The 50 Best Videos For Teachers Interested In Gamification

Community Colleges see an INCREASE in students entering with Academic Needs | In Hawaii 70% need remediation | WHY? asks Jeff Piontek

This is nothing new to anyone with a heartbeat or a pulse in education, who work in the Pre K-20 or P-12/P-16 continuum. The fact that so many students drop out of high school in 9th grade, take the GED route instead of attending classes (and some pass) and then go on to CC, and of course those who eventually graduate in 5/6 years just shows that the high school system is fatally flawed and needs to be revamped NOW.

If you want to know more about my views on this topic watch the presentation I did in 2007, yes 2007 to the entire STEM, Political and Education committees in Hawaii which showcases our data, it is disturbing.

But, you know what is even more disturbing is the fact that under our current administration, our current superintendent and our current BOE nothing has changed!!!!

This year though during the election or re-election campaigns they will though promise to do it AGAIN, promise to make things better AGAIN and unfortunately we will see in another 2/4/6 years at the end of their term what has actually been done. There are people like Linda Lingle who as Governor did more for education that her prior three Governor’s and unfortunately in a wildly Democratic State like Hawaii did not receive the credit for her attempts to move Hawaii into the national spotlight with Robotics, STEM education and partnerships with organizations like the National Governor’s Association.

Maybe someday Hawaii will have a strong, healthy, diverse economy, but not if the “Good Old Boys” network keeps on doing what they are doing, NOTHING to change it, because it benefits them.

Presentation Link: http://www.slideshare.net/jeff.piontek/an-inconvenient-reality-oct-2007-2780003

Community colleges should tailor remedial curriculum for students who are unprepared for introductory English and math courses, and in some cases, developmental classes “hinder” student progress, according to a report released by the Education Department (ED) during an April 27 virtual symposium.

ED Secretary Arne Duncan and Second Lady Jill Biden spoke to educators and students at a symposium broadcast on the internet from Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Md., a two-year school with more than 60,000 students on three campuses.

ED officials and educators who led sessions at the symposium outlined “bridge programs” for adult learners who want to return to college after many years in the workforce, and customizing those remedial classes that come with high costs to colleges, students, and taxpayers.

ED released the report to coincide with the symposium that said as much as 60 percent of incoming community college students enroll “in at least one developmental education course to bring their reading, writing, and mathematics skills up to college level.”

Developmental classes that help new community college students catch up with their peers can be critical to earning a degree, according to the ED report, but remedial education “may not improve students’ persistence or completion rates and, in some cases, may actually hinder their progress toward educational goals.”

A more flexible slate of remedial class options on two-year campuses would have educators pinpoint precisely where a student needs improvement, said Shanna Smith Jaggars, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center in New York.

Targeting specific academic vulnerabilities, Smith Jaggars said, would allow a student to move through remedial classes quickly without redundant lessons that lead to high drop-out rates among remedial students.

“We need a system that diagnoses student weaknesses and determines which areas require quick redress [that] gives students less opportunity to get disheartened and a chance to drop out,” she said.

Early intervention was stressed by several speakers who addressed remedial classes in community colleges. College officials and policy analysts said summer bridge programs would help high school students prepare for college without having to enroll in non-credit-bearing remedial courses.

Duncan and Biden, as they have since President Obama entered the White House in 2009, said continued help – including federal funds – for two-year colleges would help unemployed Americans find jobs and prove to be a centerpiece in the country’s economic recovery.

ED introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program on Jan. 20, inviting community colleges—and other two-year degree-granting institutions—to apply for up to $5 million per institution, or up to $20 million to applicants who apply for funds in a consortium of schools.

ED will dole out about $500 million in 2011, and $2 billion will be distributed in the next four years overall, according to the announcement.

“These funds will support programs that use proven or innovative strategies to prepare students for high-demand careers,” Biden said.

The Obama administration in October invited more than 100 community college decision makers to the White House’s first-ever Summit on Community Colleges, where top federal officials lauded two-year colleges as a bridge to jobs and four-year universities, and a way to lead the world in college graduates by 2020.

Education analysts said last year that the expansion of online classes at two-year colleges would be key in increasing community college enrollment.

