Author: abendelow
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The technology of teaching, pt. 1
At the base of this job is the body. No, not the student body (though if it were not for a group of needful students, there would be no teachers.) I am focusing this post on the teacher’s physical body, his/her main machine, the vehicle through which he does anything, including teaches.If a teacher’s health…
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A Hybrid High School grows in San Francisco
Beginning less than a month ago, the San Francisco Flex Academy, a charter school with a corporate curricular engine, comes close to my model of a new school, and it doesn’t meet in a school building. This high school takes place in an old ballroom under chandeliers (albeit a ballroom with robust wifi, fast laptops,…
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How can we get Grandpa on the team?
For a discussion question in my current course, EDT6030 (Using Technology to build Learning Communities): Rembrandt’s “Old man in armchair” According to Martin-Kniep (2008), the professional learning community model holds key assumptions which include: • Knowledge is socially constructed • Allows for individual understanding and the exploration of new ideas, deepens expertise and helps…
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Google Apps for Education: tough lessons for early adapters
All is not well in the land of GAFE (Google Apps for Education). Like their search engine, their application software for working communities seems instantaneous, reactive to present demands rather than built to anticipate user’s problems and so precludes them (like a good Apple design). You see, GAFE is way buggy. Compatibility problems with district…
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Los Angeles' "value-added" teacher evals are easy to use. Maybe too easy.
It’s there as plain as a Consumer’s Report recommendation to parents. Which teachers’ classrooms should we try to get our kid into? Which should we avoid? Well, moms and dads, just check the chart. In a user-friendly view, every teacher’s effectiveness (as measured by the amount of student growth in his/her classroom, as measurable by…
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The extermination of quality teachers continues in Chicago Public Schools
This summer, I blogged my alarm at what the Chicago Public Schools was doing to go after experienced, highly-qualified teachers. In an effort to wipe their relatively high salaries off the books, the administration ghetto-ized and then exterminated them in a way that borrowed from the notorious NKVD. Now from the Chicago Reader comes Ben…
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Trying, and failing, at intentional online communities
One of my intents when I began blogging.was to create an online learning community or PLN (personal learning network). That hasn’t worked out yet, nor have other non-scholastic attempts I’ve made at intentional online communites. I’m hopeful the course I’ll be taking this fall at CUChicago, EDT 6030, Using Technology to Create Learning Communities, will…
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An exciting educational experiment is happening next door!
Exciting educational experimentation is happening at Chicago Public Schools this year: it’s blended learning on a district-wide basis! According to the Tribune article, over 4,000 students have already done “credit recovery” via online learning modules. As of this year every high school is offering some degree of online learning. That’s some dramatic change!The savings is…
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The Technology of Resorting/Vacationing, part 1
Modern civilized man (for space’s sake, I will refer in this post to mankind, homo sapiens sapiens, as male), once he is materially beyond a base level of surviving, has consistently chosen to leave his regular habitation and “vacate” himself for regular periods of time at “resorts.” The ancient Romans had their villas, the British…
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Robots in the Kindergarten? They're already there!
…in places like Korea, according to this article in e-School News. And they’re good for teaching closed-system knowledge–like foreign language and math. They’re not good for much else… yet.But they are tell us what teachers are still good for: “organic,” or non-programmed responses to the learner. A factory worker’s job, easily roboticized, is not a…
The Wikiness 