Ever wonder if that money you’re shelling out for university so that your kids can one-up the competition is giving you a proper return on your investment? Seth Godin does. In today’s post, Godin provokes me again–in a good way. He’s contending that universities as we know them may be on their way out and [...]
I love reading Seth Godin’s blog; it’s a daily visit I make in my news reader. I enjoy the way he conveys usually deep pearls of wisdom in a few words. In today’s entry, Seth shares the importance of deciding for ourselves who will judge our work. Recommended.
Have the skills teachers need for success changed or evolved over time, particularly as we dig in to the 21st century? Certainly, many are the same, but perhaps some are unique to our current tech savvy age. Andrew Churches, a head of the tech department at his school in New Zealand, offers eight essential skills [...]
A National Institutes of Health study of 550 1st and 2nd grade twins revealed what has been obvious to some for a while: Teaching quality is the single greatest indicator of student learning progress. Among the identical twins, 42 pairs out of 280 pairs showed significant differences in reading improvement during the year studied, said [...]
Last month the National Governor’s Association for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released the Common Core State Standards, an attempt to standardize K-12 education across the U.S. To date, 48 of the 50 states have adopted the standards, Alaska and Texas electing not to adopt. The final [...]
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that last year’s infiltration into Google’s Gmail accounts by alleged Chinese hackers was actually much broader than was previously reported. Attackers who breached Google Inc.’s systems last year gained access to computer code for the software that authenticates users of Google’s email, calendar and other online programs, according to a person [...]
In answer to the question in the post’s title, as an educator, I like to think we are, but it’s increasingly difficult to understand why–if it is the case that we are professionals–that teachers’ unions continue to oppose merit-based pay as per this article from the WSJ. The reader will be hard pressed to name [...]
I thought I’d share this article from Joanna Nikas at the NY Times which compiles some of the latest and best sources for free online class resources. Some of them you may be using already, but there are others you may not have heard of. The mentioned offerings are mainly geared toward upper high school [...]
I hated the title of this post, but I couldn’t come up with anything else as descriptive, so let’s go with it. I’m constantly looking for new ways to help teachers via supervision, and I began using the tool below which provided a great jumping off point for improving instruction. What I like about the [...]
For linguaphiles, I submit this illuminating and tasteful video, recently rolled out by TEDTalks, in which James Geary clears the smoke to reveal the extent to which we wield metaphorical thought and language in the course of our daily lives. (Question: How many figurative expressions are there in the preceding sentence?) The presentation could be [...]
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