Developing News

Wow, How Long Has This Been Going On?

Karen — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:53:49 +0000

Dear Reader(s),

I realize it has been nearly a year since my last post and I need to apologize but life got very busy. In the world of work and family, this is a good thing. However, it has a negative impact on blogging, for most of us, anyway. : )

Please look for future posts pretty soon. I apologize for the delay. And there has been a lot going on.

Talk soon,

Karen

Harvard Views on Readers, Readership, and Reading History

Karen — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:53:31 +0000

Interested in a little history? A little perspective? Some insights into the “hot new topic” of Reading? Visit Harvard’s Open Collections Program at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/ and maybe gain a little background knowledge of your own. : )

High Stakes Testing Fails Our Kids in Fundamental Ways

Karen — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:58:02 +0000

In the spirit of getting ready for the March to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) in D.C.,

Prof. Richard Elmore, HGSE

I bring you some sane and sage insight from Richard Elmore of HGSE regarding high stakes testing and its impact on the relationship among teachers, students, and content in schools. It’s a little off-topic for this blog, I guess, but I am so tired of fighting this battle — sometimes, seemingly — alone out here, where education is often made synonymous with skills training in parents’ minds. And I’m tired of trying to remediate the effects of MCAS on my children’s education with the limited tools that I have at my disposal. So, I will happily pass along anything that supports what I know with a mixture of research results and common sense. Here’s the link to a good, quick read:

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/leadership/leadership001a.html

Outsourcing the Teaching: Classrooms in Britain, Tutors in India

Karen — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:06:48 +0000

From NYTIMES.COM (Julia Werdigier): “Once a week, year six pupils at Ashmount Primary School in North London settle in front of their computers, put on their headsets and get ready for their math class. A few minutes later, their teachers come online thousands of kilometers away in the Indian state of Punjab.

Ashmount is one of three state schools in Britain that decided to outsource part of their teaching to India via the Internet. The service — the first of its kind in Europe — is offered by BrightSpark Education, a London-based company set up last year. BrightSpark employs and trains 100 teachers in India and puts them in touch with pupils in Britain through an interactive online tutoring program.

The feedback from pupils, the schools and parents is good so far, and BrightSpark said a dozen more schools, a charity and many more parents were interested in signing up for the lessons. The one-on-one sessions not only cost about half of what personal tutors in Britain charge but are also popular with pupils, who enjoy solving equations online, said Rebecca Stacey, an assistant head teacher at Ashmount.

But the service also faces some opposition from teacher representatives who are fearful that it could threaten their jobs at a time when the government is pushing through far-reaching spending cuts. The 3 percent that is to be cut from the budget for educational resources by 2014 might be small compared with cuts in other areas, like welfare and pensions, but money at schools will remain tight.

Online learning is still controversial in Britain. Some teachers said tutors based elsewhere lacked the cultural empathy and understanding of a pupil’s social environment that could influence study habits and performance. There is also concern about the qualifications of teachers abroad…”

(Ya think? In this case, BrightSparks teachers have good qualifications on record and the interaction includes interactive whiteboard communications during the online lessons.)

I have my feelings about appropriate use of online learning. This case may fit my criteria but when you’re talking about remotely hiring a workforce that’s paid about $11/hour, it’s tough to feel OK about not seeing a problem with it, frankly. Why? Partly because of how hard it will become for cash strapped schools and systems to *not* turn over more and more of the teaching responsibilities to companies like BrightSparks, as they get more comfortable with this model. And that may mean that local teachers will see wages and benefits cut in order to stay on par with the value of their foreign counterparts. If we become comfortable thinking about educating as a commodity that we can buy from outside sources, the nature of education changes and the link between teachers and students changes, too.

On the other hand, imported education can save remote and under served areas. (If it also brings affordable options to the masses with options, then can I reasonably make a stink? Still, I see a difference. And a danger in one instance, when it’s a boon in another.)

