Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 11/09/2012
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HOW TO : Embed the Kindle Ebooks on Your Website ~ Geeky Stuffs
"But here we are going to learn how to embed the sample chapters of the ebooks available on the Amazon store." You can embed Kindle ebooks and sample chapters on your blog. This is a very cool way to do book reviews.
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Announcing the Global Student Leadership Forum — THINK Global School
"THINK Global School in conjunction with the Flat Classroom Project® are excited to announce the formation of a Global Student Leadership Forum. After months of planning, the forum will be launched at the upcoming Global Education Conference, when students will meet online and exchange ideas and plans for future development. What are the aims? The aim of the Forum is to to encourage students (High School – Gr 9-12) to gather in a formal capacity to discuss issues and propose future directions for the world. It is also to provide a place for students to form an online community that will support and foster active discussion and interaction with a view to sharing resources, ideas and collaborate on actions globally. Virtual classroom and community networking tools and other resources will provide opportunities for students from all parts of the world to come together as a global forum virtually (and where possible in real time). The purpose of this is to: Foster leadership skills amongst young people Provide opportunities to interact online and therefore become adept at using virtual tools for interactions and co-creation Encourage global conversations about real world topics and global issues Encourage discussion about possible solutions to global issues and foster action projects" Julie and I are very excited about this project. This is an excellent opportunity for students who are leaders or who don't have the opportunity to do a lot of flattening but would benefit from interaction with others around the world. Join in!
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Harvard Wants to Know: How Does the Act of Making Shape Kids’ Brains? | MindShift
Despite the fact that Texas lawmakers have "outlawed" Bloom's Taxonomy (not sure how you can outlaw a way of thinking, but ok) these researchers are studying what happens when students create. It is about time as we've been talking about the creativity crisis in the US for some time now. Creativity and creating should be part of what happens in every classroom but it can be messy and not so very discrete. Some kids can disengage (unless held accountable) and others (often those who test well) are totally lost when asked to make something original. So glad to see this happen - read the full post over at Mindshift to learn more.
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Who is accountable at Coursera?
Stephen Downes asks an important question as someone found a big error in a course at Coursera. Whose job is it to correct errors? If this error stays put and there is no system for reporting it, I think it will be telling. Many can put content up, but who is going to interact and keep it updated?
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Fairfax Teachers Say They Will 'Cheat' On New Evaluations
When teachers don't understand evaluations and are so upset they say they will "cheat" there are many problems with this. We put students on an honor code and even when the teacher is unreasonable and hard, those students are expected to be honest. Now, we have an unreasonable "test" for teachers and some say they will cheat. This "evaluation" needs to be evaluated. Many problems here. But one of the biggest problems I see is the harem scarem, unpredictable pendulum swing of evaluations and criteria used to evaluate a profession that has been around a very long time. As people work hard to weed out - it is working - more than half of teachers have been teaching less than 10 years as veterans say "enough!" You don't turn a big ship by crashing it into a reef but by slow, methodical turns of the wheel. I find teacher evaluations that many are using to be cumbersome, confusing, and inconsistent. I know of a top evaluated teacher in my area according to her hallmate, who plans her lessons twice a year and wow's the principal -- the rest of the time this teacher has a glorified study hall and does nothing. When I hear these stories of highly "evaluated" teachers, I'm convinced it is broken. My curriculum director and principal are in my room several times a month, looking at what we are doing and watching what is happening. That is a much better system, in my opinion and much more in keeping with what is happening in my classroom daily.
