With TED Ed, “ideas worth spreading” become “lessons worth sharing.” Each lesson will be under 10 minutes long and designed to educate and inspire. GeekDad at Wired also has a good piece on Ted Ed, with a video tour. — Kelly Searsmith

by Julia Lawrence / Education News / 26 April 2012

TED, or as Gawker.com calls them, “Nerd Coachella,” is introducing a new platform that will allow teachers to take advantage of TED-created video content to put together unique learning opportunities for their students. TED-Ed, launched with the help of $1.25 million donated by Kohl’s Department Stores, currently hosts a few dozen videos put together from previously delivered conference talks which will give teachers a chance to experiment with the new tools.

Each video featured on the site is mapped, via tagging, to traditional subjects taught in schools and comes accompanied with supplementary materials that aid a teacher or student in using or understanding the video lesson. Supplementary materials include multiple-choice questions, open-answer questions, and links to more information on the topic.

The videos themselves are only part of the experience. What makes this platform special is the unprecedented opportunities to customize the content via a process called “flipping,” which allows teachers to edit or completely alter the supplementary content and pipe the information onto a private webpage whose access permissions could be individually set.

To read more…

Image Source: TED Ed logo

It may be that state waivers for NCLB will expand the math and reading-driven curriculum beyond the basics. A strange and unexpected turn in the story. — Kelly Searsmith

by Erik W. Robelen / Education Week / 24 April 2012

As states seek waivers under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, one effect may be to chip away at the dominance reading and math have had when it comes to school accountability.

Many state waiver applications include plans to factor test scores in one or more additional subjects into their revised accountability systems. Seven of the 11 states that won waivers in the first round intend to do so, and about a dozen of those that applied in the second round have the same intent.

Science is the most popular choice, followed by writing and social studies.

To read more…

Image Source: stock.xchng 982635

Rarely have I come across such a smart indictment of the teaching of writing within educational settings as this. In addition to providing a well reasoned critique, Marc Bousquet advocates for “a different writing pedagogy,” that is the teaching of authentic academic and some forms of professional writing through concentrating on the literature review and its foundational relationship to academic writing.

In addition to providing the opening of the article, below, I cannot restrain myself from giving my favorite passage, which delighted me with a shock of recognition, as a former teacher of writing and literature who has all too often found mechanical writing and junk forms of writing and thinking passing for sound work, even among promising students and at the college level: — Kelly Searsmith

Mechanical writing instruction in mechanical writing forms produces mechanical writers who experience two kinds of dead end: the dead end of not passing the mechanical assessment of their junk-instructed writing, and the dead end of passing the mechanical assessment, but not being able to overcome the junk instruction and actually learn to write.

As bad as this pedagogy’s failure is its successes. Familiar to most college faculty is the first-year writing student who is absolutely certain of their writing performance. She believes good writing is encompassed by surface correctness, a thesis statement, and assiduous quote-farming that represents “support” for an argument ramified into “three main points.”

In reality, these five-paragraph essays are near-useless hothouse productions. They bear the same relationship to future academic or professional writing as picking out “Chopsticks” bears to actually playing music at any level. Which is to say, close to none.

Students of any new skill do need mechanics to help them master the basics, and in essay writing this can mean providing a simple form and a simple process for them to fill and follow (e.g., the five-paragraph essay “junk” genre; focus on sentence- level correctness and clarity; or the same linear writing process steps every time, as if writing by recipe). But teaching these scaffolded forms and processes without pointing out that they are props or helping students to master them and move on to what comes next is a real mistake. Despite the pressures on teachers that Bousquet acknowledges, we can do better. We should. We must.

by Marc Bousquet / Chronicle of Higher Education / 18 April 2012

A just-released report confirms earlier studies showing that machines score many short essays about the same as human graders. Once again, panic ensues: We can’t let robots grade our students’ writing! That would be so, uh, mechanical. Admittedly, this panic isn’t about Scantron grading of multiple-choice tests, but an ideological, market- and foundation-driven effort to automate assessment of that exquisite brew of rhetoric, logic, and creativity called student writing. Without question, this study is performed by folks with huge financial stakes in the results, and they are driven by non-education motives. But isn’t the real question not whether the machines deliver similar scores, but why?

It seems possible that what really troubles us about the success of machine assessment of simple writing forms isn’t the scoring, but the writing itself–forms of writing that don’t exist anywhere in the world except school. It’s reasonable to say that the forms of writing successfully scored by machines are already-mechanized forms–writing designed to be mechanically produced by students,  mechanically reviewed by parents and teachers, and then, once transmuted into grades and sorting of the workforce, quickly recycled. As Evan Watkins has long pointed out, the grades generated in relation to this writing stick around, but the writing itself is made to disappear. Like magic? Or like concealing the evidence of a crime?

To read more…

Image Source: article (Flickr user: geishaboy500)

Matt Chingos

Two scholars at the Brown Center on Education Policy, Matthew M. Chingos (Fellow, Governance Studies) and Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst (Director) have published a new report, Choosing Blindly: Instructional Materials, Teacher Effectiveness, and the Common Core (released 10 April 2012), with K-12 instructional materials policy recommendations through the The Brookings Institution.

