2013年8月26日 星期一

大學送自行車



Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
FEDERAL OVERSIGHT TAKES AIM AT WAIVER COMPLIANCE
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to place three states on “high-risk status” for problems with their No Child Left Behind Act waivers, it’s clear that the federal push to grant states sweeping flexibility in school accountability will be fraught with stumbles. Implementing teacher evaluations tied to student growth is a significant sticking point for many waiver states, including Kansas, Oregon, and Washington—which were formally warned by federal officials Aug. 15 that they might lose their waivers if they don’t get new evaluations back on track. The article is in Education Week.
DISPUTES CONTINUE OVER L.A. TEACHER EVALUATIONS
United Teachers Los Angeles has filed a labor complaint against the school district, alleging that teacher-evaluation guidelines issued by the state violate formal agreements between the two parties, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. It's the latest wrinkle in a longstanding disagreement between district and union over how to evaluate teachers in the nation's second-largest school district. The post is from Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
OBAMA ON FOR-PROFITS
The Obama administration has had no shortage of spats (and some out-and-out warfare) with the for-profit sector of higher education. But typically administration officials outside the Oval Office have been the ones directly expressing views on the sector. On Friday, however, in a question-and-answer session at the State University of New York at Binghamton, a doctoral student at (nonprofit) Syracuse University asked the president about the sector and for-profit colleges that the student called "predatory." The president responded with some language that didn't go over well with officials in for-profit higher education. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
RISING DEBT ENGULFS COLLEGES AS WELL AS STUDENTS
President Obama took aim last week at rising levels of student borrowing, but two graduate students in sociology say the real culprit for growing college debt is Wall Street. In a report posted last week on the Web site of the Scholars Strategy Network, Charlie Eaton and Jacob Habinek, doctoral candidates at the University of California at Berkeley, assert that the expanding burden of tuition debt is “partly driven by the indebtedness universities have taken on.” Public research universities have passed along their own debt to students by raising tuition and fees by an average of 56 percent from 2002 to 2010, say the authors, who work in the branch of sociology known as financialization. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.


ABOUT HIGHER ED
ENJOYING WHITE HOUSE ATTENTION
Advocates of disruptive college business models and carrot-and-stick accountability measures were excited Thursday to hear President Obama back their work in his effort to curb the rising cost of college. The president, in a speech on college costs, praised a new public-private partnership between the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Silicon Valley start-up, name-checked a performance-based college funding formula in Tennessee and praised programs that award degrees to students based on how well they test rather than how much time they spend in a classroom. All of this, Obama said, could help “shake up the current system, create better incentives for colleges to do more with less and deliver better value for students and their families.” The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
OBAMA PLAN DRAWS MIXED REVIEWS
President Obama continues his three-campus "college cost" bus tour on Friday, promoting his plans to make college more affordable through a mix of carrots and sticks. The heart of the proposals is a controversial plan to rate colleges based on measures of access, affordability, and student outcomes, and to allocate aid based on those ratings. Under the plan, students attending higher-rated institutions could obtain larger Pell Grants and more-affordable loans. The Obama administration and its supporters say the ratings would empower consumers with fresh information and would pressure colleges to keep costs down. But skeptics worried about the unintended consequences of the president's plan, predicting that colleges would seek to improve their ratings by turning away at-risk students or by dumbing down their standards. They urged the administration to use caution in choosing the measures it will use to judge colleges. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
ABOUT K-12
THE COMMON CORE AND THE COMMON GOOD
Charles Blow writes in The New York Times: The Obama administration strongly supports the Common Core, and the American Federation of Teachers endorses it. The president of the United Federation of Teachers says that most teachers agree it should be implemented. And, according to CoreStandards.org, “45 states, the District of Columbia, four territories and the Department of Defense Education Activities have adopted the Common Core State Standards.” This seemed like a sure thing. The problem is that, in some states, Common Core testing has been implemented before teachers, or the public for that matter, have been instructed in how to teach students using the new standards. This means that, when students score poorly on the more rigorous Common Core-based tests, it threatens to cause a backlash among parents, who increasingly see testing as the problem, not the solution.
DEAL ORDERS REVIEW OF COMMON CORE
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has ordered a sweeping review of the Common Core State Standards and asked the state board to "formally un-adopt" a part of the program that includes sample English test selections that infuriated some parents. Deal also asked the board to develop a new social studies curriculum that emphasizes, among other aspects, civic and fiscal responsibility. The article is in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.



Some of the News Fit to Print
POLLS REACH DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS ON TEACHER EVALUATIONS TIED TO SCORES
So just what does the public make of the recent move to tie student test scores to teacher evaluation? You won't get a straightforward answer from a bunch of polls that all dropped just this week, which found rather disparate responses to the question. The first poll, released by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reported that 53 percent of parents polled said changes in students' statewide test scores should be used either "a great deal" or "quite a bit" in teachers' evaluations compared with 20 percent who said "only a little" or "not at all." But the PDK/Gallup poll, released yesterday, had a different response. It found that 58 percent of adults surveyed opposed state requirements that teacher evaluations "include how well a teacher's students perform on standardized tests," an increase from the last time it asked the question. The post is from Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog.
PETITION DRIVE TO PULL MAINE OUT OF COMMON CORE
AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Equal Rights Center announced Wednesday that it will launch a citizens’ petition campaign to repeal Maine’s reliance on a set of education standards used in 45 states. The ballot question, which would go to a November 2014 referendum if petitioners gather enough valid signatures, is the first of its kind in the country. Heidi Sampson, a member of the state Board of Education and the Maine Charter School Commission, co-founded a group called No Common Core Maine, which is partnering with the Maine Equal Rights Center on the initiative. Opponents of Common Core characterize it as part of an attempt to nationalize public education and an erosion of local control. The article is in the Bangor Daily News.
DEVELOPING GRIT IN THE CLASSROOM
In his much-referenced book How Children Succeed, author Paul Tough draws on dozens of studies that point to perseverance, "grit," and other non-cognitive skills as critical factors in students' success. At the same time, researchers like James Heckman of the University of Chicago have demonstrated that living in poverty can affect children's development of these skills. Education Week Teacher asked educators: What role do you think traits like grit play in academic achievement? What steps are you taking in your classroom this year to help high-needs students to build such non-cognitive skills? What steps do you think administrators should take? Policymakers?
ABOUT HIGHER ED
OBAMA PLAN AIMS TO LOWER COST OF COLLEGE
President Obama announced a set of ambitious proposals on Thursday aimed at making colleges more accountable and affordable by rating them and ultimately linking those ratings to financial aid. A draft of the proposal, obtained by The New York Times and likely to cause some consternation among colleges, shows a plan to rate colleges before the 2015 school year based on measures like tuition, graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of lower-income students who attend. The ratings would compare colleges against their peer institutions. If the plan can win Congressional approval, the idea is to base federal financial aid to students attending the colleges partly on those rankings.  “All the things we’re measuring are important for students choosing a college,” a senior administration official said. “It’s important to us that colleges offer good value for their tuition dollars, and that higher education offer families a degree of security so students aren’t left with debt they can’t pay back.”
BEYOND ENROLLMENT
Amid a national debate about how the federal financial aid system could be improved, a new study shows that an increased amount of need-based aid with no strings attached can have positive, long-term effects for low-income students. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.


