While local educators are taking notice of text slang, they aren’t alarmed by its presence.
“You tell them, ‘Look, there’s a context for everything. You don’t walk into my room swearing like you do with your friends. You don’t text in your papers,’” said Kleiner at Chief Umtuch.
On YouTube, “you can get a whole story in six minutes,” he explains. “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.
Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.
Many of us out there know that project-based learning (PBL) inspires students to understand core content knowledge more deeply and gain key skills for success in college and career.
Evidence that PBL Works | Edutopia
Experimental Study of BIE Project-Based Economics Units
Finkelstein, N., Hanson, T., Huang, C.-W., Hirschman, B., and Huang, M. (2010).
A study, conducted by WestEd’s Regional Educational Laboratory West (REL West), addresses the following key research questions:
- Does PBE increase student content learning, motivation to learn economics, and problem-solving skills?
- Does PBE increase teacher knowledge in economics and teacher interest in teaching economics?
This federally funded experimental study examined the combined impact of a one-week summer professional development institute and the use of the BIE Project-Based Economics curriculum on the economic knowledge of approximately 7,000 twelfth grade students taught by 76 teachers in 66 high schools. Student outcomes that were studied included scores on the standardized Test of Economic Literacy (TEL), scores on performance assessments of student conceptual understanding. Teacher outcomes included confidence in teaching economics and satisfaction with teaching materials.
Results
Both high school students and their teachers benefit:
- Students outscored their peers in the control group who received the more typical textbook- and lecture-driven approach.
- Students also scored higher on measures of problem-solving skills and their application to real-world economic challenges
- Teachers scored higher in satisfaction with teaching material and methods than those in the control group.
For more info, view the official IES report or the WestEd research site.
My old principal once made a comment that good teaching was like good theater; you got into character and at the end of the production, you should be tired because you were “on” the whole time.
Schools can go green by deploying rooftop solar systems or tapping into wind energy projects by using a model that requires little to no upfront costs and can result in annual savings related to powering a facility.
When we are effective, the majority of kids are learning and getting what they need, goals and objectives are achieved, and we teachers feel an incredible sense of accomplishment.
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all
Aristotle
[Students] may be experts in entertaining themselves online, but they know almost nothing about educating themselves online.
Educators say the transition from notebook to Macbook will help students excel. “Whether it’s a Mac or a PC, that’s not the point. It’s getting equipment in the students’ hands to help them learn,” Hofer said.
When devising ways to beat school policing software, students showed an exemplary capacity for self-directed learning. Too bad that capacity didn’t expand in academic directions, too.
Stross, Randall. “Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality.” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 7 July 2010. Web. 19 July 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/11digi.html?_r=1>.
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