See what you think. Read the rest of the article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/technology/25iht-teach25.html?_r=1&hp w

Growth Cycles and Brain Development: Linked ’til 30

Karen — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 03:01:40 +0000

Pic via: ucdmc.ucdavis.edu

This stuff fascinates me. I’m so grateful for this kind of research. And I love how it affects how I approach educational design. I’m going to post the whole article from HGSE news, here. Because I can.

From HGSENEWS.COM (Maria Fusaro): “What does the brain have to do with learning? HGSE professor Kurt Fischer offers a powerful explanation: behavior and the brain change in a repeating pattern that appears to involve common growth cycles. From birth until about age 30, new capacities for thinking and learning coincide with these growth cycles in the brain.

Summary

What does it mean for the brain to go through a growth cycle? Consider the brain’s outer layers, known as the cortex, which supports reasoning and thinking skills through its massive network of connections with the rest of the brain. Whenever neurons fire, a small amount of electrical energy is released, which can be measured using EEG (electroencephalogram) technology. The amount of electrical activity in the cortex, and the strength of connections between its parts, show periodic spurts. Fischer noticed that these spurts occur at the same time as news skills emerge, say in musical performance or spatial reasoning. So, during each cycle, spurts of electrical activity and growth in connections support a new level of development.

Just as physical growth shows dramatic spurts, learning also jumps in fits and starts, often even falling back temporarily during the learning process. This doesn’t mean that learning is fast or easy: it can take months or years for children to master new skills. Development involves a recurring growth cycle. A child doesn’t learn skills and concepts just once – he or she relearns them at successively more mature levels.

Cognitive spurts in clusters of skills only show up when children enjoy optimal learning conditions, such as the support of a good teacher or mentor. The figure below shows how students’ ability to think abstractly differs depending on whether support is available. A child’s ability even in a single skill can vary depending on the support available. Removing instructional help, such as when a teacher shifts from working with a student to having the student work alone, leads to a natural, rapid drop in performance.

In other words: don’t count on your cortex to do the work for you. Sustaining the highest level of performance supported by brain development takes practice and help from others.

Fischer, K. W., & Rose, S. P. (1998). Growth cycles of brain and mind. Educational Leadership, 56(3), 56-60.

By Maria Fusaro, doctoral student in Human Development and Psychology at HGSE.

Codex Rules!

Karen — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:49:22 +0000

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

E-Books are Gaining Ground but Paper Textbooks Still Reign

From NYTIMES.COM (Lisa Foderaro): “They text their friends all day long. At night, they do research for their term papers on laptops and commune with their parents on Skype. But as they walk the paths of Hamilton College, a poster-perfect liberal arts school in this upstate village, students are still hauling around bulky, old-fashioned textbooks — and loving it.

“The screen won’t go blank,” said Faton Begolli, a sophomore from Boston. “There can’t be a virus. It wouldn’t be the same without books. They’ve defined ‘academia’ for a thousand years.”

Though the world of print is receding before a tide of digital books, blogs and other Web sites, a generation of college students weaned on technology appears to be holding fast to traditional textbooks. That loyalty comes at a price. Textbooks are expensive — a year’s worth can cost $700 to $900 — and students’ frustrations with the expense, as well as the emergence of new technology, have produced a confounding array of options for obtaining them.

Internet retailers like Amazon and Textbooks.com are selling new and used books. They have been joined by several Web services that rent textbooks to students by the semester. Some 1,500 college bookstores are also offering rentals this fall, up from 300 last year. Here at Hamilton, students this year have a new way to avoid the middleman: a nonprofit Web site, created by the college’s Entrepreneur Club, that lets them sell used books directly to one another.

The explosion of outlets and formats — including digital books, which are rapidly becoming more sophisticated — has left some students bewildered. After completing the heavy lifting of course selection, they are forced to weigh cost versus convenience, analyze their own study habits and guess which texts they will want for years to come and which they will not miss.

“It depends on the course,” said Victoria Adesoba, a pre-med student at New York University who was standing outside that school’s bookstore, a powder-blue book bag slung over her shoulder. “Last semester, I rented for psychology, and it was cheaper. But for something like organic chemistry, I need to keep the book. E-textbooks are good, but it’s tempting to go on Facebook, and it can strain your eyes.”

