Studying teacher moves — educationnext.org by Michael Goldstein
A practitioner’s take on what is blocking the research teachers need

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

But there is almost nothing examining the thousands of moves teachers must decide on and execute every school day. Should I ask for raised hands, or cold-call? Should I give a warning or a detention? Do I require this student to attend my afterschool help session, or make it optional? Should I spend 10 minutes grading each five-paragraph essay, 20 minutes, or just not pay attention to time and work on each until it “feels” done?

My point is simply that relative to education policy research, there is very, very little rigorous research on teacher moves. Why? Gates knows it’s more than a lack of raw cash; it’s also about someone taking responsibility for this work. “Who thinks of it [empirical research on teachers] as their business?”  he asked. “The 50 states don’t think of it that way, and schools of education are not about [this type of] research.”

I agree, but I contend there are a number of other barriers. The first is a lack of demand.

A second issue is that researchers don’t worry about teacher time. Education researchers often put forward strategies that make teachers’ lives harder, not easier. Have you ever tried to “differentiate instruction”? When policy experts give a lecture or speak publicly, do they create five different iterations for their varied audience? Probably not.

Pier Luigi Capucci -- The Internet of Things

Excerpt:

We were asked to consider the Internet of Things (IoT) from the user’s viewpoint. Well, my viewpoint is exactly this, since I’m neither a company director nor a software coder or a hardware creator. From an user’s viewpoint I think we are undergoing a big transformation. The Internet of Things comes out from an evolution process which involves calculation power, connections, networking, personal technologies, and that can be resumed in four phases.

 

Apple University will train executives to think like Steve Jobs — from good.is by Liz Dwyer

Excerpt:

If you want to honor Steve Jobs’ life by following in his entrepreneurial footsteps, forget heading to business school. The Los Angeles Times reports that an Apple team has been working on a top-secret project to create an executive training program called Apple University. The goal? To train people to think like Steve Jobs.

Apple refused to comment on the existence of Apple University, but the Times says that in 2008, Jobs “personally recruited” Joel Podolny, the dean of Yale Business School, to “help Apple internalize the thoughts of its visionary founder to prepare for the day when he’s not around anymore.” Apple analyst Tim Bajarin told the Times that, “it became pretty clear that Apple needed a set of educational materials so that Apple employees could learn to think and make decisions as if they were Steve Jobs.” Though the curriculum is still under wraps, Jobs himself oversaw the creation of the “university-caliber courses.” (emphasis DSC)

 Also see:

 

Steve Jobs’ virtual DNA to be fostered in Apple University:  To survive its late founder, Apple and Steve Jobs planned a training program in which company executives will be taught to think like him, in “a forum to impart that DNA to future generations.” Key to this effort is Joel Podolny, former Yale Business School dean.
Photo: Steve Jobs helped plan Apple University — an executive training program to help Apple carry on without him. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Steve Jobs helped plan Apple University — an executive training program to help
Apple carry on without him. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times / October 6, 2011)

From DSC:
If Apple were to choose to disrupt higher education, several other pieces of the puzzle have already been built and/or continue to be enhanced:

  • Siri — a serious start towards the use of intelligent agents / intelligent tutoring
  • An infrastructure to support 24x7x365 access and synchronization of content/assignments/files to a student’s various devices — via iCloud (available today via iTunes 10.5)
  • iTunes U already has millions of downloads and contains content from some of the world’s top universities
  • The internal expertise and teams to create incredibly-rich, interactive, multimedia-based, personalized, customized educational content
  • Students — like employees in the workplace — are looking for information/training/learning on demand — when they need it and on whatever device they need it
  • Apple — or other 3rd parties — could assist publishers in creating cloud-based apps (formerly called textbooks) to download to students’/professors’ devices as well as to the Chalkboards of the Future
  • The iPad continues to be implemented in a variety of education settings, allowing for some seriously interactive, mobile-based learning

 

 

 

 

At the least, I might be losing a bit more sleep if I were heading up an MBA program or a business school…

 

5 ideas for responding to what kids want the nation to know about educationfrom The Innovative Educator by Lisa Nielsen

Excerpt:

In the session the focus was clear. Educators and the former principal (YAY for administrators) who attended wanted to know how we can hear the children and show them they matter, we love them, and we want to honor their unique passions, talents, interests, and abilities.  We discussed a lot of great ideas.  Here are five ways we discussed addressing what students want from education:

  1. Rather than bubbletests, measure student progress with personal success plans.
  2. Rather than report cards and transcripts allow students to showcase their learning with an authentic ePortfolio.
  3. Rather than work that only has the teacher as the audience, empower students to do real work that matters to them and has a real audience.
  4. Rather than telling students how to meet learning goals, empower them to drive their own learning as participant Deven Black explained he does (visit this link to see how).
  5. Have conversations with students about what their talents are.  You can use the videos in this article that feature students sharing stories about their talents.

From DSC:
Consumers’ expectations from entertainment may likely spill over into education

  • Why the future of TV is all about personalization — from stunmedia.com 
    Excerpt:
    Fueled by the explosive development of smartphones and tablets, video clip viewing routines have [been] forever modified. It’s no surprise that buyers, who have been speedy to embrace video clip providers like HBO GO, Netflix and Hulu, are now expecting a a lot more personalized, interactive and seamless viewing experience across their traditional TV, laptops, gaming consoles, and connected TVs, as well as on smartphones and tablets (emphasis DSC). Here, we’ll discuss the present state of personalised cell video and what customers can anticipate in the future.

From DSC:
In the near future, if I can see what I want on whatever device I want — and it’s personalized/customized for me — won’t that affect my expectations for other types of content that I want to review — such as educational content? 

Yes…I think it will. Whatever discipline I want, on whatever device I want, whenever I want it — available 24x7x365 with online tutoring available (which may or may not be from the same organization that posted the original content).

 

 


Social media and its impact on how we learn in the workplace — from C4PLT by Jane Hart


 

From DSC:
One reflection that jumped out at me from Jane’s excellent presentation…and that I believe is a universal truth:

If an organization doesn’t respond to changing conditions, needs, desires, preferences, best interests, and/or the requirements of its customers, that organization will diminish in usefulness and will most likely (albeit eventually) go out of business.

I know I’m not introducing a new thought here and the above statement seems very self-evident, but do we heed this advice in corporate L&D? Corporate IT? IT within higher education? In higher education as an industry?

 


Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at a glance -- video

My thanks to Mrs. Krista Spahr, Calvin College, for this resource and the quote below:

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is meant to minimize barriers and to maximize learning.

 

Reflections from DSC:
Though I still have much to learn about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), my initial thought is that I really like this approach, as it moves us away from the one-size-fits-all approach and towards a teaching and learning environment that offers more choice, more selection, and more opportunities for customization and personalization. Plus, as companies such as Apple and Microsoft have seen, functionality that started out trying to address accessibility-related needs ended up helping everyone!

Along these lines, I created this graphic years ago — with the idea that students would have a choice on which media they might prefer to use to absorb the information:

 

Again, the idea being that we could provide the same content in 3-5 different ways and let the students select what works best for them. Plus, in the example above, we could even see how other students are describing/making meaning of something.

But it goes further than this as I’m understanding UDL. For example, the methods for achieving a learning outcome can be greatly varied, as the assignments for a particular outcome might be reaching via watching a video clip, or reading a book, or doing a project, or writing a story, or creating music, or ___(fill in the blank) ____.

Also see:

 

cast.org


Guidelines for UDL

Apollo to buy adaptive-learning company for $75-Million — from The Chronicle by Josh Keller

Excerpt:

The Apollo Group, which runs the University of Phoenix, announced on Tuesday that it plans to pay $75-million to purchase Carnegie Learning, which develops interactive math instruction that adapts to the needs of individual students.

Universal Design for Learning: It’s Not Just for Disability Experts Anymore (The Confessions of a First-Time Teacher) — from National Collaborative on Workforce & Disability for Youth (NCWD/Youth) by Amy Katzel

Excerpt:

All students, with or without disabilities, have different strengths and weaknesses. Early on, it was clear to me that I had a wide range of abilities in the room. Some students started out unable to consistently construct full sentences, while others were already writing complex prose. Some students raised their hand frequently to answer questions, while others preferred to stay quiet. When we did reading assignments during class, everyone read at different speeds. Some youth demonstrated they understood the material on quizzes, but then struggled with applying those concepts to their essays.

When I get up in front of the class, to which student am I teaching?

Also see:

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