ABOUT K-12
STUDENTS NOT PREPARED FOR RIGOR OF COLLEGE, ACT DATA SHOW
The report released today by the Iowa City, Iowa-based organization found just 39% of test-takers in the class of 2013 met three or more of the ACT college-readiness benchmarks in English, reading, science, and math. Nearly one-third did not meet any. View the new ACT report on college readiness. The article is in Education Week.
MOST AMERICANS UNAWARE OF COMMON CORE
Nearly two out of three Americans have never heard of the Common Core State Standards, and among those who have, fewer than half believe the new, more rigorous academic goals in English/language arts and mathematics adopted by all but four states so far will make the United States more competitive in the world, according to a new poll from Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup. The article is in Education Week.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
OBAMA TO OFFER PLANS TO EASE BURDEN OF PAYING FOR COLLEGE
WASHINGTON — President Obama will offer a series of proposals this week aimed at making college more affordable by reshaping the way Americans pay for higher education, he said in an e-mail to supporters on Tuesday. In the message, Mr. Obama promised to take action to confront the financial challenges facing an increasing number of students and their families. The average tuition at four-year colleges has tripled over the past three decades, and students who take out loans are left, on average, with $26,000 in debt, he said. The article is in The New York Times.
UDACITY CEO FIRES BACK AT CRITICS
After a summer of unexpected setbacks and amid a growing chorus of doubt, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun on Tuesday dismissed the idea that his company's model for high-quality, low-cost education isn't working. Speaking to Information Week, Thrun said the MOOC provider has almost "found the magic formula" for how to produce and run its online courses. Udacity hit a major snag last month after disappointing results led one of its two university partners, San Jose State University, to pause its partnership. According to a leaked report, students enrolled in the $150 classes provided by Udacity performed much worse than their peers in traditional courses -- especially in remedial math. Thrun maintains the data was published "in an incomplete form, with a very strong bias," and that results from summer courses will show that more than half of the students passed their courses. Thrun said the numbers should provide an incentive for San Jose State to resume the partnership in 2014.This information is from Inside Higher Ed’s Quick Takes.
posted Aug 21, 2013 10:05 am


A bicycle giveaway and bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions.
A bicycle giveaway and bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions.
Campaign Spotlight
Never Mind Citi Bike, Here's Campus Bike
By STUART ELLIOTT 30 minutes ago
The University of Dayton is offering free bikes to 100 incoming freshmen in exchange for pledges to forgo bringing cars to campus for the first two years they are enrolled.

2013年8月21日 星期三

從"Jeff Bezos 2010年回母校PRINCETON 的畢業典禮演說"說起

1974年某天. 我帶一位藍色眼睛的普林斯頓畢業生參觀東海校園.
他說路思義教堂遠比夢想中的小......
後來我修他"英文作文"課.
我忘記他的名字了.
近40年之後. 對他的KINDNESS 說聲謝還來得及的.
*****

Jeff Bezos 2010年回母校PRINCETON 的畢業典禮演說.

12分鐘他拭了二次淚水的生命的故事 (前6分是校長導言)

http://youtu.be/vBmavNoChZc

2013年8月21 吳國精先生傳來一份摘要翻譯: 謝謝

“亞馬遜創辦人 對普林斯頓畢業生的12分鐘演講”



在我10歲的時候,利用各種機會練習算術,計算汽車每加侖跑多少英里、算買菜買了多少錢……我記得當時曾經聽過一個廣告,每吸一口菸就會減少幾分鐘壽命。
在那個夏天的長途拖車旅行途中,我決定為抽菸的外婆算一算。我計算她大概一天抽幾根香菸、一根菸可以抽多少口,算出我覺得滿意的合理數字後,我從後座把頭伸到前座,拍拍外婆的肩膀,驕傲地公布:「如果每吸一口菸會減少兩分鐘壽命,你已經少活九年了。」
我原本期待外公外婆會稱讚我聰明、數學好:「傑夫,你好聰明,已經能夠算這麼複雜的數學,算得出來一年有幾分鐘,還會除法。」但實際情況並非如此。外婆聽完後就哭了,我坐在後座,不知道該怎麼辦。
外公一路靜靜地開車,後來把車停在高速公路路肩。外公下了車,繞到後座把車門打開,等我下車跟著他走。當時我心想:「我闖禍了嗎?」外公是非常聰明、不多話的人,他從來沒有兇過我一句,但是,這將會是第一次嗎?還是他會要求我回到車上跟外婆道歉?我們站在拖車旁,外公看著我,柔和平靜地說:「傑夫,有一天你會明白,﹝仁慈﹞比﹝聰明﹞更難。」

