Committed Sardine Blog

Ted-Ed Tour—YouTube

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I once heard a keynote speaker declare lecture was dead. He was so convincing I got up and left.

Old joke. But here is proof that not only is lecture not dead, but it has new life. The idea of repackaging TED material into school materials is a no-brainer, when you think about it. And it proves that lecture isn't dead; instead, bad lecture is dead. Because, as all TED fans know, when good speakers hold forth with good content, it is a wonderful thing to behold.

And when you package it with good learning materials, as Ted Ed has done, it's a real contribution to the learning scape.

Nielsen report finds 56 percent of US households have a modern game console, total gaming time up seven percent

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By Donald Melanson
posted Mar 9th 2012 2:40PM
www.engadget.com

Nielsen is out with its annual survey of video game use in the US today, and it's found that gaming continues to be on the rise across the board. That includes a seven percent increase in total gaming time compared to the previous year (apparently due largely to increases in mobile and tablet gaming), and an increase in modern console ownership from 50 percent of households to 56 percent; that includes so-called 7th generation consoles like the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It also found the number of cross-platform gamers be on the upswing, with 24 percent responding that they play on two or more of a console, PC, tablet or mobile device (compared to 17 percent previously). Looking at mobile gaming, specifically, Nieslen found that while iOS gaming tended to be distributed fairly evenly across all age groups, Android gaming proved to be far more popular among those aged 25-34 than any other group.

A few other tidbits: 65 percent of consoles are located in the living room, online shopping for games is up while other channels continue to decline, and streaming video continues to be a growing secondary use for game consoles (particularly on the Wii, where it accounts for 33 percent of console usage, compared to roughly 15 percent on both the Xbox 360 and PS3).

Disruptions: Indiscreet Photos, Glimpsed Then Gone

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By NICK BILTON
May 6, 2012, 5:24 PM
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com

People once took photographs so they could capture a moment for themselves and keep it forever. Then digital cameras and cellphones turned photos into something more ephemeral and more easily shared. But as the case of Anthony Weiner demonstrated, photos that are shared but are not meant to last, sometimes stick around.

Mr. Weiner’s downfall does not seem to have discouraged people from sharing risqué photos. According to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project that is due out later this year, 6 percent of adult Americans admit to having sent a “sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude photo or video” using a cellphone. Another 15 percent have received such material. Three percent of teenagers admit to sending sexually explicit content.

All of this sexting, as the practice is known, creates an opening for technology that might make the photos less likely to end up in wide circulation.

This is where a free and increasingly popular iPhone app called Snapchat comes in. Snapchat allows a person to take and send a picture and control how long it is visible by the person who receives it, up to 10 seconds. After that, the picture disappears and can’t be seen again. If the person viewing the picture tries to use an iPhone feature that captures an image of whatever is on the screen, the sender is notified.

The app’s description in the Apple App Store does not mention sexting. But the accompanying images are of scantily clad women, and Apple has designated the app as being for users 12 and older, warning of “mild sexual content or nudity.” Mentions of the app on Twitter indicate that many young people use it for photo-based banter with friends, though there are references to its less innocent potential.

So does Snapchat really allow people to safely share their bare essentials without fear of ending up in the tabloids?

Snapchat’s privacy policy says that while it tries to quickly erase photos from its servers, it “cannot guarantee that the message data will be deleted in every case.”

Evan Spiegel, a Stanford University student who built the application with a friend, said in an e-mail that he was “completely absorbed with end-of-year projects at school” and unable to comment.

So I asked Michael Fertik, chief executive of Reputation.com, an online reputation management service, if people could feel secure on Snapchat. He noted that it adds hurdles for those who want to breach the confidentiality of an image exchange.

“We know that friction is a very powerful tool to deter people from taking things that are meant to be private and sharing them,” Mr. Fertik said. “It’s probably impossible to completely deter people, but adding friction in a second-to-second environment — like sexting — can be very powerful.”

But even if a Snapchat image is set to vanish after a few seconds, there’s nothing to stop someone from taking a photograph of his smartphone screen with another camera.

And there is also the issue of whether Snapchat itself is trustworthy. Snapchat’s privacy policy says that while it tries to quickly erase photos from its servers, it “cannot guarantee that the message data will be deleted in every case.” It adds: “Messages, therefore, are sent at the risk of the user.”

Snapchat isn’t the first app to help people do things they probably shouldn’t on a smartphone. After Tiger Woods’s texting habits got him in trouble, a company called Tigertext offered an app that would delete text messages after they had been read.

People often believe that texts they share with friends and lovers will be kept safe. But on Twitter, some people are posting their Snapchat usernames so anyone can send them photos. Many of them appear to be quite young.

When asked about sexting among teenagers, Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with the Pew Research Center, said: “What motivates teens is what motivates anyone who does this: You want to be in a relationship, you want to be desired, you want to be cool, or wild.” She added: “Solving the problem is always a bit of an arms race; we have technology that allows us to do something, then we have to create the technology to help protect us.”

The Health Initiative

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

LAUREN MILLIGAN
03 May 2012

THE HEALTH INITIATIVE, a pact between the 19 international editors of Vogue to encourage a healthier approach to body image within the industry, is unveiled today in the June issue of Vogue.

"As one of the fashion industry's most powerful voices, Vogue has a unique opportunity to engage with relevant issues where we feel we can make a difference," editor Alexandra Shulman explains in her editor's letter, adding that the Initiative will "build on the successful work that the Council of Fashion Designers of America with the support of American Vogue in the US and the British Fashion Council in the UK have already begun to encourage a healthier approach to body image within the industry".

In line with the Health Initiative, the international issues of Vogue jointly pledge - among other things - to "work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help to promote a healthy body image" and to "be ambassadors for the message of healthy body image".

The British Fashion Council's Model Health Inquiry was finalised in 2007 and it continues to promote model health through its on-going Model Programme. Recommendations in place since this date, which are also included in London Fashion Week's designer contracts, comprise: no under 16 models on London's catwalks, healthy food and drink available to all backstage, the introduction of a model relaxation zone, Equity becoming a representative body for models, and bi-annual meetings of the BFC's Model Programme Committee to discuss any issues that may arise.

"Vogue believes that good health is beautiful," Jonathan Newhouse, Condé Nast International chairman, said. "Vogue editors around the world want the magazines to reflect their commitment to the health of the models who appear on the pages and the wellbeing of their readers."

Background TV May Harm Young Kids' Development

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

U.S. Kids Exposed to Close to 4 Hours of Background TV Noise Every Day

By Denise Mann
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
WebMD Health News

April 19, 2012 -- We all do it at least occasionally. We leave the TV on as background noise when no one is really watching. No problem, right? Wrong, according to a new study, if there are young children in the house.

U.S. kids are exposed to close to four hours of background TV each day. This is the main finding from a new study slated to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association in Phoenix, Ariz.

Background TV has been linked to problems with learning and reading among young children.

Victor Strasburger, MD, sums it up best when he says, "Babies don't multitask." Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, reviewed the findings for WebMD.

Researchers examined background TV exposure in 1,454 households with children aged 8 months to 8 years. Younger kids and African-American kids were exposed to more background TV than other children, the study shows.

