Very cool. Maybe our education system will get lucky in the future and instead of making kids learn to do color by numbers (aka Standardized tests), we will actually have schools producing kids with hands on knowledge who can truly problem solve. A teaching model that would make Da Vinci proud |
At Da Vinci Science High and Da Vinci Design High, students learn by producing elaborate projects — paper roller coasters, models of Chicago tenements, children’s books from scratch. |
Da Vinci and its conjoined twin, Da Vinci Design High School, are one vision of the future of education. They trace their lineage to two celebrated charter schools, High Tech High in San Diego and Camino Nuevo High in the Westlake area of Los Angeles. Like Da Vinci, those schools employ a “project-based” curriculum that allows students to learn through hands-on projects, often involving teamwork and computers.
What sets the Da Vinci schools apart is more political than pedagogical. These schools are part of an unusual battle between two overlapping school districts — one highly successful, the other notRead more at www.latimes.com |
More real-life proof to support my notion of augmented learning with the ipod touch. Now if people would just start putting out better educational software and educational games. iPods and educational applications have Minnesota students giddy about learning |
For fourth-grader Gabe Rivera, running vocabulary drills and solving mathematical problems on his classroom iPod Touch is a fun way to learn, in part because it’s “something that is more newer than paper.”
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The student at Somerset Elementary School in Mendota Heights is one of many enthusiastic about the Apple touch-screen media players and handheld computers. The devices are becoming fixtures in U.S. schools as educators become aware of the various applications that can be installed on the gadgets to help students learn.
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At Somerset and other schools in the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan district, for instance, the iPod Touch has taken classrooms by storm.
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For kids there, math and spelling activities that used to seem, well, boooring have a sudden allure on an iPod. This was clear on a recent morning in a room filled with students raptly tapping, scrolling and swiping.
Read more at www.twincities.com |
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Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions
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Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. |
While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms. |
It does make more sense, especially the communications portion. Medical School: Anatomy’s Out, Systems Biology’s In |
 Sending students to the anatomy lab to dissect a cadaver in their first week of medical school may be a fading ritual. At Georgetown, students spend a few months in courses called “Physician-Patient Communication” and “Social and Cultural Issues in Health Care” before they start with the cutting — and when they do get to dissection, it’s in a unit on limbs, not in an old-school anatomy class.
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That’s one example of the way med schools are shuffling their curricula to try to catch up with the changing demands — both scientific and cultural — doctors face, the Washington Post reports. |
In a new case-based teaching method at Johns Hopkins, students might have a unit on heart disease where they look at sample heart attack cases to understand the genetics of heart disease, the physiology of the heart, medication options, costs and benefits of various treatments and how environment can affect heart disease risks, the Post says. Read more at blogs.wsj.com |
Russia’s Conquering Zeros
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The strength of post-Soviet math stems from decades of lonely productivity |
| It may be no accident that, while some of the best American mathematical minds worked to solve one of the century’s hardest problems—the Poincaré Conjecture—it was a Russian mathematician working in Russia who, early in this decade, finally triumphed. |
Decades before, in the Soviet Union, math placed a premium on logic and consistency in a culture that thrived on rhetoric and fear; it required highly specialized knowledge to understand; and, worst of all, mathematics lay claim to singular and knowable truths—when the regime had staked its own legitimacy on its own singular truth. All this made mathematicians suspect. Still, math escaped the purges, show trials and rule by decree that decimated other Soviet sciences. Read more at online.wsj.com |
Wow.. the changes from then till now. ‘Sesame Street’s’ been swept, but the magic of show remains |
(CNN) — In the early days of “Sesame Street” — that is, B.E. (Before Elmo) — Sesame Street was a pretty grimy place. |
The brownstone at 123 Sesame Street looked like it needed a serious power washing, the storefront of Mr. Hooper’s shop was intentionally dingy and the Fix-It Shop’s window was cluttered with toasters. It was gritty, but gritty in a magical way. |
“These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” |
On the DVDs, Cookie Monster can be seen as his character of Alistair Cookie in his “Monsterpiece Theatre” segment (a spoof of Alistair Cooke’s “Masterpiece Theatre”) smoking a pipe. |
This guy seems to be moving in the right direction. Great concept. When her 17-year-old son, Robert, stopped coming home at night, Debra Curry was desperate. She knew he was spending time with kids who were into drugs and guns, that he was on a path to self-destruction. |
She called Orrin Hudson and later introduced him to Robert. Orrin began teaching him chess and through that exercise, Robert learned that every move has a consequence. It wasn’t long before he began to apply that lesson to his life. |
Two years later, Robert was enrolled at Georgia Perimeter College to study nursing. Robert says practicing chess through Orrin’s Be Someone program taught him to stop, think, and carefully consider his decisions—and their consequences. Read more at www.besomeone.org |
Fifteen Strategies You Can Employ Now |
Wow! Soon these schools will be doing 24×7 to keep up with enrollment. |
New Meaning for Night Class at 2-Year Colleges
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BOSTON — Winston Chin hustles on Tuesdays from his eight-hour shift as a lab technician to his writing class at Bunker Hill Community College, a requirement for the associate’s degree he is seeking in hopes of a better job. |
He is a typical part-time student, with one exception. His class runs from 11:45 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., the consequence of an unprecedented enrollment spike that has Bunker Hill scrambling to accommodate hundreds of newcomers. In the dead of night, he and his classmates dissect Walt Whitman poems and learn the finer points of essay writing, fueled by unlimited coffee, cookies and an instructor who does push-ups beforehand to stay lively. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Another reason insurance companies suck! The Case of the Missing Assistant Surgeon |
Do you know how many people are at the table with gloves on, when you have an operation? There’s the surgeon and a scrub nurse, of course. A surgical tech may be there too, suctioning up those queasy fluids, holding the arm or leg we’re working on, cutting sutures and holding retractors. But you have seen enough medical shows to know there’s also always at least one other doctor present. We may not engage in the same kind of dramatic medical banter that fictional surgeons do (like flying a passenger jet, safe surgery should be a little bit boring), but that second doctor — the assistant surgeon — should be in the operating room for all major procedures. Read more at www.time.com |
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A teaching model that would make Da Vinci proud
