Thank a Teacher — from ed.gov by Laurie Calvert
During Teacher Appreciation Week (May 2-6) and All Year Long
Excerpt:
We owe so much to our nation’s teachers. Teachers have lit a spark in us, brought us into comfortable and challenging learning communities, and helped us to see who we could be. They have believed in us, and in so doing, teachers have changed the trajectory of our lives.
From DSC:
Amen to that!
Not sure if there is a more recent edition here…but also see:
Originally saw this at:
The Educator’s PLN- posted by Chris McEnroe on 3/28/11
Also, very relevant here is the following posting from Arne Duncan at ED.gov blog:
One of the greatest challenges facing our country is the coming retirement of more than 1 million baby-boomer teachers. This challenge has presented us with a once in a lifetime opportunity to help reshape education in America by recruiting and training the next generation of great American teachers.
Teaching is a rewarding and challenging profession where you can make a lasting impact. Teachers have a positive influence on students, schools, and communities, now and into the future. Schools across the nation are in need of a diverse set of talented teachers, especially in our big cities and rural areas, and especially in the areas of Math, Science, Technology, Special Education, and English Language Learning.
That’s why the department launched the TEACH campaign — a bold new initiative to inspire and empower the most talented and dedicated Americans to become teachers. We know that next to parental support, there is nothing more important to a child’s education than the quality of his or her teachers.
Many of you are already thinking about becoming teachers. The TEACH campaign provides tools at your fingertips to navigate the academic and professional requirements that will credential you to succeed as a teacher in one of our schools. TEACH.gov features an online path to teaching and over 4,000 listed, open teaching positions.
Also see:
$1.5M grant jump-starts teacher development — fromeschoolnews.com by Jenna Zwang
Tutor.com, which connects students with live tutors online for tutoring in math, science, social studies, and English, is the largest online tutoring and homework help service available—and, with help from a $1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the company is expanding its horizons to help teachers as well.
Get connected to the online learning culture — from Edutopia.org
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Professional Development: Starter Kit for Teaching Online
Get expert advice on how you can get started as an online educator.
Making the Case for Open-Source Textbooks
Futurist David Thornburg on why open-source textbooks have the advantage of being free of cost and provide greater value to the users.
Beyond Paper and Pencil
Technology expert Ben Johnson wonders how learning — and schools — would change if teachers stopped using paper.
Banned in School — from The Innovative Educator by Lisa Nielsen
From DSC:
This item caught my eye because this very sort of thing prevented me from helping some of our remote student teachers this week. The schools that they were in did not permit access to the servers that provided web-based collaboration software. The reasons I picked up from the email-based correspondence was that the schools were concerned about the misuse of such technologies — based upon actual acts of digital vandalism they had occurred at their schools or other schools.
Though I understand the concerns of the administrations — especially in light of the litigious society that we live in — I couldn’t help but reflect upon how incredibly unfortunate that — again — a small percentage of bad apples ruins it for the rest of the students.
What can we do to promote better digital citizenship? Ethics? Morality?
I agree with Lisa when she asserts that it is no longer acceptable to have disconnected teaching and learning environments. It is not ultimately beneficial to ban teachers and students from the Internet.
P.S. If we can’t help our student teachers out in such matters, it makes change all the more difficult to implement.
‘Social teaching’ company bets buy-in from Capella Education — from The Chronicle by Josh Fischman
The basic idea behind Sophia is to identify the best teachers for any concept, put their instruction for that concept online, and students all over the world can use these “learning packets” free of charge. For example, a professor who has a really great lesson on how to factor polynomials can package that lesson—complete with video and any other materials—on Sophia, and search engines like Google will let students find it and use it.
From DSC:
Will the Forthcoming Walmart of Education turn out to be that we teach each other, free of charge? Online marketplaces and exchanges continue to appear; the game-changing environment — filled with disruption and change — continues to develop.
But know this, teaching is tough. It’s not easy, and it’s not an exact science; it’s also an art.
Our minds — and the ways in which we learn — are unbelievably complex. After decades of trying, scholars still do not agree on how we learn. There are numerous learning theories out there (still) and though we’ve come a long way, there are no silver bullets of the teaching and learning world.
So if you decide to be a teacher, you better get ready to spend some serious time honing your craft…otherwise, your ratings on these types of sites will plummet and few will see your modules/contributions. conversely, if you are an effective teacher, your ratings will reflect that and your contributions will be seen/linked to quite frequently — from people all over the world.
Also see:
From DSC:
I’d like to thank:
2/8/11:
Note/correction from my original posting:
Doug Lynch and Stanton Wortham are not at Penn State, but rather they are at the University of Pennsylvania; Elliot Masie is an Adjunct Faculty Member at the University of Pennsylvania.