What Is Background TV?

"Background TV is TV that is on in the vicinity of the child that the child is not attending to," says researcher Matthew Lapierre. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia.

Maybe your child is playing in the same room as the TV, or perhaps he or she is eating dinner as the TV drones on in the background, Lapierre says.

Whatever the scenario, it interrupts mental tasks.

According to the study, those children who got the least amount of exposure to background TV were those who did not have a TV in their room. "We think parents leave the TV on while the child is sleeping," he says.

The message is clear: "If no one is watching the TV, turn it off."

TV watching also needs to be monitored. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that older children watch no more than one to two hours of age-appropriate TV per day. It discourages any TV viewing for children ages 2 or younger.

Turn Off TV, and Tune Into Your Kids

"In most households, the TV is on for hours and hours at a time. People use it to keep themselves company, but for children under the age of 2, this may interfere with language development," says Strasburger.

The risks are age-dependent. "Kids older than 2 may see or hear things that a parent doesn't necessarily want them exposed to, but for children under 2, background TV may interfere with language development," he says.

Strasburger says that parents should turn the TV off and tune into their children: "Read to children beginning when they are babies."

These findings will be presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.

In Weak Job Market, One In Two College Graduates Are Jobless Or Underemployed

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By HOPE YEN
04/22/12 05:19 PM ET
www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees.

Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.

While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.

Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse.

Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he got financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. "There is not much out there, it seems," he said.

His situation highlights a widening but little-discussed labor problem. Perhaps more than ever, the choices that young adults make earlier in life – level of schooling, academic field and training, where to attend college, how to pay for it – are having long-lasting financial impact.

"You can make more money on average if you go to college, but it's not true for everybody," says Harvard economist Richard Freeman, noting the growing risk of a debt bubble with total U.S. student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. "If you're not sure what you're going to be doing, it probably bodes well to take some job, if you can get one, and get a sense first of what you want from college."

Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who analyzed the numbers, said many people with a bachelor's degree face a double whammy of rising tuition and poor job outcomes. "Simply put, we're failing kids coming out of college," he said, emphasizing that when it comes to jobs, a college major can make all the difference. "We're going to need a lot better job growth and connections to the labor market, otherwise college debt will grow."

By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed – roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.

On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.

The figures are based on an analysis of 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor's degrees who were "underemployed."

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years.

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position – teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely.

In Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation, Class of 2012 college seniors recently expressed feelings ranging from anxiety and fear to cautious optimism about what lies ahead.

With the state's economy languishing in an extended housing bust, a lot of young graduates have shown up at job placement centers in tears. Many have been squeezed out of jobs by more experienced workers, job counselors said, and are now having to explain to prospective employers the time gaps in their resumes.

"It's kind of scary," said Cameron Bawden, 22, who is graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline.

Bawden said his friends who have graduated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that don't require degrees. "There are so few jobs and it's a small city," he said. "It's all about who you know."

Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor's degree holders. By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor's degree can have benefits that aren't fully reflected in the government's labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employers tend to value bachelor's degree-holders more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions.

In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must compete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projections also may fail to consider "degree inflation," a growing ubiquity of bachelor's degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones.

That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who is waiting to see the returns on his college education.

After earning a biology degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construction worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications.

"I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field," he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor's main advice: Pursue further education.

"Everyone is always telling you, `Go to college,'" Edwards said. "But when you graduate, it's kind of an empty cliff."

At an Urban L.A. School, Nature Grows — and Test Scores, Too

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

At Leo Politi Elementary, workers ripped out concrete and planted native flora. The plants attracted insects, which attracted birds, which attracted students, who, fascinated by the nature unfolding before them, learned so much that their science test scores rose sixfold.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
April 16, 2012

Biological diversity does not come easily near the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Hoover Street.

The neighborhood just west of downtown is one of the most crowded in Los Angeles County, with 25,352 people per square mile. It's chock-full of buildings and has lots of pavement, little landscaping and many economically disadvantaged families.

In that setting, Leo Politi Elementary School wanted only to make a dreary corner of campus more inviting to its 817 students. Workers ripped out 5,000 square feet of concrete and Bermuda grass three years ago and planted native flora.

PHOTOS: Unexpected oasis at urban school

What happened next was unforeseen. It was remarkable.

The plants attracted insects, which attracted birds, which attracted students, who, fascinated by the nature unfolding before them, learned so much that their test scores in science rose sixfold.

In the words of Leo Politi's delighted principal, Brad Rumble, "We've gone from the basement to the penthouse in science test scores."

As Rumble stood in the garden recently, 10-year-old Jacky Guevera fixed her eyes on an orb spider spinning a web near a pair of bushtits building a nest in the limbs of a crape myrtle tree.

"At our school, flycatchers drink the water in the vernal pool," said Jacky, who dreams of becoming an ornithologist. "Scrub jays hang out in the oaks. The snapdragon's red flowers attract Anna's and Allen's hummingbirds."

"I can identify each of these birds when I see them," she added confidently as she sketched images of the garden's wildlife.

Three years ago, the school's standardized test scores in science for fifth-graders showed that 9% were proficient and none were advanced. Last spring, 53% of fifth-graders tested as proficient or advanced.

Leo Politi's garden grows where a towering apartment complex once stood. The structure was torn down in 1991 to make room for the school, named in honor of Leo Politi, a children's book author and illustrator who earned the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1950 for "The Song of the Swallows," his book about the swallows at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

In partnership with Los Angeles Audubon, Leo Politi in 2008 became one of the first elementary schools in the city to apply for and win "schoolyard habitat" and partner's grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

With $18,000 from the agency, and volunteer assistance from environmental students at Dorsey High School, Leo Politi removed the concrete and grass from the forlorn corner of campus. Dorsey students wielded rakes and shovels and helped select and plant bushes, flowers and trees, including six live oaks that now shade a slope Rumble calls "our oak highlands."

Nature responded quickly to the clumps of rye grass, owl's clover and waist-high thickets of white sage and wildflowers: California poppies, California wild roses, tidytips and island snapdragons.

"First to arrive were insects — lady beetles, butterflies and dragonflies — almost as if they were lying in wait," Rumble said. "They were followed by birds that feed on them."

At that point, students were hooked. "Questions about why some birds flocked to one plant and not another led to discussions about soil composition and water cycles, weather patterns and seasons, avian migration and the tilt of the Earth in its orbit around the sun," Rumble said.

Now, the children are studying the dynamics governing the behavior of birds and the ecological systems that support them. They are also compiling an online illustrated survey of every species documented in their urban bird sanctuary, calling it "A Field Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Leo Politi Elementary School."

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles District Hires First Social-Media Director

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

District could be setting precedent with new position

By Ian Quillen
Published Online: April 17, 2012
www.edweek.org

In what may be a national first for a school district, the Los Angeles school system has hired a full-time social-media director.

The move last month prompts an immediate question: What exactly does a K-12 school district's social-media director do?

Answering it has been one of the first orders of business for Stephanie Abrams since she took the job at the nation's second-largest school district after a career as a television reporter, most recently for KCBS in Los Angeles.

