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How Math is Getting Its Groove Back
By Rebecca Jacobson Carrie Lewis and Kelly Steele’s fifth grade students slide and spin across the classroom floor, doing the hustle, the robot, and the running man. While it may look at first glance like goofing off, these students are actually dancing for a higher cause…math. Lewis, a STEM specialist for Virginia’s Lynchburg city schools, [...]
More Teachers Refuse to Give Standardized Tests
Flickr: albertogp123 By Ann Dornfeld An entire school of teachers in Seattle is refusing to give students a standardized test that’s required by the district. The teachers say the test is useless and wastes valuable instructional time. Meanwhile, individual teacher protests of standardized tests are popping up nationwide, and the Seattle case may make bigger [...]
Dan Pink: How Teachers Can Sell Love of Learning to Students
Erin Scott By Jennie Rose In his new book To Sell is Human, author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country. And with this growth comes the opportunity to change the way educators envision their roles and their classrooms. Guided by findings in educational research and [...]
Making Math Meaningful with Online Games and Videos
By Almetria Vaba Math can be made meaningful when connected to students’ experiences. With video clips and interactive games from public media students practice math concepts while exploring real world concepts. Learn how to decorate an intricate cake, play the role of the pharmacist, roof a house and more using PBS LearningMedia resources to measure [...]
Five Secrets to Succeeding Without a College Degree
Getty By Nikhil Goyal British rapper-poet Suli Amoako recently launched a video, “Why I Hate School, But Love Education,” that has been making rounds all over the Internet. He calls for young people to “understand your motives and reassess your aims” and provides outliers in history that have done very well for themselves and society [...]
How to Get Parent Support for Tech Use in Class
By Jennifer Carey Every teacher who has attempted to integrate technology into the classroom knows that getting parents on board can sometimes be a challenge. It’s not uncommon for the parent of a struggling child to be on the phone with you asking questions like: “Why do you need to use technology to teach math/social [...]
Boy Scouts Make Way: Kids Explore By Creating
Countless kids have grown up with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts or Campfire Girls, but for some families, the uniforms and outdoor focus of traditional Scouting groups don’t appeal.
Why Nate Silver Can Save Math Education in America
Ian Hill/Thinkstock/Penguin By Nikhil Goyal Call it “The Triumph of Nerds.” Poll statisticians have risen to rock star status. One of the most famous is New York Times’ wunderkind Nate Silver — or as Jon Stewart put it, “Lord and god of the algorithm.” He may be best known for predicting the 44th president, but [...]
Should Work Experience Come Before College Education?
Della Rollins By Steve Henn Eighteen months ago Eden Full was finishing up her sophomore year at Princeton University. She was on the crew team as a coxswain. She had spent the previous summer in Kenya building an innovative, low-cost contraption to make solar panels more efficient. Full was glowingly successful — the kind of [...]
FTC Urges App Makers to Protect Kids’ Privacy
By Mark Memmott Developers of smartphone and tablet apps aimed at children have done little in the past year to give parents “the information they need to determine what data is being collected from their children, how it is being shared, or who will have access to it,” the Federal Trade Commission reports. “Our study [...]
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