education & tech

Education is a resource every country should pay close attention and the next moth two events are coming and are related to the Educational businesses. BizDeansTalk speaks of a The Economist organizing what they called Debate Series, five propositions have now been short-listed to address the most far-reaching and divisive aspects of the education debate: the place of foreign students in higher education; the position of corporate donors; and the role of technology in today's classrooms. The highest ranking propositions will be debated, with the first launching on Oct 15th.

The following are the propositions:

1. This house believes that the continuing introduction of new
technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most
education.

2. This house proposes that governments and universities everywhere
should be competing to attract and educate all suitably-qualified
students regardless of nationality and residence.

3. This house believes that companies donate to education mainly to win
public goodwill and there is nothing wrong with this.

4. This house believes that the "digital divide" is a secondary problem
in the educational needs of developing countries.

5. This house believes that social networking technologies will bring
large changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom.

In the other hand, October 8th, the k12 Online Conference 2007 is coming. I wasn't tagged but I would love to spread the word of mouth and list my three reason why I might be in such a conference:

1. Opportunities to meet new educational big tanks.
2. Learn at your own pace, in your own space.
3. Is your school district offering professional development at this level?

There might be more (there are for sure) reasons to attend. Welcome all educators.

When I say 'even myself' that's what I really mean it. Easy explanation of what you should be doing in order to rank high for the crawling search robots. Talk of Search Engines Optimization is not easy at least you're an experienced web developer as our dear Techzilo for example, but the article I am about to quote is easy to understand and I am paying attention what's Joe Hayes is saying:

"...any search engines goal is to return the most relevant results for the user’s query. Your site must be more relevant for that particular search than any of your competition. Once your site is crawlable or otherwise search engine friendly, it pretty much comes down to backlinks. All things being equal, the site with the most (relevant, powerful, and in quantity) backlinks will win. Things like the age of the backlinks, sudden surges in recent backlinks, relevancy (have I mentioned relevancy?), and strength of the backlinks among the things that play a part in how your website ranks today. Once you get top 10 exposure, writing the best content should get you to the top eventually.

Can you please add any other factor I should be considering to rank high?

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The self-described "book whisperer" has been writing a series of three articles in the Teacher Magazine. She's presenting reader-engagement techniques in her first article. The second one has to be with process of motivating reluctant readers and last one where she discusses a good way to create in-class reading time and how to raise test scores in reading. Donalyn Miller, also includes a list of thirteen recommended books that should be read before you turn 13.

All those top recommendations are planned to be run in 6th graders. But 5th graders also have a saying not only after exercised their reading skills but after being coached by a good teacher. Clarence Fisher post about what his students had understood in the very first days of class about what it means to be writing and blogging at the same time. There are three points he's quoting from his youngsters: voice, safety and culture. Please if you want to follow up in the development of his class you might want to follow Shyla, Kate or Michael blogs. Remember though, they are only about 10 years old which a 5th grader is this far.

This is the subtitle the author has been using in her page Change Agency. Stephanie Sandifer is a professional in education working in the southern Houston. I wasn't reading my subscriptions lately and I haven't realized how much information our mind had lost. We are followers of what Change Agency publishes everyday!

What today caught our attention was the dynamics of this page: interesting post links for teacher's business, introduction of new hand-on experiences, quotes, etc. Et al.

teh i11it3r4t3 o teh 21 c3ntury w0nt b th0s3 wh0 c4nt r34d & wr1t3 but th0s3 wh0 c4nt 134rn un134rn & re134rn

Why should we quote like this? Don't ask me, ask her!

Stephanie has being talking about interesting experiences that we believe every teacher should be paying attention, it's no matter of vanish some technology tools or application but how we teach them and a different approach how we are using the technology in education. Read her IMing experience.

Do you know what is the Ghost Walk concept? Well, let us ask again Stephanie Sandifer.

Don't leave yet. The most interesting topic still coming. Did you ever happen to use Google Doc in the classroom? I'm not. I do have this application in use but for other business than education. Follow the mob and for any reason miss this screencast that explains everything!

I've been reading Catherine Gewertz' post in Education Week and reminds of my Doctoral thesis I'd written a few years ago precisely about the impact of the family income in the learning process. The conclusions were almost the same but the difference is that our study was conducted in our mother country and now this study has been made in the United States.

The study conducted by Joshua S. Wyner, John M. Br idgeland & John J. Di Iulio, Jr. under the title of Achieventrap (pdf) analyses data of 3.4 million k-12 children in American schools. They've found that children who come from households with incomes below the national median had score in the top quartile on nationally normed tests. They start school with weaker academic skills and are less likely to flourish over the years in school than their peers from better income families.