For all the talk that her generation is the most technologically adept in history, paper-and-ink textbooks do not seem destined for oblivion anytime soon.

According to the National Association of College Stores, digital books make up just under 3 percent of textbook sales, although the association expects that share to grow to 10 percent to 15 percent by 2012 as more titles are made available as e-books.

In two recent studies — one by the association and another by the Student Public Interest Research Groups, a national advocacy network — three-quarters of the students surveyed said they still preferred a bound book to a digital version…”

And the article continues. No opinions from me, today, just passing on a story that I think is of interest. Read the rest of the information and learn more about where things stand and what people are doing, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/nyregion/20textbooks.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=education

Just in Time for Fall: Change How You Study

Karen — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:24:08 +0000

Ellen Weinstein for The New York Times

Happy September, Everyone. : )

My summer vacation is officially over and I’m back to posting. How appropriate is it that I find this article on “new” research that throws some age-old study suppositions on their tails?

I’m not sure Howard Gardner, et al, back at ‘GSE will appreciate the reference to “the lack of credible evidence” for the utility of understanding learning styles, made by researchers who published this research review in this APS Journal. The abstract has me questioning their suppositions and they sound a bit, oh I don’t know, “hackish” I guess, if that’s a word. : ) However, methodology is important and I may have to read the review in its entirety to find out, alas.

Nevertheless, it was nice to see other support for some practical teaching/study methods I’ve employed by trial and error, myself — esp., getting out of the mud, the heck away from the “official study zone,” and mixing it up a little!

You can read the NYTimes article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?src=me&ref=general

w00t! Haptic Influences: The Importance of Sensation

Karen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:14:10 +0000

Studies Show That Touch Plays an Important Role in How We Make Decisions

FROM MITNEWS.COM (Peter Dizikes): “Your success in your next job interview may not have much to do with the contents of your resume. Instead, it may depend on what’s under your resume. Namely: Have the people interviewing you put your CV on a heavy clipboard, or a light one?

That is one finding made by Joshua Ackerman, an assistant professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management, whose research indicates that haptic impressions — our sense of touch — may strongly influence our thoughts.’Our understanding of the world and our social environment is not just a product of our minds,’ says Ackerman. ‘It’s a product of our bodies as well.’

In a new paper, ‘Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions,’ published this week in the journal Science, Ackerman and his co-authors, Christopher Nocera of Harvard and John Bargh of Yale, describe the results of six studies showing a variety of ways that tactile sensations can affect decision-making. From workplace judgments to financial decisions, they write, ‘haptically acquired information exerts a rather broad influence over cognition, in ways of which we are probably often unaware.’”

Haptic: “relating to or based on the sense of touch.” : ) Currently, this research is all about decision making but the implications for designing learning environments are obvious and, I’d venture, potentially profound. That’s why I’m giving it w00t! status and a place on my list of things to learn more about. You can read the full article here — it’s good and quick reading on some very interesting findings.

We’re Getting Closer! Computer Speech Recognition’s Recent Strides

Karen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:26:00 +0000

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

FROM NYTIMES.COM (Steve Lohr and John Markoff): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/science/25voice.html?hp

No time for comment or good post this morning. Just want to get this out. Will improve later.

w00t! At Last! Vuvuzela Relief! (You’re welcome.)

Karen — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:52:57 +0000

Off Topic Alert: This is for all my World Cup loving friends…

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!

Yes, yes, you can save your hearing and your sanity by filtering out those vuvuzelas during the WC matches. If you have a low latency sound card and software, great. If not, a decent equalizer will do. Learn how to eliminate most or all of the drone and still be able to hear the commentators. (If you don’t want to hear the commentators, either, then you don’t need this tip. You just need your volume control. )

Talk about a w00t! Learn what to do at LifeHacker.com. (Go Red!! w00t! w00t!)