Category: schoolreform
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Notes on Dr. Scott McLeod’s follow up session at OU K20 MidWinter
These are my notes from Dr. Scott McLeod’s follow up session during the OU K-20 Center’s MidWinter Conference in Norman, Oklahoma, on 29 January 2009. MY REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. The conference Ning is http://k20center.ning.com, and is open to anyone. I got to this session late, and did audio record the latter part. 1st…
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Reflections on EduCon 2.1 via an EdTechTalk Webcast
These are my notes from “Teachers Teaching Teachers” on EdTechTalk Live this evening, discussing the recent EduCon 2.1 conference in Philadelphia. There were some problems with Skype and delays in the connection tonight, but I learned a great deal none-the-less from the participants. Thanks to Paul Allison for his tweet earlier in the night which…
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Making homework into classwork with mastery learning
I’ve posted twice in the past few weeks about Colorado teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams’ use of video podcasting to “flip” the traditional school model of lecturing during face-to-face class time and sending students home to complete independent practice activities in isolation. Their 21.5 minute video, “Mastery Learning That Works,” provides more background and…
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Professional Schools and Self-Directed Learning
Our family has had a wonderful weekend with family and friends back in Lubbock, Texas. Of the four or five times we’ve visited since moving to Oklahoma almost three years ago, this is the first time my wife has said “it doesn’t feel like home anymore.” It doesn’t feel like home to me either, although…
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Federal or State Responsibility for Education and Inequitable Education Funding Formulas
I shared the following ideas as a comment this evening to Cindy Seibel’s post “U.S. and Scotland have one – should Canada follow suit?” In her post, Cindy asserts in the United States “education is a federal responsibility.” Whoa, hold on a minute there! I think you have some misconceptions. Education in the United States…
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It’s Time for a New Kind Of University
Indeed it is. This video is a good example of a professor transcending “The Synchronous Non-interactive Fallacy” I wrote about in January 2006. Hat tip to Tony Vincent. I’ve added this video to my “Videos for PD” blog page under the first section heading, “Schools Need to Change.” This video looks and sounds great, but…
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It is time to drastically slash the number of state educational standards
Thanks to Chris Lehman’s recommendation I read Tom Hoffman’s excellent post “Weird KIPP Op-Ed” today. In it Tom asks: …I haven’t pored over the various state standards at this point, but it seems to me that there are two possibilities: they are substantially similar, or they are substantially different. If they are similar, this is…
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Harry Potter Whiteboard Wands, Responders, and the Palm Pre
I recently had a chance to see and try out the “Activwand” from Promethean designed for use with their electronic white boards. This wand is definitely cool and fun to use, making one feel a bit like Harry Potter. For shorter students or teachers, it can be handy to permit a longer reach to the…
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Since when is a “D” Grade considered good and improving in Oklahoma?
This is a clear example of educational public relations “spin” in my home state of Oklahoma if I’ve ever seen it. Yesterday’s NewsOK article “Oklahoma education system improving, study says” starts with two sentences which misleadingly suggest things are good for education in our state: The education system in Oklahoma is getting better but still…
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Contrasting recent Oklahoma City and Winnipeg morning radio coverage about education
I had a moment of significant cognitive dissonance this morning driving in to work, listening to the radio. photo credit: rakkasan69 This past Friday morning, for THREE HOURS, I was a minor guest on the Winnipeg, Manitoba radio station CJOB with Darren Kuropatwa, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Dean Shareski, and Darren’s former student Mark Rabena. The complete…