Civic Enterprises LLC, a Washington-based research and public-policy group, and the Lansdowne, Va.-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation establishes that higher-achieving children from lower-income families enter school with a disadvantage that shows up in their national test scores. More than 70 percent of 1st graders who score in the top quartile are from higher-income families, and fewer than three in 10 are from lower-income families.

In the ensuing years Catherine writes, the higher-achieving lower-income children are more likely to lose ground, 44 percent fall out of the top quartile in reading between the 1st and 5th grades, compared with 31 percent of high achievers whose family income is above the national median ($48,200 in 2006). They are also more likely to drop out of high school or not graduate on time than those from economically better economically positioned families. The difference persists through college and graduate school, with lower-income students less likely to attend the most selective colleges or to graduate.

However, the report does offer some optimistic notes. "Of the higher-achieving students, it says, 93 percent of those from lower-income families, and 97 percent of those from higher-income families, graduate from high school in four years. Those rates are much better than the 70 percent of all students on average that researchers estimate get their diplomas on time. But the data still show too many 'unrelenting inequities' that harm the prospects of capable children from lower-income families."

They -the authors, even say that Asian students perform better than Africa-American kids (not mention of Hispanic students) but Hewertz brings into discussion to Michelle M. Fine, a professor of social psychology and urban education at the City University of New York who says: "Something is clearly working for those lower-income Asian kids that isn’t working for the lower-income black kids".

Academic studies over the last thirty years show that young people's interest and enthusiasm in schoolwork has declined precipitously. Social Networks in the other hand have become so engaging. Look at today's curriculum, though, and you won't find much interactivity, seems we are still learning through reading and regurgitating!

I am not a N-Gener anymore but enjoy while join online communities such as StumbleUpon or Youlicit. I don't even belong to the generation born between 1977 and 1996 (Baby Boom), this new Net Generation (G-Gen) is bigger and stronger than the baby boom itself. This is the first generation to grow up in the digital age, and makes them a huge force of collaboration. My son I can conclude is among those majority of Americans kids who learnt how to use computers at very early age and for studies, almost 90 percent of American teenagers are using the Net!

I was having fun while browsing around StumbleUpon and what I've found is again a world teeming with great opportunities and possibilities for education, work, and entrepreneurship. What do we need? We need the skills, motivation, capacity for a lifelong learning, and a basic income level to get connected.

So, begin for acquire knowledge and develop skills in order to build up your very own social network that will pay in the future.

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Today as always I was reading my subscriptions in Bloglines and one of the most interesting things I've found is a post about how to keep readership and be happy about what you have say or you've seen in the online highway of information. Many of you dear readers might be thinking how come a person can spend hours and hours reading blogs without substantial information, no pertinent data or simply personal diatribes about innumerable facts that only human beings would be involved in.

Certainly is hard to convince bloggers such as fake Steve Jobs to stop writing facts and colloquial information challenging the most respectable man in the computer business. No word about another top influential blogger in the techie field, Robert Scoble. Tip of the hat. Not to mention young rockies in the amalgam of 68 million blogs according to Technorati. This our Science & Tech showed up a while ago and was written in Spanish at the very beginning. Spanish is the second language where you might find blog info about. English language is the dominant language, no matter what the Chinese bloggers have to say. That was the reason why we had to switch from Spanish to English and many readers come to check what we have to say, sometimes no original content but readable and pertinent. We are receiving hits aver the 100 hundred daily and our MyBlogLog goes right now over the hundreds. Thanks everyone for the dedication you take and come back everyday to check out what's going on in our neighborhood.

TonNet is not moving from Blogger or Blogspot, we prefer them over Wordpress, no matter what the these guys have to complain about our blogs hosted in Blogspot. We will keep reading and writing about what we like: education, hacks, gadgets, technology and all stuff about new developments and progress in the scientific field and technological spectrum. You are seeing new template because we wanted to keep fresh design and easy readiness. You tell, I've already received reports about what it looks like and how easy is now to load this page, well before we decided to show up all post, hem. We've all have discussed how important it is the content and the socialnetworks, with millions of people with access to the online content we have not only to dedicate time to excel content but keep a wide range of social connectors. It is not casual many websites had being created to keep up with the growing market of socialnetworking. Take a look at what's going with Facebook, how MySpace have changed and why Yahoo is struggling to keep up with the collection offresh money.

We've never really looked for any form of recognition over this blog other than share and publish interesting stuff to a mixed and varied edtech and want to be edtech audience. Over the course of this weekend I had the chance to publish the logo Rose DesRochers awarded this blog, I actually wanted to say thank you to the readers who have helped get the blog to this point!

Personally I'm quite surprised that she even noticed us. I guess the reach of Education & Tech is starting to make it's mark across the globe rather than just on the US side of things. It's always lovely to read the comments from our readers and even lovelier to be thanked for it. I, me and myself are honored that someone thinks we are worth being noticed. Kinda luv your Blog Award !

