Will College Get in the Way of Your Kids’ Education?

...people who have had children know that there is truly a different right way to parent for each child. People truly are different. This lesson is essential, and our modern testing system forgets about it.

http://oliverdemille.com/2015/04/college-in-the-way-education/

The backwards bicycle [VIDEO] - Dangerously Irrelevant

from Dangerously Irrelevant http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2015/04/the-backwards-bicycle-video.html
What a backwards bicycle can teach us about learning… Fascinating. Hat tip: Will Richardson

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A History Class Using Bring-Your-Own-Devices (BYOD) - Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

from Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/a-history-class-using-bring-your-own-devices-byod/
A few years ago, there was much hype about BYOD. At the time, I had dismissed BYOD for a number of reasons. First, there were the technical difficulties (bandwidth issues and managing different platforms). Second, there were pedagogical constraints that … Continue reading →

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Societies With Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness - Mad In America

Societies With Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness - Mad In America: "Here’s one situation that I’ve seen hundreds of times. An intelligent young child or teenager has been underachieving in standard school, and has begun to have emotional and/or behavioral problems. Such a child often feels coerced by standard schooling to pay attention to that which is boring for them, to do homework for which they see no value, and to stay inside a building that feels sterile and suffocating. Depending on the child’s temperament, this coercion results in different outcomes — none of them good.

Some of these kids get depressed and anxious. They worry that their lack of attention and interest will result in dire life consequences. They believe authorities’ admonitions that if they do poorly in school, they will be “flipping burgers for the rest of their lives.” It is increasingly routine for doctors to medicate these anxious and depressed kids with antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

Other inattentive kids are unworried. They don’t take seriously either their schooling or admonitions from authorities, and they feel justified in resisting coercion. Their rebellion is routinely labeled by mental health professionals as “acting out,” and they are diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder. Their parents often attempt punishments, which rarely work to break these kids’ resistance. Parents become frustrated and resentful that their child is causing them stress. Their child feels this parental frustration and resentment, and often experiences it as their parents not liking them. And so these kids stop liking their parents, stop caring about their parents’ feelings, and seek peers whom they believe do like them, even if these peers are engaged in criminal behaviors."



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Lessons Learned from a Chalkboard: Slow and Steady Technology Integration (Bradley Emerling) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Lessons Learned from a Chalkboard: Slow and Steady Technology Integration (Bradley Emerling) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: "The more I observed Japanese masterful use of the chalkboard, the more I reflected on technology approaches in US classrooms. Not only do educators rarely discuss the rationale for which technologies might best support particular learning opportunities, many US schools are consumed by a haphazard race to adopt the latest innovation. While many classrooms are decked out with shiny new tablets, document projectors, smartboards, or infrared response systems, far too often these devices are under-utilized, and methods of use vary widely across teachers. There are definitely exceptions to this pattern.... But there are many more classrooms where digital devices function as little more than expensive and colorful accessories with minimal influence on existing instructional methods. In other cases, devices sit unused, collect dust, and soon become obsolete, costing thousands of dollars in upgrades."



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Think your world view is fixed? Learn another language and you’ll think differently - Network Front | The Guardian

from Network Front | The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/27/world-view-learn-another-language
New research says that a German speaker and an English speaker perceive the world in different ways – thanks to the grammatical toolkit they’re using

Bilinguals get all the perks. Better job prospects, a cognitive boost, and even protection against dementia. Now new research shows that they can also view the world in different ways depending on the language they are operating in.

In the past 15 years there has been an overwhelming amount of research on the bilingual mind, with the majority of the evidence pointing to the tangible advantages of using more than one language. Going back and forth between languages appears to be a kind of brain training, pushing your brain to be flexible.

When judging risk, bilinguals also tend to make more rational, economic decisions in a second language

Related: 12 untranslatable words (and their translations) | David Shariatmadari

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Five studies find online courses are not working well at community colleges - The Hechinger Report

from The Hechinger Report http://hechingerreport.org/five-studies-find-online-courses-are-not-working-at-community-colleges/

Here’s an unusual case where scholarly research is producing a clear conclusion: online instruction at community colleges isn’t working. Yet policymakers are continuing to fund programs to expand online courses at these schools, which primarily serve low-income minority students, and community college administrators are planning to offer more and more of them. The latest salvo […]

The post Five studies find online courses are not working well at community colleges appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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