Distance-learning enrollment in American community colleges jumped by 22 percent during the 2008-09 academic year, an increase fueled in part by an influx of nontraditional students who require the flexibility of online courses, according to a survey conducted by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC).

The ITC, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), collected 226 responses from community colleges in its annual survey, “Trends in eLearning: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community Colleges,” which revealed the 2008-09 increase in online enrollment. Last year’s ITC survey reported an 11-percent uptick in web-based class enrollment at community colleges.

“We flat lined and stagnated [while] other countries have passed us by and I think we are paying a price for that,” Duncan said. “So [as we] try to educate our way to a better economy, community colleges are absolutely going to help lead us where we need to go. … Community colleges have been the unrecognized, unpolished gem on the education continuum. I believe we have come a long way to ending that.”

Biden, a longtime educator and adjunct English professor at Northern Virginia Community College, lauded the Obama administration’s $2 billion community college funding add-on to the health care reform bill passed last year.

Will this actually change anything? What are your comments I would love to know……

Pennsylvania: Cyber charter schools aren’t working | so let’s expand them K12? asks Jeff Piontek

There’s an interesting and worthwhile debate over whether we should be expanding alternative, public-funded charter schools; some, like the Kipp Academiies, are clearly successful, although we can argue about the extent of that success. Others have been flat-out scams. Then we have the case of cyber charter schools, which receive public tax dollars to educate children over the Internet, and which seem to be especially popular in Pennsylvania.

What could possibly go wrong with poorly supervised, taxpayer-funded online learning, right? Especially in such an on-the-ball state as this one.

Well, just like with some bricks-and-mortar charter schools, some cyber charters are deeply flawed. My Daily News colleague, David Gambacorta, has reported extensively this year on problems at a Philadelphia based cyber-school called the Frontier Virtual Charter High School. It was just forced to surrender its charter, actually. Why?

Frontier didn’t supply students with promised laptops, printers and Internet reimbursements, the state said. The school’s administrators didn’t properly monitor attendance, truancy and grades, according to investigators. A “significant” amount of money was spent on nonschool expenses, the state said, including trips to restaurants and cash purchases that weren’t backed with the receipts. The school failed to provide many of the classes it had offered students.

An extreme case? For sure. But what if I told you that, generally, a wide swatch of students at these cyber charters are underperforming their peers at other traditional public or charter schools? That seems to be exactly what has been happening here in the Keystone State (PDF):

“In an April 2011 study (PDF), the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University reviewed the academic performance in Pennsylvania’s charter schools.  Virtual-school operators have been aggressively expanding in the state for more than a decade, making it a good place for a study; around 18,700 of the state’s 61,770 charter school students were enrolled in online schools. The results weren’t promising.

The virtual-school students started out with higher test scores than their counterparts in regular charters. But according to the study, they ended up with learning gains that were “significantly worse” than kids in traditional charters and public schools. Says CREDO research manager Devora Davis, “What we can say right now is that whatever they’re doing in Pennsylvania is definitely not working and should not be replicated.”

So, given this body of research from one of America’s top universities, guess what the state of Pennsylvania is doing?

It’s replicating them!

Specifically, the state has greenlighted four new cyber-charter schools — all of them run out of Philadelphia. Education guru Diane Ravitch wrote yesterday: “This is unbelievable,” and it’s hard not to agree. At a very cursory glance, the folks running these new ventures seem to be qualified and well-meaning. But that’s not the issue. The issue is the growing evidence that cyber charters are not helping — and possibly harming — the kids who are educated there. Until these issues are resolved, Pennsylvania should not be approving new cyber charters.

The Revolution:Top Ten Disruptors of Education | by Jeff Piontek

New online learning models are bursting from startups and top universities, bridging the educational divide.

We are in the midst of a revolution that will bring high-quality education to hundreds of millions of people who have never had access to this level of learning before.

These tools will reach those in developing cities and countries but also foment a revolution in the U.S. classroom as they change our perception of what learning can be.

Here are the leading new platfoms disupting the education world:

1.Udacity

Sebastian Thurn and his colleagues hit on wild success with their Stanford computer science courses when they opened them up to the online public.The team has left Stanford to start Udacity with venture backing and a new slate of courses. They have hit 150,000+ students in each course, signaling the demand for great online education. Thurn admits that there is no firm business model as yet, but will use the next year to experiment with different approaches.