Technorati picked up a new site linking to our one. It happened to be Knit 1 Blog Too. It appears that they have been on the search for new up and coming blogs and they like our Blogger Betta Resources one!

Kudos for Jaloe who also picked our Blogger Templates and believed it's worth it to have it in his top left header.

Thanks to all!

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. Follow me on Twitter. For other concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Now a days is hard to catch up with all technological developments and get to the level where fluency is a plus in this digital world. Karin Dalziel, starts a first draft of what all would like to call types of information literacy.

Literacy, the ability to read and write.
Information Literacy, the ability to find, evaluate and use information
Media Literacy, the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms.
Digital Literacy, the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information.

Frank Baker has suggested to add the word 'comprehend' as part of the Primary Activity in the chart built up to characterize this typology.

And Jenny, The Shifted Librarian thinks the chart should be completed with the category 'evaluating' in the first Information Literacy box (talking about the very same chart Dalziel has been working on).

So, after disclosing this interesting work I would like to ask you dear readers. What's you level of information literacy in scale 1 to 5?

Remote Access:

"We cannot be counters of grades and sorters of kids"

Or the Flickr experiences of Mr. Fisher's Class.

In other point, Hellen Holes states:

"Relationships with students and their families are far more important than any other benchmark or learning target. Teaching is leading someone to water, and having that someone trust you enough to drink it. Take time to go slow in the beginning so that you can go fast in the end."

Now that our kids fletch train and buses to go early to school it's very important that studies like this one give parents and educators the peace to keep building up socialnetworks thanks to the knowledge and skills kids and teenagers have acquired. Catherine Gewertz reports in Education Week and says the survey was commissioned by the Alexandria, Va.-based National School Boards Association and among other things they've found that 96 percent of adolescents with access to cellphones and Internet-capable computers use them to build and maintain social networks(Nothing new here, though).

She also states: "The online survey of 1,277 9- to 17-year-olds found that 50 percent said they talk specifically about their schoolwork when they text-message by cellphone, or use their computers to instant-message, blog, or visit social-connection sites such as Facebook. Nearly six in 10 said they discuss education-related topics, including college or college planning, careers, and jobs"

Two points are being recommended: 1) Find ways to harness the educational value of social networking, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to talk about and collaborate on their classwork, and; 2) Re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites at school.

So, for God sake if you have a computer, let these guys learn how to use it! Still they'll be learning something new that very day.

I remember when I was studying for HS tests and the time I used to spent trying to memorize facts that I've never used after. Being a good student meant to get higher grades and getting high grades meant to recite everything exactly as the teacher said.

The question is: How to learn more and study less, because as the author states, the time spent studying not always means learning. The answer is what has been called Holistic Learning, much related with the Holistic Education. There are some tools that can help you shift your learning habits so they become more holistic, why not give it a try:

1. Visceralize, take all of your senses and connecting it to information.
2. Metaphor, these are literary devices that link two things that normally don’t go together.
3. Ten Year Old Rule, “dumb down” an idea enough so it seems obvious to yourself.
4. Trace Back, relate that idea to another concept in your subject.
5. Refresher Scan, quickly link that information back to existing ideas through viscerlization and metaphor.
6. Compress Information, find ways to group information into smaller chunks of memory through pictures or mnemonics.
7. Write, cribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.

Now that the immigration laws are being enforced and regulations to protect national security are being placed as the last one in NJ were police officers might be able to ask for your identification and failure to do that will allow them to call USCIS for assistance. You, being a US national, American citizen can get all the mess Amor Righi got into.

He's pledging innocence and want to fight Civil Rights as Constitutions states and Ohio Laws establishes. He was arrested after calling 911 and asked for help while a Circuit City Manager refused to let him go their parking lot. Officer in charge asked for a Driver's license while Mr. Righi was walking, the officer didn't read his Miranda rights as it should be and fail to produce law evidence to justify the detention of Amor Righi. He's was accused of interfering official business!!

However, Ohio’s “stop and identify” law, says:

2921.29 (C) Nothing in this section requires a person to answer any questions beyond that person â € ™s name, address, or date of birth. Nothing in this section authorizes a law enforcement officer to arrest a person for not providing any information beyond that person â € ™s name, address, or date of birth or for refusing to describe the offense observed.

My question is if this is happening with a normal American citizen what poor immigrants should be waiting for? Please help Amor Righi, he's accepting donations through PayPal in order to fight his rights and has already decided to look for help in the ACLU. For updates follow up here.

As I watched the video went to Yahoo for seeing the new features and what I've found is the "n" and "c" but not the "t" for text messages! Anyone can explain that?


Thanks to Digital Inspiration