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Introducing this work
For the purposes of this Scoop.it site, the history of human interaction with information may be divided into 4 eras. The first era ended with the invention of writing around 3000 BC. The second era ended with the invention of the printing press in 1440. The third era ended, and the fourth began, with the invention of the Internet (depending how one defines its operational beginning) somewhere between 1969 and 1982. We now exist early, but decidedly, in the fourth era.
All readers may not agree with this interpretation of history, especially with the division and numbering of the eras. That is not the main point here. Rather, it is that humankind is presently existing in an era distinctly different from the one that preceded it -- that in fact, this new era is accompanied with, and characterized by, a new information landscape. This new Internet landscape will challenge, disrupt, and overpower the print-oriented one that came before it. It will not completely obliterate that which preceded it, but it will render it to a subsidiary, rather than primary, level of influence.
Just as the printing press altered humanity's relationship with information, thereby resulting in massive restructuring of political, religious, economic, social, educational, cultural, and other realms of life; so too will the Internet occasion analogous transformations in the same areas of human activity.
This site will concern itself primarily with how K-20 education in the US, and the people who comprise its constituencies, may be affected by this transformative movement from one era to the next. -JL 
From the Huffington Post:
"A national resolution to urge education administrators to rely less on standardized testing is gaining a wave of support in South Florida.
"The Palm Beach School Board was the first school board in the state to endorse the petition that asks state governments and education boards to: develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools." 
By David Mahaley
"With the integration of the iPad into the instructional environment, teachers and students have discovered many new ways in which the device can expand and enhance the learning environment. With the iPad, the Apple TV can offer a flexible, complete, and cost efficient alternative to the traditional interactive boards populating our classrooms."
Be sure to read the comments following the article. They offer a great deal of additional, important information. -JL 
By Matthew Ingram
"In an interview about the future of the media industry, Google's head of news products Richard Gingras said that newspapers are like old-fashioned internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo, and that unless they can adapt to the web instead of fighting, they are likely doomed." Via David Patton, Luís António Santos 
"A report into digital learning released today will also recommend that teachers and learners should not be prevented from using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in schools."
Via EDTC@UTB, Blair Cook 
By Tanya Roscorla
"Like most schools, teachers at New Milford High School spend time on duty at lunch, in the halls and at in-school suspension rooms.
"But this year, the 55 teachers from this New Jersey school didn't have to do these duties for two or three 48-minute periods a week. And only one teacher had these duties at a time instead of two.
"This simple policy change enables what's been called the 80/20 principle, a theory practiced by Google that employees who spend 20 percent of their time on company-related projects that interest them will work better.
"In similar fashion, New Milford teachers now have more time to follow their work-related passions, Principal Eric Sheninger said. During these professional development periods, the teachers are coming up with interdisciplinary projects, new assessments and ways to integrate technology into their students' learning." 
From the website:
"The National School Reform Faculty™ (NSRF™) is a professional development initiative that focuses on increasing student achievement through skillful use of collaborative professional learning communities called Critical Friends Groups™, or CFGs™.
"Critical Friends Groups™ use protocols and activities that result in meaningful and efficient communication, problem solving and learning. At the heart of NSRF’s program and essential to successful CFGs are the concepts of Facilitative Leadership and Critical Friendship. We have learned that Critical Friendship is best achieved through applying protocols, structured ways to work and communicate that promote adult growth and are directly linked to student learning. Facilitative Leadership skills are needed to engage school communities in this practice, and are valuable for all leaders—school leaders, classroom teachers and district administrators.
"This site is designed to give you information about Critical Friends Groups™, keep you updated with news from CFG™ coaches worldwide, inform you about upcoming trainings, and make resources available to you, including how you can become a CFG™ Coach."
The materials provided on this site are a great resource for use by trainers/coaches/facilitators for PLCs. If you serve in this role, you will probably find useful material here. This work focuses on F2F interactions. It would be great to see adaptations for distance use. I have used some of this material in teaching my graduate classes and giving workshops and find it quite valuable. -JL 
By Barbara Blackburn
"True instructional rigor, however, is centered around student learning. Rigor is creating an environment in which each student is expected to learn at high levels, each student is supported so he or she can learn at high levels, and each student demonstrates learning at high levels." 
By Tammy Andrew
"Whether adapting an existing lesson or creating a new one, keep in mind Bloom’s taxonomy. While examining the lesson, ask questions such as, “Are students asked to apply their knowledge to solve a similar situation,” “Are students asked to relate this information to something else,” “Are students asked how they would improve something,” or “Can they explain why they made certain choices.” Also consider how student centered the work will be and look for ways for students to interact with each other while learning.
