Bill and Melinda Gates Are Not Discouraged by Failure of Their Education “Reforms” - Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog
Link
Bill and Melinda Gates told Nicholas Kristof that they have poured billions into education reform, but there’s been “no dramatic change.” Although the Gates’ normally pay attention to results, in the case of education reform they are unfazed by failure. As Inside Philanthropy reports: This is significant for a bunch of reasons, not the least […]

via IFTTT

Students are Not Widgets (& a Must Read Book) - Etale - Digital Age Learning

Etale - Digital Age Learning
Link
If you haven’t read Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica’s book, Creative Schools, I urge you to click here and buy a copy today. I am not overstating when I say Continue Reading →

via IFTTT

Flipping for New Chromebook for Today’s Classrooms - Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator
Link


via IFTTT

Want to foster rich academic discussions? Try a student #Edcamp | eSchool News | eSchool News

Want to foster rich academic discussions? Try a student #Edcamp | eSchool News | eSchool News:



'via Blog this'

Higher Education in 2030: Get Ready for the #HigherEd #Startup Revolution - Etale - Digital Age Learning

Etale - Digital Age Learning
Link
Thomas Frey predicted that 50% of colleges would collapse by 2013. Similarly, Clayton Christiansen is quoted as saying that 50% of colleges will not exist in 15 years. Others have Continue Reading →

via IFTTT

Review: In ‘Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be,’ Frank Bruni Examines College Admissions Mania - The New York Times

Review: In ‘Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be,’ Frank Bruni Examines College Admissions Mania - The New York Times: "As valuable as this book should be for anyone who takes it to heart, it’s important to remember that its focus on very selective colleges — and on the students who aim to attend them — pertains to only a tiny segment of our society. Such colleges will enroll perhaps 100,000 of the roughly three-and-a-quarter million students finishing high school this spring — in other words about 3 percent. And even most private colleges, because they depend on tuition revenue to serve their students, are less worried about how few applicants they can admit than about how many of those admitted will enroll. Unfortunately, our less heralded institutions — from small private colleges to large public community colleges — along with the millions of students they serve, are unlikely to be the subject of a comparably impassioned book."



'via Blog this'

In the Name of College! What Are We Doing to Our Children? | Michelle Rose Gilman

In the Name of College! What Are We Doing to Our Children? | Michelle Rose Gilman: "Have we lost our collective consciousness? Have we forgotten what childhood is? What it's for? Why it even exists at all? Have we, as parents, educators, counselors and even students, bought into some asinine idea of what the years 15 through 18 are all about? I can only answer yes, we have lost our collective consciousness, and we are making one of the largest mistakes we can make while hurting our children in the process. For many of our kids, we have stopped childhood at around 14, if not younger, and have replaced the rest of adolescence with something completely artificial."



'via Blog this'

Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection - The New York Times

Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection - The New York Times: "Kathryn DeWitt conquered high school like a gold-medal decathlete. She ran track, represented her school at a statewide girls’ leadership program and took eight Advanced Placement tests, including one for which she independently prepared, forgoing the class.

Expectations were high. Every day at 5 p.m. test scores and updated grades were posted online. Her mother would be the first to comment should her grade go down. “I would get home from track and she would say, ‘I see your grade dropped.’ I would say, ‘Mom, I think it’s a mistake.’ And she would say, ‘That’s what I thought.’ ” (The reason turned out to be typing errors. Ms. DeWitt graduated with straight A’s.)"



'via Blog this'

Steve Nelson: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves - Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog
Link
Steve Nelson, head of a progressive private school in Néw York City, writes vividly and cogently about the inevitable failure of so-called reform. The corporate reforms fail because they are built on extrinsic motivation, that is, a regime of carrots and sticks to drive teachers and students to comply with reformers’ demands. Extrinsic methods tend […]

via IFTTT

Why can't school be more like camp? - Education Outrage

Education Outrage
Link


via IFTTT

...Some Hard-Earned Lessons on Building an Open Community

The Mightybell Blog — As Reddit Burns, Some Hard-Earned Lessons on...:



'via Blog this'

Are Our Kids Too Safe to Succeed? | Free Range Kids

Free play turns out to be one of the most important things a kid can do to develop into the kind of adult who’s resilient, entrepreneurial—and a pleasure to be around...



Are Our Kids Too Safe to Succeed? | Free Range Kids:



'via Blog this'

Phys Ed: How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain - NYT > Home Page

NYT > Home Page
Link
A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health.











via IFTTT

Noam Chomsky: Bubble Tests “Destroy Any Meaningful Educational Process” - Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog
Link
This post contains a valuable interview with Noam Chomsky.   Chomsky is a philosopher, not a statistician or an economist. He looks behind the facade of data to ask “why are we doing this?” “What are the consequences?” “What is the value of collecting the data?” “Why?”   Statisticians and economists (fortunately, not all of […]

via IFTTT

Secret Teacher: Elizabeth is 12 and homework is stealing her childhood

Elizabeth sometimes doesn’t seem like a child. She’s more like a mini-executive, balancing a packed schedule and the weight of expectation placed on her by the school, her high-flying peers and, increasingly, by herself. I am absolutely certain that she will go on to do great things. I just hope that, among the many talents she is mastering, she learns how to slow down and enjoy being a kid.