我今天想跟大家分享的,就是"天賦"與"選擇"。﹝聰明﹞是天賦,﹝仁慈﹞是選擇。天賦與生俱來,但是選擇就難了。如果不小心,你們可能就會被聰明誘使做了傷害仁慈的選擇。你們是一群很有天分的人,頭腦聰明又能幹,這點我毫無懷疑,因為要進入普林斯頓大學是非常競爭的,不聰明是進不來的。
在這充滿創新驚奇的世界,聰明是優勢。但是,你們將如何運用自己的天賦?你們會以天賦為傲,還是以你的選擇為傲?十六年前,我創辦亞馬遜。我無意間發現網路使用一年成長23倍,我從來沒有見過、也沒有聽過任何東西成長得那麼快。我對於建立一家可以賣幾百萬種書的網路書店這概念非常興奮,這種規模在實體世界不可能存在。
那年我正好30歲、剛結婚一年,我告訴太太我想要離職去做網路書店這件瘋狂的事,可能不會成功,因為大部分的創業都失敗了,我也不太確定失敗後會如何。
我太太也是普林斯頓校友,她告訴我,我應該創業。她提醒我,在我小時候就已經是車庫的發明家。我用裝了水泥的輪胎做出自動關門器,用雨傘與錫箔紙做了不太好用的太陽能鍋,還做了烤盤鬧鐘。我一直希望當個發明家,我太太希望我能做自己有熱情的事。
我沒有多想如果試了失敗會不會後悔。如果連試都不試,我想我會一直掛記著這件事。經過考慮後,我選擇較不安全的路、追求熱情。我為自己的選擇感到驕傲。
明天,完全由你們書寫的嶄新的人生新頁,真的要開始了。
● 你將如何發揮你的天賦?你會做什麼選擇?
● 你是照習慣行事,還是你將追求熱情?
● 你會遵循成規,還是要創新獨特?
● 你會選擇安逸的生活,還是選擇奉獻與冒險的人生?
● 你碰到批評會畏縮屈從,還是堅持自己的信念?
● 你犯錯是會哄騙掩飾,還是坦承道歉?
● 你會因為害怕拒絕而不敢敞開心房,或是願意墜入愛河?
● 你會選擇打安全牌,還是會浪漫一點、超過極限冒險?
● 遇到困難,你是會放棄,還是不顧一切繼續前進?
● 你是憤世嫉俗的批評者,還是務實的建設者?
● 你會為展現自己的聰明而傷害別人,還是選擇仁慈?
我敢說,當你們80歲的時候,靜靜回想,在心中對自己說一生的真實故事,其中最鮮明、最有意義的將是你做的一連串選擇。
人生就是由選擇所創造的。
為自己創造一個偉大的人生故事。
祝你們好運。

2013年8月18日 星期日

Georgia Institute of Technology的電腦相關碩士線上課程受注目


Virtual U.

Master's Degree Is New Frontier of Study Online

By TAMAR LEWIN

The master's degree offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology through massive open online courses has the potential to disrupt higher education. 

我還沒深入研究 只是轉貼"廣告":

 

OMS CS Update: July 8, 2013

Thank you for your interest in the Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS), offered in collaboration with Udacity and AT&T! It’s been quite an exciting month since the May 14 announcement of our program, and we’re thrilled to update you with new information about OMS CS as it becomes available.
Georgia Tech’s College of Computing is moving into territory never before seen in higher education, so we don’t have all the details you’re probably wondering about—yet. However we will continue these periodic updates as we move toward program launch in January 2014 and the first matriculation of “open” applications later next year.

Timetable

  • Summer & Fall 2013: Development of initial OMS CS courses (listing below) and infrastructure (both GT and Udacity) to support program at scale
  • January 2014: Launch of pilot cohort
  • Spring/Summer 2014: Begin accepting open applications
  • Fall 2014: Matriculation of first “open” OMS CS cohort

Specializations & Course Offerings

We have identified the initial courses and specializations that will be available to OMS CS degree-seeking students, and more will be added as additional courses come online. At the launch of the pilot program in January 2014, the follow specializations will be offered:
  • Computational Perception & Robotics
  • Databases & Software Engineering
  • High-Performance Computing
  • Interactive Intelligence
  • Machine Learning
  • Networking
  • Social Computing
  • Systems
The following six courses will be available upon the pilot launch. A list of all tentatively planned courses, as well as more detail on specializations, is also available on the OMS CS website.

1. Computer Networks
by Associate Professor Nick Feamster
2. Advanced Operating Systems
by Professor Kishore Ramachandran
3. Machine Learning
by Professor Charles Isbell &
Professor Michael Littman (Brown University)
4. Software Development Process
by Associate Professor Alex Orso
5. High Performance Computer Architecture
by Associate Professor Milos Prvulovic
6. Special Topics: Robotic Cars for Real People
by Research Professor Sebastian Thrun (Stanford University)

Credential Options

Credential-seeking students in the OMS CS program will have several options, depending on their previous educational achievements, interest & available time, and preferred price point. M.S. degree-seeking students first must pass (paying Georgia Tech tuition and fees) two OMS CS courses with a grade of B or better before petitioning for full admission to the program. Georgia Tech certificates also will be available for students who only wish to take certain courses or are otherwise ineligible for MS program admission. These credential tracks, as well as the costs and services associated with each, are explained in more detail on the OMS website.

