Skip to main contentdfsdf

Sandra Stark's List: Education and Training

  • Jan 20, 11

    Good article on pros and cons of distance learning in the college environment.

    www.nytimes.com/...05college.html 2.2_distance_learning

    • Online education is best known for serving older, nontraditional students who can not travel to colleges because of jobs and family. But the same technologies of “distance learning” are now finding their way onto brick-and-mortar campuses, especially public institutions hit hard by declining state funds. At the University of Florida, for example, resident students are earning 12 percent of their credit hours online this semester, a figure expected to grow to 25 percent in five years.

       This may delight undergraduates who do not have to change out of pajamas to “attend” class. But it also raises questions that go to the core of a college’s mission: Is it possible to learn as much when your professor is a mass of pixels whom you never meet? How much of a student’s education and growth — academic and personal — depends on face-to-face contact with instructors and fellow students?

  • Jan 20, 11

    Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using cellphones to text one another the answers.
    Enlarge This Image

    Drew Angerer/The New York Times
    John Fremer, 71, a Caveon co-founder who was once the chief test developer for the SAT.
    CHEAT SHEET

    A High-Tech Approach

    Articles in this series examine cheating in education and efforts to stop it.
    Readers' Comments
    Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
    Read All Comments (77) »
    With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone — not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets.

    So the state called in a company that turns technology against the cheats: it analyzes answer sheets by computer and flags those with so many of the same questions wrong or right that the chances of random agreement are astronomically small. Copying is the almost certain explanation.

    www.nytimes.com/...28cheat.html 2.2_edu_training. 1.2_security

  • Jan 20, 11

    Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

    Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.

    www.nytimes.com/...21brain.html 2.2_edu_training 1.11_people_machines

  • Jan 22, 11

    Though teachers and students are now pushing learning beyond the borders of the classroom through social networking, that move also comes with hurdles, including the fact that many schools still block access to such sites within their walls. School officials must also confront the uncertainties and questions surrounding privacy issues, proper management, and cyber security when they open their doors to social-networking sites.

    www.edweek.org/...03networking.h03.html 2.2_edu_training 2.2_IT_teach_learn

1 - 5 of 5
20 items/page
List Comments (0)