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jul/18/secret-teacher-homework-is-stealing-childhood

Poor diets may lower children's IQ

Diets high in fat, sugar and processed foods are lowering children's IQ, a new study suggests. The report says that eating habits among three year olds shapes brain performance as they get older.

A predominantly processed-food diet at the age of three is directly associated with a lower IQ at the age of eight and a half, according to a Bristol-based study of thousands of British children.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/feb/07/diet-children-iq

School administrators in Iowa to monitor students with body cameras - Intellihub

Intellihub
Link
Mikael Thalen | Cameras to record "student movement" as well as "parent and student interactions"

via IFTTT

What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? - MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones

MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones
Link

Psychologist Ross Green offers a radically different approach to fixing kids' behavior.
Tristan Spinski

...The expression "school-to-prison pipeline" was coined to describe how America's public schools fail kids like Will. A first-grader whose unruly behavior goes uncorrected can become the fifth-grader with multiple suspensions, the eighth-grader who self-medicates, the high school dropout, and the 17-year-old convict. Yet even though today's teachers are trained to be sensitive to "social-emotional development" and schools are committed to mainstreaming children with cognitive or developmental issues into regular classrooms, those advances in psychology often go out the window once a difficult kid starts acting out. Teachers and administrators still rely overwhelmingly on outdated systems of reward and punishment, using everything from red-yellow-green cards, behavior charts, and prizes to suspensions and expulsions.
How we deal with the most challenging kids remains rooted in B.F. Skinner's mid-20th-century philosophy that human behavior is determined by consequences and bad behavior must be punished. (Pavlov figured it out first, with dogs.) During the 2011-12 school year, the US Department of Education counted 130,000 expulsions and roughly 7 million suspensions among 49 million K-12 students—one for every seven kids. The most recent estimates suggest there are also a quarter-million instances of corporal punishment in US schools every year.
But consequences have consequences. Contemporary psychological studies suggest that, far from resolving children's behavior problems, these standard disciplinary methods often exacerbate them. They sacrifice long-term goals (student behavior improving for good) for short-term gain—momentary peace in the classroom...

via IFTTT

Are Helicoptered Kids More Depressed at College? - Free Range Kids

Free Range Kids
Link
. This excerpt from Julia Lythcott-Haims’ new book, “How to Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success,” is more than viral. It pleads with parents to step back and let kids make their own decisions  — and mistakes: The data emerging confirms the harm done by asking […]

via IFTTT

ISTE 2015: The Big Themes—On-site and in the Backchannel | ISTE 2015 - School Library Journal

School Library Journal
Link
Melissa Techman recaps the highlights from ISTE 2015, much of the value, as in past events, coming from conversation and social media.

via IFTTT

ISTE 2015: Takeaway Tips for a Library Maker Space | ISTE 2015 - School Library Journal

School Library Journal
Link
Maker was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference—and that was a good thing for Jennifer Hanson, director of library services at Worcester (MA) Academy, who is planning a maker space at her school.

via IFTTT

Edcamps: Remixing Professional Development - Edutopia RSS

Edutopia RSS
Link
Edutopia blogger Andrew Marcinek gives us a personal perspective on how the Edcamp model changed his professional focus, and provides examples of how he's adapted this model for staff, students and community.

via IFTTT

Teacher Tom: The Jobs Of Tomorrow

Teacher Tom: The Jobs Of Tomorrow: "The idea of efficiency in education is an absurdity. The core idea is that if we subject children of the same age to the same information in the same manner at the same time, and if we are sufficiently rigorous, we will produce the kinds of workers they imagine they'll want two decades from now. It's all based on a sort of sociopathic fallacy. Children are not incomplete humans; they are already fully formed just as they are. Children are not primarily on this planet to fill job vacancies; they are here to create the future. Children cannot be standardized; each of them is a unique and wonderful person on a unique and wonderful journey. And anyone who claims to know anything about those "jobs of tomorrow" is blowing smoke; by the time our children assume their adult roles, those guys will be in nursing homes baffled by a world that has passed them by."



'via Blog this'

The Students at the Center of Your Education Movement

I usually have a handful of hints I look for when anyone calls themselves activists / thought leaders / experts in education, but the one that always sticks out revolves the kids. How they speak of the children matters more than any other factor. It’s not the awards, the qualifications, the degrees, the conference keynotes, the years spent in the classroom (to a certain extent), or even political leanings. It’s about how they speak of the young people they serve.

Do they talk only about a couple of students or do they speak about all of their students warmly? Do they not speak of students at all or speak about them in absolute hypotheticals? Are they interested in how their children live or is the allotted time period enough? Are they ever hard on themselves, or at least reflective about the faults they embody as teachers? Do the students reflect love to these adults back?

What’s that energy like?

http://thejosevilson.com/the-students-at-the-center-of-your-education-movement/