What Is the Most Important Innovation in Education in 200 Years?

Anant Agarwal, who heads edX, “a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the Web, free, to anyone who wants one”, believes that streaming interactive video classes will change education as we know it. As online education advances from simple video instruction and beginning interactive programs to “software that maps an individual’s knowledge and offers a lesson plan unique to him or her”, the questions remain:

• Will access to dynamic online materials disrupt learning as we know it in our schools and colleges?
• What will happen to the $800 billion business of education that provides instruction and materials for over 80 million students in K-graduate school in the United States?

U.S. Physics Team

High school and college students are eligible to compete for a spot on the U.S. Physics Team. Teachers may nominate up to two students to take the preliminary exam; registration must be completed by 12/10/12. The top-scoring 300-400 students will be given a semifinal exam.  Some of those taking the semifinal may be invited to join the team. Team members must agree to attend a training camp and be available to represent the U.S. at international competitions.  The team is sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), which also sponsors Physics Day at Six Flags America, Team American Rocketry Challenge, the International Science and Engineering Fair, the AAPT Physics Bowl, and the High School Physics Photo Competition.

Using Cartoons in Learning

Daryl Cagle’s newsletter and site, The Cagle Post Cartoons & Commentary, features cartoons from some of the best-known editorial cartoonists around the world. You’ll find cartoons about current happenings, politics, education, and just about any topic that’s been in the news. There are links to “Best of the Year” cartoons and important cartoons from previous years. Many of these cartoons are excellent for getting students to think about a topic and to explore additional information on it. Keep in mind when using the cartoons that you’ll want to check ahead of time to make sure that what you plan to use is grade and student ability appropriate. Because the cartoons are copyrighted, it’s best to give students links to cartoons you plan to use in a lesson. To keep up to date with what’s available from Daryl Cagle, you can subscribe to his newsletter.

Do Teachers Have the Tech They Want?

We could have predicted the outcome of a PBS Learning Media survey conducted by VeraQuest Research. The survey, completed in December 2011, sampled 500 randomly selected teachers in the United States. Findings show that while most teachers (91%) have access to technology in their classrooms, only one-fifth of these teachers say they have the right level of technologies needed to accomplish what they want with their students. The problem, according to the teachers sampled, is lack of funding for classroom tech needs, not lack of knowledge or training, not slow Internet connections, not materials that don’t enhance the curriculum, or other possible difficulties.

Bringing History to Life: A Battle in the Classroom

Watch the video of a segment in teacher David McCollister’s lesson about the Battle of Bunker Hill. This is part of a lesson series he gave for 9- and 10-year-olds at Boone Trail Elementary School, Missouri. McCollister, who is a high school teacher, believes in reenacting parts of history in order to light a fire in students. According to his principal at Lutheran North in St. Louis County, Missouri, where McCollister has taught for 45 years, “You can sense the energy in his voice.” A student at Boone Trail Elementary said, “I like when teachers are energetic,” and noted that he wished he had Mr. McCollister (Mr. Mac) for a teacher. McCollister attributes his good teaching techniques to some of the teachers who inspired him years ago and also to “The 20^th Century” with Walter Cronkite. McCollister believes in telling his students why what he’s teaching is important, and he adds acting to his teaching tools. Think of the power of this teacher in the classroom or even online through our 21^st Century technologies.

Why Hasn’t Project-Based Learning Caught On?

First of all, it takes time, energy, and lots of planning on the part of a teacher. If a project is to be cross-curricular, how do teachers of different courses find the time for collaboration.  Second, when it’s happening, it looks messy and seems too noisy. Students are not in their seats working in the traditional manner. They’re bored, according to 17-year-old Nikhil Goyal, author of the book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A student’s Assessment of School. Goyal calls for anti-disciplinary education, not interdisciplinary education. “The bottom line is that you don’t have to learn the boring stuff before you start applying it. Start rolling around in the dirt from the get go.”

Bullying Prevention Month

The United States Department of Education offers a free training toolkit that targets bullying in classrooms. The materials in the kit give teachers the knowledge and skills needed “to intervene in bullying behavior and to de-escalate threatening behaviors at school. The two-part resource includes “Understanding and Intervening in Bullying Behavior” and “Creating a Supportive Classroom Climate”.

Intel’s Schools of Distinction

Intel’s Schools of Distinction awards went to schools that “provide a rich, rigorous science or mathematics curriculum and represent some of the most successful educational programs in the country. The company distributed $560,000 in cash grants and awards to the six winning schools. The Star Innovator Award, with an extra $15,000 and other prizes totaling $100,000, went to Ossining High School in New York. The school boasts having project-based, hands-on science studies since 1988. Mentorships and community partnerships are essential to the program, which includes robotics projects in which students design and build their own robots.  Other winners were in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Read about all the winners to get ideas for your school mathematics and science programs.

Digital Texts: A Good Idea or Not?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called for schools to use digital texts to better enable student learning, to help students of the United States keep up with other students in the world, and to save schools money. eSchool News’ Meris Stansbury, reminds us that not all schools have (or can afford) the resources needed to use digital texts and not all students have access to digital texts at home. Calling for comments about digital texts in schools, Meris found that educators agreed that not all students, families, and schools were ready for the digital text revolution. Digital devices that will make eTexts usable aren’t yet available in all schools and homes. They mentioned that digital texts should make use of the multimedia options available and not just be textbooks copied into digital format.  Some who are trying digital texts say all the “kinks” haven’t been worked out and that teachers need more training to be able to select valuable digital resources. Why call them texts, anyway? Is it one compiled text we need for our courses or will our students be sampling from the world of information available online? How to transition to this is the question.

Celebrate Writing with Writing

November is National Novel Writing Month, but the countdown has already started until NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins on November 1. The idea is to make it a goal for everyone to write a novel during the 11^th month. The adult (18 and up) program suggests the goal of 50,000 words, but for students 17 and under, teachers and students are encouraged to set reasonable goals related to age and ability.  The program includes guides and incentives for writers, resources, forms, and materials for teachers. After a novel is written, the text must be pasted into NaNoWriMo’s Word Count Validator by 11:59 p.m. (your local time) on November 30^th. In December, those who have met their goal of number of words collect their Novel certificate and take a look at “I Wrote a Novel! Now What?”

Write like crazy.