Almost every other nation in the World is becoming more educated, but we’re not! See the graph…
Some very interesting ideas in here, but be sure to read the section on copyright concerns with Pinterest (it’s the second half of the article).
Great ways to use Twitter in the classroom!
According to Marc Tucker, education leaders at the 2nd International Summit on the Teaching Profession are telling a much different narrative of learning than here in the States.
Singapore:
They reminded themselves that what they do in education is for the learner, their needs, their…
In 1817, during a period of economic hardship following the war with France, a motley crew of stocking-makers, stonemasons, ironworkers and labourers from a Derbyshire village attempted an uprising against the government. It was swiftly and brutally suppressed.
“Imagination is a new formation which is not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity. Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action. The old adage that child’s play is imagination in action can be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and schoolchildren is play without action.” (p. 93)
Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Psychological Processes
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on the Cornel West NPR radio show recently, and I just wanted to point to one snip that I think clearly shows that problem we’re having when it comes to how we define learning. Here’s Duncan:
Secondly, on the test scores, it’s a really, really important…
“The increasing focus and reliance on standardized tests to evaluate schools and teachers is resulting in cheating. That’s probably inevitable. But it’s also probably minimal. The bigger problem is a more serious type of cheating – one that’s perfectly legal and apparently acceptable. Students are being cheated of a broader education that emphasizes a balance of creativity, extracurricular activities, foreign languages, higher math and science skills and other opportunities due to the over-emphasis on testing for basic math and reading.”
John Seely Brown’s keynote from the recent DML conference is worth the watch if nothing else for his overview of “entrepreneurial learning.” I could summarize, but I found this snip from Sarah Vaala to be a more than adequate overview:
Entrepreneurial Learning. The morning began with a…
How did Jeanette Winterson recover from the fantastically bad luck of landing in the embrace of a woman who understood motherhood as a daily struggle with the Devil over the ownership of her child’s soul?
“What we notice in stories,” Winterson answers toward the end of her memoir, “is the nearness of the wound to the gift.”
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—
Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,
The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
Robert Pinsky
On March 25, 1911, fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 employees, most of them women.
So do you think that in a few years, the incidence of brain-related diseases will drop? Also, what does this say to the psychologists that say people cannot multi-task? —TBH
From the article:
A study has found that people who appear to be constantly distracted have more “working memory”, giving them the ability to hold a lot of information in their heads and manipulate it mentally.
Daniel Levinson, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, said that those with higher working memory capacity reported “more mind wandering during these simple tasks”, but their performance did not suffer.
The results, published online in the journal Psychological Science, appear to confirm previous research that found working memory allows humans to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously.
Everyone knows maturity has something to do with the ability of “children” to focus on a single task for an extended period of time. Everyone knows a student’s mind wanders when they are bored.
Both of those aside, whether we call it left brain vs right brain or critical thinker vs creative thinker, some - not all - are wired for successful multi-tasking. The performance of creative thinkers is often not harmed by multi-tasking. The same cannot be said for most critical thinkers.
Traditionally, classroom teachers have considered a lack of focus, multi-tasking, to be a problem. Creative multi-taskers are often forced to conform in the classroom - if they want to get a good “grade”. This study supports the value of multi-tasking. But educators should not interpret it to mean that multi-tasking is better!
Today’s technology could be used to transform the educational experience of ALL students! However, it will require a model of education that recognizes the value in student differences. This model cannot be developed as long as Public Education is being STANDARDIZED.
Here’s one:
Fluxtime
Fluxtime is an interesting tool that allows the user to record actions as they move things around the screen, manually creating the animation. In addition to providing backgrounds and images Fluxtime has an upload option so you can include any images you create or find elsewhere.
she told me an experience she’d had where a little girl had come up to her and said she was really interested in something that came up and she asked could the teacher give her some ideas for how to look into it further
and the teacher was compelled to tell her , I’m sorry but you can’t do that, you have to study to pass this national exam that’s coming , that’s going to determine your future , the teacher didnt say it but it’s going to determine my future whether i’m rehired and so on
the system is geared to getting the children to pass hurdles but not to learn to understand and explore/
” —Noam Chomsky - Noam Chomsky on education (via noam-chomsky)GOP presidential challenger Rick Santorum faced three tough questions from high school students Friday afternoon on his education, health care and economic policies.
The questions he faced afterward from reporters at an Italian restaurant in suburban Chicago about the year he lived in Illinois seemed almost gentle by comparison.
[…]
Seventeen minutes into his speech, the faculty advisor interrupted him.
“Excuse me — I know we’re on a tight schedule here. We have some students who would like to ask some questions if you’re ready to entertain those,” the faculty member said. Santorum nodded.
The 3 questions students got to ask:
1.
“You recently commented on how you don’t believe everyone should go to college,” Becky Pauwels, 17, told Santorum. “Yet countries such as Germany and Japan, whose governments offer college to any motivated student, experience high rates of socio-economic mobility, which, by your own admission and all academic studies, is lagging in the United States.”
Since President Barack Obama proposes expanded access to college and training programs, how do his proposals differ from Obama’s, she asked.
2
“Your main competitor, Mitt Romney, donated 16.3 percent of his income to charity and you donated only 1.7 percent of your $923,000 salary to charity,” Vucicevic said. “Your explanation was that you have to provide for seven children, one of which has special needs. … How do you expect middle-class Americans who are in similar situations to pay for it? Isn’t your situation the exact reason why we need a universal health care system like most other nations have?”
The auditorium erupted in applause at the question.
3
Hannah Johnstone asked if Santorum’s economic policies weren’t “just giving the upper 1 percent more of the advantages they had under George Bush’s lower tax rates and deregulatory policies which is very similar to what you are proposing?”
Big news this week: Khan Academy releases an iPad app and the TED organization opens their education channel on YouTube. The Washington Post asks if Khan is education’s future and calls both “the new leaders in education reform“.
Crap!*
To me, all this emphasis on Kahn represents the…
