Sunday, December 25, 2016

Colleges Should Take An Entrepreneurial Approach To Higher Education

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Recently we’ve been talking (and beginning to collaborate) with a remarkable woman named Charisse Wernecke. Dr. Wernecke holds a PhD in higher education leadership and policy, and she has some great ideas about how to fix American colleges.

What does that have to do with entrepreneurship (we hear you ask)? Well, isn’t it about time that US colleges took a more entrepreneurial and open-book approach to their business?

Certainly most of them can’t continue on their current trajectory. Total US college enrollment is down 6% over the past four years, notes Wernecke, a drop of more than a million students. Tuitions and expenses continue to rise, sometimes topping $200,000 for a four-year degree. And even though most students don’t pay the full fare, they’re taking on a lot of debt to pay the discounted costs. At last count total US student debt was about $1 trillion—more than total credit card debt.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2016/02/02/the-open-book-college/#6e223eb97ece
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Thursday, December 22, 2016

HOW EDTECH CAN INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

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Students not paying attention to their teachers is an age-old dilemma. Pre-cell phones, that meant note passing instead of note taking. Today, it’s that type of activity coupled with zoning out or simply not caring. Kids today are accustomed to instant gratification via technology – which makes classroom teaching harder than it’s ever been in the past.

Case in point: The first annual Professor Pulse Survey was performed between August and November 2016. In total, 21,558 faculty members from institutions worldwide communicated their opinions regarding higher education. Respondents were predominately employees of public and private colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The biggest teaching challenge reported was students not paying attention or participating in class. Forty-one percent of those polled indicated that most students do not participate in class. The majority cited increasing student participation and engagement as their number one priority.

So how can teachers capture the attention of their students and keep it?

More at: http://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-edtech-can-increase-student-engagement/
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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

How to Ace an Interview: 5 Tips from a Harvard Career Advisor

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Learn how to prepare for your next interview with these 5 tips from career services advisor Linda Spencer.
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Monday, December 19, 2016

Justin Urbas - Jumpstarting Learning for Children Living in Poverty

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Contrary to popular belief, DNA is not a child’s destiny. IQ is not fixed. Cognitive skills can change. This is critically important in K-12 schools because of the poverty gap — the difference between a child’s chronological age and developmental age.

In a healthy environment, a child’s developmental age will match his or her chronological age. In a high-risk environment, research shows that while a child’s chronological age is 5 years old, his or her developmental age is closer to 3 years old. This has a huge impact on school readiness and performance.

Today, 51 percent of all students in U.S. public schools are poor. Our public education system is designed to help students achieve a year of academic growth in a school year. For economically disadvantaged children, that’s a problem.

More at: http://www.theedadvocate.org/jumpstarting-learning-children-living-poverty/
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Sunday, December 18, 2016

When And How To Hire An Independent Educational Consultant

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My recent travels, including to the annual conference of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), have led me again into conversations with members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) and Higher Educational Consultants Association (HECA).  An increasing number of families are looking for consultants to help their children through the college process.  You may, or may not, want to join the crowd.

First, do you really need a consultant?  When I started work in an independent school in Florida, I met with a local consultant who had clients in our school.  I told her that I respected such work, having done some after attending the IECA Summer Institute, been a member of the organization, and become a Certified Educational Planner.  I also told her that if we were doing our jobs in the fine school where I worked, no family in our community needed her services, other than perhaps for standardized test prep or academic tutoring.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christeare/2015/10/11/when-and-how-to-hire-an-independent-educational-consultant/#70337b203cb2
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Thursday, December 15, 2016

Justin Urbas - IPADS IN EDUCATION: TOOL OR TOY?

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Findings from a survey of Maine high school students and educators imply that the use of iPads for education purposes is not effective. A whopping 90 percent of teachers and 74 percent of students prefer using laptops over the iPad for teaching and learning, according to the survey.

