Education Overhaul Begins Today: 5 Education Articles to Start Your Week

As we begin to wind down to the end of the 2010 fall semester and high-schools prepare for the long winter’s break, bloggers and newswriters begin to acknowledge the past and begin to look for a better, brighter future for educators and students all over the world.

25 Years of Computers in Education: What Has Changed?

by Patrick Ledesma, Teacher Magazine

Twenty-five years ago when the Commodore 64 made its way onto the market, marketers were focused on selling it as a must-have tool for education and learning. It worked. Now computers are a growing part of the educational fabric. In this blog article, Patrick Ledesma details some important ways that computer technology has shaped education forever.

Digital Learning Council Releases “Road Map” to Ed. Overhaul

by Ian Quillen, Education Week

The newly-appointed Digital Learning Council has released their recommendations for education reform. Their 10 suggested changes to education policy include pay for performance models, an overhaul of funding models and also for states to begin using digital learning models to initiate reform in all programs.

Why bar parents from helping on homework?

by Jay Matthews, The Washington Post

When Westfield High in Fairfax County gave their AP sophomores a sheet entitled “Expectations of Integrity,” I’m sure that they didn’t realize how much they were truly limiting their students. Their number one rule discouraged their students from using information found on the Internet or confer with their parents on classwork. According to the document, if they didn”t abide by the rules, they’d receive an honor code violation.

Jay Matthews, who has been following the story from the beginning, argues that Westfield High School”s method deters AP sophmores from gaining real-life learning experiences. Parents also believe that it deters students from sharing what they”ve learned throughout their AP coursework.

A system to tell how your kid is doing in school

by Steve Peha, Guest Blogger for The Answer Sheet

For decades now, report cards have been the only marker for how students are performing in school. However, modern parents want more depth to the assessment of their child. That’s why they turn to people like Steve Peha, president of education consultancy “Teaching That Makes Sense”. Peha (who believed that the hundreds of volumes of data the state provides very few answers to what parents really want to know) created a new way to access what students have learned in the classroom. In this article, you’ll get to take casino a closer look at the 5 simple questions that form Peha’s students accessment.

Colleges Tackle Remedial Problem

by Robert Frahm, CT Mirror

The problems with public school math courses are the most evident to the college professors who have to teach students who are just not ready for college-level work.

In this article, we look at how Conneticut colleges are handling the influx of college freshman who are in serious need of remedial math courses. Since students who take remedial courses are twice as likely to quit college, the stakes are higher than ever. That’s why Connecticut schools such as Manchester Community College are taking a close look at remedial college work, hoping to find new ways to teach students who graduated high school unprepared. According to the article, some colleges will begin using computer programs and digital learning environments as a means to help math-challenged students pass their remedial courses.

featured photo by Bindaas Madhavi

6 Digital Trends to Watch In Education
A detailed review of the latest internet trends such as social media, video, game based-learning impacting education and how educators, teachers and tutors can embrace those changes with the rise of the digital- native.

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