CNN highlights Udacity’s new model.

2. Coursera

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera to bring high-quality university courses to the masses. They are working with Princeton, Michigan, Penn, Stanford and others to fashion online courses which include video, online testing and peer support. In a recent Forbes article, Koller expressed the hope that “maybe the next Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs is living in a remote village in Africa” Bringing top professors to a global audience can certainly change the game in the education divide.

3. EdX — MIT and Harvard

MIT has been a pioneer in online education with its Open Courseware (OCW) program. Now it teams up with Harvard to launch EdX (by the way — have you noticed how many brands use x these days? SpaceX, UberX, X Prize, TEDx — it gives that hint of mystery to a brand.) OCW boasts more than 2,000 online courses, but these are all archived. EdX will specialize in courses that students can take together with supervision and interaction.

4. iTunes U

I still meet people who own iPads, iPhones and every other Apple device and yet do not know about iTunes U. How can this be?!

Want to understand what in the world a Higgs boson is? Download a physics course from U.

5. Khan

Sal Khan hit on education gold when he started making videos for his young cousins on science and math. Now the site offers more than 3,000 videos — all in short form so they are easy to digest. Great for kids to watch at home and do more interactive work at school. Let’s phase out boring class lectures and get kids moving and excited at school.

Many would benefit from watching the video on the Greek crisis:

<iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xc-TSAQkqJ0?feature=player_embedded” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

6. 2Tor

John Katzman founded Princeton Review and now launched 2Tor. His new company teams up with top universities such as USC to offer fully accredited degrees online.

USC and 2tor offer a full masters in education. This is great for anyone who wants to change careers and still work while they are obtaining the degree necessary to become a teacher. 2tors’s newest degree is from Wash U. and offers foreign lawyers a masters in U.S. Law

7. Altius Ed

Spark Capital, Maveron and others have invested in Altius Ed. Altius partners with universities to offer a two-year bridge program for those students who wish to attend a four-year college but may not have the requisite coursework.
8. Latimer Education

Latimer works with historically black colleges to extend their reach online. Investors include Maveron.

9.Capella University

Rather than partner with other universities, Capella itself is an accredited university offering its courses online. Capella counts Maveron and others as investors and offers bachelors, masters and doctoral programs. The jury is still out on how these pure play degrees will be accepted in the marketplace.

10. Minverva Project

This is an ambitious attempt to start a new university from whole cloth. Students will live in dorm buildings placed around the world and the professors will pipe in via video conferencing to each of the buildings. Ben Nelson, the former CEO of Snapfish, raised $25 million from Benchmark Capital for this new venture. We will have to wait to see on this one as it has yet to be launched.

11. (yes, we could not fit all the new platforms into a list of 10) Straighterline.com

This site offers online courses which earn real credits that can be transferred to many college degree programs. Straighterline aims to make college courses more affordable with both a la carte and subscription plans.

Bonus Disruptor:

Add to the pot the new University Venture Fund.

This new venture capital fund will invest in the kind of revolutionary startups that we described here. Bertelsmann and the University of Texas are two of the largest investors.

—–

All in all, these disrupters will bring high-quality learning to millions of people in the U.S. and around the world who never had access to this material. Now the questions are:

a. Will it scale?

b. Will these models turn out to be sustainable?

c. How do we measure the intangibles of in-person learning and how can we replicate those online?

d. Who will disrupt these disupters?

Stay tuned.

Thinking about starting a business by Jeff Piontek

http://www.crl3c.org/fr_fundingoptions.cfm

investedin – a platform built to help anyone raise money for anything, utilizing their existing social network presence

Kickstarter – a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors and is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

Teacher Planet – complete online resource for information related to K-12 grants.

DonorsChoose.org – an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need — public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests.

crowdrise – is about volunteering, raising money for Charity and having the most fun in the world while doing it.

GiveForward – provides free, personalized fundraising pages to raise money quickly and easily online.

givezooks! – offers social fundraising for nonprofits, connecting individuals and organizations online to increase charitable giving.

Social Wish – makes it easy for individuals and not-for-profits to raise funds through social media, email marketing, and websites.

IndieGoGo – any project or idea (creative, cause or entrepreneurial) can raise money, offer perks, and keep 100% ownership of their project.

