Colonial Williamsburg Introduces Electronic Field Trips, making the vast historical resources available to students globally.
These free distance-learning programs are targeted to grades 4-8 and are supported with multi-disciplinary lesson plans, interactive student resources, program scripts, and other materials to help teachers make history exciting and relevant for students. The electronic field trips are offered on public television and cable stations nationwide, and on the internet.
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In App Gems: Top Education Apps, Computer World recommends two iPad education apps, one for the younger set from Launchpad Toys, Toontastic which allows younger children to create their own animations and Virtual History Roma. from Arnoldo Mondadori Editore which is described as a virtual textbook,
Both sound like they merit a look-see.
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That kids can teach themselves to a degree isn't controversial. But Professor Sugata Mitra of India went to the ultimate degree. He placed a computer amid an Indian slum. Remarkably children interacted with the computer without instruction and learned.
If such underprivileged children could learn this way, what implications does this have for children from more affluent circustances?
The results were wonderful and interesting. Children learn by themselves, without adult assistance. Motivated by posing questions and by the possibility of examining, investigating, and discovering, children learn. It’s hard to believe, but it works. The same Sugata Mitra has popularized a lucid phrase by Arthur Clarke: “If a teacher can be replaced by a computer, the teacher should be replaced.” In other words, where there are good teachers, excellent. Where there are no teachers, or where they are not good, technology can be an indispensable means for producing significant learning. And not through the technologies themselves, but through their potential to bring about new pedagogical processes.
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"Budget Hero", the online simulation that allows players to pit their skills against the pols as they figure out how to deal with the federal budget, has a new iteration. It's a great tool for secondary and higher education students to demostrate the complexities of governance.
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American students don't know much about US history, according to the Nation's Report Card released this week.
Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal that just 13% of high school students displayed proficiency in US history. 22 per cent of fourth grade students and 18 per cent of eighth-graders scored proficient or better. The students were tested on such topics as colonization, the American Revolution and the Civil War to the contemporary United States.
One reason given for such poor performances is that so much time is spent on the core subjects of language arts, math and science that history gets short shrift. This begs the question of why students aren't proficient enough in these subjects so they can study American history as their forebearers did. In addition, reading and writing about US history should be a vital part of a school's language arts curriculum.
The traditional study of US history also has been diluted by a social studies curriculum which is a grab bag of multiculturalism and a rewriting of history to the point that our nation's story is drown in a sea of political correctness and flat out propaganda.
To paraphrase the old song, it won't be a wonderful world if US students don't know much about their history as many American children will be left far behind.
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Teachers will no longer be rescoring Regents exams in New York State, thus tightening standards for test takers, according to the New York State Education Department.
The decision represents a significant shift in grading for the crucial exams. In New York state, most students must pass five Regents tests—English, math, global history, U.S. history and science—in order to receive a high-school diploma.
Until now, state policy called for teachers to "rescore" essays or open-ended questions when students' test scores were up to five points shy of the passing grade of 65 in math and science exams.
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A new report from the "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education ReformNational Council on Education and the Economy has studied other successful countries to find out what strategies they employ for academic excellence. The countries include Canada, Finland, Singapore, China and Japan.
There will be aspects for both the left and the right to harken in this report with the ceding of local control an irritant to the right and the higher standards and pay for excellent teachers one for the left.
The report's recommendation requiring students to pass tests at certain grade levels before continuing their education is likely to be controversial. Hypothetically, students would have to pass a "gateway test" at the end of middle school and again at the end of 11th grade in order to move on to the next grade. NCEE says gateway tests in countries such as Finland are well-designed, comprehensive, and standardized throughout the nation. "Because the exams are very high quality, they cannot be 'test prepped;' the only way to succeed on them is to actually master the material," NCEE says.
Other recommendations include the reallocation of money—spending more on paying quality teachers and less on state-of-the-art school facilities, new textbooks, and administrators. The report also recommends that states take more of a responsibility for funding schools, moving away from the majority local-funded system the country uses now.
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President Obama's weekly address focused on improving education by offering incentives such as his "Race to the Top" program and charging Congress to overhaul the 2001 "No Child Left Behind" legislation.
With the debt limit battle in Congress, more incentives or even retaining those in place may be a hard sell, but perhaps more flexibility in NCLB could be the compromise.
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