Cburell's Favorite Links on education from Diigo

GeoGebra

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:05:49 -0000

Tags: math software education opensource

Posted by: cburell

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash - NYTimes.com

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:21:21 -0000

I want to interview Campbell.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”

Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”

Mr. Campbell was well aware of her opinion. “I don’t think we have this great massive change over time where we go from fish to amphibians, from monkeys to man,” she once told him. “We see lizards with different-shaped tails, we don’t see blizzards — the lizard bird.”

With some approximation of courtesy, Mr. Campbell reminded her that only a tiny fraction of organisms that ever lived had been preserved in fossils. Even so, he informed his own students, scientists have discovered thousands of fossils that provide evidence of one species transitioning into another — including feathered dinosaurs.

There were heated objections from some religious organizations and local school boards. In a stormy public comment session, Mr. Campbell defended his fellow writers against complaints that they had not included alternative explanations for life’s diversity, like intelligent design.

His attempt at humor came with an edge:

“We also failed to include astrology, alchemy and the concept of the moon being made of green cheese,” he said. “Because those aren’t science, either.”

Many of the students, Mr. Campbell sensed, were not grasping the basic principles of biological evolution. If he forced them to look at themselves in the evolutionary mirror, he risked alienating them entirely.

The discovery that a copy of “Evolution Exposed,” published by the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, was circulating among the class did not raise his flagging spirits. The book lists each reference to evolution in the biology textbook Mr. Campbell uses and offers an explanation for why it is wrong.

Where the textbook states, for example, that “Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago based on fossil and DNA evidence,” “Exposed” counters that “The fossil evidence of hominids (alleged human ancestors) is extremely limited.” A pastor at a local church, Mr. Campbell learned, had given a copy of “Exposed” to every graduating senior the previous year.

Tags: evolution science religion creationism education

Posted by: cburell

No school like home: Jessica Shepherd meets the children who don't go to school | Education | The Guardian

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:26:21 -0000

Tags: unschooling education

Posted by: cburell

combating-global-warming-map.jpg (JPEG Image, 1126x803 pixels) - Scaled (78%)

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:21:56 -0000

Nice graphic on all the things we can do to slow global warming by reducing our own footprint.

Tags: education environment activism globalwarming

Posted by: cburell

Social networking - digizen.org

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:40:48 -0000

full report on SNS in education pdf download

Tags: collaboration education internetsafety research socialnetworking

Posted by: cburell

www.danielwillingham.com - Daniel T. Willingham

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:35:28 -0000

UVa psych prof of educational psychology - skeptical about much brainbased learning pedagogy.

Tags: brainresearch education for:plugmein

Posted by: cburell

Replace That US History Textbook with Learner.org’s “A Biography of America”

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:13:46 -0000

Tags: resources teaching web2.0 education history

Posted by: cburell

Annenberg Media - A Biography of America

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:10:49 -0000

Awesome 23-hour WGBH US History series, all free and online, from Learner.org. Throw away your textbook.

Tags: history education ushistory video primarysources

Posted by: cburell

John Locker: The Smartest Free Documentaries Online. Educate Yourself on History, Science, Music, War, Religions, Politics, Conspiracies, and more! - Home

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:10:39 -0000

Tags: video downloads documentaryfilms education politics

Posted by: cburell

Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students - ReadWriteWeb

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:21:49 -0000

Tags: seocho tools students web2.0 education

Posted by: cburell

As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It - washingtonpost.com

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:18:51 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A04

The nation's best-known researcher on homework has taken a new look at the subject, and here is what Duke University professor Harris Cooper has to say:

Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except reading and some basic skills practice -- and yet schools require more than ever.

High school students studying until dawn probably are wasting their time because there is no academic benefit after two hours a night; for middle-schoolers, 1 1/2 hours.

And what's perhaps more important, he said, is that most teachers get little or no training on how to create homework assignments that advance learning.

Yet teachers themselves don't uniformly agree on something as basic as the purpose of homework (reviewing vs. learning new concepts), much less design or amount or even whether it should be graded. And the result can be inconsistency in assignments and confusion for students.

That is part of the reason some educators and authors are making new cases for the elimination of homework entirely, including in the new book "The Homework Myth," by Alfie Kohn.

Kohn points to family conflict, stress and Cooper's research as reasons for giving kids other things to do to develop their minds and bodies after school besides homework.