"Once teachers understand what rigor is, they may find that it is already present in some of their activities. The challenge then becomes identifying where, tweaking it to be more effective and finding more places in the curriculum to use it. Bloom's taxonomy, especially the cognitive and affective domains, gives a starting place for understanding rigor using a familiar set of categories." 
Via Professional Learning:
Blog from Mal Lee (Australia), Martin Levins (Australia), Chris Hubbard (US), and Terry Freedman (UK), researchers for the ACER Press publication – Bring Your Own Technology – the first concerted international analysis of schools and education authorities facilitating the students’ use of their personal suite of digital technologies in the classroom.
This is a rather new website. The authors have co-authored a new book, "BYOT" which is currently in press in Australia, Europe, and the U.S.; publication is scheduled for Sept. 2012. In the meantime, the site includes a significant amount of information that will be of use to those in the early stages of BYOT planning or implementation. NBC-TV in the U.S. aired a segment in May 2012 about the Forsyth County Schools in Georgia that have implemented a large-scale BYOT program. The website houses a live link to it. -JL Via pru 
Available for free download at this site, both this updated 2nd edition and the 1st. Terry Anderson's book was awared the Charles A. Wedemeyer Award for making a significant contribution to the field of distance education. -JL 
Clintondale HS in Clinton, Michigan has established a strong reputation for having successfully implemented the flipped instructional model building-wide, under the leadership of principal Greg Green. This has led to substantial improvements in student achievement in a short period of time.
Educators will be interested to view some of the over 300 (and counting) videos now posted on the school's website. Covering the areas of English, Math, Science, Social Studies, ACT Prep, and Learning Strategies, most videos are from3 to 8 minutes long and are available in web, iPad, or iPod/mobile formats.
This is really inspiring to me!-JL 
From 9To5Mac
"According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.
"While Apple has always had full control of the actual iOS Maps application design, the backend has belonged to Google. That will change with iOS 6 thanks to their purchases of Placebase, C3 Technologies, and Poly9; acquisitions that Apple has used to create a complete mapping database. Now that the application is fully in-house, it is being referred to simply as “Maps” (some people call the current version Google Maps because of the backend). We reported prior to the launch of iOS 5 that Apple and Google had extended their Maps deal, and now it is obvious when that deal ends." |
By Tom Whitby
"Let us consider that maybe the merging of the mantras of education and business are not working out together. Maybe “Content is King” merged with “Data is King” does not add up to a learned individual. Maybe the focus on content, so that education can be easily assessed by Data is really the wrong thing that we should be analyzing. Maybe, how we teach, is a much more important element in learning than what we teach. Maybe the data is totally correct about what it is assessing, but what it is assessing is not what we should be looking at." 
By Thomas Friedman
"Andrew Ng is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and he has a rather charming way of explaining how the new interactive online education company that he cofounded, Coursera, hopes to revolutionize higher education by allowing students from all over the world to not only hear his lectures, but to do homework assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing the course and use that to get a better job or gain admission to a better school.
“I normally teach 400 students,” Ng explained, but last semester he taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning. “To reach that many students before,” he said, “I would have had to teach my normal Stanford class for 250 years.” 
By Anne Collier
"Over the past year, Katie Salen went on a “listening tour,” interviewing game designers at Media Molecule, Valve, and Blizzard Entertainment. Here’s what she learned in terms of gaming principles that can be applied to education:
"Don’t shoot the player while she’s learning. Too much drama, too nerve-wracking or scary an environment makes it hard for participants to learn. Students need space to think, look around, process, and reflect.
"Learning is social. Problem-solving is increasingly collaborative. Salen heard a Media Molecule designer explain how much players’ own interactions, often more than the design, adds to the experience. Players, like students, can bring ideas to the process that designers don’t even think of. Will Wright, designer of The Sims and Spore, says he designs communities, not games. “We need to design a classroom as a community in which the participants’ knowledge is valued and the exchange of their own expertise is valued,” Salen said. “Most challenges in school today only deal with individual problem-solving. Tests don’t reward collaborative problem-solving. Sharing is often seen as cheating,” while collaborating in cross-functional teams is what’s needed more and more in a complex world.
"A strong sense of community creates safety. Open up space for students (players) to interact with one another, a space for which you’ve created 1) a need to know, 2) a need to share what they know, and 3) the infrastructure for that sharing. “Sharing should feel like a gift,” Salen said. Let players/students participate in the designing too. In participatory learning, like open-source code writing, the design keeps getting better.
"Learning that empowers the learner helps make it irresistible. Mark Healey at Little Big Planets told Salen that empowering a player to do something feels like a “force flows through your veins like you can change the world around you.” When we can design learning experiences that feel like that, we make learning irresistible.
"You can listen to the entirety of Katie Salen’s talk here." 
"Academy District 20 in Colorado Springs is an example of one district that encourages teachers to practice blended learning for themselves, so that they can effectively bring it into the classroom.