YouTube Is Developing a Secret Weapon Against the Internet’s Worst Commenters by Jeff Piontek

The biggest problem with traditional schooling by Jeff Piontek

Ways We Can Help Students Develop Creativity by Jeff Piontek

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Diane Ravitch about Finland’s Education System by Jeff Piontek

This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement.

Dear Deborah,

I recently returned from a trip to Europe. In Berlin, I spoke at an international education research conference. Researchers from Europe, Asia, and Latin America were very alarmed by the current “reform” movement in the United States, fearful that the same trends — the same overemphasis of standardized testing, the same push for privatization and markets, and the same pressure to lower standards for entry into teaching — might come to their own countries.

The highlight of my trip was visiting schools in Finland. Of course, Finland is much in the news these days because of its success on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) examinations.

For the past decade, 15-year-old Finnish students have consistently been at or near the top of all the nations tested in reading, mathematics, and science. And just as consistently, the variance in quality among Finnish schools is the least of all nations tested, meaning that Finnish students can get a good education in virtually any school in the nation. That’s equality of educational opportunity, a good public school in every neighborhood.

What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission.

Their own teachers design their tests, so teachers know how their students are doing and what they need. There is a national curriculum — broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education — but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have extensive responsibility for designing curriculum and pedagogy in their school. They have a large degree of autonomy, because they are professionals.

Admission to teacher education programs at the end of high school is highly competitive; only one in 10 — or even fewer — qualify for teacher preparation programs. All Finnish teachers spend five years in a rigorous program of study, research, and practice, and all of them finish with a masters’ degree. Teachers are prepared for all eventualities, including students with disabilities, students with language difficulties, and students with other kinds of learning issues.

The schools I visited reminded me of our best private progressive schools. They are rich in the arts, in play, and in activity. I saw beautiful campuses, including some with outstanding architecture, filled with light. I saw small classes; although the official class size for elementary school is 24, I never saw a class with more than 19 children (and that one had two assistant teachers to help children with special needs).

Teachers and principals repeatedly told me that the secret of Finnish success is trust. Parents trust teachers because they are professionals. Teachers trust one another and collaborate to solve mutual problems because they are professionals. Teachers and principals trust one another because all the principals have been teachers and have deep experience. When I asked about teacher attrition, I was told that teachers seldom leave teaching; it’s a great job, and they are highly respected.

And by the way, the Finnish teachers I saw — those heaped with laurels as outstanding professionals — didn’t look or act differently from many, many teachers I have seen in the United States, even in so-called “failing schools.”

Finland has one other significant advantage over the United States. The child-poverty rate in Finland is under 4 percent. Here it is 22 percent and rising. It’s a well-known fact that family income is the most reliable predictor of academic performance. Finland has a strong social welfare system; we don’t. It is not a “Socialist” nation, by the way. It is egalitarian and capitalist.

I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit pay.” They are paid more if they do more work for the community, but they can’t understand why teachers should get a bonus to compete with one another for test scores. Since they don’t have comparative test scores for their students, our practices don’t make sense to them. Nor do they understand the benefits of competition among teachers who ought to be collaborating.

The current crop of corporate reformers get very upset by any mention of the Finnish model. They refuse to believe that a nation can have great schools without relying on high-stakes testing. They insist that Finland cannot serve as a model because it lacks racial diversity; but they fall silent when one points out that Finland has the same demographics as Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, yet gets superior results. I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly experienced teachers, small classes, and a curriculum rich in the arts and activities.

Here’s an interesting contrast: We claim to be preparing students for global competitiveness, and we reward mastery of basic skills. Our guiding principles: Competition, accountability, and choice. Finland has this singular goal: to develop the humanity of each child. Isn’t that a shocking goal? Their guiding principles: equity, creativity, and prosperity.

Finland rightly deserves attention today as a nation that treats its children as a precious resource and that honors the adults who make education their passion and their career.

Someday, I hope, we will recognize the failure of the behaviorist approach now in vogue; someday we will see that our current “reforms” are appropriate for the industrial era of the early 20th century, not for the needs of the 21st century. When that day arrives, we will understand the deep wisdom of Finland, with its love for children and its respect for educators, and we will be grateful that there is a successful alternative to our own failed model.

Diane