The Complete Parent’s List of Education Hashtags on Twitter — from onlinecollege.org
Excerpt:

As a parent, it’s important to be a part of the discussion about education. Informed parents can make a difference, not just in the lives of their own children, but in schools, policy, and more. You can stay in the loop and contribute your opinion by taking part in these chats and using these hashtags. Check out our list, and you’ll find more than 30 of the most relevant and useful hashtags for parents interested in education today.

10 College Business Incubators We’re Most Excited About — from bestcollegesonline.com
Excerpt:

College campuses are ripe with innovation, as students grow through education and experimentation in school. To help foster this innovation, many colleges and universities have opened business incubators, helping students and others in their community to help make their innovative dreams a reality. Whether they’re offering tricked-out labs or incredible funding opportunities, these incubators offer a great opportunity for students who are smart (and lucky!) enough to participate. Follow along as we explore 10 of the most exciting college business incubators around today, and be sure to share your own favorites in the comments.

The 10 Biggest Breakthroughs in the Science of Learning — from Online PHD Programs
Excerpt:

When it comes to human organs, none is quite so mysterious as the brain. For centuries, humans have had numerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about how the organ works, grows, and shapes our ability to learn and develop. While we still have a long way to go before we truly unravel all the mysteries the brain has to offer, scientists have been making some major breakthroughs that have gone a long way in explaining both how the brain functions and how we use it to organize, recall, and acquire new information. Here, we list just a few of the biggest and most impactful of these breakthroughs that have contributed to our understanding of the science of learning.

10 BYOD Classroom Experiments (and What We’ve Learned From Them So Far)” — from onlineuniversities.com
Excerpt:

With budgets tight, many schools are hoping to bring technology into the classroom without having to shell out for a device for each student. A solution for many has been to make classes BYOD (short for “bring your own device”), which allows students to bring laptops, tablets, and smartphones from home and to use them in the classroom and share them with other students. It’s a promising idea, especially for schools that don’t have big tech budgets, but it has met with some criticism from those who don’t think that it’s a viable long-term or truly budget-conscious decision. Whether that’s the case is yet to be seen, but these stories of schools that have tried out BYOD programs seem to be largely positive, allowing educators and students to embrace technology in learning regardless of the limited resources they may have at hand.

The 25 Best Resources For Finding Nonprofit Jobs — from bachelorsdegreeonline.com
Excerpt:

Finding a job that helps you make ends meet is great, but finding one that helps you make a real, lasting difference in the world can be even better, especially for those who have always dreamed of a career in the nonprofit or social services sectors. Luckily, there are a number of incredibly useful sites on the web that can help you network, share your resume, and find nonprofit job openings in your area. We’ve shared 25 of them here so you can get your nonprofit job search started on the right foot and hopefully find a job that lets you make a positive impact on the world and your community.

8 Career Mistakes New Grads Make (and How to Avoid Them) — from onlinedegreeprograms.com
Excerpt:

You’ve crossed the stage, thrown your hat in the air, and entered the real world. You’re probably eager to get your career started and are already thinking ahead 10 years when you’ll be running a company, saving the world, and making wads of cash. But slow down there, new grad. Your career starts with baby steps and avoiding some of the common mistakes young workers make. If you follow these tips and stay away from some pitfalls, you’ll be in that corner office in no time.

15 Libraries Taking Summer Reading to the Next Level — from the Online Education Database
Excerpt:

While not an exhaustive list (there are a lot of amazing libraries out there), here we highlight some of the libraries we think are going above and beyond in their summer reading initiatives, offering programs and activities that help readers spend their summers reading, learning, sharing, and growing.

8 Predictions for the Future of Academic Publishing — from the Online Education Database
Excerpt:

University presses and academic journals may perpetuate the world’s most groundbreaking research, but they tend towards the heavily conservative when it comes to changing anything and everything about their organization. But the inevitable influx of digital and new media ventures has already started trickling into the tightknit institutions, and many scholars are already calling for a dismantling of the old — and often unwieldy and inaccessible! Some of the latest experiments will stick, while others will go all Crystal Pepsi on humanity. Until time decides to tell, the following represent a few things academics are saying about where their research might be headed.

