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More on the Endrew F. vs Douglas County being heard by the Supreme Court
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“In a case that could affect the education of 6.7 million children with disabilities, the Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled to decide whether it should require public schools to do more under a federal law that calls for them to provide a free education that addresses the children’s needs.”
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“Students frequently ask: can you help me find a source that’s not biased? When they ask that question we know what they mean, what it shows us the students need to learn is that 1) there are degrees of bias and 2) everyone has bias, so 3) there is no such thing as unbiased. Instead, we need to teach students to recognize what a text creator’s bias is and how or whether that bias negates the usefulness of that source for the student’s purpose.”
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“A new form of information manipulation is unfolding in front of our eyes. It is political. It is global. And it is populist in nature. The news media is being played like a fiddle, while decentralized networks of people are leveraging the ever-evolving networked tools around them to hack the attention economy.” —dana boyd 2017
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“Students who struggle with reading often lack the thinking skills, such as memory, planning, and the ability to shift focus when necessary, that seem natural to skilled readers. For many teachers, the process of reading is so familiar that they often have difficulty explaining it to students. Much like riding a bicycle, we know we can do it, but explaining how it happens is another story entirely!”
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From Katie Martin “It’s critical that we rethink why, what, and how we learn in schools for students to thrive in the information economy of today and tomorrow, not yesterday.”
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Excellent new resource for Interrupting Islamophobia: Harvard Education Publishing Group – Blog https://t.co/CEMYhWsHLE
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A Padlet board of micro-credentials from Jill Snell
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A collection of content and resources on digital badges curated across the web for hastac.org.
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This extraordinary article by the editor of the Sri Lankan Sunday Leader was published three days after he was shot dead in Colombo
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From The Economist – “Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition.”
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A real example of a news story on the measles outbreak due to the false news reports that caused parents to stop getting their children the MMR vaccines.
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John Oliver discuss the importance of news media and journalism and how their roles are impacted due to social media.
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Wonder about this in the context of education.
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Formative assessment is the lived, daily embodiment of a teacher’s desire to refine practice based on a keener understanding of current levels of student performance, undergirded by the teacher’s knowledge of possible paths of student development within the discipline and of pedagogies that support such development.
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Great resources on the topic of formative assessment
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Great overview of how to document learning with mobile technology from Reshan Richards
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The New Google SITES: Recommended Tutorials for Teachers https://t.co/NXlOzDERZk #yorkuict #addedict
Author: Patrick Larkin
I have been in school leadership for over 25 years. I feel blessed to be an educator. I have had the good fortune of working as an English teacher, an Assistant Principal, a Principal, and an Assistant Superintendent in three districts in MA. I am also proud to be an IDEAS Instructor working with educators across the state and region who are part of schools and communities that promote anti-bias, anti-racist education.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (January 8, 2017)
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The ratio of record highs to record lows was 5.7-to-1 in 2016. That’s the biggest differential in at least 95 years https://t.co/aMcopCqw4i
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From Boston Review: While economic inequality has played a significant role in the events of 2016, the dismissal of race as mere “identity politics” obscures the ongoing struggles of America’s black, Muslim, undocumented, and minority communities. With this in mind, we present you with a selection of BR essays from 2016 that speak to their struggles.
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From Harvard Business Review – “Fake news and cyberattacks are triggers, not causes. The issues that confront us are structural.”
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From Edutopia – “A number of education and technology organizations, such as the Asia Society and Digital Promise, are now diving in to help teachers like Lee connect their students to students around the world. “
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Good Overview of new resources to help support computer science education in the elementary classroom
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (January 1, 2017)
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Cambridge Analytica and microtargeting of “low-information voters” https://t.co/ZEy5ibwHip
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From Larry Ferlazzo – “We can think of far worse things a student might say to us, and John’s comment demonstrates our perspective on using video with English-Language Learners (and, for that matter, with all students) — research and our experience show that it can be a very effective learning tool, but it has to be used as an active one.”
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Fake and false news is a big problem. Here are some tips to navigate the ways fake news stories seek to fool you… https://t.co/XoZ0RepieD
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Good video from John Spencer
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From Dave Truss – “Ambiguity can be a necessary part of authentic and transformative learning experiences, but if it doesn’t lead to learning, it can lead to apathy, frustration, and complacency. ‘Learn to live with ambiguity’, but do not live in it.”