Best Press Coverage

At last count, nearly 200 unique news articles have been written about OMS CS since our May 14 announcement. Here are a few highlights:

2013年8月15日 星期四

grants for pro-Israeli; drops tuition fees – for those who study Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh

Students praying for luck before exams at a Vietnam university
Students who take degrees in certain medical specialities such as tuberculosis and leprosy also will get a free ride


Some of the News Fit to Print




Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
NEW EDUCATION STANDARDS FACE GROWING OPPOSITION
The Common Core, a set of standards for kindergarten through high school that has been ardently supported by the Obama administration and many business leaders and state legislatures, is facing growing opposition from both the right and the left even before it has been properly introduced into classrooms. Tea Party conservatives, who reject the standards as an unwelcome edict from above, have called for them to be severely rolled back. Indiana has already put a brake on them. The Michigan House of Representatives is holding hearings on whether to suspend them. And citing the cost of new tests requiring more writing and a significant online component, Georgia and Oklahoma have withdrawn from a consortium developing exams based on the standards. At the same time, a group of parents and teachers argue that the standards — and particularly the tests aligned with them — are simply too difficult. The article is in The New York Times.
WHY STATES ARE BACKING OUT ON COMMON STANDARDS AND TESTS
Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass write this commentary forThe Hechinger Report: The bloom is surely off the rose of Common Core, the new English and math standards pushed by Washington, D.C. education trade organizations and the Obama administration. In the last few months, a number of states have paused or de-funded implementation of the standards; others have pulled out of the consortia developing tests tied to them. In recent years, the Obama administration has made a number of federal goodies, such as Race to the Top grants and No Child Left Behind waivers, contingent on states’ adoption of Common Core standards and assessments. But now that Race to the Top money has been spent, states are belatedly taking a clear-eyed look at Common Core. High-performing states in particular won’t like what they see.
WASH., 2 OTHER STATES GET FEDERAL WARNING ON TEACHER EVALUATION
U.S. education officials announced Thursday that three states have not fulfilled their promises to bring their teacher and principal evaluation systems up to federal standards, but Washington, Oregon and Kansas have been given one extra year to finish the work. The new teacher evaluation systems were part of the requirements for waivers from the federal education law known as "No Child Left Behind." If the states meet the requirements of the waiver, they won't need to have every child meet state academic standards in reading and math by January 2014. So far, 40 states and the District of Columbia have been granted a one- or two-year reprieve from the requirements of the U.S. education law, passed more than a decade ago. A group of districts in California recently were given a different kind of waiver from requirements of the federal law. Washington, Oregon and Kansas had been placed on "high risk status" and given until the end of the 2012-13 school year to fix the way to include improvement in student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations. The article is from KOMOnews.com.

ABOUT HIGHER ED
FAIL FAST, NOT SPECTACULARLY
MOOC stalwart Udacity made more news lately, and it wasn’t of the positive, swooning variety. The results from this experiment—one that was celebrated widely when it was first announced—emerged recently, and they were not spectacular. Whereas in traditional remedial classes at SJSU, reportedly 74 percent of students were able to pass the course, in the online version from Udacity, no more than 51 percent were able to pass any of the three classes. What was widely celebrated, is now being widely derided. There are a few things to take away from this moment. The article is in Forbes.
 ABOUT K-12
IS YOUR STUDENT 'COMPETENT'? A NEW EDUCATION YARDSTICK TAKES THE MEASURE
Grading at Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, N.H., is not influenced by some of the more traditional factors, such as turning in homework on time or doing "extra credit." Instead, each class defines a set of about four "competencies" – central concepts and skills – and a student must be proficient in each one to pass. Stellar performance in one can't make up for lack in another. Students here have multiple opportunities along the way to show teachers what they know: There are quizzes and tests, yes, but also projects, individual portfolios, and class performances. This approach to learning is known as competency-based education, and New Hampshire is among the pioneers. As it gains momentum around the United States, the expectation is that it will deepen learning and tie education more explicitly to skills that will equip students for the workplace and college-level studies – everything from accurate math and writing to creative problem-solving. Competency education can be done in a variety of ways and across all subjects, but it takes a different mind-set than simply marching through a textbook-based curriculum. The article is in The Christian Science Monitor.

ABOUT HIGHER ED
COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND PERFORMANCE FUNDING
With the announcement that Massachusetts community colleges will be funded based on graduation rates and other measures, The Hechinger Report’s Jon Marcus spoke about this national trend on public-radio station WBUR’s Radio Boston program.
HOW MOOCS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE CORPORATE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
MOOCS, which first formally entered the learning sphere in 2008, gained prominence in 2012 when Stanford University offered the first in what became a series of its own. The concept’s name plainly conveys its definition: the MOOC is “massive” because it is designed to enroll tens of thousands of learners; it’s “open,” because, in theory, anyone with an Internet connection can enroll in the free course; it’s “online” because much if not all of the interaction takes place online in threaded web discussion groups with cohorts of learners, or on wikis, or via online videos of professors giving lectures and finally, MOOC’s are “courses” because they have concrete start and end dates, student assessments, online tests and quizzes, and proctored exams. Upon completion, some may offer a “verified certificate” of completion or college credit. The leading MOOC providers include Coursera, Udacity and edX. But as MOOCs storm the academic world, the public discussion of their impact is ignoring what could become their most valuable application. Far from being limited to higher education reform, the new learning style’s most important legacy could be its impact on the world of corporate training – which is a $150 billion industry. The article is in Forbes.
19 LESSONS ABOUT TEACHING
Andrew Joseph Pegoda writes in Inside Higher Ed: I started teaching in May 2007. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