Top 25 Education Blogs for Proactive Parents — from onlinecollege.org
Excerpt:

As a parent, it’s your job to look ahead and plan for the future, whether that means packing lunch or creating a roadmap for college. Perhaps one of the most important things parents can look ahead to is education. School reform, college, and getting involved as a parent are all important topics for parents to stay on top of, and these blogs all offer great ways to do so. We’ve discovered 25 of the best education blogs for proactive parents, and we encourage you to check them out.


http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680196/a-new-education-for-business-leaders-for-a-new-future

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This is because education is shifting from a focus on what works for teachers to a focus on what students need to succeed and thrive.

Tagged with:  

From DSC re: the item below — an example of the opposite of true leadership
(
To see an example of TRUE leadership, see my immediately previous posting re: Christensen and Eyring.)



Give colleges more credit — Op-Ed at the LA Times by Barry Glassner and Morton Schapiro
Doomsayers are wrong. America’s higher-education model isn’t broken.

Barry Glassner is president, and a professor of sociology,
of Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.
Morton Schapiro is president, and a professor of economics,
of Northwestern University in Illinois.


 

From DSC:
I was going to title this posting “‘America’s higher-education model isn’t broken.’ Easy for you to say Morton and Barry.”

An excerpt from their article (emphasis DSC):

While for-profit colleges enroll an increasing percentage of all undergraduates, the demand for education at selective private and public universities and colleges continues to grow, as evidenced by dramatic declines in the percentage of applicants they admit.

Nice. Let’s see how many people we can decline — that’s a great  way to serve our society! Then let’s pride ourselves on this shrinking  percentage of people who actually get into our university.  Woo hoo!  That will help with our ever-important ratings/prestige/branding even more! (Please note: The dripping sound that you are now hearing is the sound of drops of  sarcasm  hitting the floor.)

A few brief questions for you Barry and Morton…

  • When was the last time you lived from paycheck to paycheck?
  • Do you know what that’s like?
  • Have you ever been in that situation? If so, when was the last time?

You two are so far removed from the society — that you say that you are trying to help and serve — that you don’t even recognize the strength of the current that you’re swimming in.  You swim with — and serve — the 1% (not the 99%).

One other thing worries us. There is a surefire way to make today’s dire predictions come to pass — if educational leaders feel compelled to listen to scaremongers who are all too anxious to force us to adopt a new model that eliminates outstanding professors and their passion for teaching, research budgets and the pursuit of new knowledge, the residential college experience and the core commitment to excellence that have made American higher education the leader in the world. If that were to happen, we might end up with colleges and universities that aren’t worth saving.

For transparency’s sake, I attended Northwestern University — and did very well there. It’s a great school in many ways. But I wonder what the percentage of professors are at NU who are there to work on being the best professors/teachers that they can possibly be. I question how many have a true passion to teach.  Research? Yes.  Teach? Not so much.

In fact, from my experiences at NU, I remember several graduate students grading my work or teaching our classes. Speaking of those folks…I wonder…were those graduate students trained in teaching and learning?  Were they given a background in any sort of School of Education? Or pedagogical training?  BTW, those same questions can be asked of NU’s  full-time, tenured faculty members; and I’ll bet you that the answers are not pretty. Also, in many other of the courses I took at NU, I had hundreds of students in them so I seriously doubt that any of my professors even knew who I was.

BTW, what does a year at NU cost these days? From what I can tell from NU’s website, roughly $60,000+ for 3 quarters worth of tuition, room, board, and associated fees.