In an interview by email last week, Ms. Abrams said she picked up technology as one of her beats during the latter portion of her TV-news career and was one of her network's early adopters of social-media platforms.

She said her salary of just over $93,000 a year, which has drawn some criticism locally, reflects duties and responsibilities that are far more demanding than simply overseeing the district's Facebook and Twitter accounts.

For one thing, Ms. Abrams said, she will be leading staff education about a new social-network-use policy implemented in February.

The policy advises employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District to keep work-related and personal social-network accounts separate, strongly discourages maintaining social-networking contacts with students through a personal account, and warns employees not to hold any expectations of privacy while using school-owned technology.

"The use of social media is a new and fluid situation at [the Los Angeles district], so I expect to lead the district on this issue moving forward," Ms. Abrams said in an email. She added that enforcement of the policy would fall under the authority of the school system's human resources department.

The district now has just over 1,000 Facebook "likes" on its new profile page, and gets approximately 5,000 daily visitors, Ms. Abrams said, with the expectation that the following will greatly expand during the next six months. The district also has accounts on Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and is using its YouTube channel to post weekly video updates titled "@LASchools" that will also run periodically on KLCS, one of the city's public-broadcasting stations, Ms. Abrams added.

"The use of social media is a new and fluid situation at [the Los Angeles district], so I expect to lead the district on this issue moving forward."

The district may expand to more social-media platforms, Ms. Abrams said, after conducting the school system's first districtwide social-media survey to determine, among other information, how many schools have their own websites and social-media presence, and how many students and parents in the district are engaging in social media.

Ms. Abrams also said part of her job description includes working closely with top administrators, especially during crisis situations, so that information about school lockdowns, early closings, and other student-safety issues can be relayed through its social-media accounts.

Ms. Abrams said she understands the criticism of her salary, $87,000 of which is funded by the Boston-based Goldhirsh Foundation, which has given funding to the LAUSD in the past and has also funded other initiatives aimed toward "social innovation," according to Tara Roth McConaghy, the group's executive director.

Given the school system's budget troubles, some in the district have suggested that any private infusion of money should be directed toward positions that more directly help students.

But Ms. Abrams added that, "given the scope of the work, which includes communicating via social media to more than 1,000 school sites, nearly a million students, and approximately 65,000 employees, plus my critical role in developing policies as we move forward, the district determined that the salary is within a fair range."

Countering Bad News?

While Ms. Abrams may be the first full-time social-media director for a K-12 district, she said positions in other large districts have similar responsibilities, with different titles and sometimes additional duties.

For example, a spokesman for the 1.1 million-student New York City school district said that it has a currently unfilled "online communications director" position, but that managing the district's social-media accounts is only a portion of the responsibilities of that job.

Others have suggested the LAUSD created the job in response to a spate of negative publicity for the 664,000-student district, which is still struggling with budget challenges in the wake of the recession. As of last month, the system's school board decided to push for a parcel tax and seek a one-year pay cut from the local teachers' union to help close a $390 million budget deficit.

And the district was shaken in early February by sex-abuse allegations originating on the south side of the city that eventually led to the transfer with pay and replacement of the entire teaching staff at Miramonte Elementary School. One teacher from the school was charged in the case.

Simone Wilson, a reporter and blogger for LA Weekly, sees Ms. Abrams' appointment as a public relations ploy orchestrated by Superintendent John E. Deasy.

The district now has just over 1,000 Facebook "likes" on its new profile page, and gets approximately 5,000 daily visitors, Ms. Abrams said, with the expectation that the following will greatly expand during the next six months.

"Since Abrams was picked up by LAUSD, the district's Twitter account has done a complete 180 from stale once-a-month announcements to a more lively feed of student accomplishments, links to pro-LAUSD news stories, Deasy [retweets], and [a lot] of exclamation points," Ms. Wilson wrote in a blog post published last month.

"The official LAUSD Facebook page and YouTube account are taking off as well," she wrote, "because nothing helps us move on from horrific sex-abuse allegations like feel-good photos of science projects and won decathlons."

Thomas Waldman, the district's director of communications and media relations, acknowledged the potential public relations benefit that could come from a district's hiring of a social-media director. He said he first proposed the position while interviewing for the director position with Superintendent Deasy.

However, Mr. Waldman, who assumed his post with the district last July, bristled at the notion that public relations was the sole motivation for hiring Ms. Abrams.

"People who say that this is exclusively another instrument of spin don't understand and haven't been listening to the reasons we have been stating as to why this is very important," Mr. Waldman said. "I think there are people who look at the communications department and see it only as a way of overaccentuating the positive, but that was never the case here."

Other Districts' Efforts

Those with a knowledge of the national educational technology landscape say they believe the Los Angeles district is doing something new with the position, if not necessarily the nature of the work.

Bailey Mitchell, the chairman of the board for the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN, and the chief technology and information officer for the 37,000-student Forsyth County, Ga., school district, said he wasn't immediately aware of another district dedicating a full-time staff person to social media.

But he said that his district and many others do the same level of social-media outreach through collective efforts by communications department staff members.

Others working in the communications offices of medium-size to large districts also said their district Facebook and Twitter accounts were typically a shared responsibility.

And Jennifer Caracciolo, the Forsyth County district's director of public information and communications, said that she has seen a growing number of similar positions created in the private sector during the past six months, but that budget constraints have likely limited the creation of such jobs by even the most forward-thinking school districts.

The Challenge of Change

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Why is it that in a typical classroom at any age level, the hardest-working person is typically the teacher? Industrial Age classrooms are often described as “teacher-centered,” with the teacher in the role of “sage on the stage.” There often seems to be more of a focus on what the teacher is doing than what the learner is doing. Large group instructional methods often lead to a passive role for the learner, whose job seems to be to “absorb” the content presented by the teacher.

Studies of time in conventional large-group classes have shown repeatedly that even in the best of classes, each learner answers only one or two questions in a period; a typical learner spends only 20% or less of the day actually studying the curriculum. In this world, mastery of content is valued over thinking critically about the content. Teachers create and maintain a culture of dependency by telling their students what they need to do to pass the test, to pass the course, to pass the grade, to move to the next level, and finally to graduate.

All the answers are prearranged, pre-formatted, and ready for absorption by those who are willing and able to play the game called school. These are the academically successful. They are the students who are comfortable operating in a culture of dependency—dependent on the teacher, the textbook, and the test. Students quickly learn that they don't have to do the work - that they will be told what they need to know. It’s scarcely surprising that many learners often react with boredom and disinterest.

Then, after having spent 13 or more years in the system, our students graduate from school, and the educational infrastructure that has held them up for all their years in education is suddenly removed. When this happens, many of the students fall flat on their faces as they enter the real world. And we can’t understand why, even though it is we, the educators, who were responsible for creating this culture of dependency in the first place.

We know that learning is the result of what learners do and make, not what we tell them. Telling isn’t teaching. Information, no matter how entertaining, is not instruction. Everything in the educational or training environment contributes to learning only if it causes learners to make or create something: a new understanding expressed in a dialog or a product. Only the learner can integrate knowledge into his or her understanding of the world and how it works.

