Feb 29th, 2008 by Ann Maher
A very bright high school freshman shared the following opinion with me a few months ago:
“Schools are confining destiny. I have been taught well by many teachers and horribly by others. I disliked school the fifth week into high school because of the boring same old routines. Classes are hard and believe me, it is not fun to sit in class all day and get yelled at for the most pathetic things such as saying one word. Please help us!”
Let’s hear from more students. Just register on the site, and post your thoughts and ideas here. And please know….there ARE adults listening!
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Feb 5th, 2008 by Ann Maher
Wikis. URLs. Facebook. MySpace. Blogs. Email. IM (Instant Message). Spreadsheets. Graphs and charts. Word processing. Flash. And the list goes on…
How confident are you about your own technology literacy? Are you a confident risk taker in exploring the new world of electronic organization? Or does the mere thought of using a computer make you want to revert to “the good old days?”
One thing is certain – technology will continue to have an impact on our lives, whether we like it or not. Our young adults already use technology for recreation, communication, work production, and experimentation. In an odd turn of events, the adults have become the “illiterate”, and our students now circulate in places and ways that feel inaccessible to adults. That is at once fascinating…and terrifying.
Consider the viewpoint of a high school sophomore named Natalie. In response to the question “How well do you feel you are being “technologically” prepared?”, her response is frank and illuminating: Personally, I don’t think that we are being prepared very well, I think that school could definitely use technology such as computers / laptops etc. more. I know that private schools use laptops in their classes and I think that public school students should have that choice as well. Continue Reading »
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Feb 3rd, 2008 by Ann Maher
Are you ready to Wiki? It took a deep breath and a challenge from a student to push me into the Wiki World. But like so many other “things that seemed hard”, once explored, Wikis have become a new fascination for me. I offer this as a “work in progress” , to prove that making the attempt is the first (and often hardest) step in moving forward. I encourage other Wiki-ites to share your sites with us as well, so that we can learn, laugh, and help each other find twenty-first century literacy - whatever that means!
Here’s the link to check out: www.teacherandlearner.wikispaces.com
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Jan 10th, 2008 by Ann Maher
Our conversations about positive change need fuel to keep them headed in the right direction. Sharing information about the reality of our world today may be just the spark to light a fire of discussion. Click on this link to view a powerful educator presentation entitled “DID YOU KNOW”? The people who designed it are located at shifthappens.wikispaces.com. Here’s the background story:
Did You Know? originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting in August 2006 at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, United States. The presentation “went viral” on the Web in February 2007 and, as of June 2007, had been seen by at least 5 million online viewers. Today the old and new versions of the online presentation have been seen by at least 10 million people, not including the countless others who saw it at conferences, workshops, training institutes, and other venues.
Here’s the presentation, in YouTube format. Let’s join their discussion and ask their questions locally!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Tags: , Change, twenty-first century
Posted in 21st Century Education | No Comments »
Dec 23rd, 2007 by Ann Maher
“The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers –will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” (Daniel Pink – author of A Whole New Mind)
Continue Reading »
Posted in 21st Century Education | No Comments »
Dec 3rd, 2007 by Carmen Andrews
It’s time to pause and take a clear-eyed look at an evolving and powerful determinant of what students are being taught in American public schools. This time, instead of filtering curricula through a lens of high stakes state exams, NAEP and other testing barometers, we need to look at societal norms and realities, and examine whether they wield enough influence in U.S. public education. Continue Reading »
Tags: curriculum, Douglas Reeves, education, Grant Wiggins, Making Standards Work, NCLB, students, teachers, Understanding by Design
Posted in Curriculum and Academics | No Comments »
Nov 27th, 2007 by Ann Maher
What has happened to school in our society? It has become something to be endured, seemingly by both students and teachers, in many cases. We recoil from measuring success by test scores, but lack consensus on how to prepare our students to succeed in today’s global society. Research tells us that if learning is “joyful, interactive, and constructive”, then thinking is made visible to the student and mastery of content will occur. How many of our classrooms today would be described as “joyful”?
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Tags: A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink, education, schools, students, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman
Posted in School Climate | No Comments »
Nov 3rd, 2007 by Ann Maher
Dr. Seuss saw it coming. Before his death in 1991, he was trying to write a book that would be a tribute to teachers, a story in celebration of individuality and creative thinking. In the last book credited to his genius, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, readers come to know Miss Bonkers, who teaches her students to THINK. Amazingly, it’s really a book about children being required to take tests. Diffendoofer students love their school because they have fun and learn interesting things. However, to stay in their school, they must score well on a test. (Does this sound familiar?) Those children who don’t pass the test will be sent to a dreaded place called Flobbertown.
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Tags: education, NCLB, teachers
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Nov 2nd, 2007 by Carmen Andrews
We’re entering an era of cognitive externalization. We’re in the midst of a technology revolution that is outsourcing our need to remember everyday information. Even some of our decision-making responsibilities have been lifted in surreptitious ways.
Most people believe that the main transformative innovation of the information age was that it allowed us to know a whole lot more. Nearly a decade into the 21st century we find that the real advance of the information age is that it actually allows us to know less. Our present state of technological inventiveness has provided us with an affordable cache of handheld and embedded servants who dwell on-line, in our machinery and in our pocket devices. The collective silicon memory systems, intelligent online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge have outsourced life’s details to external cyberbrains. We can harness these electronic, sentient gofers to free ourselves from the mundane minutiae of our rote memories, consumer decision-making and drudgery-laden mental tasks.
Continue Reading »
Tags: education, NCLB, teachers, technology
Posted in Technology in Education | No Comments »
