Information Age Education Blog

I contribute time and energy to the Oregon PrISM (Preparation for Instruction of Science & Math) project. (See http://www.theprismproject.org.) Yesterday the leaders in this project spent time discussing possible content for a new proposal to the National Science Foundation that would continue and extend the good work that has been done so far.

As I have done repeatedly with this group, I pointed out that the content of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) areas has changed significantly due to computer modeling and computational thinking. (See http://iae-pedia.org/Computational_Thinking.) Also, students have changed significantly through growing up in a world of cell phones, text messaging, computers, computerized games, multimedia recording and playback devices, and the Web.

In 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested about $3 billion in a variety of projects. Education was one of the areas emphasized. (Gates Foundation, 2009). Quoting from eSchool News:

Supporting the development and adoption of the Common Core standards was one of the Gates Foundation’s many education investments in 2009. All told, the foundation spent $373 million on U.S. education last year and another $19 million on libraries, according to its annual report.

I am a regular reader of the (free) ASCD SmartBrief. Quoting from the 9/9/2010 (http://www.smartbrief.com/servlet/ArchiveServlet?issueid=539D4C89-3ABF-4700-9FA9-4E814961C5C2&lmid=archives) issue:

Philadelphia high school implements mastery-learning model
Class is back in session in Philadelphia, where educators are working to raise achievement at six schools designated by Superintendent Arlene Ackerman as Promise Academies. One high school is adopting the mastery-learning model of instruction. The approach uses pass-fail ratings instead of letter grades and allows students to progress through subjects at their own pace.

The TED videos are one of my favorite sources of information. Recently I viewed Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education. This 17-minute video is available free online at http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html.

Mitra, along many other teachers, feels that: “Children will learn to do what they want to do.” Quoting from the video listed above:

At lunch today I spent time talking to Bob Sylwester, my co-author of the Information Age Education Newsletter available free at http://iae-pedia.org/IAE_Newsletter. We talked about his experiences in teaching in a one-room school, and how collaborative learning and older students helping younger students was the norm in those one-room schools of the “good old days.”

The article Peer Pedagogy: Student Collaboration and Reflection in a Learning-Through-Design Project (http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15198) caught my attention later in the afternoon. In 2008 research involving a mixed class of 4^th-5^th  grader students studying science, the authors report: