Poetry writing about Flint murals allows for ‘creative freedom’ in this high school classroom — from mlive.com by Dylan Goetz (behind paywall)
Excerpt:
It’s a new tradition in the curriculum of the senior-level English class, where teacher Carrie Mattern asks her students to seek out a mural in Flint and write poetry about it.
This year, there was a focus on writing around cultural grief and the process of healing.
It’s become a favorite assignment for the students who’ve worked on the project, who say it allows them to use “creative freedom” in a way that other classes don’t.
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Also see:
5 Playful Strategies That Reduce Language Learning Anxiety — from edutopia.org by Paige Tutt
We visited a classroom in Denmark to see how a playful learning philosophy can put students at ease and make language learning joyful and engaging.
Excerpt:
Instead of trying to convince students that their fears aren’t warranted, Belouahi makes a point of creating a positive, mistake-friendly classroom where students feel comfortable experimenting. One of the ways she does this is by incorporating playful learning strategies. “It doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning,” Belouahi says. “The goal is for them to use their English language as much as possible and as best as they can. Not perfectly.”
Here are five playful learning strategies from Belouahi’s classroom designed to make the act of learning a new language less daunting, and more joyful, social, and engaging.
Also from edutopia.org, see:
What I Learned From My Students Who Became Teachers — from edsurge.com by Corey Winchester
Excerpt:
After nearly two hours of laughter, tears and thoughtful discussion with students who have become teachers, I walked away with two important messages that affirm why teachers decide to stay and why our stories deserve to be heard.
Our dinner conversation revealed that sometimes, it feels like we’re swimming against the flow of what we know is right for students and ourselves, while our education system emphasizes laws, mandates and standards purported to guide the next generation. Because of that, I worry that too many educators – newcomers and veterans alike – feel like they won’t be able to sustain the work. Now more than ever, educators need to be acknowledged and celebrated for the important work we do, especially when stories like ours reveal that meaningful relationships matter, especially when we have the ability and support to meet young people where they’re at.
To Improve a Child’s Education, We Must Be Willing to Let Old Practices Die — from edsurge.com by Isabel Bozada-Jones
Excerpt:
As the weeks turned to months and the surge from the pandemic finally ended, the question still hung in the air: what are we willing to lose in order to change a child’s life? We are still buckling under the weight of the inequitable education system that preceded the pandemic and the makeshift solutions created during the pandemic. At the same time, we fear losing what has kept us going. In order to answer this question, we need to shift from a mindset of scarcity and claim abundance.
They Left Teaching in Search of a Better Life. Did They Find It? — from edsurge.com by Emily Tate Sullivan
Excerpt:
To find out what happens after teachers put in their notice, as they transition into their next acts, EdSurge talked with six former classroom teachers who resigned at the end of the last school year, after that NEA survey was conducted. Is life on the other side everything they hoped and expected — and are they happy now?
How Music Technology Helped My Students Tap Into Their Creativity — from edsurge.com by David Casali
OPINION: Post-pandemic, let’s develop true education-to-workforce pathways to secure a better future — from hechingerreport.org by Mat Gandal
New partnerships will help smooth the way from high school to higher education and careers
That’s why it is once again time for a major evolution in how we think about U.S. education. If we want to address the challenges and inequities faced by students and the ongoing needs of employers and communities, we must deliver on a concept that has gained substantial momentum in recent years: education-to-workforce pathways.
…
Through LAUNCH, teams of legislative, K-12, higher education and workforce leaders will be deeply analyzing existing education systems to identify barriers for students. They’ll also come up with ways to help students persist and complete high-quality pathways.
Credentialed Learning For All — from gettingsmart.com
Vision
Learning happens throughout life and is not isolated to the K-12 or higher education sectors. Yet, often, validations of learning only happen in these specific areas. The system of evaluation based on courses, grades, and credit serves as a poor proxy for communicating skills given the variation in course content, grade inflation, and inclusion of participation and extra credit within course grades.
Credentialed learning provides a way to accurately document human capability for all learners throughout their life. A lifetime credentialed learning ecosystem provides better granularity around learning, better documentation of the learning, and more relevance for both the credential recipient and reviewer. This improves the match between higher education and/or employment with the individual, while also providing a more clear and accurate lifetime learning pathway.
With a fully-credentialed system, individuals can own well-documented evidence of a lifetime of learning and choose what and when to share this data. This technology enables every learner to have more opportunities for finding the best career match without today’s existing barriers around cost, access, and proxies.
Addendum on 4/28/23 — speaking of credentials:
First Rung — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
New research shows stacking credentials pays off for low-income learners.