This principle means that our challenge is to:

• place the learner in a highly interactive environment
• provide appropriate, interesting, and relevant learning tasks
• support learning and instruction with useful tools and resources
• offer sound coaching on both content and the learning processes themselves
• empower our students both to take responsibility for and to do the hard work of generating ideas, structuring their personal knowledge, and building real-world products.

In 21st Century learning environments, the hardest-working person must be the learner. The teacher's challenge in the 21st-century classroom is being able to move away from the role of "sage on the stage" to being the "guide on the side."

Are you up to the challenge?

Are our brains being boggled by Google? Study says humans now use the internet as our main 'memory' - instead of our heads

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

People remember where to look up information - not the info itself
People actively forget information if they think they can look it up later
Tests on how people remembered items they would normally Google

By ROB WAUGH
UPDATED: 23:11 GMT, 25 January 2012
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech

The Internet is becoming our main source of memory instead of our own brains, a study has concluded.

In the age of Google, our minds are adapting so that we are experts at knowing where to find information even though we don’t recall what it is.

The researchers found that when we want to know something we use the Internet as an ‘external memory’ just as computers use an external hard drive.

Nowadays we are so reliant on our smart phones and laptops that we go into ‘withdrawal when we can’t find out something immediately’.

And such is our dependence that having our Internet connection severed is growing ‘more and more like losing a friend’.

Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University in the U.S. carried out four tests to check their theory.

They involved giving test participants a trivia quiz and then seeing whether they recognised computer-related words more quickly than other words.

The other tests involved seeing if people remembered 40 pieces information they would typically later have normally looked up.

The third and fourth parts of the study involved checking how well people remember where to look up information on-line and whether or not they remembered the location more than the actual data.

The results showed that when people don’t believe they will need information for a later test, they do not recall it at the same rate as when they do believe they will need it.

In fact, some of those in the study ‘actively did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read’, the paper says.

The other results showed that when continuous Internet access is expected, people are better at remembering where they can find it than the details.

The study was lead by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor at the department of psychology at Columbia University.

In their paper, the researchers say that we now have access to the Internet 24 hours a day meaning we are 'seldom offline unless by choice' and it is 'hard to remember how we found information before the Internet became a ubiquitous presence in our lives'.

People actively do not make the effort to remember when they think they can look up information later,' says the study.

The paper reads: ‘The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger.

‘No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can ‘Google’ the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue.

‘When faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it.

‘The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.’

The study is not the first to touch on such anxieties and similar fears were addressed in ‘The Shallows: How the Internet is rewiring our brains’, a book released last year.

Its author, American technologist Nicholas Carr, talks of how we are unable to concentrate for long periods because of how using the web has affected us.

In research he commissioned for the book, test subjects said they were unable to read copies of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ because their minds had been altered.

Others were disturbed at how they could only think in ‘staccato’ bursts because they had become little more than ‘decoders of information'.

The Digital Classroom

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Tips for Planning Interdisciplinary Units in Middle School

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Published Online: April 17, 2012
By Sarah Henchey
www.edweek.org

During my fifth year of teaching, my principal asked me to move from the 8th grade to the 6th grade. I suddenly became more aware of the range of students within a middle school: Some students still had baby teeth and believed in Santa while, one floor away, others were dangerously close to driving and shaving.

I soon realized that 6th graders needed more repetition and connectedness in their learning. Fresh from elementary school, where they'd spent most of the day with one teacher, they were not used to a patchwork curriculum in which class changes signified the boundaries between subjects.

I'd learned in my undergraduate coursework about how team-teaching could ease this transition, supporting students' social and emotional needs via interdisciplinary instruction. I just hadn't seen it in practice—until my principal arranged for a group of us to visit a nearby middle school.

The neighboring teachers shared the ups and downs of the process they had gone through to establish their interdisciplinary framework. They had faced challenges—but they were forthright about the impact their units had had on student learning and engagement.

Afterward, our 6th grade teachers committed to trying out one interdisciplinary unit by the end of the year. We stumbled through the planning and execution but learned a lot through our mini-experiment. This year, we vowed to make a more sustained commitment to interdisciplinarity—and we've already seen payoffs in the form of more intensive student engagement and better retention of knowledge.

Here are a few lessons we've learned:

Spread enthusiasm among your colleagues. You can't do this on your own, so think carefully about the "pitch" you'll make to your colleagues. Show them some examples of how collaboration can make a difference: Perhaps you could visit another school, view a video of successful collaboration, or discuss articles like this one. You may want to do some advance thinking about topics that really lend themselves to interdisciplinary teaching.

Consider starting small. Organizing and executing an interdisciplinary unit can be a daunting task. There are many ways to experiment with this concept without committing to a large unit. Consider skills or experiences that correspond with your students' needs. For a few weeks, could your grade focus on analyzing informational texts or strategies for identifying unknown words in context? Is there a broad theme, such as "change" or "relationships," that could be highlighted over the next month?

Set broad time frames. We've found it helpful to focus on incorporating the interdisciplinary focus over a broad period of time, like a nine-week grading period. This allows teachers the chance to thoughtfully weave the shared goals into their content area without feeling restricted by time.

Avoid superficial connections. While interdisciplinary units aim to help students make connections across contents, we want those links to be as purposeful and meaningful as possible. We try to not "force" overlap or expect that all teachers will approach it in the same way. Depending on the unit, one teacher may incorporate the shared content in three class periods while another may spend the majority of his class time focused on the interdisciplinary content.

Communicate early and often. In most schools, teacher planning time is stretched far too thin—but frequent communication is vital to creating an effective interdisciplinary unit. It can be difficult to find common planning time, but we've successfully used tools like Google Docs to communicate and provide updates. This pre-meeting work has allowed for productive use of our valuable face-to-face meeting time.

Celebrate success with students. Our own excitement around a unit directly translates into student engagement and buy-in. We've found ways to celebrate the hard work teachers and students have invested in our learning. For example, after a two-month exploration of Greek and Roman cultural legacies, we held a Classical Antiquities Week. Culminating events included Olympic Games and an evening called, "Party at the Parthenon," where students shared their learning with their families.

Taking simple steps to making connections for students can go a long way in helping them to better understand and synthesize their learning. We're hopeful to continue adding to our integrated units each year, allowing for more connected learning for students. What experiences have you had with interdisciplinary units? What tips would you add to the list above?

Sarah Henchey teaches middle school language arts in the Orange County (N.C.) Public Schools. She's a National Board-certified teacher who is also credentialed in social studies. Henchey is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network.

The Fiction to Reality Timeline

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

click to view larger image

Do you remember "Star Trek" and all the great gadgets the crew members used in each episode? Or the fancy gizmos from "The Jetsons" or "Minority Report?" Ever wonder when, or if, we'll invent technology like what we've seen in the fictional universe? Satisfy your craving for fictional tech with The Fiction to Reality Timeline.

Some Libraries Still Have Got It Wrong…

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I went into my local library over the weekend and I was disappointed that they had got it wrong.

They had the self-service check out where you could scan your book and swipe your card, but they still had it wrong.

They had a nice performance area with several levels of seats, but there was no one there.

They had a wide selection of fiction works, media to take out, and magazines. They had an extensive array of reference materials and even some computers, but they still had it wrong.

They had staff who were experienced and knowledgable. They had a long and wide service desk, and this was part of the problem.

I walked into the library, rummaged around, found a book, and left—all without ever talking to the librarians. This was where it went wrong.

The librarians, with all of their accumulated wisdom, extensive experience, passion for books, and understanding of system, stayed behind their thick wide desk. They were the end point of the process if I had to withdraw a book or item that required a charge, or required some degree of intervention. Other than that I was on my own.

Why is it that the experts with the passion for books are the last point of call? Why are they the end of the process? Why are they only relevant if I need help or if I need to pay?

Surely in the modern library, the librarians are the starting point of the journey.

Wouldn’t it be great if they came out from behind their fortified issues desk and became relevant to me as I tried to find the object of my curiosity rather than as the cashier? I struggle too—in the days of self check out, where you can demagnetize the book yourself, issue it at a compact workstation where you can perform the cataloging functions—as to why they need a huge desk that keeps them separate from the customers?

Why are libraries, even ones built in the last few years, still designed with the librarians as the end point? Is the apparent role of the librarian merely to protect the book stock or to issue the book?

Walk into your own library. Does a librarian come and greet you and ask how they can help? Do they share the accumulated wisdom and scholarship they have? Do they exude the passion and love they have for reading? Or do you have my experience and never encounter a librarian at all?

And what will happen soon when ebooks are much, much more common?

This is Your Brain on Oregon Trail: Lessons Learned from a Childhood of Gaming

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Gaming isn’t the violence-inducing waste of time it’s sometimesmade out to be. Here are some important life lessons I learned from my childhood screen time.

APRIL 15, 2012 BY LOUIE HERR
www.digitaltrends.com

I have a long history with educational games. In the earliest of my last 29 years, I can recall hours pleasantly spent with MECC’s Number Munchers and The Learning Company’s Where in Time is Carmen San Diego, amongst others. But games don’t have to be specifically educational in order to teach. Many are imparting valuable learning at the same time they’re entertaining. Here are a few surprising lessons that video games have taught me.

Typing

In my day, we didn’t have fancy headset mics with which to hurl curses and racial epithets at each other. I taunted using the keyboard, like a man. But “LeetNinjaGangsta” wasn’t going to wait for the end of my turn before gibbing me with his railgun, so I had to type quickly. Hence, epic-fast typing skills, especially in profanity-laced descriptions of others’ Quake 2 skills — highly-useful, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Computer literacy

After I was shown the locations of “gorilla” and “snake” within the recesses of the family computer’s file system, I learned my first real lesson about computers: .exe and .bat files were games, sometimes. Soon after, I began learning my second lesson: how to locate those files using the command prompt and DOS Shell. Just seven years old, I had already started on the path of nerdery that finds me writing for Digital Trends today.

Web literacy

Blizzard’s original Diablo provided my friends and I our first opportunity to play online. It also provided the first opportunity to cheat while doing so. During this time, our Web skills were honed by searches through atrocious Geocities and Angelfire pages for the newest hacks. Those early days spent weathering awful fonts and animated gifs make today’s web — yes, even MySpace — infinitely more tolerable, and instilled an appreciation of quality Web design that has persisted to this day.

Economics

The open-ended environment of EVE Online boasts an incredibly deep player-run economy. Some of the game’s most powerful players are its super-industrialists: characters with in-game economic interests of hundreds of billions of ISK (the in game currency) — equivalent to thousands of real-world dollars. With its thrilling space combat and numerous opportunities to spend time in spreadsheets, it’s easy to see why EVE remains a popular choice MMO choice amongst uber-nerds.

If America attacked education with the same fervor with which we do the latest Facebook game, we’d be the most educated nation in the world. Maybe someday.

Physical education

While physical fitness is important to a healthy life, in many cases it doesn’t directly improve job performance. My keyboard doesn’t care how fit I am. On the other hand, video games train muscle groups and reflexes that translate directly over to your desk job. Professional Starcraft players move with lightning speed, executing more than 300 actions per minute. That fervent pace corresponds to incredible deftness with mouse and keyboard. The result: the most talented data-entry technicians of our generation are being lost to a world of intense competition and cheering crowds. It’s tragic.

Sports education

I’m a big football fan, but my knowledge of the game is fairly limited. I pick up a bit each year, but I’ll always be surpassed by two groups of people: those who played football at some level, and those who play EA’s Madden games. A few virtual seasons coaching and managing a team can impart a surprisingly deep understanding of the sport. They won’t improve your marketability, but video games can increase your enjoyment of your favorite sports. That’s still pretty good.

Leadership

CounterStrike and World of Warcraft can provide excellent studies in leadership and teamwork, especially when played at their highest levels. Far more often, though, they demonstrate the effects when those qualities are lacking: see “No, idiot, we’re on your team, quit flash-banging us,” and the humorous, if fictional, “Leeroy Jenkins,” respectively.

History

Sid Meier’s Pirates has taught me far more about the Spanish Main than I would have ever learned elsewhere, all while offering a gaming experience with addictiveness on par with the most serious street drugs. The simulation genre has long been a friend of educational gaming. Consider the ubiquitous Oregon Trail: acquainting children with the dangers of fording the river for more than 35 years.

Criminal justice

A week-long seventh-grade mock trial taught me one thing, memorably: Objecting to things is the most fun one can have in the court room. Phoenix Wright taught me the same thing in the first fifteen minutes of gameplay. Winner: video games.

Engineering

Minecraft’s sandbox mode provides a set of virtual building blocks so robust that actual working computers have been constructed within the game world. The dedication of the player community indicates that the sophistication of these projects will only increase. It can’t be too long before you’ll be able to play a game on a virtual computer in a computer game on a computer. Did I just blow your mind?

Ethics

The Mass Effect games (and other Bioware properties) are well known for their morality-based dialogue system, where good and bad choices carry over from game to game. This culminates in the climax of the franchise’s third installment, where your character’s ethical history decides the fate of you, your crew, and the galaxy.

But, seriously: You’re learning

Writing this article was fun, but humor can obscure the real-life benefits of gaming. For example: Experience with the variety of game designs begets a facility with interfaces that can be helpful when learning new systems. All games are computer programs, after all, and using any computer program improves our ability to use others in the future. Each system trains us in its own way. Over time, we become more receptive to that training — whether it’s from the newest first-person shooter or the latest edition of Pro Tools.

The massive casual and mobile markets mean that there remains huge untapped potential for educational gaming. If we’re lucky, a company like Zynga will enter the edutainment space. If America attacked education with the same fervor with which we do the latest Facebook game, we’d be the most educated nation in the world. Maybe someday.

Flipped Learning: A Response to Five Common Criticisms

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By Alan November and Brian Mull
March 26th, 2012
www.eschoolnews.com

Over the past two years, the Flipped Learning method has created quite a stir. Some argue that this teaching method will completely transform education, while others say it is simply an opportunity for boring lectures to be viewed in new locations.

While the debate goes on, the concept of Flipped Learning is not entirely new. Dr. Eric Mazur of Harvard University has been researching this type of learning since the early ’90s, and other educators have been applying pieces of the Flipped Learning method for even longer.

