Category: schoolreform
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Public Schools Are Not Businesses – Why Educational Sharing Matters
If you have access to a phone and can use it, you can readily publish audio online for FREE as a podcast using iPadio. Your students can as well. This process is called “phonecasting.” Tuesday I recorded a 23 minute phonecast using iPadio on my iPhone, continuing my review of Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The…
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Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven
This weekend I finished reading Diane Ravitch’s excellent new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” I highly commend this book to anyone interested in the topic of education reform. I agree with much of what Ravitch writes, and made extensive notes as well as annotations in my paper copy of…
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Podcast348: Reflections on Technology Classes for PreService Education Teachers (Part 1)
This podcast is a recording of a conversation over skype on May 14, 2010, with Dean Mantz in Sterling, Kansas, Dean Shareski in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn in Manhattan, Kansas, and Wesley Fryer in Edmond, Oklahoma. For the past several years, each participant has taught pre-service technology classes for undergraduate college students. In this conversation…
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NCLB has killed creative teaching and energetic learning about science (at least before state testing)
Carol Engelmann, in a video interview for the Imagine It! Project, correctly observes our politically-inspired educational culture of high stakes accountability (NCLB) has severely hurt the cause of creative teaching, driven passionate teachers away from the profession, and DISCOURAGED rather than encouraged excitement in many K-12 science classrooms. video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsfree video player Carol…
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Who is hosting your state’s Commons-based peer production server for curriculum?
Kent Brooks, the director of technology at Western Oklahoma State College (WOSC) out in Altus, wrote a great post on his Ning last week following an Adobe connect brainstorming session called, “Open Content, Peer Production and Creativity, STEM and School Culture Transformation in Oklahoma.” This built on the ideas in my post, “Let’s build openly…
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Welcome to OLD School Assignment Turn In
The following photographs could likely be taken at almost any College of Education today in the United States. I’m not sharing this to be harshly critical of the current institution for which I am teaching as an adjunct instructor: Rather I’m sharing these images because they reflect the assessment status quo for many professors / instructors…
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NCLB was designed to define public schools as failures
This weekend I had an opportunity to read the first half of Diane Ravitch’s excellent new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” I will be writing at much greater length in upcoming weeks about the book, the research it presents, and the implications…
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Working hard to get the public excited about MINIMUM standards
This evening my wife and I have been finalizing the “application packages” for our 6 and 9 year old daughters to transfer into another public elementary school next year, which is an arts integration school. In searching for my oldest daughter’s last standardized test score report, we ran across the following letter from last year…
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Mandatory Reading for School Reformers and Transformers: Alvin Toffler’s 2007 Interview in EduTopia
James Daly’s 2007 interview with Alvin Toffler, “Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up,” should be considered mandatory reading for anyone seeking to reform and/or transform formal education in the 21st century. Toffler is clear on our need for charter schools. We MUST diversify our educational landscape. Charter schools offer one way forward when it comes…
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Meeting with a future education leader: What would you say in 60 minutes?
Hypothetically, if you had an opportunity to meet over coffee with the person who was going to be your state’s highest ranking education official for the next four years, what would you say? photo credit: powerbooktrance Would you talk about laptops for students and teachers, the importance of having access to digital curriculum which facilitates…