CROWDSOURCING IDEAS FOR A BETTER SCHOOL
Robyn Gee reports for NPR’s All Tech Considered: In my previous life as a high school English teacher, I often felt disconnected from everyone making the decisions that affected how I did my job. A new curriculum handed down from the district. Tutorials to learn how to process student data. Elective classes swapped out for study halls. I just learned to roll with the punches. But crowdsourcing tools are slowly working their way into the education policy world, designed to give teachers and district employees more say on big decisions that affect their school environment. It might seem far-fetched that this can actually work — that a district employee will have a brilliant idea for changing the system and that it will garner unanimous support from the ranks of teachers, administrators and community members. It's easier to imagine an online free-for-all — a new platform to vent and passionately disagree with each other. But whatever the ultimate outcome, at least offering a somewhat democratized, regular feedback loop that teachers can easily access on their own time (after all the grading is done), seems like a win.
THIS GUY LEFT GOOGLE TO PUT THE POWER OF BIG DATA INTO SMALL CLASSROOMS
Prasad Ram (aka Pram) is founder, creator, and CEO ofGooru, “an open and collaborative online community where the best free materials for learning can be found, created, remixed and shared.” Gooru harnesses the power of data to enable personalized learning. Pram used to be a big research scientist: head of R&D for Google India and CTO for Yahoo India. He also contributed to the development of Google Maps, News, and Translate. Now, he’s dedicated to Gooru, a platform that describes itself as “a non-profit education technology start-up in Silicon Valley with a mission to honor the human right to education.” Put simply, Gooru puts the power of big analytics in the hands of small classrooms. This is what makes Gooru so exciting. As Pram said to me during a recent phone call, “the teacher is at the center of the learning process for us.” Gooru is not edtech that attempts to automate the teaching or learning process. Instead, it makes intuitive suggestions by looking at the whole class. The article is in Forbes.

ABOUT K-12
NEW TEACHER EVALUATION PROCESS SET TO BEGIN IN PITTSBURGH PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Teacher evaluation systems can determine who keeps a job and who goes, but what can such systems do to improve all teachers in the classroom? The new evaluation system developed by Pittsburgh Public Schools includes so much help that A+ Schools, an education advocacy group, is calling it the new "teacher improvement system." On Monday, A+ Schools released a report examining the complex evaluation system that will take effect in the 2013-14 school year. "We have a system now that is much more detailed, that reflects five years of collaboration between teachers and administrators, that is a vast improvement from what the system was five years ago," said Amy Scott, director of research and data analysis for A+ Schools. The article is in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
COMMON CORE POSES BIG CHALLENGE FOR STUDENTS, BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR TEACHERS
With an emphasis on developing verbal and analytical skills, the new Common Core standards will pose a big step up for most students. For English learners, who comprise a quarter of California’s children, it’ll seem more like a pole vault. “Common Core is pushing us toward a higher level of achievement, and that depth is predicated on an ability to use language in sophisticated ways,” said Ben Sanders, director of standards, assessment and instruction for the 10 districts that formed the nonprofit California Office to Reform Education, or CORE.Recognizing this will also be a unique opportunity and a heavy lift for teachers. CORE’s second annual Common Core summer conference for 450 teachers and administrators in San Francisco this month concentrated on teaching academic language – the shorthand for becoming fluent in the vocabulary, compound sentences and thought processes demanded to analyze texts, form coherent questions, create logical arguments and collaborate on projects. These are the priorities of the Common Core, which 45 states, including California, and the District of Columbia have adopted. In a sign of agreement over its importance, the California Teachers Association also made academic language under Common Core a theme at its annual Summer Institute for 1,100 teachers in Los Angeles – and for those who viewed webinars online last week. The article is in The Hechinger Report.

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RESEARCHERS EXPLORE FACTORS BEHIND MISMATCHED COLLEGE CHOICES
Many students attend a college they're over- or underqualified for, and a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research examines why. The researchers found substantial undermatch and overmatch, or students at colleges below or above their ability level, respectively. About 28 percent of students in the sample who started at a four-year college probably could have gone to a better institution, and 25 percent of students might have been in over their heads. While those figures aren't so different from shares of mismatched students three decades ago, the new report digs into this persistent issue. Mismatches are driven more by the decisions of students and families than of admissions offices, argue the researchers, Eleanor W. Dillon, an assistant professor of economics at Arizona State University, and Jeffrey A. Smith, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan. The consequences of mismatch need more attention, Ms. Dillon said. Examining the effects of undermatching and overmatching on students' graduation rates and future employment is her next task, she said. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

2013年8月13日 星期二

哈佛名師塔爾班夏哈 不再教授全球知名的「幸福課」

(麻州劍橋市訊) 今年六月曾經訪台的哈佛名師塔爾班夏哈,在新學期開學前突然宣佈不再教授全球知名的「幸福課」,讓1,400名已經在線上登記選修的學生大失所望。

班夏哈擁有哈佛組織行為博士學位,所開設的「正向心理學」被嫟稱為哈佛的幸福課,每年選修人數超過全校學生的百分之二十,許多人反應這門課「改變了他們的一生」。

如此受歡迎的王牌講師卻堅稱,取消幸福課程的決定是「極度痛苦但正確的」,有鑑於他在訪問台灣期間,親眼目睹一個國家從上到下對「小確幸」的執著與實踐,所形成的集體意志和力量遠遠超出他的預期,只要人民沒有遠高志向,不要有太多想法,好好過小日子,就可以獲至幸福感。

這個經驗讓他瞭解自己對幸福的定義「竟是如此膚淺而象牙塔。」

據班夏哈博士觀察,「小小而確定的幸福感」一詞雖由日本作家村上春樹發明,但真正從生活中去實踐的只有台灣人。台灣式的小確幸具體表現在知足不計較的價值觀,不必知道其它地方在發生什麼事的世界觀,以及吃美食、換手機、短期旅遊等低成本享樂主義上。

哈佛大學董事會對於班夏哈的決定感到震驚,但聽取他的親口報告後全體董事皆啞口無言,無異議通過取消幸福課程。

一位不願公開姓名的董事感嘆:「誰能想到單單靠著大吃大喝、開開咖啡店或B&B (編按:即民宿),就可以讓人忘卻二十餘年薪資不上漲的痛苦挫折?」

另一位曾獲諾貝爾獎的哈佛經濟學家則欣然表示:「東方社會長期以來經濟利得多被資本家、地主及專業經理人壟斷,勞工未分享成果卻仍甘之如飴,台灣人工作時數是全球最長的之一,我們終於瞭解他們是如何辦到的!」

班夏哈博士將接受台北「苦中作樂基金會」邀請,再度來台進行田野研究。他計劃明年秋天在哈佛經濟系開設全新的「小確信」課程,分享台灣成功經驗。

相關新聞:福斯國際電視網首部自製偶像劇*《幸福街第3號出口》*將於2013年7月殺青,在衛視中文台播出,預計將創造10以上的幸福收視率。
· · · 22分鐘前 ·

2013年8月12日 星期一

美國教育新聞摘要/ 兩位英國教育家

Sir Albert Sloman (1921-2012) / Lord James of Rusholme (1909--1992)


  Sir Albert Sloman (1921-2012) / Lord James of Rusholme (1909--1992)是兩位我敬佩的英國教育家. 我在2013年的書《珍重集:師友僑生譯藝獎留英追憶》(臺北:華人戴明學院2013)中會介紹他們.

