Hilarious bit about what happens when students are made to memorize great poetical works and can recite them at will for life, even when drunk and wandering the streets in the dead of night. This post from Fielding at The Guardian makes me regret not keeping up the curious habit of learning poems by heart so one can pull them out at odd times throughout one’s life. My fifth-grade teacher made her students memorize a poem of their choice every week, and then recite the poem on Friday. I loathed every single Friday from September through June in 1985. The vomit wants to come back whenever I see a Shel Silverstein book.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

They always make you take history in school. I’m more of a math and science girl and will always choose a good chemistry lab over a history lecture. However, having been expected to complete several history courses (for the well-rounding of me and my education), I did pick up on the patterns we humans cycle through as decades and centuries go past. The technology we create for ourselves, ostensibly to make our lives easier/better/faster, seems always to impact more than just the job it was created for. I’m talking about wheels and looms, satellites and cotton gins, not Silly Putty and Flowbees.

Dean Shareski over at Ideas and Thoughts wrote a piece about technology in education and whether or not its just a tool. We’re in the midst of that changing moment, the one some hardcore science geek college girl will have to learn about a few centuries hence.

Further Reading:

Literacy: We’ve Still Got It
Another New and Exciting Way to Be Driven Over the Edge by Technology
New Essay Writing Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch
Implementing Different Tools
Launching the Emerging Media Major
“Don’t Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?”
The Future of Education
Digitizing Knowledge
21st Century Learners

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(technology)

When you’re a fresh-faced newbie trying to make your way through this harsh and unkind world, it helps to have an older, wiser, more experienced hand to hold onto. Standing on the shoulders of giants makes the machete-hacking stumble through the jungle go a lot more smoothly.

Those giants are called mentors, and every chucklehead youngin’ like yourself wants one. The more awesome a mentor, the more sought out they are. This has the unfortunate effect of making them ignore most of the tweedle-dums who come begging for their priceless advice and knowledge. If you want to be mentored by the best, you’re going to have to be better than all the other chuckleheads at asking. Ramit Sethi has some advice for you.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(standing on the shoulders of giants)

Pennsylvania public schools have jumped on the cheating bandwagon. I’m excited to find out which state will be found out next. And I’m super duper excited to read American History a few decades from now when someone theorizes that President Bush and his No Child Left Behind Act pushed American educators to cheat on standardized tests.

Further Reading:

Atlanta Cheats, Too
Too Many Erasures On D.C. Standardized Tests
It’s Not On the Test
No Child Left Behind Is Ruining Our Education System

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(scantron)

Dear State and Federal Governments,

You don’t pay educators enough money. Perhaps a budget increase could class things up a bit in the U.S. Public School System. Get on that, please, for the love of all things wholesome and holy. Thanks!

Sincerely,
Alexa

P.S. Try not to be such tools.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(meth pipe)

Remember the jackass educators in Washington D.C. who erased students’ incorrect answer bubbles and filled in the correct ones? So classy, so honest, such role models for the impressionable young minds they’re wearing down to nubs with high-pressure standardized tests. Adults suck. Need more fact-age to prove me right? Atlanta educators are slimy too:

Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level

America’s biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta

Report on Atlanta school cheating inquiry validates AJC analysis

Deal: APS cheating investigation outlines ‘dark chapter’ in system’s history

Atlanta school kids angry over cheating scandal

High-Stakes Testing & the Culture of Fear: The Atlanta Case, Report #1

Why Were Test Answer Sheets Altered? The Atlanta Case, Report #2

Atlanta Public Schools cheating: Some teachers admit guilt

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(Atlanta school bus)

Michele Bachmann has officially announced her decision to run in the 2012 presidential campaign.

I’d rather have the Baton Rouge teen, Zack Kopplin, who called her out on her creationism/intelligent design education policies. He seems smarter and a lot more open to facts and logic. That’s him above, testifying to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, which allows the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in Louisiana public schools.

Michele Bachmann’s education policies reflect her pro-creationism and intelligent design stance.

Words from Michele Bachmann:

“There is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact … hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel prizes, believe in intelligent design.”