Stacking credentials pays off for many low-income students, new research finds, but only if learners move up the education ladder. Also, Kansas is hoping a new grant program will attract more companies to participate in microinternships.
From DSC:
Regarding the core curricula of colleges and universities…
For decades now, faculty members have taught what they wanted to teach and what interested them. They taught what they wanted to research vs. what the wider marketplace/workplace needed. They were not responsive to the needs of the workplace — nor to the needs of their students!
And this situation has been all the more compounded by the increasing costs of obtaining a degree plus the exponential pace of change. We weren’t doing a good job before this exponential pace of change started taking place — and now it’s (almost?) impossible to keep up.
The bottom line on the article below: ***It’s sales.***
Therefore, it’s about what you are selling — and at what price. The story hasn’t changed much. The narrative (i.e., the curricula and more) is pretty much the same thing that’s been sold for years.
But the days of faculty members teaching whatever they wanted to are over, or significantly waning.
Faculty members, faculty senates, provosts, presidents, and accreditors are reaping what they’ve sown.
The questions are now:
A Profession on the Edge — from chronicle.com by Eric Hoover
Why enrollment leaders are wearing down, burning out, and leaving jobs they once loved.
Excerpts:
Similar stories are echoing throughout the hallways of higher education. Vice presidents for enrollment, as well as admissions deans and directors, are wearing down, burning out, and leaving jobs they once loved. Though there’s no way to compile a chart quantifying the churn, industry insiders describe it as significant. “We’re at an inflection point,” says Rick Clark, executive director of undergraduate admission at Georgia Tech. “There have always been people leaving the field, but not in the numbers we’re seeing now.”
Some are being shoved out the door by presidents and boards. Some are resigning out of exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment. And some who once sought top-level positions are rethinking their ambitions. “The pressures have ratcheted up tenfold,” says Angel B. Pérez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as NACAC. “I talk with someone each week who’s either leaving the field or considering leaving.”
From DSC:
This quote points to what I’m trying to address here:
Dahlstrom and other veterans of the field say they’ve experienced something especially disquieting: an erosion of faith in the transformational power of higher education. Though she sought a career in admissions to help students, her disillusionment grew after taking on a leadership role. She became less confident that she was equipped to effect positive changes, at her institution or beyond, especially when it came to the challenge of expanding college access in a nation of socioeconomic disparities: “I felt like a cog in a huge machine that’s not working, yet continues to grind while only small, temporary fixes are made.”
??Well this is something else.
GPT-4 passes basically every exam. And doesn’t just pass…
The Bar Exam: 90%
LSAT: 88%
GRE Quantitative: 80%, Verbal: 99%
Every AP, the SAT… pic.twitter.com/zQW3k6uM6Z— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) March 14, 2023
Description of video:
Sal Khan walks through Khan Academy’s GPT-4 integration (not generally available yet). Folks can join the waitlist at Khanacademy.org. To learn more about Khanmigo, visit: khanacademy.org/khan-labs
We believe that AI has the potential to transform learning in a positive way, but we are also keenly aware of the risks. To test the possibilities, we’re inviting our district partners to opt in to Khan Labs, a new space for testing learning technology. We want to ensure that our work always puts the needs of students and teachers first, and we are focused on ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared equally across society. In addition to teachers and students, we’re inviting the general public to join a waitlist to test Khanmigo. Teachers, students and donors will be our partners on this learning journey, helping us test AI to see if we can harness it as a learning tool for all.
GPT-4 has arrived. It will blow ChatGPT out of the water. — from washingtonpost.com by Drew Harwell and Nitasha Tiku
The long-awaited tool, which can describe images in words, marks a huge leap forward for AI power — and another major shift for ethical norms
Introducing Our Virtual Volunteer Tool for People who are Blind or Have Low Vision, Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 — from bemyeyes.com
We are thrilled to announce Be My Eyes Virtual Volunteer™, the first-ever digital visual assistant powered by OpenAI’s new GPT-4 language model.
For example, [GPT-4] passes a simulated bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers; in contrast, GPT-3.5’s score was around the bottom 10%.
Here are some incredible things people are already doing with GPT-4
It’s been less than 3.5 hours
? A thread
— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) March 14, 2023
Had my wife close her eyes and describe rooms in her dream home.
In 3 minutes, I made these on Midjourney (h/t @nickfloats)
She was speechless.
She’s now a huge fan of AI and “gets it”
This is the way. pic.twitter.com/sjf3CQYtwa
— Kallaway (@kanekallaway) March 6, 2023