It’s our opinion that one of the reasons this debate exists is because there is no true definition of what Flipped Learning is. The method is often simplified to videos being watched at home and homework being done at school. If this is the definition, then we should all be skeptical. Instead, we should look closer at Dr. Mazur’s work. The components he includes in his implementation make for a thoughtful, rigorous experience.

Dr. Mazur has a video describing his integrated Flipped Learning and Peer Instruction methods, but the major points are:

Students prepare for class by watching video, listening to podcasts, reading articles, or contemplating questions that access their prior knowledge.
After accessing this content, students are asked to reflect upon what they have learned and organize questions and areas of confusion.
Students then log in to a Facebook-like social tool, where they post their questions.
The instructor sorts through these questions prior to class, organizes them, and develops class material and scenarios that address the various areas of confusion. The instructor does not prepare to teach material that the class already understands.
In class, the instructor uses a Socratic method of teaching, where questions and problems are posed and students work together to answer the questions or solve the problems. The role of the instructor is to listen to conversations and engage with individuals and groups as needed.

With the above framework in mind, we tapped Twitter to learn what educators say are the downsides to implementing the Flipped Learning method, and we have provided our opinions that address the five major criticisms.

Implementing the Flipped Learning method makes me, as the teacher, much less important.

This could not be further from the truth! In a Flipped Learning environment, the teachers are more important than ever.

If they have provided students with an array of rich resources and have set up opportunities for students to think deeply and question what they have learned at home before coming to class, these teachers are going to see that there are a wide array of new questions that arise that might never have come up during a standard class period. In these cases, teachers are really going to need to know their stuff, and they are going to need to be able to individualize on the fly—quite possibly five, 10, or even 20 times in a class period.

Also, teachers are also going to need to figure out the right questions to ask when students come to class. These questions should have students address their misconceptions about and apply their knowledge concerning what they have learned on their own. During a conversation with Dr. Mazur, he shared that this is the most difficult, but also the most crucial, part.

In addition to providing an avenue for students to access their learning material at home, technology will play a crucial role for the teacher in the coming years. Smart systems are currently being designed that are going to help teachers learn more about their classes than ever before. For example, Dr. Mazur’s Learning Catalytics software allows students to engage with application problems during class. Students respond to these problems using their individual laptops, smart phones, and tablets. The system then keeps track of all responses and intelligently points students to other classmates with whom they can debate their responses. The system records all of the responses over the entire span of the course, allowing a teacher to visualize the learning and the struggles of all students.

It’s our opinion that one of the reasons this debate exists is because there is no true definition of what Flipped Learning is.

Kids do not want to sit at home watching boring video lectures on the web. At least in the classroom, they get some kind of interaction with me and with their peers. This is just a lot of excitement over bad pedagogy.

We completely agree that simply watching a boring lecture video will not get kids excited about this process. However, is the fact that there are bad examples of lecture videos a problem with the model—or with the implementation of the model?

Certainly, there are opportunities to improve these resources in ways that ramp up interaction and pedagogy. To begin, do not replace an hour-long classroom lecture with an hour-long video. Audio and video should be used in short, five- to 10-minute segments, and there should be opportunities for students to interact with the information in these videos in a variety of ways. Some teachers are experimenting with unique ways of doing this. For example, by including links within YouTube videos, Jac De Haan demonstrates how a teacher can basically quiz students and provide them with immediate feedback and explanation within the same video. Ramsey Musallam also has a method he uses that combines video clips with Google Forms to gather feedback from his students. Both of these methods can be used as part of a cycle of inquiry.

Also, give students a voice in this process. Provide them with several videos made by different teachers who present with different styles. Ask students to evaluate what they like and what they do not like. Have students produce video that teaches some of the content being taught in class. Look at what they do that excites or turns off their classmates. Over time, you will learn what has the biggest impact, and your students will appreciate having the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Make sure you provide more than just video. You are going to have students who want to watch video, but you are also going to have students who would rather look at a concept map or read a bit of text. Mix it up and keep your students guessing. You do not have to have all of this material from the start; you can build your library over time.

We all know how students like to interact with one another as well. Challenge students to create Skype study groups that meet on occasion to discuss their thinking on topics about which they are learning. Have them reflect on how these discussions are changing their thinking.

Finally, keep your eye out for the amazing resources that we are going to gain access to over time. For example, there is initial work being organized by Chris Anderson who runs the famous TED conference and website to create educational resources tapping some of the best minds in the world.

Most of my kids do not even have internet access at home. There’s no way they can watch all of this video.

While this statement is true in many places, there are a variety of options in how these resources can be shared with students.

First, schools should provide opportunities outside of the standard school day for when the school library is open, allowing students to use school computers. In addition, there should be a loaner program in place where devices can be checked out for an evening’s use. This loaner program might include smaller, less expensive devices such as iPod Touches and various types of tablets. And while on the topic of smaller devices, while many students do not have computers with internet connections at home, we do find that instead, many have other digital devices that connect to the internet using cell towers.

Taking these ideas a bit further, audio and video material can be burned to DVDs so they can be accessed on students’ home DVD players. The price of these players have come down so much that they are in almost any home. Furthermore, schools might work with local libraries and community centers to make access to this material very easy for students. We can agree that it will be quite important for teachers and school leaders to understand their communities and think creatively about ways to create equitable environments for learning.

In a Flipped Learning environment, the teachers are more important than ever.

Where is the accountability? How do I even know if kids are watching the videos?

There have always been concerns about students not completing the work they need to complete at home. Flipped Learning will not be the magic potion that fixes this issue. However, if we look again at Dr. Mazur’s method, he does have accountability built into the process. He requires every student to submit reflections, questions, and concerns before each class period. Teachers should be posting thought-provoking questions that guide students as they explore the at-home material. The work at home should not be without some sort of focus. Additionally, in class, there should be a tremendous amount of interactivity among students as the teacher circulates around the room. If the teacher sees there is a student not taking part in the conversation, this can be easily addressed.

To continue, we would guess that a large majority of students who do not do their work at home are not doing it because they are either bored and feel like the work is there simply to keep them busy, or they are struggling and do not understand the work. So to address accountability, teachers also must think through these issues.

If students are bored, they need to be presented with resources to explore at home that go deeper into the topics the class is learning. They need to be given more advanced issues that require them to make connections with others outside of the school building and around the world. The teacher, who we already said will be more important than ever, is going to need to individualize work for these students. The teacher also should provide more opportunities for these students to create additional resources for the rest of the class to use that might further assist those who are struggling. The key to motivating students who are bored is to honor the knowledge they have, challenge them to dig deeper, and not hold back their potential. If you take a look at Khan Academy, you will see that students can chart their own path through curriculum and receive instant feedback from problems they tackle on the site. This real-time, self-directed journey through curriculum certainly can help some students with boredom and frustration.

Students who are struggling require a different approach, and as Greg Green, principal of Clintondale High School, told us, “[The Flipped Learning method] eliminates the learning obstacles that all students face when they are practicing without an expert.” Struggling students need to be offered safe places where they can ask questions and share their confusion anonymously and without ridicule from peers. This type of environment can be set up within different social response tools, like Edmodo, Schoology, or Nimbus (powered by Schoolwires). They also need more time and individual attention to learn material. With the resources created for the Flipped Learning method, students can watch or listen over and over again while pausing the content, working a bit, and then playing more. Then, as students do their “homework” at school, teachers can immediately address problems as they are walking around and listening to conversations. Teachers know the students who are struggling, and they can give these students the attention they need. Through this process, as students see success, their confidence and work ethic usually skyrockets.

