Have you ever watched children choosing books at a library or bookstore? They don’t pick books based on title, author, or jacket description the way we adults do. Instead, they spend time exploring each book, opening and paging through it, skimming a page here, looking at a picture there. Then they close it and open the next one.
No amount of game play or virtual-reward system is going to change that shopping dynamic of trying, testing, and browsing for a good fit. Providing appropriate content and frictionless access to a huge selection of books will enable and expand children’s browsing—and this is far more powerful than any external reward system.
Category: Learning, Education, & Training
The Real Crisis in Education | Angels And Superheroes
As we implement new education legislation, I ask that teachers be treated as the experts we are. That we are not just included in the conversation, but that we are leading it. The data demands it, and our children deserve it.
United States’ schools with fewer than 10% of students living in poverty score higher than any country in the world. … Tragically, schools with 75% or higher poverty rates rank lower in reading scores than any country except Mexico.
Couple this with the 2013 data that indicates that a majority (51%) of public school students live in poverty in this country, and we see the true depth of the actual crisis of poverty, and its impact on education.
We are not in an education crisis. We are in a crisis of poverty that is being exacerbated by the school accountability movement and the testing industry.
Source: The Real Crisis in Education | Angels And Superheroes
News Sources
Which news sources should we believe, when there are so many to choose from, and each one is telling you not to believe another one?
You have to evaluate media based on something other than the fact that one source told you not to listen to another source.
Remember that journalism is a professional and academic field with a set of agreed-upon standards. People get degrees in it and people who are really good at it get jobs in it at good organizations.
Source: Vanessa Otero
We all have to get our information from somewhere. Remember that everyone at least unconsciously has a diagram like this in their mind which they use to evaluate new information based on their past experience with various sources of information. This diagram is not mine. This diagram is probably not yours. But everyone that can see an article’s source and has past experience with that source will have preconceptions about the credibility of the article’s content.
A new study shows how Star Trek jokes and geek culture make women feel unwelcome in computer science — Quartz
Women thrive when classrooms make them feel like they belong.
And as one undergraduate research participant in our lab put it, the current stereotypes of computer scientists is that they are “nerdy guys” who “stay up late coding and drinking energy drinks” and have “no social life.”
This geeky image is at odds with the way that many girls see themselves.
When high school girls see Star Trek posters and video games in a computer science classroom, they opt out of taking the course.
When the classroom is devoid of décor, girls still opt out. It is only when an alternate image of computer science is presented by replacing geeky objects with art and nature posters that girls become as interested as boys.
Ease of Online Applications Hurts Low-Income Students – The Atlantic
Students—especially those who are economically disadvantaged—and universities are hurt by how simple it is to apply to schools online.
The concern for colleges is that selectivity and national reach aren’t the only metrics that matter. Just as critical is “yield”—the share of accepted students who actually enroll. It’s what colleges use to project their revenues and manage their finances, and miscalculations can be fatal. Too few students—too low a yield—can spell shortfalls that lead to budget cuts, fewer classes, or even faculty layoffs. … On the other hand, too many enrollments could mean not enough student housing or financial aid.
Most schools, however, are having trouble finding the right students. In fact, despite the online application boom, schools are in crisis around yield. NACAC’s State of College Admission survey found that the average four-year college yield rate was 35.7 percent in 2013—down from 48.7 percent in 2002.
Of course, most students have no idea that this is how colleges are judging them. Some do, however, because they have the means to hire private educational consultants who can explain the rules of the current admissions marketplace. “One way to tell that the market is dysfunctional is if you have to hire a guide,” says Roth, from Stanford.
Source: Ease of Online Applications Hurts Low-Income Students – The Atlantic