The system’s not broken you say…hmmm…seems to me I have to pay the price of a pretty darn nice house in order to get an undergraduate degree at your place.  But then they tell me that an UG degree isn’t worth much these days…that what you really need is graduate work to get a good job. Hhhmmmm…

Northwestern and other universities and colleges like it have strayed far off the noble path from which they began their journeys. Look out for #1 has not only been Northwestern University’s motto these last few decades (replacing the long held Quaecumque Sunt Vera motto) , it is the unofficial teaching/undercurrent that it delivers to its students year in and year out.

 

My hats off to Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring!  My respect level just went up yet another notch for these two people.

Seeing as Clayton is a Professor at ***Harvard‘s*** Business School and Henry is an ***Administrator*** at Brigham Young University, their stance and recent letter to college and university trustees nationwide is a wonderful example of true leadership.   They risked many things by taking a stand and urging institutions of higher education to change. Their purpose is noble. Their message should be heeded.

From the website of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni: (emphasis by DSC)

Clayton Christensen: higher ed trustees “crucial as never before”
Harvard Business School professor (and bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma) Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring of Brigham Young University recently sent a letter to college and university trustees nationwide, recognizing a critical turning point for the future of higher education. “If you’ve been serving for more than a few years, you’ve seen a big change in the nature of trustees meetings,” the authors wrote. “Before the downturn of 2008, the agenda tended to focus on growth and on ways to fund it…. At some point, the bubble was bound to burst—or at least start to sag. Now that it has, your role becomes crucial as never before.” The letter urges trustees to demand innovative solutions to expand student access and improve academic quality at their institutions: “The innovators can do more than merely avoid disruption. They can help usher in a new age of higher education, one of unprecedented access and quality, a combined industrial revolution and renaissance.”

 

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Addendum on 7/16/12:


From DSC:
My cousin helps Fortune 500 companies innovate and deal with change management-related issues.  Something he once said is rather haunting to me now…

“Often when organizations start feeling the pain, it’s too late at that point.” (Think Blockbuster, Kodak, Borders, and many others.)

So that has been the question I’ve been pondering these last couple of years — are we already too late to the game?


 

Public universities see familiar fight at Virginia — from the NYT by Tamar Lewin on 6/25/12

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The tumult at the University of Virginia …reflects a low-grade panic now spreading through much of public higher education.

But the 10-point outline she offered — listing state and federal financing challenges, the changing role of technology, a rapidly changing health care environment, prioritization of scarce resources, faculty workload and the quality of the student experience, faculty compensation, research financing and the like — was almost generic, and would have applied to nearly every public university in the nation.

Rebuilding Mr. Jefferson’s University — from insidehighered.com by Kevin Kiley

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In a statement before the vote, Dragas said the events of the past two weeks have actually unified the campus around a series of questions it needs to address. “Prior to these events, there seemed to be a roadblock between the board’s sense of urgency around our future in a number of critical areas, and the administration’s response to that urgency,” she said. “Also, many of our concerns about the direction of the university remained unknown to all but a few. This situation has now keenly focused the attention of the entire university community on the reality and urgency of the specific challenges facing the university  most of which, once again, are not unique to U.Va. – but whose structural and long-term nature do require a deliberate and strategic approach.”

University of Virginia: Only the Beginning — from The American Interest by Walter Russell Mead

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

What we see at UVA this month is just a foretaste of the storm that is coming — a few early raindrops and gusts of wind before the real storm hits. The country needs more education than the current system can affordably supply, and the pressure on the educational system will not abate until this problem is resolved.

Fixing college — from the NYT by Jeff Selingo, editorial director at The Chronicle of Higher Education, who is writing a book on the future of higher education

Excerpt:

Other information industries, from journalism to music to book publishing, enjoyed similar periods of success right before epic change enveloped them, seemingly overnight.We now know how those industries have been transformed by technology, resulting in the decline of the middleman newspapers, record stores, bookstores and publishers.

Colleges and universities could be next, unless they act to mitigate the poor choices and inaction from the lost decade by looking for ways to lower costs, embrace technology and improve education.