"I am always fascinated when research says one thing and we are all rushing in the other direction," Kohn said.

"It is striking that we have no evidence that there is any academic benefit in elementary school homework," he said. "Then people fall back on the self-discipline argument and how it helps students learn study skills. But that is an urban myth, except that people apply it in the suburbs, too."

In 1989, Cooper, now a professor of psychology and director of Duke's Program in Education, published an analysis of dozens of studies on the link between homework and academic achievement.

His conclusions: The research base showed no correlation between academic achievement and homework -- besides reading -- in elementary school, a small benefit in middle school and more for high school.

This spring, he co-authored another paper in the Review of Educational Research after reviewing various newer studies done on homework from 1987 to 2003, and he offered a few additions to his conclusions.

This time, he said, there was some evidence that, in grades 2 through 5, students do better on unit tests when they do short homework assignments on basic skills that relate directly to the test.

And, he said, it appears that more than two hours of high school homework, and more than 1 1/2 hours of middle school homework, have no academic benefit and may produce negative results.

Other educators, such as Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University education professor and researcher, say that many of the studies Cooper evaluated were not tightly controlled and not authoritative but that his conclusions make sense.

Darling-Hammond said Cooper also is correct in pointing out that many teachers lack the skills to design homework assignments that help kids learn and don't turn them off to learning.

Tags: myresearch stress education pedagogy

Posted by: cburell

As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It - washingtonpost.com

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:06:04 -0000

"most teachers get little or no training on how to create homework assignments that advance learning." Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2006%2F09%2F11%2FAR2006091100908.html

Tags: myresearch stress education alfiekohn

Posted by: cburell

KEDI

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:42:32 -0000

Gov't thinktank on Korean educational issues. Give them a visit.

Tags: korea seocho education research

Posted by: cburell

For English Studies, Koreans Say Goodbye to Dad - NYTimes.com

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:38:57 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The mothers, members of the largest group of foreigners at the public school, were part of what are known in South Korea as “wild geese,” families living separately, sometimes for years, to school their children in English-speaking countries like New Zealand and the United States. The mothers and children live overseas while the fathers live and work in South Korea, flying over to visit a couple of times a year.

Driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea’s rigid educational system, parents in rapidly expanding numbers are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea’s notorious educational pressure cooker.

So some families are radical here, critical of Korean stress. posted by cburell

More than 40,000 South Korean schoolchildren are believed to be living outside South Korea with their mothers in what experts say is an outgrowth of a new era of globalized education.

The phenomenon is the first time that South Korean parents’ famous focus on education has split wives from husbands and children from fathers. It has also upended traditional migration patterns by which men went overseas temporarily while their wives and children stayed home, straining marriages and the Confucian ideal of the traditional Korean family. The cost of maintaining two households has stretched family budgets since most wives cannot work outside South Korea because of visa restrictions.

Wouldn't it be more economical to start alternative schools here? posted by cburell

South Korean parents say that the schools are failing to teach not only English but also other skills crucial in an era of globalization, like creative thinking. That resonates among South Koreans, whose economy has slowed after decades of high growth and who believe they are increasingly being squeezed between the larger economies of Japan and China.

It could take years to see how well this wave of children will fare back in South Korea, especially since they are now going overseas at the elementary level. But earlier this decade, when the wild geese children tended to be high school students, many succeeded in plying their improved English scores to get into colleges in the United States or other English-speaking countries, education experts said. For others, their years overseas was a roundabout way to get into top South Korean colleges, like Yonsei University in Seoul, which increasingly offer courses or entire programs in English.

For New Zealand’s public schools, which charge foreign students annual tuition of $8,700, South Koreans provide an important source of revenue.

Koreans are not blind to the need for CREATIVE THINKING. Stress this. posted by cburell

In 2006, 29,511 children from elementary through high school level left South Korea, nearly double the number in 2004 and almost seven times the figure in 2000, according to the Korean Educational Development Institute, a research group that tracks the figures for the Ministry of Education.

South Koreans now make up the largest group of foreign students in the United States (more than 103,000) and the second largest in New Zealand after Chinese students, according to American and New Zealand government statistics. Yet, unlike other foreign students, South Koreans tend to go overseas starting in elementary school — in the belief that they will absorb English more easily at that age.