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From Lolly Daskal – “Empathy is a leadership competency – like no other skill- that can make a big difference when it comes to leadership.”
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From TED – With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed at an incredible rate by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. How do we choose which news to consume? Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and sometimes non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart.
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Good thoughts for ensuring a growth mindset heading into the new year.
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via Hravard Biz – “In most organizations, culture and strategy tend to be discussed in separate conversations. Executives know that culture is important and that a negative culture can hurt company performance, but they often don’t know what to do about it.” “When most companies try to improve their culture, they focus on the negative aspects, and try to fix them. This sounds reasonable, but what we’ve learned is that the opposite approach is much more successful. You should identify a few positive attributes within your culture that are connected directly to your identity and the specific capabilities that are driving success in your business, double down on them and find ways to accelerate and extend them throughout the organization”
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Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop critical thinking skills by exploring topics in history, literature, and culture through primary sources. Drawing online materials from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States, the sets use letters, photographs, posters, oral histories, video clips, sheet music, and more. Each set includes a topic overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA’s Education Advisory Committee.
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Digital tool to spot the origin of fake news on Twitter
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From Stony Brook University
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Good Resource from Stanford on reading like a historian.
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From te Hechinger Report – “The overwhelming majority of young people are unable to sift through online information and separate fact, fiction and opinion, according to a new study from Stanford University.”
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NLP helps young people gain the tools to discern credible news and become lifelong learners.
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From NPR
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Good resources from Larry Ferlaazzo
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 25, 2017)
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However, instead of making the trek over to Finland there is somewhere much closer and within the U.S. we can visit. Educators, researchers and leaders could make a pilgrimage to the great state of Massachusetts, because they ranked as highly as Finland in the current PISA results. More than 70 countries take part in PISA, and Massachusetts ranks among the top.
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U.S. we can visit. Educators, researchers and leaders could make a pilgrimage to the great state of Massachusetts, because they ranked as highly as Finland in the current PISA results. More than 70 countries take part in PISA, and Massachusetts ranks among the top.
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Many people are tempted to download videos from YouTube to show them in classrooms where YouTube is blocked. According to YouTube’s terms of use, you’re not supposed to download unless you see a download link, in order to protect video creators’ rights, so you may not want to take this route. The good news is that YouTube now offers Creative Commons-licensed videos, which are automatically safe to use. You can even modify or edit them into your own videos using the YouTube Video Editor. Enter specific keywords into YouTube’s main search bar as you normally would (“biology lectures,” for instance), then click on the “Filter & Explore” tab to the far left. In the middle of the drop-down list are the words “creative commons.” Click here and all the videos that appear under your search term will be Creative-Commons licensed. If the content you’re interested in doesn’t come with a Creative Commons tag, it helps to know that the fair use clause in the Copyright Law of the United States allows the use of works without permission for teaching. Still, the user must adhere to some key regulations that can be vague and confusing.
Three Great Resources To Help Students Fight Off Fake News
In my previous post on the topic of Fake News, I mentioned that Fake News is nothing new. There have always been individuals and organizations that have tried to influence people by presenting them with stories that stray from the truth. While these stories vary in the degree of factual information they contain, the more important question regards the ability of the reader to delve into these articles and blog posts and pull out where things veer from fact to fiction. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) highlights the following skills for students in its 21st Century Literacies Framework:
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Students in the 21st century must be able to take information from multiple places and in a variety of different formats, determine its reliability, and create new knowledge from that information.
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Students in the 21st century must be critical consumers and creators of multimedia texts.
In order to attain these skills, teachers are encouraged to reflect on the following questions:
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Do students analyze the credibility of information and its appropriateness in meeting their needs?
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Do students use information to make decisions as informed citizens?
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Do students strive to see limitations and overlaps between multiple streams of information?
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Do students analyze and evaluate the multimedia sources that they use?
