Social Learning Systems

Reforming education: The great schools revolution | The Economist

FROM Toronto to Wroclaw, London to Rome, pupils and teachers have been returning to the classroom after their summer break. But this September schools themselves are caught up in a global battle of ideas. In many countries education is at the forefront of political debate, and reformers desperate to improve their national performance are drawing examples of good practice from all over the world.

Why now? One answer is the sheer amount of data available on performance, not just within countries but between them. In 2000 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at the OECD, a rich-country club, began tracking academic attainment by the age of 15 in 32 countries. Many were shocked by where they came in the rankings. (PISA’s latest figures appear in table 1.) Other outfits, too, have been measuring how good or bad schools are. McKinsey, a consultancy, has monitored which education systems have improved most in recent years.

Read the entire article here.

 

via www.economist.com

Ignite Great Lakes - Maria Andersen: Where's the "Learn This" Button? - YouTube

Dr. Maria H. Andersen is the Learning Futurist for the LIFT Institute and a Math Professor at Muskegon Community College, where she organizes Ignite MCC. She writes the "Teaching with Tech" column for MAA Focus and has recently published articles in Educause Review and The Futurist. Lately she has been spending a lot of time building games for teaching math and musing about the future of learning and higher education. You can find Maria blogging on the Internet at TeachingCollegeMath.com or on Twitter at @busynessgirl.

 

See the video here.

via www.youtube.com

Teachers must think internet-first | Education | The Guardian

Education and skills professionals are at the frontline in tackling a key cause of worklessness. This work, if the CBI is right, will only become more urgent as the UK moves further towards a high-skilled jobs market, and opportunities for those without qualifications fall sharply.

Digital skills are now vital for education and employment: we know that you're 25% more likely to get work when you have web skills, and, once in that job, you'll earn 10% more. Unison, the biggest public sector union, has just conducted a skills survey of some of its 1.3 million members. Almost half of middle-aged, low-paid women (cleaners, catering staff, carers) argued that lack of digital savvy was their most serious skills gap. Our figures show that 4 million of the 8.7 million UK adults who have never used the internet are from our hardest-to-reach groups.

Read the complete article here.

via www.guardian.co.uk

Ministry of Education, Singapore: Press Releases

An interesting look at 21st Century Learning Skills in Singapore via Elliott Masie.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) will implement a new framework to enhance the development of 21st century competencies in our students. This will underpin the holistic education that our schools provide to better prepare our students to thrive in a fast-changing and highly-connected world.

 As part of this effort, MOE will strengthen the quality of Physical, Art and Music education. These subjects enable students to develop physical robustness, enhance their creative and expressive capacities, as well as shape their personal, cultural and social identity.

via www.moe.gov.sg

Read the complete article here.

 

Advice from the Virtual Trenches | trainingmag.com

Great tips for virtual presenters from Training Magazine

Take the phones/microphones off of "MUTE," especially when learners are paying for the class. Learners, by and large, want to be actively engaged in the learning process. If you are going to mute them, just e-mail a URL to the recording--I promise they won't watch it.

Focus on the chat and feedback indicators (hand raises, emoticons, etc.). Ignore them once, just once, and learners will probably ignore you for the rest of the session--AND share their feelings with everyone else in the class. Remember, learners have e-mail, private chat, Skype, and Twitter to come up and slap you around (even DURING the session)--without you seeing it coming.

Eliminate your verbal crutches. (Cool, gotcha, you know, umm, aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh). They make you sound less intelligent than you probably are.

via www.trainingmag.com

Read the entire article here.

Yes, The Khan Academy IS the Future of Education (video) | Singularity Hub

I’m just going to come out and say it: the Khan Academy is the best thing that has happened to education since Socrates. The brainchild of Salman Khan, the Khan Academy became famous by teaching simple math lessons for free through over 2000 YouTube videos. Now, after millions in donations and an expansion of the company, the academy is so much more. The website for the Khan Academy already had exercises you could use to test your understanding of the videos you just watched, but in the past few weeks the website has exploded with wonderful new features. You can create a profile for the site simply by logging in through Google or Facebook. You can track your progress with some wonderful metrics. Teachers (or ‘coaches’) can monitor student progress in groups. Students can earn badges to keep them interested. The list goes on and on and it’s all free. Free, I tell you!

Read the entire article here.

via singularityhub.com

2010 in Review Part 1: Top 10 C4LPT resources

Jane Hart's year-end review

 

"As 2010 draws to an end I am going to be a writing a number of postings with my review of the year. Here in Part 1 I present the Top 10 resources at the main Centre for Learning & Performance Website (C4LPT) in 2010  This list has been generated based on number of accesses to resources, as well as number of tweets and comments about the resources; it is displayed in reverse order."

Read the full article here.

via janeknight.typepad.com

The Differentiator

 
A great tool -

Pick the Thinking Skill.

Pick a way to Differentiate Content.

Pick a Resource.

Pick a Product for Students to Create.

Pick a Group Size for Student Group Work. 

Fabulous!

Here is a direct link to the tool.

 

via www.byrdseed.com

5 Innovative Classroom Management Tools for Teachers

Few teachers are drawn to the profession for its administrative duties. But the reality of attendance taking, lesson planning, grading and parental communications is that they’re a big part of the job.

These tasks, however, need not take over. With help from the many online services and mobile apps designed for teachers, it can be easy to efficiently organize and complete classroom management responsibilities.

Here are five of our favorite virtual tools for tackling some of the most common classroom chores.

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via mashable.com

Read the full article here.