In New Zealand, there were 6,579 South Koreans in the country’s elementary and secondary schools in 2007, accounting for 38 percent of all foreign students.

“We talked about coming here for two years before we finally did it,” said Kim Soo-in, 39, who landed here 16 months ago with her two sons. “It was never a question of whether to do it, but when. We knew we had to do it at some point.”

Wild geese fathers were initially relatively wealthy and tended to send their families to the United States. But in the last few years, more middle-class families have been heading to less expensive destinations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Now, there are also “eagle fathers,” who visit their families several times a year because they have the time and money. Those with neither, who are stuck in South Korea, are known as “penguin fathers.”

President Lee Myung-bak said he would start to address the problem by hiring 10,000 English teachers. “This is unprecedented,” he said. “Korea is actually the only country in the world undergoing such a phenomenon, which is very unfortunate.”

South Korean students routinely score at the top in international academic tests. But unhappiness over education’s financial and psychological costs is so widespread that it is often cited as a reason for the country’s low birthrate, which, at 1.26 in 2007, was one of the world’s lowest.

At Remuera Primary, Ms. Kim said she believed that English fluency would increase her sons’ chances of gaining admission to selective secondary schools in South Korea and ultimately to a leading university in Seoul. Her husband, Park Il-ryang, 43, graduated from a little-known Korean university, and he said that the resulting lack of connections had hampered his own career.

Before coming here, the parents had sent one son, Jun-sung, now 10, to evening cram schools and their other son, Jun-woo, now 8, to an English preschool. Parents in their apartment building talked incessantly about their children’s education.

Even so, the sons were not making sufficient progress in English, the parents said. They hired a private English tutor to supplement the supplementary cram schools. “We didn’t think the cram schools were doing any good, but we were too insecure to stop sending them, because the other parents were sending their children,” Ms. Kim said.

Tags: seocho korea stress education

Posted by: cburell

For English Studies, Koreans Say Goodbye to Dad - NYTimes.com

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:22:04 -0000

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2008%2F06%2F08%2Fworld%2Fasia%2F08geese.html%3F_r%3D1%26oref%3Dslogin%26pagewanted%3Dall

Tags: seocho korea stress education

Posted by: cburell

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education. - book reviews | Whole Earth Review | Find Articles at BNET.com

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:55:37 -0000

Tags: unschooling schoolreform education

Posted by: cburell

Teenage Liberation Handbook

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:54:54 -0000

Tags: unschooling schoolreform education

Posted by: cburell

Anatomy of a high school dropout - The World and I Magazine

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:51:57 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

CHARACTERISTICS OF 'SUCCESSFUL' DROPOUTS

        Combining resilient-student research with what educators know about gifted dropouts, many of whom test in the concrete-random learning style (see sidebar), we finally understand why the very things that gave Murray grief in school were those that won him the Pulitzer Prize.
        Resilient-student research shows today that those who succeed in life despite the odds have a knack for turning circumstances to their benefit. Murray was no exception.
        So what did he do that was different? First and foremost, he did not change his learning style, that internal mental wiring that rendered him incomprehensible to the schools. Rather, he adapted consciously and unconsciously many of the negatives, "remaking something new out of what did not work before."
        "I think I have succeeded because of the negative influences in my life," Murray concedes. "They gave me the materials for my writing but more than that, gave me the emotional hunger, the needs, the drive to express myself, to discover myself, to exist, to influence, to shout I AM HERE." FOOTNOTE: 3
        Murray hungered for in-depth immersion in a subject of his own choosing. What mattered were topics he cared passionately about. He was motivated for a career in writing, for meaningful work that would point him in that direction, but he was not motivated for high school, which did not expedite his cause. When topics of interest captured Murray's attention, days would pass until he surfaced again. He reflects on the situation, "I was a compulsive reader held back by my ... teachers since I read more, far more, than was required. I knew I could learn what I needed to learn." His sense of efficacy, the knowledge that he could do what he determined to do, is characteristic of resilient children.

Tags: unschooling schoolreform education

Posted by: cburell

Pennylicious » Blog Archive » Billionaire Dropouts.

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:48:49 -0000

Tags: schoolreform unschooling education

Posted by: cburell

Education 1

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:48:19 -0000

This site focuses largely on the detrimental psychological effects of institutional rigidity and the "tough standards movement."

Tags: education schoolreform unschooling

Posted by: cburell