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HOW THE U.S. CAN ENGAGE GIRLS IN STEM

The problem has been around forever. Young men go into science, technology, engineering and math at a far greater rate than young women.
Men are twice as likely to be in STEM positions as women, and one out of every five female science and engineering graduates has left the labor force completely.
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IMPROVING EDUCATION: GREAT MINDS ARE MADE! NOT BORN!

Growth Mindset” isn’t a new idea. It was formulated almost thirty years ago by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck.
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AMERICAN EDUCATION: DOES OUR PRESENT SYSTEM ENDANGER OUR FUTURE PROSPERITY?

Lew Dobbs, for those of you that might not know, is the host of Lou Dobbs Tonight, a prime time program on the Fox Business Network. 
Endangering Prosperiy: A global view of the American school
In this interesting video Dobbs discusses a recent book by Eric Hanushek titled Endangering Prosperiy: A global view of the American school with the author himself.
As an interviewer Lou Dobbs tends to be more laid back than most of his fellow hosts on the Fox Network, but he did seem upset by two figures author Hanushek claimed showed the inadequacy of our public schools:
  • one, students in the US were rated 32nd of 65 nations in math proficiency;
  • two, US students ranked 17th in reading proficiency worldwide.
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ROBOTS HELP TEACHERS FIND EACH STUDENT'S SWEET SPOT OF LEARNING

Have you ever wondered why students don’t like school?
Most of us haven’t given the question much thought; disliking school just seemed to come naturally.
Personally I disliked sitting in one place for such a long time.
But maybe the author of "Why Don’t Students Like School", cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, is on to something with his “sweet spot.”
 
“The problem,” for each student, Willingham says referring to teaching in general,  “must be easy enough to be solved yet difficult enough to take some mental effort,”  He calls this the “sweet spot” of difficulty.
Goldilocks would have understood: the bed couldn’t be too hard or two soft (easy); like all of us she was looking for “just right!”
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ROBOTS: THE NEWEST MILESTONE IN SCIENCE LEARNING

In an online edition of Scientific American,  Michael Wysession, an earth and planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote, “Though we live in a thoroughly modern scientific world, our science education structure is now 120 years old.”
That sounds like a criticism, but it’s really just a statement of fact.  
froebel blocks
Mr. Wysession breaks the last 120 years of science education into four separate eras or milestones.
 
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6 TECH TOOLS THAT BOOST TEACHER-PARENT COMMUNICATION

Communicating effectively with parents is one of the most trying things a teacher will do.  
Some parents are working several jobs and are hard to find;  some don’t speak the teacher’s language, and truth to tell it, some parents just don’t want to be bothered.  
Teachers too have things to do, grading papers, planning lessons; some become discouraged when their communications with parents have been ignored.
Fortunately in today’s educational digital universe there are several means available to help teachers get their thoughts across to parents without going door to door or making endless phone calls.
Educator Jeff Knutson discusses several of these means in a blog post on Graphite.Org called 
 
weebly logo
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IF MASSACHUSETTS WAS A COUNTRY

I ran into an interesting article by Alan Singer, a Hofstra University social studies educator.
The article is openly contemptuous of what he terms the "self-proclaimed educational ‘reform’ movement" which in his opinion "is busy packaging Common Core standards with high-stakes assessment, scripted curriculum, packaged test prep, the de-professionalism of teachers and the privatization of school support services".
 
Professor Singer believes that the process, he so deplores, is driven in part by a recent book by Amanda Ripley titled The Smartest Kids in The World: And How They Got That Way, kids which she apparently discovered in Finland, South Korea and Poland.  
These kids did particularly well on international exams when compared to American kids.
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HOW TO STAY ALIVE IN THE SWAMP


Alive in the Swamp

The first four words in this article on EdSurge by Tony Wan, Nine Questions for Evaluating Education Innovation, caught my interest immediately.

They must have done the same for Mr. Wan as he took them directly off the title of a new report from Nesta and newSchools Venture Fund, an otherwise ’sober-sides’ educational organization.

 

What are the four words you ask? Hang on, I'm getting to them!

 

Drum roll... and the four words are, “Alive In The Swamp”!

Mr. Wan aptly terms these three words as a possible title for a “cheesy survival horror flick,” and also a good analogy for the problems experienced by “entrepreneurs and educators slogging their way through edtech jungle, trying to figure out how to best build, deploy and assess technology for the classroom.”

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NAO ROBOT FASHION SHOW, HIGHSCHOOLERS ROCK

Teachers searching for innovative ways to interest kids in STEM learning should watch this video of high schoolers in Austin, Texas, producing their own robot fashion show at a local Barnes and Noble. That’s right! A robot fashion show complete with a runway and the latest fashions for well-dressed robots!

 

The students are from the award-winning robotics clubs of Anderson High School and Eastside Memorial. High School presented five ‘NAO’ humanoid robots developed by Aldebaran Robotics of Paris, France; they programed them with five distinct personalities, taught them to move like little models, and sent them down the runway strutting their stuff and dressed to the nines!

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OHIO OFFICIALS LAUNCH 'STRAIGHT A' FUND

RobotsLAB is pleased to report that yet another state has realized the importance of STEM learning and the necessity of spending more of their scarce educational funds on it. 
The state this time is Ohio!
 
Ohio State Superintendent Dick Ross believes that “many educators and administrators are eager for transformation and we have the innovative spirit needed to improve student efficiencies.”
 
Apparently Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich agrees with Ross as he recently asked the Ohio State Legislature to make available $250 million for new education innovation fund grants in the next two fiscal years.
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