Schooling & Learning Choices

Source: Orlando Sentinel, Jul 2011

High school students need to take calculus and physics in high school, if they want to succeed in engineering and  science courses in college and land careers in those oft-touted STEM fields. Yet most states are doing a poor job of preparing high school students for engineering and science after graduation, according to a new national ranking.

Massachusets showed best in the new Science and Engineering Readiness Index, Mississippi looked the worst and Florida was among those ranked just average.

From the release: “The SERI scores do not show how states’ educational outcomes compare with international standards, but even Massachusetts would have a hard time competing with countries such as China or Singapore. …..Cottle says he hopes that the SERI scores serve as a wake-up call for policy makers who don’t see physics as a necessary college prerequisite.”

Source: MIT, Jun 2011

Explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery. A study by MIT researchers and colleagues compared the behavior of children given a novel toy under four different conditions, finding that children expressly taught one of its functions played with the toy for less time and discovered fewer things to do with it than children in the other three scenarios.

What matters is not ifchildren are shown a function, but how they are shown that function. If they believe that an informed teacher has taught them everything, they will be less motivated to explore.

the study underscores the real-world trade-offs between education and exploration, and the importance of acknowledging what is unknown even while imparting what is known. Teachers should, where possible, offer the caveat that there may be more to learn.

“Teachers can say things like, ‘I’m showing you what we think is true, but there are a lot of other possibilities you should consider,’” Schulz says.

In short, she says, “a little humility can go a long way.”

Source: FL Dept of Education, Jun 2011

Department of Education Announces 2011 FCAT and FCAT 2.0 Results for Reading, Mathematics and Science

~ Transition to FCAT 2.0 keeps statewide scores constant; FCAT results show improvements in science ~

TALLAHASSEE – Florida Education Commissioner Dr. Eric J. Smith today announced the 2011 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test 2.0 (FCAT 2.0) Reading results for grades 4-10, FCAT 2.0 Mathematics results for grades 4-8, FCAT Mathematics results for grade 10 and FCAT Science results for grades 5, 8 and 11. As expected, statewide results for FCAT 2.0 assessments remained essentially the same as last year due to the process used to transition to the new, more rigorous assessments. FCAT Science and the Grade 10 FCAT Mathematics were also administered this year, with results showing statewide student performance increases for all science-tested grades and a slight performance decrease at grade 10 in Mathematics. Next year, grade 11 Science and grade 10 Mathematics will be replaced with Florida End-of-Course (EOC) assessments and grades 5 and 8 Science will transition to FCAT 2.0.

Source: WSJ, Jun 2011

Source: WaPo, May 2011

1. Vouchers work in D.C.

2. Parents say they switch to charters for better academic results, but don’t appear to mean it.

3. Regular school principals in a position to be influenced by competition from charters don’t appear to be doing anything differently.

4. In Michigan, competition from charters does not lead to more regular school efforts to raise achievement.

5. Charters are not skimming the best students from regular schools and not creating greater racial stratification.

Source: NYTimes, May 2011

There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.

If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.

In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.

Source: Chronicle, May 2011

The fellows, all 20 years old or younger, will leave institutions including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, to work with a network of more than 100 Silicon Valley mentors and further develop their ideas in areas such as biotechnology, education, and energy.

More than 400 people applied for the fellowship, and 45 of them were flown out to San Francisco in late March to present their ideas to Thiel’s foundation and the network of Silicon Valley mentors.

Mr. Thiel, who is also the first outside investor in Facebook, said he was impressed by the quality of the top candidates.

At least one student initially chosen as a Thiel fellow, however, ended up turning down the deal, opting to continue her traditional education by accepting admission at MIT.

Source: Mindshift, May 2011

here are five surprising perspectives you might not have associated with online learning.

1. Students get more one-on-one interaction with teachers, not less.

2. Online courses are not necessarily easier than traditional courses.

3. Online learning could work for unmotivated students, as well as for those who are self-disciplined.

4. Online learning can create a lot more free time for extracurricular activities.

5. Students can learn how to work cooperatively even without face-to-face interaction.

Source: Economics for Teachers, Mar 2011

As I mentioned, I’m using SWoRD in my writing class for econ majors. SWoRD is a site that not only facilitates peer review, it allows for student grades to actually be determined by their classmates’ reviews.

One of the coolest things about the SWoRD system is how it calculates grades. Students receive a grade both for reviewing and for writing.

Source: WSJ, May 2011

Late last year, News Corp. paid $360 million for 90% of Wireless Generation, a New York-based maker of software and other tools to help schools evaluate and monitor student performance and devise instruction accordingly.

Mr. Murdoch has described Wireless Generation as a gateway to a kindergarten-through-12th grade education market he says is worth about $500 billion a year in the U.S. alone. He also said schools need to incorporate more personalized learning, saying schools need the same tools to “micro-target audiences” that media and technology companies have mastered. He cited a program for the iPod used by American children on a military base in Okinawa, Japan, that can “instantly diagnose where a child is in his or her reading – and then produce a customized textbook for the next ten days.”