Archive: 2013
3 Tech Tools for the Sped Classroom
Being a Special Education teacher is something that takes patience and a warm heart. These teachers are truly in it for the love of seeing a student develop as a person socially and mentally. However, they seem to be in need of and short of resources more than most other classrooms.
Mass Community Colleges Focus on Employability
The 15 Massachusetts community colleges participating in the Massachusetts Community Colleges & Workforce Development Transformation Agenda (MCCWDTA) are making notable progress on improving rapid pathways to high wage jobs. The awkwardly named project is funded by a three-year, $20 million grant from the U.S.
What Role Does Social Media Have in Education?
Recently, Compass Learning interviewed about 30 educators, including teachers, principals, superintendents, directors of curriculum and learning, and consultants, at the Texas Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development conference held in Dallas. We wanted to know what role—if any—social media (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc.) plays in the classroom, in the school, or in the district. The answers were interesting.
New Ideas On What Colleges Want to See Out of Prospects
We all remember the students from our own graduating classes who did it all. Their GPAs were at the top of the class, or very near to it. They might have played two or three different sports, and served as captain in one or two of them. They were members of two or three clubs, with a leadership position in student government or National Honor Society. They were the ones who we viewed as “well rounded,” likely to get into a highly selective college.
Q&A: Jenn Karson of Vermont Makers
SparkFun’s Department of Education engages in educational outreach all over the country, and we’re always impressed and excited when we run into people and organizations as enthusiastic about electronics as we are. Over the past few years we’ve met a lot of people involved in the maker movement on the east coast, and Vermont continues to stand out as a state invested in furthering STEAM and electronics education in new ways. (In fact, Vermont’s Department of Education recently instituted a grant structure that will give SparkFun Inventor Kits to Career and Technical Education Centers around the state to provide preliminary Arduino training for FIRST Robotics teams!)
MSOE: An Example of Education for Employability
The Milwaukee School of Engineering experience is a pretty good example of “rigor, relevance, and relationships” (as my friends from Big Picture would say). Their commitment to employability is as strong as any campus that I’ve visited. It’s a place that seems to be asking the right questions about what’s next. Unemployment rates would be lower and economic growth rates would be higher if every city had an urban jobs engine like MSOE.
Hype vs. Hope: San Jose State + Udacity vs. Linn State Technical College
While it would be a stupendous achievement if Udacity and other MOOC providers are able to develop and deploy a model that can successfully remediate math and reading at scale, we need to step back and look at the bigger picture: A more powerful (and much more realistic) achievement would be to put society’s needs and judgments ahead of those of higher education institutions, and focus on propagating proven programs that prepare students for profitable employment and a life of learning.
EdTech 10: News Before Crossing the Pond
Are you headed to London for BETT this coming week? We are. Don’t worry, we’ll give you the roundup of the best happenings while we sip a cuppa, spread some clotted cream on a crumpet, and salute to Big Ben. But before we get too lost in our warm pints, we’ll share with you that this week, blended learning was off the charts and MOOCs are making headway in higher ed.
After Fulfilling 30,000 Wishes, DigitalWish is Just Getting Started
Digital Wish is the edtech DonorsChoose. They have fulfilled more than 30,000 classroom wishes, mostly 1:1 classroom deployments with Dell netbooks.
Classroom Management: The Advantage of Structured Learning in Entrepreneurship
Here’s a novel concept for you: Entrepreneurs can learn from other entrepreneurs in an accredited capacity. When striking out on one’s own, it’s an established practice to seek the advice of those who’ve been there before and have made a success of it. So it makes perfect sense that business students, paying and working hard for an education, would greatly benefit from the insight that successful businesspeople can bestow.