"The district just wrapped up its first year of professional development using blended learning, through a combination of online and face-to-face activities. It went so well that two fourth-grade teachers said they want it to continue next year.
"I feel like I've gained so much knowledge in all different kinds of areas of how to use technology in the classroom," Janice Theda said." Via Stephanie Sandifer 
By Marion Brady
"For all practical purposes, the core is now America’s national curriculum. The governors and school officers who pushed the Initiative think that standardizing the curriculum provides “a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn…” Corporate interests also think it’s a good thing, but for a different reason: It standardizes the education market, thereby significantly upping profit potential.
"The secretive, long-running, organized, well-financed campaign to centralize, standardize, and privatize American education is on track. To follow the campaign, follow the money." 
Nearly 2-hour video of Rheingold's presentation at the MIT Media Lab about his new book, "Net Smart", included here, along with this brief article. -JL 
By Gregory Ferenstein
"...last week, two Stanford professors made a courageous proposal to ditch lectures in the medical school. “For most of the 20th century, lectures provided an efficient way to transfer knowledge, But in an era with a perfect video-delivery platform — one that serves up billions of YouTube views and millions of TED Talks on such things as technology, entertainment, and design — why would anyone waste precious class time on a lecture?,” write Associate Medical School dean, Charles Prober and business professor, Chip Heath, in The New England Journal of Medicine. Instead, they call for an embrace of the “flipped” classroom, where students review Khan Academy’s YouTube lectures at home and solve problems alongside professors in the classroom. Students seem to love the idea: when Stanford piloted the flipped classroom in a Biochemistry course, attendance ballooned from roughly 30% to 80%."
I found it valuable to read the relatively short article in the New England Journal of Medicine...which soundly endorses the flipped classroom/blended learning approach for medical school education. If the Stanford Medical School can plan to adopt this model, what is holding back K-12? -JL From YouTube:
"George Siemens, a main proponent of connectivism and a social media strategist with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University, answers some of our questions about the future of connectivism learning theory. The presentation is divided into two parts: Part 1: Overview of Connectivism Part 2: Interview with George Siemens"
Presentation from Nov. 2010. Via Susan Bainbridge, João Greno Brogueira 
By Barbara Blackburn
"Instructional rigor is one of the most discussed topics in education today. But there is much debate over what rigor is and is not. Let's look at seven myths, then a concrete definition of the actual meaning." 
By Tammy Andrew
"Checking curriculum or lessons for rigor includes lessons for all students; rigor is not limited to gifted or college bound programs. Look for different ways that content can be presented and analyzed. Ask questions about the activities such as: Are the activities inquiry or project based, requiring students to form their own answers? Do students use the results of their answers to explore ways they can make a difference in the world around them? Do lessons contain elements from different disciplines, encouraging students to make connections with previous knowledge? Are students asked to examine their own emotions concerning dilemmas or to take a position on a controversial topic?"
By Bruce D. Baker, Ken Libby, Kathryn Wiley Summary by PEN Weekly NewsBlast
"A frequent reform claim is that charter schools deliver higher performance at a lower cost. The performance side of this question has been addressed elsewhere, with mixed findings, but the cost side has received less attention. A new study from the National Education Policy Center compares per-pupil spending of district schools with charters operated by major charter management organizations in New York City, Texas, and Ohio. The researchers assembled three-year data sets including school-level spending per pupil, school size, grade ranges, and populations served for both charters and district schools. For charters, they used government reports of spending, and spending as reported on IRS non-profit filings, and compared spending with that of traditional schools of similar size, serving the same grade levels, and with similar populations. Overall, comparative spending between the two sectors is mixed, with many high-profile network charters outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas, but other network charters spending less, particularly in Ohio. In New York City, KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools outspend ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) similar district schools by 30 percent. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. In Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50 percent more based on state-reported expenditures, and 50 to 100 percent more based on IRS filings." 
Summary by Inside Higher Ed
"Universitas 21, a group of universities from around the world, has released a new international ranking of nations’ higher education systems. Countries were evaluated on a series of measures related to resources (spending by governments and private sources); output (research and its impact and graduates who meet labor market needs); connectivity (international collaboration); and the higher education environment (government policies, diversity and other factors). Population was taken into account. The top five countries: United States, Sweden, Canada, Finland and Denmark." 
By Valeria Strauss Summary by SmartBrief on EdTech
"A high-school senior in Florida recently produced a video with help from a digital educator, in which she featured seven top students who failed state exams on their first try. In the video, the students describe how the high-stakes exams affected their lives, with some being shifted from Advanced Placement to remedial courses. A Florida school board member also is featured in the video, describing his experience taking -- and failing -- a test similar to those administered to students." |
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