While the bulleted items above are just an abridged look at the skills and questions that are outlined in NCTE’s Framework 21st Century Literacies Framework, an equally important issue is in regards to the resources that are available for students to utilize to determine the credibility of sources of information that they come across. The resources below are a few of the ones that I have come across to help support students in this complicated task:
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Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world – (A great post from Joyce Valenza on School Library Journal’s Website)
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How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Kids to Be Media-Savvy) – (From Common Sense Media)
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FAKE NEWS vs. REAL NEWS: How to Determine the Reliability of Sources – (Website from Northern Essex Community College
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 18, 2016)
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Great list of resources for bloggers
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Our School has listened to the research and will be starting HS & MS at 8:30am beginning next fall. #edchat https://t.co/8hdIdq3Nj9
Burlington One of 12 Catalyst School Districts for MA Personalized Learning EdTech Consortium (MAPLE)
Burlington Public Schools is proud to be one of 12 school districts in Massachusetts that are catalyst school districts in the MAPLE Consortium, a public/private consortium created to catalyze personalized learning in schools across the state.
The consortium, which was created by LearnLaunch Institute and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education launched yesterday at Natick High School with an event featuring MA Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester. Commissioner Chester outlined the motivation behind this initiative as follows:
“While proud of how Massachusetts schools perform when compared to other states, we need to enable success for all students, preparing them to compete globally in the 21st Century. This requires fostering and accelerating the rate of adoption of effective practices in teaching and learning,” said Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts commissioner of elementary and secondary education. “The MAPLE Consortium is a collaborative effort with local school districts to identify, analyze, and nurture successful new models of personalized learning and then catalyze and support the expansion of these models and practices across the Commonwealth.”
The entire presentation from yesterday’s kickoff event is below. The Press Release for the event can be accessed here.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 11, 2016)
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From Justin Reich – “The magic of our best schools is really simple. The places where people are year after year making schools better and improving teaching and learning, they are places where the faculty are having fun learning and improving their teaching. When people can find joy in their learning, they keep learning. “
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From Richard Byrne – “The Explore function in Google Docs and Google Slides makes it easy for students to find images to insert into their documents and presentations. The old research tool in Google Docs used to automatically add a link to image sources in the footer of your documents. The same is not true for the Explore function in Google Docs and Slides. In the video below I demonstrate how to find and cite the source of images that appear in the Explore menu in Google Docs and Slides. “
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Good post by Richard Wells – I particularly like the deeper questions he poses for educators to ask students: move from “What are you doing?” to “Why are you doing this?” or “Why is this the priority at the moment?” move from “how’s it going?” to “What do you need to improve so far?” or “How do you know you’re on track?” move from “Are you finished?” to “What might this lead to next?” or “Who could this project or information have an impact on?” move from “Do you understand that topic X is ABC?” to “How do you know you understand that topic X is?”
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Cool spaces – Would like to futher investigate the one-touch recording booth and the idea of more “messy spaces.
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Intersting data from Nate Silver
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From Criag Badura – “A worksheet on an iPad is still a worksheet. It’s boring. We are paid professionals, we can provide better opportunities for our students. “
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Detailed play-by-play of the happenings involving for-profit education ventures/comapnies. Their demise may be overrated with a different perspective from our new Preseident.
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Great resource from Joyce Valenza
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Good Site on deternining the reliability of sources from Northern Essex Community College
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From Jonathan Martin – “It’s been about a year since ESSA was made law, and in that time much attention has been directed to the new non-academic factors requirement, with some wide debate about which particular additional factor(s) should be selected for inclusion in the state level accountability index. “
Forget Fake News
Let’s face it, fake news is really nothing new. The only thing that has changed is that it is getting more headlines due to its prominence surrounding the presidential election. In referencing this, I have to admit that I am hesitant to even mention fake news for fear that the conversation will quickly devolve into politically-based finger-pointing, but I think it is important to talk about this phenomenon and discuss what we are doing to educate our students in the area of reliable sources of information.
Getting into the habit of simply tossing a news story or blog post quickly into the category of fake news is not the recipe that will alleviate the problem. There are a number of issues that we need to review before we come to the conclusion that a story is fake. One is that there is a stark difference between a story with an honest error and a story that is developed with the primary intent of misleading the reader. More important is the question about how we come to the conclusion that a story is not accurate. Are we going to take someone else’s word that a story is fake or are we capable of figuring it out for ourselves? It is important that we avoid the categorization of news into one of two piles (fake and not-fake) and dig deeper.