The report begins with the premise that evidence shows that the selection of instructional materials can have an even greater impact on student test scores than the quality of instruction. And, yet, “little research exists on the effectiveness of most instructional materials, and very little systematic information has been collected on which materials are being used in which schools.”

The report calls for coordinated federal and state efforts to collect data on what instructional materials are in use–such as through districts submitting purchase reports for these–and for the Data Quality Campaign and philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation, to aid with these collection efforts and to provide assistance for assessing how the data collected can be used to improve instructional resourcing.

A summary of the report and a link to the full report can be found here. — Kelly Searsmith

A new study of the impact of the One Laptop per Child program shows that students with laptops improved in general cognitive skill over the control group, but did not improve in math or language arts, and read the same amount over time. The results seem to suggest that there is value in technical literacy, but that learning digitally does not in itself improve domain-driven learning outcomes. What is likely is that better digital learning tools need to be developed that make use of this new medium, tools that are data-driven and interactive. Moreover, teachers need more training about how to select such tools and how to best integrate them into instruction. — Kelly Searsmith

For another story on this Peruvian national experiment with OLPC, see here.

2.5 Million Laptops Later, One Laptop Per Child Doesn’t Improve Test Scores [STUDY]

by Sarah Kessler / Mashable Tech / 9 April 2012

At $200 per computer, One Laptop Per Child(OLPC) has sold or facilitated donations of about 2.5 million laptops to classrooms in 42 different countries.

A new study suggests those laptops do not, however, have any effect on achievement in math or language.

The study, which was conducted by development funding source in Latin America called Inter-American Development Bank, looked at 319 public schools in Peru. It found that although OLPC students were more likely to use computers than their non-OLPC counterparts, the two groups scored about the same on math and language assessments 15 months after laptops were deployed.

To read more…

Image Source: article (OLPC)

One of the hot areas in ed tech hardware is tablets. Tablets for K-12 need to be affordable and rugged. They need to work in slow and sometimes unreliable network conditions but meet high multimedia demands.They need to be produced in volume and be available worldwide. Intel is the latest to offer a potential solution for this market. — Kelly Searsmith

by Zoe Fox / Mashable Tech / 10 April 2012

Intel has launched the latest device in its line of classroom computers: a tablet, Intel studybook.

The Intel studybook is built to be both a rigorous education tool and a sturdy playmate. It comes loaded with Intel’s Learning Series software, including an interactive ereader and LabCam applications. The rugged water and dust-proof design is constructed from a single piece of plastic, with shock absorbers surrounding the screen. It’s also drop tested from 70 centimeters, the height of a child’s desk, onto concrete.

“Students today live in a virtual world and this device can give a valid scientific experience for students in emerging economies, ” says Wayne Grant, director of research and planning for Intel’s Education Market Platforms Group, as he throws the tablet across the table to demonstrate its robustness. “Representations of knowledge are changing. Tools are now based in tablet environments.”

The tablet has a 7-inch screen, 1060 x 600 pixel resolution, and can run either Windows 7 or Android Honeycomb software. Some additional features include front and rear-facing cameras, a microphone, multi-touch LCD screen, light sensor support and mobile learning environment. It runs on an Intel Atom Z650 processor.

To read more…

Image Source: article

The new CoSN report seeks to balance concerns that have moved some states and school districts to limit or attempt to limit social media and mobile technology access with the promise of educational benefits offered by these new technologies. Concerns include cyberbullying, distraction from the educational mission, inappropriate teacher-student contact or social awareness, and increased risk-taking behavior. Given that social media and mobile technologies are ubiquitous in contemporary American life (95% of teens as young as age 12 use the internet regularly, 80% use social networking sites, 75% have cell phones per the most recent Pew Research Center and Internet and American Life Project report), the report asserts that educators are missing an important educational opportunity in limiting in-school exposure to and conversation about these technologies and their associated information and communication practices. Moreover, they point out the following direct benefits from them:

• Bridge the gap between formal (in-school) and informal (out-of-school) learning, improving their preparation for real world experience;
• Construct their own learning environments to help them achieve academically and acquire the skills necessary for the 21st century;
  
• Connect instantly with peers, experts, and information resources beyond the school walls;
• Provide real-time feedback, exchange information, and receive assessments during classroom instruction through a text message or Twitter “back channel”;
• Document their work through images taken on and off campus;
• Receive and submit homework assignments digitally;
• Learn how to utilize mobile devices and social networking as tools for lifelong learning.   (p. 4)

CoSN Press Release / 9 April 2012

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), today joined with 13 other leading education associations in releasing a new report aimed at helping inform and guide education decision makers as they revise policies related to the use of mobile technologies and social media in schools.

