Web's second phase puts users in control

The web's shift from a tool of reference to one of collaboration presents teachers with some rich opportunities for e-learning

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Tags: collaboration, eLearning, web 2.0

28,000 school children and teachers agree - museums excite and inspire!

A major new Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) research study shows that children have fun and enjoy learning more in museums.

Teachers too, are highly enthusiastic about museums and their potential to support learning.

What did you learn at the museum today? Second Study is an evaluation of the outcomes and impact of learning following school visits to 69 UK museums. In the study, funded through the MLA’s Renaissance in the Regions programme, pupils expressed high levels of enjoyment and inspiration from visiting museums and most said they had learnt interesting, new things.

Read on …

Tag: Museums

Call for national teacher standards

A new report recommends an overhaul of how teachers are judged, writes Caroline Milburn.

SCHOOL teachers should be able to measure their competence against national standards that could herald a new era of performance-based pay, according to the author of a report on the profession.

Dr Lawrence Ingvarson said teaching, unlike most other professions in Australia, had not developed uniform standards that applied to its members regardless of where they worked.

Read on ...

Tag: Teachers

Push for simpler spelling persists

When "say," "they" and "weigh" rhyme, but "bomb," "comb" and "tomb" don't, wuudn't it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound?

Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop. Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing.

Read on …

Tag: spelling

National Financial Literacy Framework

This is a website to enable teachers to easily access the parts of the framework they need. Use the table on the home page to navigate directly to chosen year levels and dimensions.

National Financial Literacy Framework

tag: financial_literacy

The Question of Teacher Roles in Blogging-yet-Traditional Classrooms

The tension we face right now is how to navigate between the demands of the traditional structures we find ourselves in (i.e. the teacher as local power-holder: designing the syllabus, dispensing knowledge through lectures and assignments, and evaluating through testing and grades--and in turn being evaluated on just how successful the students are according to prescribed standards) and the realities of the fluid, emergent knowledge spaces existing outside this realm in places with Internet access, where everyone is an expert and an apprentice connected within that space, where we might not need "teachers" at all, where learning doesn't happen according to set schedules and syllabi. If we take the traditional role of designer-director-evaluator in our classrooms, how are we helping young people become active citizens in this world with its inequities, its fragility, its violence, its power relations, its potential, its connectedness, its beauty? How are we helping them learn how to learn and learn how to give and to act? To take responsibility for their learning and their use of that learning? And yet for many of us, the structures in place (disciplines, majors, departments, school calendars) make it incredibly difficult to break away from the lecture-absorb or call-and-response model of education, especially for student from ages 12-22. Who has the time? Who has the energy? Who has the nerve? And who has the skill?

Read the whole post

Tag: blogging in education

A 'hole in the wall' helps educate India

Another slant on this fascinating issue.

By Pat Orvis
NEW DELHI – Free computers placed where children play could help bring basic education to India's 200 million boys and girls under age 15. That's the hope of the man behind an Internet learning experiment called Hole-in-the-Wall.

Read on …

Tag: Computers in education

Attitudes to Teaching as a Career

This report synthesises recent Australian and international research on attitudes to teaching as a career, including research on the motivations of current teachers to remain in or leave the profession. The research shows that, while people who have chosen teaching as a career are chiefly motivated by ‘intrinsic’ rewards such as wanting to ‘make a difference’, enjoyment of children, etc, extrinsic factors such as remuneration, workload, employment conditions and status are the most significant factors influencing people not to choose teaching, and to leave the profession. Read the report

tag: Teaching

Jamie McKenzie's article of the month compares the Essential Question with the Damanding one .....

The (merely) Demanding Question


When is an essential question actually essential?

When will a demanding question suffice?

Back when Grant Wiggins and the Coalition of Essential Schools introduced and popularized the term "essential question" two decades ago, an essential question was important and deep enough to provide focus for an entire year's study.

"What causes some to want to explore the unknown even when that exploration might entail loss, pain, hardship and death?"
Over the next twenty years, the term spread far and wide as many curriculum leaders urged teachers to build their lessons and units around such questions.

Read the whole article

tags: Jamie McKenzie, questions in education

State readies online teacher training options

LITTLE ROCK - Arkansas teachers will get the chance to improve their craft at any time and at any location with Internet access through online professional development training slated to start this fall. Read on …

Tag: eLearning, Teachers

Young children 'learn homophobia'

Primary school children are using homophobic insults without realising it, paving the way for later bullying, an educationalist has warned.

Mark Jennett said teachers should not allow words like "gay" and "sissy" to be used as terms of abuse. Read on …

tag: homophobia

Teacher literacy falls with salaries

EVIDENCE that the academic standards of new teachers are significantly lower than a generation ago will underscore a Howard Government push for the introduction of merit pay.

The Education Minister, Julie Bishop, seized on research released yesterday that showed the average teacher trainee in 1983 was more literate and numerate than 74 per cent of age peers. By 2003, that advantage was down to 61 per cent - and the decline was similar for new teachers. Read on ...

Is $100 laptop project flawed?

The head of one of the largest charitable suppliers of refurbished PCs claims that there are some basic problems with creating a custom-made laptop for the developing world. Read on …