 

Ousted Head of University Is Reinstated in Virginia — from the NYT by Richard Perz-Pena

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Facing a torrent of criticism, the University of Virginia trustees made a stunning turnabout on Tuesday, voting unanimously to reinstate the president they had forced to resign over concerns that the university was not adapting fast enough to financial and technological pressures.

Public university becomes first to endorse untraditional online model — from by Denny Carter
Some UW faculty members, after political clashes with Gov. Scott Walker, remain skeptical of UW Flexible Degree

Excerpt:

Students at the University of Wisconsin (UW) can earn college degrees based on proven competency in a subject, making UW the first publicly-funded school to launch a competency-based degree program.

Led by officials at UW-Extension, a continued learning program with offices located across Wisconsin, the UW Flexible Degree will let incoming students demonstrate their knowledge and cut down on the time it takes to earn a degree.

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The Future of Education - Learning Powered by Techonology -- Karen Cator -- May 2012

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Featured presenters:

  • Karen Cator, Dir. Office of Education Technology, U.S. Department of Education
  • Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, Superintendent, Briarwood Christian School

Excerpts re: trends:

  • Mobility — 24/7 access
  • Social interactions for learning
  • Digital content
  • Big data

 

 

We can’t wait another year for a new ESEA — from ednetinsight.com by Mary Broderick
Mary Broderick, 2011-2012 President, National School Boards Association (NSBA), and the former chair of Connecticut’s East Lyme Board of Education — Friday, April 13, 2012

Excerpt:

For nearly five years, school leaders around the country have urged Congress to make dramatic changes to the No Child Left Behind law. We’re now reaching a critical point where too many schools are being unfairly penalized, community support is undermined, and we’re forced to sacrifice vital subjects that engage students to focus on state tests.

NCLB—the ten-year-old version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—marked nearly half of all public schools as “failing” last year, and 100% will be “failing” by 2014. This absurd statistic demonstrates that the law isn’t working the way it was intended. However, because Congress hasn’t seized the initiative to make major changes, school districts are operating in limbo between a flawed law and an unsure future in the direction of federal policy. For our public schools to move forward and for our children to be competitive, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is pushing Congress to pass a new law this year. NSBA represents the nation’s 13,800 school boards, but there’re thousands of administrators, teachers, and other school staff members who also see the law’s problems firsthand.

UCSB's Art & Lectures series: Sir Ken Robinson | lynda.com interview

My notes on two presentations from the Learning Without Frontiers Conference, London, 26th January 2012:

My notes for:
Sir Ken Robinson’s talk

Practice <–>Theory <–> Policy

  • People who practice don’t often have time to get the latest and greatest information re: theory
  • Theorists don’t have much time for practice
  • Policy makers don’t know much about either 🙂

Purposes of education:

  • Economic.  Not solely, but there are economic reasons for providing education. Academic vs vocation programs – Sir Ken doesn’t subscribe to this dichotomy in educational DNA. Need new sorts of education
  • Cultural. Aim to pass on cultural genes – values, beliefs
  • Personal. The most important! In the end, education is ultimately, personal. Too much impersonal testing that students aren’t engaged in.

Key point:

  • There is everything you can do – at all levels; many of us ARE the educational system – at least for the group(s) of students that we are working with. So we can make immediate changes; and collectively this can create a revolution.

Education not linear, not monolithic. Rather, it’s a complex, adaptive system – many moving parts, like a vortex…not like an undistributed canal; more like an ocean with different forces tugging this way and that. (From DSC: I agree with what Sir Ken is saying here, but I especially agree with this particular perspective — thus the name of this blog.)

Personalization is key! Education needs to be customized to the communities where it’s taking place.

Principles

  • Curriculum – towards disciplines (skills, processes, procedures) and away from subjects
  • Teaching & Learning – dynamic; flow of knowledge; not static; forms need to tap into streams; move towards collaborative activities; active learning trumps passive learning
  • Assessment – must move from judgment to description

 


My notes (part way) for:
Jim Knight – If Steve Jobs Designed Schools

What if Steve Jobs had re-invented the education system rather the computer and consumer electronics industry?