The first step in increasing the depth of analysis on the topic of on-line news sources. We have a gaping knowledge deficit in this area that we need to quickly address. This is not simply a digital citizenship discussion, this is a citizenship discussion. If we are going to adequately prepare our students to be responsible and well-informed citizens then we need to reinforce the skills necessary to discern between reliable sources of information in all subjects. As long as this is left to one department in the school that teaches a lesson or two involving research, we will miss our target by a long shot. We need to help students find reliable sources for their health, their wealth, and whatever else they decide they would like to learn more about.
So let’s stop talking about fake news, an exercise that is likely to lead us down an inescapable rabbit hole, and start talking about reliable sources of information. For every topic where research is needed, let’s begin by having our convince us why what they found should be deemed a reliable source. I firmly believe that our students enjoy an authentic challenge and the only way that they will solve the complicated riddle regarding the reliability of sources of information is if we offer them our guidance.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 4, 2017)
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Awesome! Teacher-driven December Challenge. #proudprincipal #edchat #edchatma #leadlap #edugladiators #mespachat… https://t.co/yLyQ2YPJ1G
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From Edutopia
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Is it optional for Ed. leaders?
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based on our review of these schools, we are confident in saying that technology, when well planned and implemented, can be a key component of a successful digital strategy that has a positive impact on student outcomes.
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From Edutopia – “In addition to these programs, Apple Education introduced the Apple Teacher program in 2016. It gives teachers a way to explore iOS and Mac tools and integrate them into their instruction to create deeper learning experiences. The program uses badges to help teachers monitor which tools they’ve mastered—they can do that within a short time frame or decide to focus on just a few tools during the school year and revisit the program over the summer.”
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To provide additional support to help district and school staff identify what should be observed in particular content-area classrooms, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE), in partnership with educators in the field, has developed a suite of straightforward observation guides for grades 1–8 (K–8 for English Language Arts (ELA)). These “What to Look For” guides describe what observers should expect to see in a classroom at a particular grade level in a specific subject area. This includes the knowledge and skills students should be learning and using (as reflected in state learning standards) on the front of the page and best practices related to classroom curriculum, instruction, and assessment for each subject area on the back of the page.
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From Larry Ferlazzo – Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa are all coming-up, and I thought it would be timely to create a “The Best…” list focusing on those holidays.
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so excited to find this today! Definitely doing it with @5Wclassroom @jstephengagnon https://t.co/UrGhSkQKpj
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The Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) is the region’s leading technology association and the premier network for tech executives, entrepreneurs, investors and policy leaders. MassTLC’s purpose is to accelerate innovation by connecting people from across the technology landscape, providing access to industry-leading content and ideas and offering a platform for visibility for member companies and their interests.
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another overview of new Google Sites
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An overview of the new Google Sites
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Systemic silences around issues of race, whiteness, and equity in schools sustain a status quo where whites maintain privilege while retraumatizing people of color and sapping any efforts at meaningful, transformative interventions. Instead of sanctifying silence, use this guide to stay vigilant and committed to exposing and disrupting the subtle forms of oppression at work in your school.
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Good model for Professional Learning from George Couros’ work in Winnipeg schools
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Books are uniquely suited to helping us change our relationship to the rhythms and habits of daily life in this world of endless connectivity. We can’t interrupt books; we can only interrupt ourselves while reading them.
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“In other words, while being a privileged white guy working in a reasonably-prestigious university might mean that he can avoid the 21st century for a while, for the rest of us social tools enable us to make important connections, do innovation work, and increase our serendipity surface.” —Doug Belshaw
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Earlier this year, Governor Raimondo rolled out an ambitious plan to offer computer-science classes in every school in Rhode Island by Fall 2017. Known as CS4RI, the program positions RI to become the first state in the country to offer computer science in all schools.
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From Mark Barnes via Jennifer Gonzalez
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Is that link legit? https://t.co/uUsbLXha7G
My Un-Learning Journey 