I mention to people fairly often that I don’t know where countries are because geography isn’t taught in US public schools. Here, we have something called “Social Studies” instead of history or geography, which is supposed to teach how people in different cultures live and think. But wow! The world is finite and countries change borders or names fairly infrequently. Can’t we take a few months in one of the early school years to focus on teaching US students where other countries are on the world map? People from every other country I’ve ever met learn this in school at a pretty young age. Only in the United States, our students don’t know.
Pro-public education Board of Education 2013 candidates
Board of Education budgets are typically 3 times as big as the entire budgets of the municipalities in which they’re located. Those hugs pots of money are why Big-Business supporter Gov. Chris Christie and his GOP colleague Mitt Romney are so eager to get their hands on public education funds. They can’t stand money being spent to actually improve the lives of vulnerable children, and students of color, across America when that money could go to make their own children and grandchildren richer.
Online Learning, Free Classes and MOOCs
Topics related to distance eLearning in academia and other organizations.
EdX offers interactive online classes and MOOCs from the world’s best universities. Online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities. EdX is a non-profit online initiative created by founding partners Harvard and MIT.
Self learning beats a “degrading” educational system
TED features a MOOC project this week
Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan developed a curriculum for their students to build a computer, piece by piece. When they put the course online — giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks — they were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn, working independently as well as organizing their own classes in the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). A call to forget about grades and tap into the self-motivation to learn.
Expanded student demographic data now on ELC website
Over the years, Education Law Center (ELC) has become the “go-to” source where parents, policymakers and advocates can find high quality, in-depth data and other useable information on New Jersey’s public schools. This organization is committed to continuing to provide timely and relevant data in a highly functional and interactive format and is pleased to announce that visitors can now find an expanded range of student data on their website: racial/ethnic composition, poverty rates, limited English proficiency rates, and special education rates of NJ public school students, whether enrolled in district schools or charter schools.
Danger looms for higher ed student diversity
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider if it’s lawful for colleges and universities to take into account the ethnicity of a student who applies for entrance when deciding whether to admit him/her. Most institutions of higher education have been required since 1978 to make room for students who may be lower-achieving academically than other candidates because they’re members of ethnic groups recognized as disadvantaged and need the boost of a handicap to raise their area of the playing field to a level which will statistically provide a similar admission opportunity as students coming from ethnic groups with history of better academic performance.