States Are Prioritizing Prisons Over Education, Budgets Show

If state budget trends reflect the country's policy priorities, then the U.S. currently values prisoners over children, a new report suggests.

A report released this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the growth of state spending on prisons in recent years has far outpaced the growth of spending on education. After adjusting for inflation, state general fund spending on prison-related expenses increased over 140 percent between 1986 and 2013. During the same period, state spending on K-12 education increased only 69 percent, while higher education saw an increase of less than six percent.

 

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What Does Tomorrow’s Student Look Like - Masters and PhDs

Just as the teacher’s job has changed from ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’, so too has the student’s job. Take a peek into the near future at tomorrow’s student. Today, you’d call this child the ‘techie’ minority. Tomorrow, s/he’ll be the majority.

 

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LeapFrog debuts its LeapTV educational console for kids

LeapFrog Enterprises has launched its LeapTV video game console for children with an educational twist — games approved by those who teach kids.

The LeapTV costs $150 and has a lot of content: eight games now, with 100 more educator-approved projects in the pipeline (and videos, too) for kids ages 3 to 8 later in the year. The new product is a bet that the living room console is here to stay despite the rise of the $20 billion dollar-plus mobile market — and that LeapFrog itself has a shot to carve out the market for smaller kids who enjoy educational entertainment (or more for their parents, who want their kids to learn while playing games). Kids will be able to play with personalization features and motion-sensing controls that are similar to those that Nintendo introduced with the Wii in 2006.

 

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Smells like STEAM spirit in Seattle - Masters and PhDs

With Microsoft, Amazon and T-Mobile in Seattle’s backyard, it’s not surprising to find technology making its way into the region’s schools and districts. Many are moving towards blended learning environments and have secured grant or local funding to reach their goals.

EdSurge recently took a snapshot at how some Seattle area districts are implementing technology around the idea of STEAM — Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math:

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X Factor over evidence: the failure of early years education - Online And Distance Learning

A recent report to the House of Lords delivered sobering news. In the years 2002 to 2007, the £7bn plus spent on providing 12.5 (now 15) hours of free nursery a week for three year olds had no long-lasting benefits on educational outcomes.

This is a report for which I and colleagues at the University of Essex and Institute of Education have spent the last two years analysing data. Much of my previous work has been on social mobility; understanding the extent to which poor children can escape from a disadvantaged start in life. But the outcome of the report is not one I relish delivering. I had high hopes we would find that this policy did in fact positively impact those who needed it most. But the results we found were not so convenient.

 

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Software dev shortage transcends international boundaries - Online And Distance Learning

There is a real shortage of software developers – and it’s a global problem.

Getting children engaged with programming is especially important and the government can play a role in developing this interest, panelists said.

Reid noted that children love technology-related classes in school, but don’t show the same enthusiasm for learning how to program. Attracting children to programming as they get older is challenging because they tend to avoid the discipline since they don’t understand it, he said. Governments, he continued, can help remedy this by adding programming courses early in the education process.

 

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Best Tips and Resources for Elementary Math Teachers - Online And Distance Learning

Teaching good Maths doesn’t solely depend on the teachers, parent’s involvement is also necessary. Teacher can only guide kids in the school but at the home parents also need to look at the kids. By having transparent communication about the assignments and frequency of homework, both teachers and parents can identify problem solve it.

When children realize that Maths is all around them then they start relaxing and taking maths easily. When they find meaning of Maths in their everyday life they will be motivated towards it.

With the rapid growth in technology teachers do not need to worry about the resources. This article lists some of the most common ones:

 

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Ebola Offers a Teachable Moment For Health Information Technology - About Health Degrees

Ebola offers us an opportunity to review our health data priorities. Privacy, in the form of Fair Information Practice Principles, must become a national priority and provide all of us with access to our health data before it goes to other institutions, health information exchanges, and data brokers so that we can control secondary use.

Most important of all, patient health records must be linked to and controlled by the patient rather than some institution.

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The World as 100 People | Visual.ly

The World as 100 People. This idea has been around since 1990. This is my attempt at presenting the information.

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iPads + project based learning = limitless possibilities - Daily Genius

Though more than two years into my school’s implementation of project based learning, yesterday, I found myself excited all over again. I was helping a second grade teacher enhance her landforms PBL by using Padlet as part of the KWL process and suddenly realized that this approach to student-centered learning has truly become a part of who we are as a school.

My adventures in combining PBLs and iPads began with a gift of two carts. I had just started taking the PBLU online courses when the head of our independent pre-k through eighth grade school challenged each grade-level team to teach one unit using the PBL approach while finding authentic ways to draw in iPads. As the lower school technology integration person, I immediately went on a quest to find a guinea pig willing to plan and co-teach a PBL unit incorporating iPads. This is the story of that first experience. . .

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The Bare Walls Theory: Do Too Many Classroom Decorations Harm Learning? - Masters and PhDs

A recent study has found that for young children, adopting a subdued approach to classroom decoration is better. The study, published May 2014 in Psychological Science, was one of the first to examine how decorations impact learning. It found that when kindergartners were taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted and scored lower on tests than when they were taught in a room with bare walls.

 

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The Latest – and Unlikeliest – Man to Reinvent Online Education - Online And Distance Learning

Welcome to Harlem at the height of its renaissance. More specifically, welcome to a virtual representation of Harlem, as it existed in the 1920s, built to scale on the virtual reality platform Utherverse (similar to the better-known Second Life). It’s a preview of what’s possible in online education, a sector that has yet to tap into its promise. And this preview is brought to you from a very unlikely source: adult entertainment pioneer Brian Shuster.

