Category: assessment
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Elephants and YouTube
I recorded a few thoughts to video last night about two of the “elephants in the room” in discussions concerning educational reform in the United States: poverty and what constitutes an “adequate” education. I posted the recorded video to YouTube this morning from the Dallas/Love Field airport. Interestingly, before I even posted this to my…
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Design matters: It’s more than just price
Dan Pink in his excellent book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future”, makes a convincing case that “cheaper and cheaper, faster and faster” is not the only formula for success (financial and otherwise) in the 21st century marketplace. Today’s CNN Money article, “Wal-Mart: ‘Cheap’ better than ‘chic’?” supports this contention. In…
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Podcast89: Free Digital Curriculum
This podcast is a recording of a presentation on sources of FREE DIGITAL CURRICULUM for K-12 educators, shared in Edmond, Oklahoma on September 27, 2006. Some of the free digital curriculum examples I discuss and share include WikiPedia, the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, Google Earth, Google Earth Hacks, Roy: Tale of a Singing Zebra, Google News, Global Voices…
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Thoughts on teaching and authentic learning
Mark Ahlness brought Doug Noon’s excellent post “Contested Ground” to my attention today. Several ideas Doug brought up grabbed me in this post. The first was this paragraph: Being a teacher means too many things for me to say that I know how to do it well. I surely don’t know how to move a…
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More recess, fewer tests, structured activities, and homework please!
Today’s Associated Press article “Give kids more free playtime, docs urge” supports ideas I’ve blogged about before in my posts “Curing Nature Deficit Disorder,” “Increase retention and creativity with recess,” and “Let’s fight for recess.” (Thanks for the link, Devin.) According to the article: The American Academy of Pediatrics says what children really need for…
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British teachers support instructional autonomy
The BBC article “‘Free up curriculum’ teachers say” cites a survey of British teachers finding they overwhelmingly support the idea of having more instructional autonomy in the classroom: ATL leader Mary Bousted said the system was failing to engage children and should be replaced by a skills-based curriculum drawing on local knowledge. But the government…
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Education leaders propose more useless and counterproductive ideas
I definitely think our educational system needs important reforms, but I continue to be disappointed and saddened by the lack of national leadership we have for the sorts of education reforms we need. US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ announcement on Tuesday that US colleges and universities need to face similar accountability to K-12 schools…
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Great review of Quia.com
Eric Langhorst has posted a superb review of the online assessment tool Quia.com as a new podcast on his blog, “Speaking of History.” I haven’t used Quia.com myself for several years, but hearing Eric describe it makes me wish that more teachers knew about it and had access to it or tools like it. We…
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Improve reading skills with basic solutions
Dr Stephen Krashen wrote a letter that was published in Education Week on January 25, 2006. The title of the letter was, “To Raise NAEP Scores, Improve Access to Books.” This is an excerpt: We should also consider the interesting case of California. That state’s extremely low score on NAEP in 1992 was blamed on whole-language…
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Podcast80: Encouraging Reading by Stephen Krashen
The development of reading skills is one of the most important goals of education, and Dr. Stephen Krashen of the University of Southern California is one of the foremost experts on this subject in the world. This podcast is a recording of Dr. Krashen’s third presentation at the 2006 Encyclo-Media Conference, hosted by the Oklahoma…