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VALUE-ADDED RATINGS FOR SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS EXPLAINED IN VIDEO
Public radio's StateImpact Ohio, which collaborated with The Plain Dealer this summer on a three-day series about teacher ratings in Ohio, has posted a new video explaining the value-added measure as an addition to that series.
The video, which explains the basics of how the controversial measure of students' academic growth works, can be seen here.
FOR EDUCATION REFORM, TEACH TEACHERS DIFFERENTLY
Bill Maxwell writes this commentary in the Tampa Bay Times: During the next few weeks, America's public schools will reopen after summer vacation, and the debate about the quality of our teachers will resume. Negative headlines will hit front pages, and state lawmakers who disdain public school teachers will hatch new, ideologically driven quick fixes. It will be the same nasty debate in which teachers are portrayed as incompetent union-backed slackers and enemies of the children they are paid to instruct. I agree with earnest critics of the teaching profession that the way we educate and train our teachers should change and that we need to produce a better teacher corps. Many of our theories and practices are inherited from the 19th century, an industrial age, and should be scrapped. The encouraging news is that a serious movement to do just that is growing nationwide. Supported by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and many leading educators, the movement's goal is to change the traditional four-year bachelor's to a three-year degree specifically designed to produce effective public school teachers. More colleges of education are responding to decades of research showing that practice-based preparation dedicated to student achievement and led by expert educators is the key to turning out top-quality teachers.

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IN FOUR BOOKS, FOUR DIFFERENT VISIONS FOR FIXING HIGHER EDUCATION
Michael Lindgren writes this commentary in The Washington Post: In a famous episode of “The Sopranos,” Tony takes his teenage daughter on a college trip to an idyllic New England hamlet, only to run across a long-lost informant in hiding, whom he ends up garrotting in the mud while his daughter tours the picturesque ivy-and-brick campus. Those of us who have recently been on college visits may feel that Tony drew the easier assignment. Give me a choice between comparing financial aid proposals and fighting a bad guy to the death, and I’ll be asking you to pass me the wire. In my youth, the whole process was pretty laid-back. Where you went to college was an important decision, sure, but it didn’t inspire existential gloom, nor did it call into play financial and structural resources exceeding those of some European nations. If you didn’t get into one small, moderately prestigious liberal arts college, then another down the road would be sure to take you, and in 20 years it wouldn’t really matter which one, anyway. Of course, as I’m reminded — over and over and over again — it’s a different world today.
MASS. TIES COMMUNITY COLLEGE FUNDING TO RESULTS
Massachusetts has launched a new way of funding community colleges, for the first time tying a large portion of each college’s budget to its ability to improve graduation rates, meet the state’s workforce needs, and help more minority students thrive. The state’s move to so-called performance funding is one of the most ambitious in the nation; about half of each school’s allocation will hinge on such factors when it is fully phased in within a couple years. Every community college president endorsed the plan, a turnaround from less than two years ago when reform proposals from Governor Deval Patrick and others met with outrage among community college leaders. A $20 million boost in funding from the Legislature, after years of budget cuts, helped make the idea palatable, and no campus is losing money this year, so they have time to adjust to the new standards. The article is in The Boston Globe.


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NEW FIGURES SUGGEST COMMUNITY COLLEGE GRADUATION RATES HIGHER THAN THOUGHT
Community college administrators have long complained that their very, very low graduation rates unfairly fail to take into account students who transfer and continue on to earn degrees somewhere else. Now there are new figures backing them up. Of the estimated one in four students who start at community colleges and then move on to four-year institutions, more than 60 percent ultimately graduate, the National Student Clearinghouse reports. And another 8 percent who haven’t finished haven’t dropped out, the study says; they’re still enrolled. The article is in the Hechinger Report.
COMPETENCY BASED TRANSCRIPTS
Students who enroll in a new competency-based program at Northern Arizona University will earn a second transcript, which will describe their proficiency in the online bachelor degree’s required concepts. The university will also teach students how to share their “competency report” transcripts with potential employers. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
OBAMA NEEDS PUSH TO SHAKE UP HIGHER EDUCATION
Richard Vedder with the American Enterprise Institute offers a plan for higher education reform in a post from Bloomberg News. Vedder writes; “As students get ready to go to college this month, let me suggest ways to “shake up the system” and “tackle rising costs.” In doing so, I would point out that two things lead to higher prices: rising demand and falling supply. Any efficient solution to the explosion in college tuition and fees must either damp demand or increase supply.
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MANY TEACHERS NEED COMMON CORE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Many teachers in states that have adopted the common standards have not had any professional development to help them adjust to the new expectations, a new study shows. The findings, based on a survey by the Center on Education Policy, which has been tracking common-core implementation, highlight the difficulty states face in reaching all their teachers to prepare them for the Common Core State Standards. The post is from the Curriculum Matters blog in Education Week.
DOES BLENDED LEARNING BOOST ALGEBRA SCORES?
As the field of ed-tech has grown, research around the efficacy of technology has been hard to come by. Part of the difficulty is finding accurate comparisons because schools, administrations, districts and student populations across the country have their own individual sets of criteria and challenges. A recent report by the RAND Corporation, in partnership with the Department of Education, tries to provide an objective overview of blended learning. RAND conducted a national two-year randomized trial to determine whether a blended learning curriculum developed by Carnegie Learning, Inc. had a positive effect on middle and high school algebra students. The report found that the curriculum, which included both instruction time on computers and in-person, improved high school performance by 8 percentile points. The post is from KQED.
 


