I am very excited to hear that Comcast is involved in this initiative, since the connection to the I
The Sharing Tree 