Apple is partnering with Maine’s Department of Education to offer schools the opportunity to trade iPads from 2013 for new Macbook Air laptops, free of charge. Over 1,700 laptops will be distributed statewide later this year.

Teachers cite that the transition from laptops to iPads wasn’t properly planned in many districts and teachers weren’t appropriately trained in incorporating and utilizing the iPads. Educators felt the iPads were mostly a gaming device used as a toy by students, largely without the ability to word process. Quartz reports that one of the teachers surveyed stated, tablets provided “no educational function in the classroom.” Another elementary school educator found that though the iPads did enhance learning by providing more varied instruction and activities, communication and conversation skills were undermined with iPad usage.

More at: http://www.thetechedvocate.org/ipads-education-tool-toy/
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Monday, December 12, 2016

Justin Urbas - Was Nov. 8 a massive failure of civics education?

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“I hate politics so much.”

That’s what a 10th grader in the Bronx had to say recently while struggling to comprehend the election of Donald Trump as president, articulating the thoughts of many students, especially young people of color, at schools across the country. “Why would you want a racist, sexist man as president?” the student asked, adding, “Minorities have been fighting for our rights for the past 200 years and now all of that is going to waste.”

It is vital that we seize on these moments to teach our young people valuable lessons about government and democracy. As a national nonprofit dedicated to teaching young people to be active citizens, we neither endorse this student’s comments nor suggest that all young people share the same views. Instead, we acknowledge that the presidential election’s aftermath has been emotional for all, creating despair in some parts, ecstasy in others.

More at: http://www.theedadvocate.org/nov-8-massive-failure-civics-education/
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Sunday, December 11, 2016

Justin Urbas - Pittsburgh Teachers Thwart Healthcare Stealing From Education

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At long last, forward-looking school and union leaders recognize they share the same goals and are proving that it’s not that difficult to slay the healthcare cost beast even in an expensive and contentious healthcare market. Philadelphia represents the model that is destroying education budgets while Pittsburgh represents the antidote to that poisonous approach. Philadelphia is like virtually every community in the country that I wrote about where teacher unions are on the wrong side of the negotiating table. In contrast, if teacher unions want to ensure their members get fairly compensated and schools aren’t further decimated by healthcare’s hyperinflation, they should follow Pittsburgh's lead.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davechase/2016/03/30/pittsburgh-1st-graders-2b-advantage-over-philly-counterparts/#50e9b0e2318c
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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Justin Urbas - Are Teachers Playing a Rigged Game?

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Teachers in America have a high workload, are expected to transform their students’ lives, and have to navigate a larger—often broken—ecosystem at the same time. In other words, teachers are expected to be superheroes. But is this expectation realistic, or is it setting teachers up for failure?

What’s a superstar teacher?

Calculus is such a hard subject for students to learn, and it’s not one that many are enthusiastic about.

But that obstacle didn’t stop Jaime Escalante, whom the movie Stand and Deliver is based on. In this Edward James Olmos classic, he takes control of a class of dropout-prone students. He keeps them in school and teaches them some of the toughest topics. He takes this class of Hispanic working-class students and gets them to raise their expectations about their capabilities in school.

More at: http://www.theedadvocate.org/teachers-playing-rigged-game/
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Monday, December 5, 2016

Justin Urbas - 5 Pricey Ways To Give Kids An Educational Advantage

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There’s probably little you won’t do to help your kids succeed—short of running the bases for them at a Little League game, or writing their admissions essays.

Who doesn’t want to make sure the odds are in their favor when it comes to college and their subsequent careers?

But when you’re juggling one too many financial priorities, you can’t always afford Saturday math camps and private tutors—unless you go into debt helping junior keep up with the Joneses’ kids.

From preschool admissions coaches (you heard right!) to foreign language immersion classes, we’ve rounded up five popular ways parents pay big bucks to give their kids an educational advantage to see if these perks are really worth the money.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2015/07/27/worth-it-or-not-5-pricey-ways-to-give-kids-an-educational-advantage-2/#2fbfe1b0409a
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