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OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ALOOF IN ESEA RENEWAL PUSH
Not since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 has Congress been so outwardly engaged in K-12 policy, yet most advocates remain pessimistic that there will be a new version of the flagship federal education law anytime soon. A big part of the reason: The Obama administration has little incentive to see a bill to revise the Elementary and Secondary Education Act advance in the current legislative climate, in which lawmakers seem more likely to erode, rather than support, the president’s policy priorities. Congress has been working on two highly partisan ESEA bills—one of which, the GOP-backed House measure, President Barack Obama has threatened to veto. The article is in Education Week.
ARE RACE-BASED GOALS IN EDUCATION HELPFUL?
While civil rights groups are critical of Florida's race-based education goals, the policy's defenders argue that it sets ambitious - but realistic - achievement targets. NPR’S Tell Me More host Michel Martin talks with Krista Kafer, chief of the policy group Colorado's Future Project.
NEW YORK FAILS COMMON CORE TESTS
The political fight over the Common Core academic standards rolling out in schools nationwide this fall is sure to intensify after New York reported Wednesday that students across the state failed miserably on new reading and math tests meant to reflect the more rigorous standards. Fewer than a third of students in public schools passed the new tests, officials reported. And, in a twist that could roil education policy, some highly touted charter schools flopped particularly badly. Other states are expected to face similar reckonings next year and in 2015, as they roll out new tests aligned to Common Core. Already, Kentucky has reported high failure rates on its Common Core tests. The article is in Politico.
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FAST ENOUGH ON TRANSFER IN CALIFORNIA?
For nearly three years California’s community colleges have been working with the California State University System to comply with a state law requiring guaranteed transfer pathways for graduates of the two-year institutions. Now some state lawmakers want to nudge the process along. Community colleges so far have created more than 800 new “associate degree for transfer” programs in 25 popular majors. While progress varies among the 112 colleges, over all the system is roughly halfway done developing the 1,654 degrees required by the ambitious legislation. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
MOOC REVOLUTION MIGHT NOT BE SO DISRUPTIVE AFTER ALL
"A medium where only self-motivated, Web-savvy people sign up, and the success rate is 10 percent, doesn't strike me quite yet as a solution to the problems of higher education," says Sebastian Thrun, of Udacity. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
 
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INTEGRATING CTE, HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM DIDN’T HURT OR HELP MATH ACHIEVEMENT
Federal legislation has attempted to move career and technical education (CTE) from a segregated component of the high school curriculum to an integrated element that jointly improves both academic and career readiness. While this study found integrating CTE and the high school curriculum didn't hurt math achievement, the federal Perkins III act was an investment that emphasized academic "upscaling" of CTE courses with the hope that this would enhance rigor and bolster academic achievement. These expectations, at least at the time of the ELS:2002 study, did not materialize. This information can be found in the Education Commission of the States Research Studies Database.
SIX CALIFORNIA CITIES GET NCLB DELAY
School districts in San Francisco, Oakland and six other California cities were granted at least a one-year reprieve from the stringent requirements and severe sanctions of the federal No Child Left Behind law Tuesday, a waiver otherwise given only to states.  The waiver, granted by the Obama administration, means the districts will no longer be required to label low-performing schools as failures and require that they make staffing or other changes in hopes of boosting test scores. The article is in the San Francisco Chronicle.
STATES’ COMMON CORE ‘TO DO’ LISTS
On the heels of its latest survey taking states' temperatures about the political environment surrounding the common core, the Center on Education Policy has released a report detailing how far along state education officials think they are in implementing the new English/language arts and math standards, and what they see as the biggest remaining challenges. Officials in 30 states told CEP that at least some of their schools and districts are already using curricula aligned to the Common Core State Standards. And those in 36 of the 39 states surveyed either "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the idea that the new math standards require "substantially revised" curricula. (Officials in two states disagreed with that idea, and one wasn't sure.) In addition, 37 of the 40 responding agreed or strongly agreed that the ELA standard would require significantly different curricula than in the past. The post is from Education Week’s State Ed Watch blog.
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REGULATORY RECIPROCITY GETS BOOST FROM LUMINA
The Lumina Foundation has awarded a $2.3-million grant to a partnership of organizations hoping to create a single set of standards that states can use to regulate colleges—and especially their online offerings. The effort, led by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, is intended to establish “a quality-assurance process that’s unbound by state lines” and that will help students and institutions trust degrees and online programs from colleges in other states, according to the commission’s president, David A. Longanecker, who is a former assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
NO MORE DOUBLE SPENDING
College students likely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars extra per year on buying rights for digital versions of readings to which they have free access. Some college and university libraries have been attempting to rein in the duplicative charges, which stem from journal articles and other assigned readings that students are told to buy for class even though the material is freely available to them through library holdings. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.


