Archive for Category: "EdView"
March 27, 2013 8:53 am
5 Major Benefits of Media Literacy and its Relationship to the Common Core State Standards
It has become apparent to educators around the world, that the 21st Century learning model must be different that the 20th century. In fact, 46 states around the country are making plans to implement a new initiative called the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The CCSS standards “are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”
December 10, 2012 9:00 am
10 Things Your Students Should Know About Their Digital Footprints
Building a digital legacy is an issue I believe doesn’t garner enough attention in our personal and professional lives. In fact, some of the heaviest users of online tools and social media are our young students, who are growing up as a generation of visual learners and visual attention seekers.
November 17, 2012 9:27 pm
Collect the Voices of Ideas with ChangeMakrs
I came across this great new platform a month or so ago, called Changemakrs.com. It looked perfect to me. Just what I needed. It was an opportunity for me to do a little internal professional development. I’ve been collecting voices.
September 23, 2012 5:25 pm
Education Nation: What happens when it’s over?
I’m not going to say that Education Nation does a horrible job of highlighting education’s positives and negatives, but it’s always been a personal mission of mine to move away from the “education news cycle.” As educators, sometimes we’ll take any positive stories about education, no matter how little and far between they seem to be.
August 8, 2012 10:48 am
Flipped Classrooms: Let’s Change the Discussion
Since Sal Khan’s 2011 TED Talk, the Khan Academy has been nearly synonymous with “flipped classrooms.” This is because since then, Khan Academy has been promoted by the Gates Foundation as well as major media outlets like CNN and CBS. But, what the media and outsiders (non-educators) fail to recognize is that Khan Academy is “just a tool” and not a methodology or pedagogy on its own.
August 7, 2012 12:00 pm
Social Media: Are we teaching our kids to have the “Great Debate?”
I’ve had this kind of sick feeling in my stomach over the past few days. I don’t know if I’m getting tired of social media, over-loaded with social media, or just disenfranchised with it altogether. I’m just not satisfied with what’s happening there. And I’m starting to wonder if we’re setting the right example for our students with our own social media behavior.
June 5, 2012 8:00 am
SummerEd: 6 Things To Do This Summer
Take a minute and think about the last vacation you took (for those that don’t remember or don’t know the meaning of the word, stare at this picture of a woman on the beach). If you let your mind wander just a little, you’ll start feeling the stress melt away. The screams of kids, the grinding of the pencil sharpener, the slamming of the door… it’s all fading into the distance. Learning is over, now it’s time to just relax. [...]
May 20, 2012 10:01 am
TED: Poised to be the Biggest Brand in Education
If you were to walk up on the street and ask the average Joe the Plumber what they thought when you said the word “education,” what would they tell you? “Unions.” “Teacher strikes. “Budgets.” If you were to ask them the same question about what was education’s biggest brand, they might say…Pearson? Or Houghton Mifflin. (“who?”) That’s one of education’s inherent problems. Education is not associated with a brand, per se. It’s associated with…dreck. Nobody in the general public gives [...]
May 1, 2012 8:00 am
The Test: A Culture of Fear
Change is hard. The process involves taking everything you once considered true, questioning it, and then making a decision that some or all of it was, in fact, false. It doesn’t stop there, either. Once we decide that our information was wrong, we have to choose to act differently. After all, if we don’t act differently, then we must not believe that the old information was wrong. Stove doesn’t look hot. Touch stove. Hand burns. Reassess state of the stove. [...]
April 3, 2012 9:42 am
The Hyper-Politicization of Education
I was speaking with a friend of mine, a paraprofessional, and she mentioned to me something I had seen reverberated through Facebook postings, conversations with teachers, and discussions with parents of school-age children. The test got easier. Let’s back up a step for some context. This year, my state (Texas) introduced its latest version of standardized testing, the State Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, test. (Before that it was TAKS, then TAAS, then TEAMS, then… well, you get the [...]
March 29, 2012 9:34 am
Teachers: What kind of students are you making?
I’m actually on vacation, but I wanted to chime in on what I’ve been reading over vacation: Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams. In the first quarter of the book (or manifesto), Seth pulls heavy remembrances of the true nature of public education, which was to prepare kids to be better factory workers. Check out Section 5 to reference the below. There’s lots of quotable items in here, but I wanted to throw this one particular item out and see what you thought. [...]
March 14, 2012 8:00 am
5 Tips for Creating Social Networking School Guidelines
“Facebook me.” “Hey, hit me on Plus” “Can you tweet me?” “I’m on Linkedin.” “Must have missed that in my feed…” “Wow, look at what is trending now!” Are you social? Today, it is almost more difficult to find someone who is NOT on a social network than someone who is. The choices almost feel endless from the old guard: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Orkut, Myspace, to the new endeavors like Path. Or even to the “socialization” of services like [...]
March 12, 2012 5:55 pm
Teachers: Do you want your kids watching Khan? Or watching YOU?
The Khan Academy PR machine is getting to be in full swing after last night’s CBS 60 Minutes airing. I’ve always stated that I’d like to see teachers being their own Khans, being master publishers, and using their many years of teaching mastery to “teach the world.” Khan beat us to it, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it better..
March 7, 2012 8:00 am
Let’s Re-Brand Education in the Media
Last week, at the Illinois Computing Educator’s Conference, I had the pleasure of hosting Education and the Media: Pointing Toward the Positive. I invited anchors and reporters from all of Chicago’s big news networks- NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. It was an eye-opening event for myself and others, and offered a wide glimpse into how education news gets made, or… doesn’t. My vision for the talk was to understand more clearly how education news is treated by the big networks. We [...]
March 6, 2012 8:00 am
“This will be an open-Internet test…”
There was nothing sweeter to the ears of a student than hearing, “Class, this will be an open-book test.” This was far better, of course, than an open-note test, which required you to pay attention and furiously scribble what the teacher said. However, either is preferable to the all-too-common “brain dump” that measures who has the keenest memory. Think about each model of assessment, though. Are we measuring what the student learned when we allow them to utilize their book [...]
February 21, 2012 6:34 pm
5 Reflections From My Day Off of School
I had Presidents’ Day off from school recently. It’s one of the perks of being a teacher. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are lots of perks when you are a teacher. Our day ends at 3pm. No weekend work. Long winter breaks, spring break, and of course, one of the main reasons all educators decide to become a teacher; summer vacation. Are you picking up on my sarcasm? I hope so, because I’m laying it on pretty thick. Actually, my [...]
February 20, 2012 8:10 am
Google’s Master Plan Behind the Chromebook
Earlier this month I spent two days at the Google campus in Mountain View, California. The Google in Education team invited an assortment of Google Certified Teachers, Trainers, and partners to learn the latest about the recently released Chromebook. There are some neat things on the horizon. Jaime Casip, Google Education Senior Evangelist, spoke for a large portion of our second day together and explained the reason Google is venturing into the world of operating systems and hardware. His response [...]
February 1, 2012 8:00 am
Ask the Big Questions…
For the past couple of weeks we have been batting around and started posting (1,2,3) on the topic of education’s “BIG QUESTIONS” here at the EdReach offices. As our – occasionally heated – yet always invigorating conversations have flowed back and forth a couple themes began to emerge in my mind about why education has such BIG QUESTIONS in the first place. No theme was more prevalent that PASSION. We as teachers, administrators, parents, and even students are passionate about: Learning [...]
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