by eileen.mcmahon
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by eileen.mcmahon
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2nd Graders Race their Lego Contraptions
I’ve been volunteering in my daughter’ s charter school in past few weeks, working with her second grade classroom. They have been working in teams to build Lego contraptions with a Klutz kit that the teacher purchased for this porject.
I posted the curriculum and a link to the final race in this google doc: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddbks9xq_176hn2gvkzv
The project went really well and although it was a complex project and some were completely new to legos, they emmersed themselves in it and did some excellent problem solving. Similar to the virtual teams I organized in my online undergraduate course, COMSTU 210, tThe collaboration was the hardest part. Teams in which everyone had similar level problem solving skills worked together the best as they were able step in and fill the gaps when necessary acting as a bridge to the next problem.
by eileen.mcmahon
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science and technology resources for high school students
Christine Borgman who presented yesterday at a Harvard iic Colloquium mentioned mentioned some citizen science games that your son’s may be interested in exploring: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ and http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
Here are a few resources for middle and high school students interested in computer programming:
Learning Logo Resources: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/. The books themselves are free in electronic form.
StarLogo TNG, which is more aimed at game design and science simulations.
http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng/learn
Scratch fto teach basic programming concepts for the first few weeks in the undergrad CS survey course: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Educators
by eileen.mcmahon
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data standards for open repositories
I attended a colloquium yesterday at Harvard (Scholarship in the Digital Age Information, Infrastructure and the Internet) presented by Christine Borgman who was involved in drafting this NSF report issued last July: Fostering Learning in the Networked World: Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08204/nsf08204.pdf).
It’s clear that NSF is very interested in seeing the development standards for metadata that can be stored in open repositories and are interested in funding universities that want to share their metadata in them. It made me totally jealous to learn that the U California system created their own repository for sharing data across systems and wonder why UMass hasn’t taken similar action!
by eileen.mcmahon
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Higher Ed and Stimulus
I just took a look at the grants.gov web site where government grants for education funded through the stimulus bill are now available.
by eileen.mcmahon
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College without Grades
If ever receive my password reset information I wil post this comment to a column and discussion on Jan. 22nd called "Imagining College Without Grades" on Inside Highered ( http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/22/grades)
"I attended Bennington College where written evaluations were used instead of grades. In addition students designed their own curriculums. It was an intellectually stimulating environment the encouraged the development of curious, creative explorations and deep thinking.
Fast forward a couple of decades and I am teaching an online course for a public research institution which requires grades. I have observed grades to be demotivating to intellectually curious students and a distraction. Grades distract students from tapping into their intellectual passion and inhibits deep learning. Instead it creates minds that are adept in traversing bureaucratic, hierarchical cultures. The problem is hierarchy is a 20th century concept, peer to peer is the order of this new century. Further hierarchy created inequity. The future of humankind depends on our ability tap into the potential of everyone on the planet.
Fortunately digital technology provides us with the ability to create new complex feedback systems that evaluate if a student has achieved a performance goal. Let’s seize the day!"
by eileen.mcmahon
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Charter Schools out perform Pilot Schools in Boston
The Boston Globe reported today that Boston charter schools are significantly out performing Boston Pilot Schools. The pilot schools are the Mass Teacher Association’s (M.T.A.) version of a the state funded charter schools. The research study published by The Boston Foundation, compared the MCAS results of middle school students from similar backgrounds in pilot and charter schools The question is why? Some speculate that the differences is a result of organizational structure. Curriculum development in charter schools is driven by grass root proposals rather than being mandated from above in the more traditional, hierarchical school administrators.
I think there is some truth to this. I’m a study in contradictions as I’m a member of the M.T.A. by virtual of working for UMass Boston but my daughter attends a Boston Charter school. I recently attended a parent council meeting at my daughter’s school in which the MCAS results from last year were shared with parents and the principle and teachers then presented the math curriculum changes that they made at the start of the fall because they want to improve the MCAS math scores. I was impressed at how quickly they integrated the new math curriculum into the school. A teacher who had used the new curriculum in her previous school mentored the other teachers. Implementing the new curriculum was clearly a collaborative effort.
It seems to me that it’s not only the grassroots adoption of curriculum but also close attention to measureable learning outcomes that’s makes charters work better.
by eileen.mcmahon
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Gapminder: Visualizing Global Statistical Data
A couple of years ago while producing an event on Mashups, I came across a very cool tool called Gapminder that displays graphical data in a dynamic way. I was fascinated and tried to find more information about it but was dead ended. Happily a friend just send me this youtube link. The tool was created by a Swedish academic who has established a foundation called Gapminder.org that allows the world to upload and share their world population data. Check out the video on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7yGMuH1iE.
by eileen.mcmahon
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The Future of Public Higher Ed
The biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education “Measuring Up 2008" points to a brewing crises. Currently the annual cost of sending a child to a public university costs 55% percent of a low income family income and with costs continuing to grow college will soon be unaffordable to the middle class as well.
This situation gave me pause and an opportunity imagine what earning an undergraduate degree at a public higher ed institution could soon look like. I don’t think it’s so bad.
First the idea that cramming an education into a four years is way outdated. The skills we need to be able to nimbly navigate a five or six decade career are impossible to predict when the tools and new skills are need to parse information are always evolving.
The pending crises presents an excellent opportunity to create a radical new model. An 18year old might instead work part time as an apprentice and take a couple of courses online. Three or four times a year they might come to a campus for a week or two to exercise soft skills and other things that can’t be done as easily online. The government might sponsor a slew of projects in emerging areas that could use inquisitive tinkering minds to create jobs for these students.
After a couple of years the student might be in a position to jump on a really exciting opportunity and ride it out. When she’s ready she could sign up for another apprenticeship in another emerging field and develop some new skills And so on. Instead of an undergraduate degree being considered something that provides you with all the essential knowledge need, it’s just the starter pack.
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Creating course web site with a blog and widgets
Inside Higher Ed published an article (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/08/widgets) examining the trend of using widgets to create course shells today. I’m currently working on creating a f2f course web site with our UMB Blognetwork to provide an example and will post the link here when it’s available.