Steve Jobs was a contradictory character, combining control freak and Zen Buddhist, and technology with design. He had a revolutionary impact on computing, animation, the music industry, printing, and publishing. Last year he and Bill Gates together expressed surprise at how little impact technology had had on schools. Jobs’s wife is an educational reformer, he was a college dropout; but what would it have been like if Steve Jobs had focused on education? What would the Jobs School be like?

How do we make an insanely great school?

  • Must go really deep to create something that’s easy to use (from DSC — I call this “Easy is hard.”) Need to de-clutter the teaching & learning environment, the curriculum, the qualifications, and the people.
  • How does it make me feel when I walk through the doorway of your school?
  • Get to choose who you want to learn with and from
  • Simple, beautiful space; flexible; social; reflective, all year round
  • More seductive, intuitive, enthralling
  • Does it inspire curiosity?
  • “Don’t need instructions”
  • Not just a school – learning doesn’t stop when school bell rings
  • 24×7 thing
  • Curriculum
  • Is there a range of things to interest everyone?
  • Need more choice; selection; more control of their learning
  • All ages
  • Enterprising
  • Creative, technical, practical…but most of all, it would be fun!

More here…


 

A dangerous game — from learning with ‘e’s by Steve Wheeler

Excerpt:

This got me thinking that many of the world’s education systems are a little like the eating game of Meze. We pile the students plates high with content. Content of every kind is presented to be consumed, and the poor students don’t stand a chance. Many are overwhelmed by the amount of content they need to learn, and the pace at which they have to learn it. Even while they are struggling their way through an overburdened ‘just in case’ curriculum, still more content continues to arrive at an alarming pace. Some learners cry out for mercy, but they are still compelled to consume the content, because later, they are required to regurgitate it in an examination to obtain their grades. The examinations bear no resemblance to that which will be required of them in the real world. No wonder so many wish to leave the table early. What can teachers do to obviate this problem? Some are making a difference, reinterpreting the curriculum they are given by enabling activities and creating resources that facilitate student centred learning. Learning at one’s own pace, and in a manner that suits the individual will overcome some of the problems of overload, but more needs to be done. Things are changing, but they are changing slowly, too slowly for many people’s tastes. It’s a dangerous game we are playing in education. Isn’t it about time we stopped?

Tyrrany-of-the-textbook----Jobrack- 2011.

Book Description
Publication Date: December 16, 2011 | ISBN-10: 1442211415 | ISBN-13: 978-1442211414

Excerpt:

Educational reforms and standards have been a topic of public debate for decades, with the latest go-round being the State Common Core Curriculum Standards. But time and again those reforms have failed, and each set of standards, no matter how new and different, has had little impact on improving student achievement. Why? The textbooks. Textbooks sell based on design and superficial features, not because they are based on the latest research on how children learn and how well they promote student achievement. In Tyranny of the Textbook, Beverlee Jobrack, retired from educational publishing, sheds light on why this happens. She gives an engaging and fascinating look behind-the-scenes of how K-12 textbooks are developed, written, adopted, and sold. And, perhaps most importantly, she clearly spells out how the system can change so that reforms and standards have a shot at finally being effective.

Did you Know?

  • Reform efforts have focused on writing and rewriting standards and tests, but these rarely have any effect on the core curriculum that is published.
  • School districts and states don’t use effectiveness as a criterion for evaluating and purchasing textbooks.
  • Publishers don’t offer textbooks with better content or the latest teaching methods because teachers don’t want textbooks that require them to change their practices.
  • Teachers report that they don’t rely on a textbook in their class, but research shows that they do.
  • Three companies publish 75 percent of the K-12 educational materials.
  • Those three companies are producing similar programs with the same instructional strategies, none of which require teachers to change their practices significantly.
  • Publishers write textbooks for California and Texas. All the other markets have to make do with books only superficially adjusted for their states.

From DSC:
I originally saw this at:

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