The report–Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media –is available here. — Kelly Searsmith

To read more…

Image Source: stock.xchng 1008231 |

Automated essay grading is nothing new, despite the title of this recent Reuters story. What is new is the Hewlett Foundation’s Automated Student Assessment Prize contest (roughly January – April 2012) to inspire innovation in the field; specifically, rewarding the “best automated scoring algorithm for student-written essays.” The article does acknowledge many of the limitations of such automated essay grading approaches. They are, effectively, blunt instruments that emphasize conformity, are dull to style, cannot capture the quality of ideas, and focus on very basic features of successful prose (e.g., lower order issues such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation and gross patterns of organization).  But, the article also makes the reasonable point that such automated scoring tools may be useful in measuring whether students have reached a certain basic threshold of competence and could be useful in providing very fast, if crude, feedback on performance. My concern is that such programs be used to supplement rather than replace teacher and peer feedback on higher order issues, which enable student writers to develop a sense of their immediate audience, their own voice, and their surrounding knowledge communities (each with their own communications and epistemological conventions and expectations, present and historical).

Robo-readers: The New Teachers’ Helper in the U.S.

by Stephanie Simon / Reuters / 29 March 2012

American high school students are terrible writers, and one education reform group thinks it has an answer: robots.

Or, more accurately, robo-readers – computers programmed to scan student essays and spit out a grade.

The theory is that teachers would assign more writing if they didn’t have to read it. And the more writing students do, the better at it they’ll become – even if the primary audience for their prose is a string of algorithms.

That sounds logical to Mark Shermis, dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron. He’s helping to supervise a contest, set up by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, that promises $100,000 in prize money to programmers who write the best automated grading software.

To read more…

Image Source: stock.xchng

Not long ago in this blog, I posted an article that asserts that lecture still has value as a teaching practice, depending on when and how it is used. That article expresses a trend among educators and education researchers to reassess the paradigm shift in education away from lecture, standardized tests, summative assessment, and even fact-based assessments. The question being asked is whether these methods still have value. The article below shares research that suggests traditional multiple-choice tests should also receive a reprieve from consignment to the dust-bin of professional fashion.

Two Cheers for Multiple-Choice Tests!

by Wray Herbert / Huffington Post Education / 2 April 2012

The oldest geyser in Yellowstone National Park is:

a. Steamboat Geyser
b. Old Faithful
c. Castle Geyser
d. Daisy Geyser

We’ve all answered hundreds if not thousands of these multiple-choice questions over the years. We answer them to get our driver’s licenses, and to get into good colleges and grad schools and professional schools. They’re ubiquitous, yet everyone hates them. Educators dismiss them as simplistic, the enemy of complex learning. Students think they’re unfair. And learning experts say they plain don’t work.

To be clear, learning experts are questioning the value of these tests as learning tools. Perhaps the easy-to-grade exams are a necessary evil for assessments — for things like driver’s licenses and law-school admission. But psychological scientists who study memory and learning say that they can’t be justified on a basic cognitive level as learning tools: years of research have shown that multiple-choice questions fail to trigger the memory retrieval that’s known to solidify new learning. With multiple-choice tests, students only have to recognize the right answer, and simple recognition does not facilitate learning. Only digging through memory does that.

At least that’s what critics of multiple-choices tests have been arguing for years. But now some new research is challenging that entrenched view. A team of scientists, headed up by Jeri Little of Washington University in St. Louis, decided to take another look at the much-maligned multiple-choice test, to see if at least some kinds of questions, if well constructed, might indeed trigger the crucial retrieval process, and thus promote memory and learning.

To read more…

Image Source: National Scenic Byways Program

A growing body of research suggests that homework may not have significant benefits for early learning. This article describes new research that suggests that early and excessive homework may also detract from test scores.

by Natalie Wolchover / Huffington Post / 30 March 2012

Piling on the homework doesn’t help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.

That’s the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students’ academic performance.

According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The same correlation is also seen when comparing homework time and test performance at schools within countries. Past studies have also demonstrated this basic trend.

To read more…

Image Source: stock.xchng

Motivational psychology has long accepted that desire from within is a more reliable and consistent form of motivation than pressure from without. But how do we help children to internalize a desire to learn, succeed, and contribute?  Stephanie Weisman’s personal account suggests tiger parenting may not be the best method, especially if it is necessary or good to let children fail along the way and determine their own paths forward.

Taming the Tiger of Achievement

by Stephanie Weisman / New York Times SchoolBook / 30 March 2012

I went to Stuyvesant High School, considered the most competitive of New York City’s specialized high schools, so I know a thing or two about Tiger moms. Or rather, I’m familiar with their work: students crying over exams, an unhealthy obsession with Harvard and enough teen angst to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

My own parents were supportive, but never put pressure on me to get straight-As or go to an Ivy League college. As long as I did my best, that was good enough for them. It turns out that it was more than good enough: I became valedictorian of Stuyvesant and, to prove it wasn’t a fluke, graduated from Columbia University with the highest GPA in my class.

So what accounts for my academic performance? Am I a genius who can do linear algebra and read Faulkner in my sleep? Far from it. I had unusual difficulty grasping concepts in class — I suspect an undiagnosed learning disability — and had to work extra hard to keep up. A lot of things contributed to my success: good work ethic, study skills, competitiveness, ambition and intellectual curiosity, to name a few.

To read more…

Image Source: stock.xchng