 

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'Sense of belonging' enhances the online learning experience

For the past couple of years Australian universities' enthusiasm for online learning has increased, following the lead of international universities in realising the potential of MOOCs to replace traditional face-to-face learning. 

Online learning presents an opportunity to provide access to higher education for traditionally underrepresented groups. However, the combination of the new mode of delivery (online) and working with non-traditional students presents challenges for how to make education inclusive.

The attrition rates for online learning and for non-traditional students are both high, creating a risk that the factors that drive attrition among these groups may compound.

The reasons that students are more likely to drop out of online learning are complex. Some researchers have suggested attrition seems to be affected by a mix of personal, institutional and circumstantial variables, and a “sense of belonging” was one aspect deemed to be important.

 

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The Top Eight Things You Need To Know About Online Education - Online And Distance Learning

Some commentators regard online learning as a panacea, others regard it as a cancer. This article list eight things you need to know. Here are the top two: Online learning is here to stay. Since 1986, when the first online degree program from an accredited institution was offered (by John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California), growth has …

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Osmo Raises $12 Million For Its Hardware-Based iPad Game For Kids

Osmo, the iPad-powered gaming device built by former Googlers (and dads) as a way to turn tablets into more “hands-on” toys, has raised $12 million in Series A funding, the company is announcing today. The company is also announcing that its products, which are currently available for sale online, will also be made available in 284 Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The game kit will also be sold in Marbles Toy Stores in the U.S., which has a number oflocations mainly in Northeast and Southern California.

Just a month ago, Osmo announced it had well exceeded its sales goals for its hardware-based iPad game, selling $2 million in pre-orders, including those from over 2,000 schools.

The hardware in its gaming kit includes a reflective camera that snaps on the top of the iPad, a stand, and physical game pieces like letter tiles and puzzle shapes. The camera sees the objects placed in front of it, then uses that capability to combine real-world play and virtual gaming.

 

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Legend: Great Tool to Create Interactive Visual Stories with Ease

With the growth in technology, we have seen a rapid growth in the market for educational content (digital content) providers but most of them are confined to the academic or curriculum content.

The students of the 21st century need to know and learn much more than what the current curriculum has to offer. In a dynamic world of information access, digitization of existing content is not the solution, hence e-books are not the best format for e-content for most of the teachers and their classrooms. Today’s kids love watching and listening to content over reading textbooks. Interactive visual stories are far more engaging and retentive than textbooks for these kids. Teacher must learn to use video, images, and text in combination to transform the quality of content that reaches the students.

The use of multimedia in the classroom has been made easy and structured for teachers and entertaining for students with Legend, a visual storytelling platform.

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Online Early Childhood Degrees - Online And Distance Learning

What is early childhood education?  It is usually taken to be the education of children from birth to age 8.  Early childhood degrees prepare you for jobs in teaching and administration related to this age group.  To do this, the early childhood education curriculum track includes courses in child psychology, parenting, and early childhood instruction and learning strategies.

This page provides information on what is studied and where you can study these programs, as well as details on jobs, potential earnings, prospects and more…  

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MIT to offer free online courses in game design, ed tech - Online And Distance Learning

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology today begins a free series of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, beginning with one on the design and development of educational technology. The second course, which begins Oct. 22, focuses on game design. Two upcoming courses will focus on educational games and implementing ed tech. MIT’s teacher education program …

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Competency-Based Education: No More Semesters? - Online And Distance Learning

The conventions of the credit hour, the semester and the academic year were formalized in the early 1900s. Time forms the template for designing college programs, accrediting them and — crucially — funding them using federal student aid. But in 2013, for the first time, the Department of Education took steps to loosen the rules.

 

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6 Principles Of Genius Hour In The Classroom

Genius Hour in the classroom is an approach to learning built around student curiosity, self-directed learning, and passion-based work.

In traditional learning, teachers map out academic standards, and plan units and lessons based around those standards. In Genius Hour, students are in control, choosing what they study, how they study it, and what they do, produce, or create as a result. As a learning model, it promotes inquiry, research, creativity, and self-directed learning.

 

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Why Some Kids Try Harder and Some Kids Give Up - Online And Distance Learning

Stanford researcher Carol Dweck has been studying motivation and perseverance since the 1960s. And she found that children fall into one of two categories:

Those with a fixed mindset, who believe their successes are a result of their innate talent or smartsThose with a growth mindset, who believe their successes are a result of their hard work

What creates these beliefs in our kids? The type of praise we give them — even starting at age 1.

 

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Special Education Programs Online - Online And Distance Learning

Special education teachers work with students who have special needs such as: learning difficulties, speech and language impairments and other communication difficulties, emotional disturbances, behavioral disorders, physical disabilities, and developmental disorders. But as well as working with students who are learning disabled or developmentally challenged, they might also assist students who are gifted and talented, to help them acquire education and life skills.  In order to do this, they need to create a learning environment to meet the unique needs of each student.

 

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EdTech: An ‘Educated’ Perspective - Online And Distance Learning

The Educational Technology (EdTech) industry is enjoying a period of unprecedented innovation and investment, driven by many factors, including market demand, shifts in classroom and home technology adoption, and the level playing field that new standards have helped to create. EdTech is becoming increasingly relevant to all students, by delivering improved learning outcomes and by …

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