Lark Birdsong's List: Education

"Pick up any college brochure or catalog. Delete the brand names and the map. Can you tell which college it is? While there are outliers (like St. John's College, in Maryland, Deep Springs College, and Full Sail University), most colleges aren't really outliers. They are mass marketers.\n\nStop for a second and consider the impact of that choice. By emphasizing mass and sameness and rankings, colleges have changed their missions.\n\nThis works great in an industrial economy where we can't churn out standardized students fast enough, and where the demand is huge because the premium earned by a college graduate dwarfs the cost. But ...\n\nCollege has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.\n\nAs a result, millions of people are in very serious debt, debt so big it might take decades to repay. Word gets around. Won't get fooled again."

NORC multidisciplinary project teams include members with expertise and experience in these and other focus areas:
Education

"learn with the open-source community"

"Yes, we love our fact sheets around here and today we’re going to mention a growing number of them from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The complete set of fact sheets can be found here. Each “sheet” has a question and the provides answers and sources of where the answer came from making it much faster to check for the latest/updated numbers. "

"Nearly 50 million students are heading off to approximately 99,000 public elementary and secondary schools for the fall term, and before the school year is out, an estimated $543 billion will be spent related to their education. These are just a few of the statistics contained in Back to School Stats, which offers data about American elementary, secondary and postsecondary schools, students, and the educational process. "

"If you’re in education somehow (and who isn’t these days!), the Educause website is a treasure trove of information. Here are some recent finds that don’t just apply to academia "

"I recalled this exchange as I read about the latest controversy at Harvard University, which – because it’s Harvard – has made national headlines. Earlier this year, the university announced that it would no longer expect its courses to conclude with final exminations. In the past, professors were supposed to obtain approval if they did not intend to give a final exam; from now on, though, they will need to notify the university if they do wish to give one"

"Think Tutorial is a database of simple, easy to follow tutorials covering all aspects of popular computing. Technology is fantastic, but it can be difficult to keep up with at times. Think Tutorial's strength resides in its very intuitive approach and design"

"The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Despite being the work of one man, Salman Khan, this 1600+ video library is the most-used educational video resource as measured by YouTube video views per day and unique users per month. We are complementing this ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World. "

"There are a bunch of college ratings out there to help students decide what college to apply to (and give something for alumni to gloat about). The tough part is that there doesn't seem to be any agreement on what makes a good college. Alex Richards and Ron Coddington describe the discrepancies."

"Should colleges teach students how to be better Googlers?

Educators who see the popular search engine as antithetical to good research might cringe at the thought of endorsing it to students. But they might not cringe nearly as hard as did attendees of the 2010 Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference when Andrew Asher showed them what happens when students do not learn how to use Google properly. "

"The Education Nation Scorecard allows families to navigate the education system by providing useful, easily understandable information about performance at individual schools, as well as in districts, states, and the nation as a whole."

"systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. This can be valuable to educators "

"As a growing number of nonprofit colleges hire for-profit companies to lay tracks for their new online programs, academics generally have been the third rail. Technology and information systems are one thing, the colleges say; to outsource teaching and curriculum is quite another."

"Texas Instruments has beefed up the resources it offers on its TI Math Nspired site, adding calculus and algebra 2 lessons, professional development resources, and other tools. The site has also recently added new pre-calc, statistics, and middle school math lessons."

"UK education authorities busy planning "the classroom of the future" should board a flight to Switzerland, because it has already been built. "

"Designed by NORD Architects from Copenhagen, the Natural Science Centre in Bjerringbro is Denmark's new science lab and education outpost. The white cylindrical façade is covered by corrugated glass, incorporating several terraces and both translucent and transparent windows. The spacious interior is, in contrast, angular and industrial. The 2,560 sq m centre will be surrounded by public "learning gardens" used in part to demonstrate green technologies. "

"Apple has created a custom area for the App Store titled "Special Education: Learning for Everyone." The new section contains five subsections: Communication, Hearing, Language Development, Literacy & Learning, and Organization."