As a teacher, I don’t have the time or the expertise to produce all of the videos required to teach like this.

Schools are going to need to be very smart about how they address this concern. In our opinion, not all teachers should be making these videos for their classes. School leaders need to find those who have the highest abilities in combining the subject knowledge they have with their ability to present this knowledge in the most creative, engaging ways—even if these teachers are not in their own schools.

If students are bored, they need to be presented with resources to explore at home that go deeper into the topics the class is learning.

Two chemistry teachers who are early pioneers in using the Flipped Learning method, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, have already figured this out. They quickly learned that they each have different strengths that motivate individual students in unique ways, so they teach using a team approach. Even though one teaches AP chemistry and the other teaches regular chemistry, they alternate who produces the content for each class. They understand that their students appreciate the different teaching styles. At Clintondale, Greg Green agrees as well. In a recent podcast, he told us that he does not care where the videos come from. Whether from his school, from another state, or even somewhere on the other side of the globe, his goal is to have the best teachers he can find teaching his students every single day.

The other key point to remember is that an entire school should not jump into teaching this way with two feet. Begin by finding a core group of teachers who might be interested in experimenting with this method. Charge them with trying a Flipped Learning lesson once or twice a week. As a leader, meet with these teachers regularly so that you can learn about the successes and issues that arise. Over time, these teachers will be starting a library of content that they will be able to use as a base for years to come. With success, more teachers might become interested. They should be encouraged and given the professional development they need at that time to get started. They also should be partnered with the pioneering teachers, who can serve as mentors.

Creating tutorial videos is certainly not for every teacher, but there are other components that can involve every teacher. Remember that the really important component of this process is to develop high-level, engaging questions that serve to deepen thinking and address misconceptions. These other teachers can help in the development of such questions. They can then use these questions in their classes, whether they are “flipping” or not. Also, they can be taught how to scour the web to find high-quality resources that have already been produced and can become resources for all teachers. Through this team approach, all teachers in the community can be involved in ways with which they are comfortable. (By the way, students also can be tapped to locate high-quality resources from around the world.)

Conclusion: Make thinking ‘visible’

One of the most important concepts in teaching is creating opportunities to make thinking visible. When teachers can really see the thinking of their students, they can provide these students with the support and encouragement they need to be successful. We believe that by using the thoughtful approach to the Flipped Learning method described at the beginning of this article, teachers have an amazing opportunity to gain insights into where students are struggling.

To hear more about how the Flipped Learning method has impacted students, teachers, and entire schools, we encourage you to listen to Dr. Mazur’s BLC11 keynote, as well as our podcasts with Greg Green, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, and Bob Goodman. We are sure you will enjoy them.

In addition, we invite you to attend the 2012 Building Learning Communities conference being held in Boston during the week of July 15th. Here, you will be able to take part in sessions and discussions with Aaron Sams, Jonathan Bergmann, Greg Green, and Eric Mazur. You’ll also be able to attend Chris Anderson’s keynote. During this keynote, Chris will be showcasing the new TED-generated content to support student learning. Learn more and register at http://www.blcconference.com. Get $50 off when you register by entering this discount code: eSchoolMedia12.

Alan November is the Founder and Brian Mull is the Director of Innovation at November Learning. They invite your questions through their website at http://www.novemberlearning.com.

13-Year-Old West Hartford Student Tells Metropolitan: 'Your Map Is Wrong'

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

May 02, 2012|By AMANDA FALCONE
afalcone@courant.com
The Hartford Courant

WEST HARTFORD—Every so often, a visitor at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City questions the accuracy of an exhibit, but Helen Evans, one of the museum's curators, says not all of them are right.

Benjamin Lerman Coady, however, was.

Benjamin, 13, of West Hartford, is a seventh-grader at Renbrook School. Fascinated by history, he reads ahead in his textbooks. His mother sees his passion for the past and tries to provide an environment where Benjamin feels free to explore his interests.

That's how mother and son ended up at The Metropolitan Museum of Art last summer.

"It's more a parent seeing the world through a child's eyes," said Benjamin's mother, Joanne Lerman.

Benjamin wasn't quite sure what to expect at the art museum. He and his mother had visited the American Museum of Natural History a few times, but the Metropolitan was a new experience. Benjamin said he thought he'd see "just art on a wall."

He said he quickly learned that The Metropolitan is about more than just paintings — it's also about history.

While touring the museum, Benjamin and his mother stopped to look at the permanent exhibit about the Byzantine Empire — a part of history Benjamin had just studied in school.

A map of the empire in the 6th century was on display, and Benjamin said he immediately began to check the dates. The map was supposed to show when the empire was at its largest, but Spain and part of Africa were missing, he said.

"If you have a question, always ask it," he said. "Always take chances."

Benjamin told a museum docent about his observation, who instructed him to fill out a form at the front desk.

"The front desk didn't believe me," he said, explaining that he never expected to hear back from the museum. "I'm only a kid."

In September, he received a letter from the museum's senior vice president for external affairs. It said that his comments were being forwarded to the museum's medieval art department for further review.

A few months later — in January, Evans, the museum's Mary and Michael Jaharis curator for Byzantine art, sent Benjamin an email: "You are, of course, correct about the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian," she wrote.

She invited Benjamin back to the museum to meet with her.

Benjamin said he was surprised that the museum readily admitted making a mistake, and he said the process taught him a valuable lesson.

"If you have a question, always ask it," he said. "Always take chances."

As for the error, Evans said this week that the museum is still working to fix it.

The error was probably made when the map was reprinted a few years ago, and the museum is trying to decide whether it should now display more than one map reflecting the empire's history, she said. It takes a while to create a new map because it involves working with a mapmaker, Evans explained.

Benjamin met Evans at the museum in February, bringing her a gift — notepads from Renbrook School.

In return, Evans showed him around the museum, gave him a sneak preview of a new exhibit and discussed the Byzantine Empire. She also asked him to draw his own version of what the map at the museum should look like — a task he is still working on.

New IBM App Presents Nearly 1,000 Years of Math History

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By Alexandra Chang
Author April 6, 2012 | 6:30 am
www.wired.com/gadgetlab

Minds of Modern Mathematics interactive timeline. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Math nerds and historians, it’s time to get excited. Minds of Modern Mathematics, a new iPad app released Thursday by IBM, presents an interactive timeline of the history of mathematics and its impact on society from 1000 to 1960.

The app is based on an original, 50-foot-long “Men of Modern Mathematics” installation created in 1964 by Charles and Ray Eames. Minds of Modern Mathematics users can view a digitized version of the original infographic as well as browse through an interactive timeline with more than 500 biographies, math milestones and images of relevant artifacts.

IBM hopes that classes and students will use the app, provoking more people to pursue math, science or technology-related educations and jobs.

