A 'Best of the Web' guide

Best of the Web Nov. 2012 from Richard Byrne

The above comes from Richard Byrne, the force behind Free Technology for Teachers.

Reading research and the Common Core

The truism that students "learn to read, then read to learn," has spawned a slew of early-reading interventions and laws. But the Common Core State Standards offer a very different view of literacy, in which fluency and comprehension skills evolve together throughout every grade and subject in a student's academic life, from the first time a toddler gums a board book to the moment a medical student reads data from a brain scan.
In doing so, the common-core literacy standards reflect the research world's changing evidence on expectations of student competence in an increasingly interconnected and digitized world. But critics say the standards also neglect emerging evidence on cognitive and reading strategies that could guide teachers on how to help students develop those literacy skills. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Teaching critical thinking

Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono is a bona fide genius. The author, inventor, Rhodes scholar and Nobel prize-nominated economist graduated from college at age 15. In the field of education and business, he is famous for originating the term lateral thinking. In his spare time, he also wrote Six Thinking Hats and several other books on creativity. Of all his contributions to the field of education, there is one critical thinking method that I use in classes more than any other: the PMI, a brainstorming model built on the categories of plus, minus and interesting. (Todd Finley at Edutopia)

Open Culture's educational resources

Open Culture's collection of K-12 resources is sure to continue to grow. The collection is arranged according to content area which should make it easy to find something that is new and applicable to your classroom. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

What could better assessment mean?

The use of testing in school accountability systems may hamstring the development of tests that can actually transform teaching and learning, experts from a national assessment commission warn.
Members of the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Education here Nov. 1-3, said that technological innovations may soon allow much more in-depth data collection on students, but that current testing policy calls for the same test to fill too many different and often contradictory roles. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

The impact of emotion on learning

Numerous research reports show that social and emotional learning (SEL) can have a positive impact on students' academic performance. Edutopia's SEL research review explores those reports and helps make sense of the results. In this series of four articles, learn how researchers define social and emotional learning, review some of the possible learning outcomes, get our recommendations of evidence-based programs, find tips for avoiding pitfalls when implementing SEL programs, and dig in to a comprehensive annotated bibliography with links to all the studies and reports cited in these pages.(Vanessa Vega at Edutopia)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

The brain of a genius

Einstein's brain had extraordinary folding patterns in several regions, which may help explain his genius, newly uncovered photographs suggest.

The photographs, published Nov. 16 in the journal Brain, reveal that the brilliant physicist had extra folding in his brain's gray matter, the site of conscious thinking. In particular, the frontal lobes, regions tied to abstract thought and planning, had unusually elaborate folding, analysis suggests. (Tia Ghose at Yahoo News)

Duncan outlines second term

In his first major postelection remarks, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he will use his second term to continue to leverage education improvement at the state and local levels, with a new emphasis on principal preparation and evaluation. And, he made clear that if Congress isn't serious about reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the No Child Left Behind Act is the current version, then his department won't devote a lot of energy to it. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

Study shows the impact of adversity on students

The stress of a spelling bee or a challenging science project can enhance a student's focus and promote learning. But the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can poison a child's cognitive ability for a lifetime, according to new research.
While educators and psychologists have said for decades that the effects of poverty interfere with students' academic achievement, new evidence from cognitive and neuroscience is showing exactly how adversity in childhood damages students' long-term learning and health. (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Collected online resources at Alltop

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder how Alltop is different from a search engine. A search engine is good to answer a question like, “How many people live in China?” However, it has a much harder time answering the question, “What’s happening in China?” That’s the kind of question that we answer. (from the Alltop "About" page)

What does this have to do with education? You can view an education page at Alltop; in other words Alltop has aggregated a number of online educational resources into a single page. To find that page, click the "e" among the letters on the main page, find "education" and then click.

If we're going to flip

We're hearing a lot of talk about education in these back-to-school days, but a few conversations rise above the din. One such is the chatter about "flipped classrooms,"¹ in which students listen to lectures at home and do homework at school. We also hear names like TED, Codecademy, Khan Academy and Knowmia bandied about, not to mention the term "MOOC"² and such brands as Udacity, Coursera, MITx, edX . . . What's it all about?

No doubt about it, online learning at every level for every purpose is the flavor of the moment, and everyone is scrambling to offer a feast. Investors are salivating at the prospect of getting into an education market with an estimated global value of $54 billion; social and academic entrepreneurs want to provide free education opportunities for the poor; and at the same time, media organizations are falling all over themselves trying to come up with the right model to replace the textbook and other print materials. (Idit Harel Caperton at Edutopia)

NCLB and graduation rates

A growing chorus of education policy advocates is urging the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen graduation-rate accountability in states that have earned waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act.
In separate letters last month to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a group of 36 civil rights, business, and education policy groups, along with U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., say they are concerned that many states' approved flexibility plans violate the spirit—if not the letter—of 2008 regulations that require all states to calculate the graduation rate in the same way and make those rates an important factor in high school accountability. (Michele McNeil at Education Week)

How to follow 'Free Technology for Teachers'

How to Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers.
If you aren't subscribed you can join more than 51,000 others who do subscribe via these links.Subscribe via RSS. Subscribe via Email.Like Free Technology for Teachers on  Facebook.Find me on Twitter, on Google+, or on Pinterest.
.
If you want to learn how to follow all that's Free Technology for Teachers, click the above hyperlinked text.  (Do keep in mind that Free Technology for Teachers does include advertisements.)

Edutopia profiles 'Schools That Work'

Edutopia's Schools That Work series profiles K-12 schools, districts, and programs that are dramatically improving the way students learn. Focusing on evidenced-based successes, we create how-to videos and actionable tip lists to help you transform your schools. We get close to the teachers, students, principals, and other administrators who have changed the future of their schools, and show you how they did it. (from Edutopia)

How the election could have an impact on education

Education policy and funding—from common standards and college access to the prospect of "doomsday" budget cuts—have been a steady theme in this year's presidential campaign, even as more specific K-12 debates lighted the political landscape in various states.
And with the strategic balance in Congress in play, along with the makeup of 44 state legislatures and the fate of numerous education-related ballot measures, the Nov. 6 elections could have a lasting impact on the direction of precollegiate policy. (Andrew Ujifusa and Alyson Klein at Education Week)

Practice prompts at the NYT

Last year we took some baby steps in thinking about how the new Common Core State Standards will affect the work we do on this blog.
Two things were obvious: The standards emphasize the reading of “informational text,” and we work for a newspaper that produces a daily geyser of it. (Katherine Schulten at The New York Times)