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STUDENTS WITH CREDENTIALS FARE BETTER AS TRANSFERS FROM COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Students who transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions having already earned either a certificate or an associate degree are more likely to make it to the finish line, especially if they plow straight through rather than take time off, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The report is based on a study of the six-year outcomes of students who started at two-year colleges and transferred to four-year institutions during the 2005-6 academic year. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
NEW NGA CHAIR TO FOCUS ON EDUCATION, WORKFORCE TRAINING
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin announced Sunday that improving education and workforce training systems will be her focus during her one-year term as chairman of the National Governors Association. Fallin, the first governor from Oklahoma to head the nonpartisan group, unveiled her initiative after formally being named chairman during the association's meeting in Milwaukee. Fallin's initiative is called “America Works: Education and Training for Tomorrow's Jobs.” “Improving our workforce and ensuring it remains internationally competitive is an issue that calls for national attention and demands gubernatorial leadership,” said Fallin, only the third woman to serve as chairman of the governors' group. “Our future economic security will require significant improvements to our education system and workforce training programs. It also will require closer relationships among our high schools, colleges, workforce training providers and employers. The article is in the Oklahoman.
GETTING OUT OF A RUT
In more than four decades researching and writing about higher education policy, finance and management, University of Pennsylvania professor Robert Zemsky has touched on just about every corner of the higher education world.In his most recent book, A Checklist for Change: Making American Higher Education a Sustainable Enterprise (Rutgers University Press), Zemsky writes:“Those of us in higher education really are living in an Ecclesiastes moment – change may be happening all around us, but for the nation’s colleges and universities, there really is precious little that is new under the sun. For 30 years, the very thing that each wave of reformers has declared needed to be changed has remained constant.” The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
WASHINGTON POST CO. SELLS NEWSPAPER, KEEPS KAPLAN
Kaplan Inc., now makes up a larger portion of the Washington Post Company, which Monday announced the sale of The Washington Post for $250 million to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Kaplan -- which includes Kaplan University, a test preparation division and other affiliates -- brought in $548 million of the Washington Post Company's $1 billion in revenue for the second quarter of this year, according to a corporate filing. While Kaplan's revenue was down slightly compared to last year, its operating revenue improved. Revenue for the newspaper division, which has been battered by circulation declines, was $138 million for the quarter. Its operating loss for the first six months of 2013 was $49 million. The information is from Inside Higher Ed's Quick Takes.
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NASBE CONTINUES ASSISTANCE ON COMMON CORE
Arlington, VA — Even as most states work hard to implement the Common Core State Standards in math and English language arts, much remains to be done in the way of aligned assessments, educator support, and continued evaluation of the standards’ broader impact on other policies. The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) will continue to assist state boards as they deal with these and other issues linked to the Common Core under a two-year, $800,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
IPAD TRAINING FOR L.A. TEACHERS BEGINS THIS WEEK
Two months after the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of education voted to spend $30 million to buy iPads for every teacher and student at 47 schools, the district began training those teachers on how to use them. "It’s so exciting for the students," said Jennifer Chang, an elementary school teacher. With the internet in their hands, there's no limit to what the students can research, she added. "The world is coming to them. It's going to make everything, I think, more efficient and faster." The piece ran on KPCC and its blog.
 
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EDUCATION BLOOMS, POST-RECESSION
Major innovations — forged by the struggles of the Great Recession and fostered by technology — are coming to higher education. Investment dollars are flooding in — a record-smashing 168 venture capital deals in the U.S. last year, according to the springtime conference’s host, GSV Advisors. The computing power of “the cloud” and “big data” are unleashing new software. Public officials, desperate to cut costs and measure results, are open to change. And everyone, it seems, is talking about MOOCs, the “Massive Open Online Courses” offered by elite universities and enrolling millions worldwide. The article is from the Associated Press. And appeared in the Standard Times.
OUR COMMUNITIES NEED MORE THAN ‘NARROWLY TAILORED’ SOLUTIONS
Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor blogs for The Huffington Post: "As we survey the environment following this summer's affirmative action ruling by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. Texas, we must not lose sight of the fact that as important as legal theorizing and statistical projections may be to navigating the societal landscape, there are real lives at stake every day -- in communities large and small all across our nation. So, at the risk of distracting us from devising appropriately "narrowly tailored" means for increasing diversity in higher education guided by the Fisher decision, I'd like to suggest we step back from our law books, databases, and spreadsheets and focus a moment."
OPEN ACCESS GAINS MAJOR SUPPORT IN CALIFORNIA
After years of discussion, the University of California's Academic Senate has adopted an open-access policy that will make research articles freely available to the public through eScholarship, California's open digital repository. The new policy, to be phased in over the next few months, applies to all 10 of the system's campuses and more than 8,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty members. It will affect as many as 40,000 research papers a year, the university said in a statement announcing the news. Faculty members can opt out or ask that their work be embargoed for a period of time, as many journal publishers require.vThe article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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TESTS LINKED TO COMMON CORE IN CRITICS' CROSS HAIRS
Having failed to persuade lawmakers in any state to repeal the Common Core State Standards outright, opponents are training their fire on the assessments being developed to go with the standards and due to be rolled out for the 2014-15 school year. They’re using as ammunition concerns about costs and the technology required for those tests, in addition to general political opposition to the common core. The article is in Education Week.
DUNCAN: WE HAVE TO GET BETTER, FASTER
“One generation ago we were first in college completion rates, and today we are 12th, and we have had many countries pass us by,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told Public Radio’s Here & Now. “Obviously in a world that’s shrinking and getting flatter, and with a globally competitive economy, jobs are going to go — high-wage, high-skill jobs, good middle-class jobs — are going to go to where the knowledge workers are. And I desperately want that to be in the United States. And so we have to stop being so complacent, we have to get better faster, and I would argue we have to get better at every level on the education continuum, from cradle to career.”
GROWTH OF TEACHER EVALUATION-SYSTEMS FUELS TECH COMPANY’S RISE
Teachscape, a privately owned company that provides online, video-based tools to help conduct classroom observations of teachers, continues to ride the wave of states and school districts seeking to implement and improve new teacher evaluation systems. The company, which already works in roughly 2,000 districts in 47 states, announced Thursday that it has been selected as an approved vendor on behalf of The Cooperative Purchasing Network, a national procurement co-op serving roughly 35,000 public agencies and nonprofits. The announcement means that it will now be easier and less expensive for many states, school districts, and charter schools to contract with Teachscape while meeting the requirements of competitive public procurement processes. The post is from Education Week’s Digital Education blog.