“Careers of the future will rely heavily on creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration — all themes that were core to the ‘Minds of Modern Mathematics’ movement and remain equally relevant today,” Chid Apte, IBM Director of analytics Research and Mathematical Sciences said in a press release. “What better way than a mobile app to reintroduce this timeless classic to inspire a new generation of learners?”

Starting from the first French pope to celebrated mathematician John von Neumann, users can see every major math-related event or person in a visually impressive layout. You can tap on an entry to read more about it, and view how math events and math superstars relate in time to other historical events, such as the First Crusade that seizes Jerusalem and the signing of The Declaration of Independence.

And in case you (like me) haven’t taken math since high school, the app also includes an “IBM Mathematics Peep Show” of nine 2-minute animated clips that will help you brush up on mathematical concepts like topology and exponents.

The Minds of Modern Mathematics app is available for free on the App Store. But if the iPad version isn’t enough, you can always visit the large-scale timeline on display at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, NY and The Museum of Science in Boston, MA.

Teen Girl Petitions Seventeen Magazine to Stop Airbrushing Models

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By Sarah B. Weir
Shine from Yahoo! Canada
Wed, 2 May, 2012 12:05 PM EDT

Julia Bluhm, 14, is an eighth grader from rural Waterville, Maine. She loves ballet and attends class six days a week. She is also gaining national attention as an activist who is challenging the media to take responsibility for the way it warps girls' self-esteem.

"I've always noticed how a lot of the images in magazines look photo-shopped," Bluhm tells Yahoo! Shine. She wants all girls to feel comfortable in their own skin. "Girls shouldn't compare themselves to pictures in magazines," she says. "Because they are fake."

Eleven days ago, she launched a petition to ask one of her favorite magazines, Seventeen, to feature one un-retouched photo shoot a month. "They have already done a lot to help girls improve their body image. Their Body Peace feature is great. I thought that they could take it one step further with an unaltered photo spread." This morning, she is leading a protest outside of Seventeen's offices in Manhattan which will include a mock fashion shoot."I'm a little nervous. But excited."

Bluhm started blogging about girls and self-esteem a year ago when she joined SPARK, a non-profit organization for 13 to 22 year-olds that calls itself a "girl-fueled activist movement to demand an end to the sexualization of women and girls in media." One of SPARKS' recent accomplishments was to get a meeting to with top LEGO executives to discuss, among other issues, the LEGO Friends line of toys which they say are demeaning to girls. However, the petition is, as Bluhm puts it, "my first big action."

Her petition on change.org reads:

"To girls today, the word 'pretty' means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It's because the media tells us that 'pretty' girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.

Here's what lots of girls don't know. Those 'pretty women' that we see in magazines are fake. They're often photo-shopped, airbrushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life….I've been fighting to stop magazines, toy companies, and other big businesses from creating products, photo spreads and ads that hurt girls and break our self-esteem….I've learned that we have the power to fight back."

The American Medical Association (AMA) backs up Bluhm's assertions. In June 2011, they issued a press release stating, "A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems." Board member Barbara L. McAneny, MD, added, "We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software."

So far, in the United States, only Glamour magazine has responded to the AMA's call to action. In its March 2012 issue, the popular women's magazine told readers, "And while our policy has always been not to alter a woman's body shape, we'll also be asking photographers we hire not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet (alas, it happens)."

Some stars are also refusing to "go under the brush." Notably, Jessica Simpson appeared without makeup or retouching for a Marie Claire photo shoot in 2010 and more recently, actress Cate Blanchett revealed her natural 42-year-old face for the online magazine morentelligentlife.com.

As of today, May 2, Bluhm's petition has nearly 24 thousand signatures. She is surprised how quickly it's taken off. "I didn't think it would get this big," she laughs. Even though she hasn't quite reached her goal of 25 thousand signatures, editors are already listening. Bluhm says Anne Shoket, the magazine's Editor-in-Chief, has reached out and asked to see the petition. Fittingly, the current cover features Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss Everdeen, the ultimate girl-power heroine, in the box office smash "The Hunger Games."

Meanwhile, the eighth grader from Maine plans to enjoy her first trip to New York City. "I want to do some sight seeing with my mom who is here with me," she says. "Maybe visit the Empire State Building."

Text Messaging in Class May Affect College Students' Learning

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2012)
www.sciencedaily.com

College students who frequently text message during class have difficulty staying attentive to classroom lectures and consequently risk having poor learning outcomes, finds a new study accepted for publication in the National Communication Association's journal Communication Education.

"We know from our past research that college students who are regular text users habitually engage in text messaging during class lectures," said the study's principal author, Fang-Yi Flora Wei, Ph.D., assistant professor of broadcast communications at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. "Now we see that in-class texting partially interferes with a student's ability to pay attention, which prior studies show is necessary for effective cognitive learning."

In the new study, University of Pittsburgh-Bradford students who were enrolled in selected undergraduate general education classes completed an anonymous questionnaire at the end of the semester. The questionnaire asked about the class that they attended immediately before their general education class. Students reported how many text messages they sent or received during the class, on average.

Participants also rated themselves on specific learning variables regarding their class. These variables included self-regulation, which Wei defined as "self-control in directing one's learning process"; sustained attention; and outcomes of cognitive learning -- both self-reported grades and the perceived amount learned.

Because it is difficult to demonstrate that texting alone can have a direct impact on students' cognitive learning, Wei said, she and her co-investigators used path model analysis to describe the relationships between texting, as a "mediator" or intervening variable, and cognitive learning.

... the real concern is not whether students can learn under a multitasking condition, but how well they can learn if they cannot sustain their full attention on classroom instruction.

Among 190 completed questionnaires from students who attended a lecture-based class lasting 50 or 75 minutes, the average number of text messages students viewed in class was 2.6, Wei's team reported. Students sent, on average, 2.4 texts while in class. The researchers found no difference between the two class lengths in the extent of texting or students' sustained attention to classroom learning.

They did find a direct positive relationship between self-regulation and sustained attention, with students who possessed a high level of self-regulation being more likely to keep their attention focused on classroom learning. In turn, sustained attention to classroom education was positively related to improved cognitive learning, in terms of better grades and especially the perceived amount of learning, the authors reported.

These highly self-regulated students were less likely to text message in class than students with lower levels of self-regulation, Wei said.

On the other hand, students who frequently texted during class were less likely to sustain attention to their instructor. The results suggest that texting diverts students' focus from the main learning task, the authors write in their article.

"College students may believe that they are capable of performing multitasking behaviors during their classroom learning, such as listening to the lecture and texting simultaneously," Wei said. "But the real concern is not whether students can learn under a multitasking condition, but how well they can learn if they cannot sustain their full attention on classroom instruction."

Students should consider limiting their texting during class, Wei suggests. She said she does not think that university bans on texting during class would be as effective as instructors using interactive instructional techniques or other strategies to keep students' attention.

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford does not have a policy banning mobile phones during class, according to the authors.

The article, "Rethinking College Students' Self-Regulation and Sustained Attention: Does Text Messaging During Class Influence Cognitive Learning," will appear in the July 2012 print issue of the Communication Education. Co-authors are Y. Ken Wang, Ph.D., assistant professor of management and education, and Michael Klausner, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, both at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.