Words from Zack Kopplin:

“For the next hand, I raise you 43 Nobel Laureate scientists. That’s right: 43 Nobel Laureate scientists have endorsed our effort to repeal Louisiana’s creationism law. … Congresswoman Bachmann, you claim that Nobel Laureates support creationism. Show me your hand. If you want to be taken seriously by voters while you run for President, back up your claims with facts. Can you match 43 Nobel Laureates, or do you fold?”

Further reading on Zack Kopplin and his mission to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008:

Bachmann Is In, Officially
17 Year Old to Michele Bachmann: Show Me Your Nobel Laureate Scientists
Is Michele Bachmann the New Sarah Palin?
Zack Kopplin’s Change.org Petition
Michele Bachmann’s Stance on Evolution Demolished by High School Student

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Hate high school? Want to get the hell out and be done with it already? Indiana’s got a new plan to have high school last a slightly less excruciating three years in lieu of the standard four. If you like high school (which I kind of did, but please don’t judge me), feel free to stick around and have the full experience and give your teen self time to mature a bit before throwing yourself into college or reality or wherever it is you wish to escape to.

Reasons behind the reduced high school experience: Indiana will save between $6,000 and $8,000 per student, which will then be used for college scholarships; and most college-bound teens are done with their core requirements and have sent their paperwork in to their future colleges and universities and spend most of senior year decompressing and having fun (the humanity!) instead of focusing on their studies.

One might argue that any high school senior who has managed to get him/herself pretty much into college by junior year deserves a year to just be and relax before they start the rat race all over again in college. And then again in post-college real life and on and on until old age does everyone in.

From The Hechinger Report article:

[Indiana Gov. Mitch] Daniels said he came up with the idea after years of asking seniors he met across the state what they were up to and too often being told “not much.”

“I kept bumping into seniors who said, ‘Well, I’m done,’ “ he said. “They’d laugh and tell me they were having a good time. We are spending thousands of dollars on students who are eligible to move on.”
Senior year has long troubled educators and policymakers, well aware that tests required to graduate often are passed by junior year. The National Commission on the High School Senior Year found in 2001 that senior year was “a lost opportunity: a year where we have significant drift and disconnection.”

Solutions over the past decade have trended toward mixing college and high school courses through dual-enrollment programs or early-college high schools, where students can earn an associate degree and a diploma. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: senioritis)

It’s been centuries, and still those pedantic professors lecture their students for hours on end. And then they have the cojones to question their audience, checking to see (a) if anyone was listening and (b) whether anyone grasped the concepts well enough to form an intelligent answer. When will the ages-old practice of lecturing and questioning ever end?

It probably won’t . Why? Because it works. I mean, usually. Even for students like me, who learn best by reading the material and not by having someone verbally beat me over the head with it. Unless a professor is still in love with his/her subject and can manage to infuse the lectures with that raw enthusiasm, I am not moved by a many-degreed someone standing behind a podium, explaining why molecules or cells or the laws of physics or ancient peoples do what they do or did whatever it is they did. But a prof who gets all worked up teaching me, in excruciating detail, how it is that paint dries will have my rapt attention and devotion.

Further Reading:

The Durability of Teacher Lecturing and Questioning: Historical Inertia or Creative Adaptation?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(lecture hall)

School kids need broadband, too! There’s a nearly infinite universe of information available on the Internet, a bazillion football stadiums’ worth of hard copy knowledge that would never fit into a school library or classroom. Students and teachers should have access to all of that brain-building, thought-provoking information. But how to give all schools decent broadband connections?

The U.S. Department of Education is on it. You can check out the interactive map showing the current status of broadband availability for U.S. schools, or you can read the hows and whys. Or both, if you’re really good.

With broadband, students and teachers can expand instruction beyond the confines of the physical classroom and traditional school day. Broadband can also provide more customized learning opportunities for students to access high-quality, low-cost and personally relevant educational material. Broadband can improve the flow of educational information, allowing teachers, parents and organizations to make better decisions tied to each student’s needs and abilities. Improved information flow can also make educational product and service markets more competitive by allowing school districts and other organizations to develop or purchase higher-quality educational products and services. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington