Online Teacher and Educator Resources
for K12 Teachers Administrators & Parents

Teachers Area

 

 

[ From Karen Ellis Webmistress of the Educational CyberPlayGround ]

Welcome to the Teachers Area.
This is the new paradigm of the central teaching - learning function: the course, [ information, data, media, 1's + 0's ] does not take the shape of its' container; the teaching 'space' is not a physical place; and 'personal' does not mean 'in person'.

I've been online since 1991 and feel lucky to be part of K-12 Internet History.

2010 Students have no nostalgia for a simpler era, because they never knew one. They intuitively understand it's all about being Global.
More than 90% of the students surveyed were born after 1980, so for them, games, music, mail and data have almost always been digital. They came of age in a world of interconnections, and hyperconnections. They understand implicitly and intuitively that economies, societies, governments and organizations are made up of interconnecting networks. Once viewed as discrete and independent, it is clear now that these spheres - both manmade and natural - connect in a myriad of ways. We may not have even needed to define complexity: they seemed so familiar with the term for an interconnected, multifaceted environment." Students view globalization and sustainability as intertwined themes. They believe that a global citizen has responsibilities to others in the world, and that an emphasis on sustainability makes one better appreciate the impact of globalization. [1]

"Coverage
is the enemy of understanding"
~ Howard Gardner

 

Silver and gold will rot away
but a good education will never decay.

Get ready to put your feet up and turn up the tunes. There are more than 1500 pages on this site so plan to visit often, because this takes time, and it will be time well spent.

1978 "We invite you
to consume mass quantities!
The Coneheads
on Earth

[ How Much Information? ]
Each American Consumed 34 Gigabytes Per Day In '08 The goal of the work is to provide some estimate of the amount of content that a typical US consumer goes through in a given year, in this case 2008. When expressed in terms of raw bytes, the report's authors estimate a staggering 3.6 zettabytes, which works out to 34GB a day per consumer. 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of info at home.

Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that consuming various media, including TV, music, books, movies, video games, and websites, takes up almost every waking hour not spent in school. In 2009, the average 8- to 18-year-old had nearly 11 hours of media exposure per day. Despite the growing popularity of online video options, BUT average TV watchers still get most of their TV exposure from watching TV.

WHAT MAKES
A GREAT TEACHER?
Deliberate Technique vs. Natural Talent

[ Stand Still When You're Giving Directions ]
It is the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?  Students pay attention not because of some inborn charisma but simply by being direct and specific.Children often fail to follow directions because they really don't know what they are supposed to do. Students can't learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions.

[ Point out the Positive ]
Correct misbehavior not by chiding students for what they're doing wrong but by acknowledging the students who are doing it right and thanking them. Managing your classroom is for the purpose of learning not to show off your power.

[ Power ]
What counts as an educated 19 year old in this day and age?. Assessment
2010 American Federation of Teachers AFT has 1.5 million members.Teachers are used a scapegoat to divert money away from public education and used to fund the pockets of big business in the private sector. Testing, Virtual Schools, Charter Schools are all big business. NCLB aims to shrink the public sector, transfer large sums of public money to the private sector, weaken or destroy two Democratic power bases -- the teachers unions -- and provide vouchers to let students attend private schools at public expense.
The results of the 'high stakes testing' are that teachers increasingly teach to the test, young people are disillusioned and disengaged, higher education complains that those matriculating (despite higher scores) are ill prepared for university studies, and intelligent and creative teachers incleasingly feel dissatisfied with their professional work. Standardized tests are intended to evaluate whether students have learned what they were taught. They are not designed to assess teacher effectiveness or teacher quality. The more that teachers focus on these measures, the more they rob children of time for instruction and for the activities that engage children in their education and promote comprehension. [ source ]

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."       --  Socrates (420 BC)

[ Are You Motivated? ] that's all there is to it right? !! DOH!
Educators, Administrators, Parents and Policy Wonks will find sections dedicated to the secret of teaching in the classroom is simple [ Motivate Students ]

 

"Education is a weapon, whose effect depends
on who holds it
in his hands
and at whom
it is aimed."
~ Joseph Stalin

[ Boo Hiss Professors who Teach Teachers ]

Professors their Academic Ability Do Schools Kill Creativity? The Importance of Creativity, Dreams And Play in K-12 Education Explained.

Transdisciplinarity is the synthesis of apparently different disciplines
School systems who teach to the test, will not unlock every child's intellectual potential. How do we kill off uncreative pedantic scholarship, and the tests which don't measure imagination, creativity, gumption, character, leadership or other ingredients of success.

Teachers' colleges can't deliver classroom ready teachers. Traditionally, education schools divide their curriculums into three parts: regular academic subjects, to make sure teachers know the basics of what they are assigned to teach; "foundations" courses that give them a sense of the history and philosophy of education; and finally "methods" courses that are supposed to offer ideas for how to teach particular subjects. Many schools add a required stint as a student teacher in a more-experienced teacher's class. Yet schools can't always control for the quality of the experienced teacher, and education-school professors often have little contact with actual schools. A 2006 report found that 12% of education-school faculty members never taught in elementary or secondary schools themselves. Even some methods professors have never set foot in a classroom or have not done so recently.

"The fate of empires depends on the education of youth."   ~ Aristotle

[ PUBLIC SCHOOL HISTORY ]
What is the purpose of education in a democracy?

"To find our way to the future, we need the skills, the insight and the productivity of every American, in a nation in which each of us shares responsibility for the future and where the blessings of progress are shared fairly by all our citizens in return... We need a national education strategy to assure that America can advance, not retreat, in the global economy in the years ahead... We are past the point where we can afford only to talk the talk without walking the walk..."
Senator Kennedy National Press Club, 1/2000

U.S. Public School is 200 years old and some say at one time gave America the strongest economy in world history. The purpose of public schools and the rationale for the Land Ordinance of 1785 which surveyed areas to establish townships and provide for public education was to produce good citizens.
18th-century essay on education, journalist Samuel Harrison Smith wrote that the free play of intelligence was central to a democracy and that individual intellectual growth was intimately connected to broad-scale intellectual development, to the "general diffusion of knowledge" across the republic.
Teachers should regard students as capable and participatory beings, rich in both individual and social potential which is fundamentally democratic and prepares one for civic life.

[ DEMOCRACY ]

Pirates - where true democracy may have been born since the crew at times had a vote. "His crew were a really rough, tough bunch - often coming from prisons and being escaped slaves. But Sir Henry didn't have any noticeable problems with leadership and seemed to be accepted by his crew."

I Pledge allegience to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One of the larger problems is that people confuse democracy with republic. A democracy is simple majority rule. A republic starts with the notion that all people have certain inalienable rights (and corresponding responsibilities) that can not be removed, unless they violate someone else's inalienable right, even by a majority vote, e.g. if people have the right to be secure in their person, you could not call for the vote on the enslavement of a particular ethnicity or class. In a democracy, you could.
Democracy does not lead to a republic, because in a democracy it soon becomes apparent to politicians and the populace that they can vote themselves someone's property.
So, republics are based on the sanctity of the person. That is to say, the government is no better than an individual, and no government can vote to remove a right, that some other individual could. By extension of the sanctity of the person, comes a person's property, which is the result of the person's efforts. So, a republic would generally have taxes on consumption and use, but not production.

Future Teachers must understand that America has the best politicians money can buy. If you want to become a Teacher then you must understand it is one of the most political professions you can choose. When you teach, what you teach, your salary, your benefits, if you are required to get additional education to keep your certification are all decisions made by politicians. Before you vote listen to what the leaders of the political parties are saying about education and teachers.

EDUCRATS - The intersection between the Government (Dept. of Ed), Politicians (and their friends), Global CorporateMedia, and Global Industry:
2010 Revenue multiples in the Education Industry continued their strong upward trend, rising 38% to 1.8, which represents a 200% growth from the low of 0.6 in 1st Half 2009.

 

Reforms / Deforms

 

 

[ Really $tupid Politicians, $tupid Lazy Reporters, $tupid Political Think Tanks ]

The Ideal Approach and the Real Goal of All Education is a financially literate citizenry who can to tell truth to power, and protect themselves, the commonwealth, and their country from commerce without conconscience!

We loose Creativity - The More We Teach to the Test.
For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

Diane Ravitch Education Historian 2010 admits The Bush / Obama education reform plan is Bad Education Policy. Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
[ Ooops - Diane's from Reform 2 Deform Education ] thinking process
What it means to make mistakes. An interview with Diane Ravitch on her school Reforms conversion. She describes the process by which she changed her mind about education reform. Excellent read.

[ The assessment folks say that NCLB throttled invention and imagination! ]
Center on Education Policy President Jack Jennings, doesn't think No Child Left Behind policy works either.
The four turnaround models, had not yielded much success among the schools, districts, and states. States have had a good deal of flexibility in trying to improve their lowest-performing schools, and have not delivered the results the Education Department would have liked to see even when they Cheat!

[ CEO Arne Duncan, now U.S. secretary of education says it doesn't work ]
Esther Wojcicki Take a look at the Chicago Public Schools, where former CEO Arne Duncan, now U.S. secretary of education, closed many schools. There's been little change in scores because students are being transferred to other low-performing schools. It hasn't worked because the community's attitude and level of support hasn't changed.

The most damaging phrase in any language is

"it's always been done that way."

~ Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

[ Americans Are Factory Farmed ~ Karen Ellis ]

EDUCRATS In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly the future Dean of Education at Stanford wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products... manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry." Education is a Business, Big Business as only Merrill Lynch Research can show.

1950 According to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study, 60% of the new jobs created in America could be filled by people with a high school education or less.

2000 only 15% of new jobs could be performed by someone with no education beyond high school.

“High schools are coming under pressure from the federal government to improve the nation’s dismal dropout rate — one in four students. In the highest-poverty school districts, as few as 15 % of students held back in the ninth grade make it to graduation day, according to other research from Johns Hopkins. Across the country, superintendents are discovering, much to their surprise and dismay, that ninth grade has turned into the biggest dropout year.
Follow Contracts and Federal Spending Major Contracting Agency is the Dept. of Education for more statistical information about American elementary, secondary and post secondary schools, students, and the educational process.

"If we don't
change directions,
we'll wind up where we're headed."
~ Chinese Proverb

[ EDUCATION INC. ]

There are more than 14,000 school districts. Nearly 50 million students go to approximately 97,000 public elementary and secondary schools for the fall 2008 term.  Before the 2007 school year is out, an estimated $489 billion will be spent related to their education, with an average of $9,969 to be spent per pupil for fall enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools. Some 3.2 million teachers are projected to be employed in public elementary and secondary schools in 2007-08. And more than 1.1 million students -- about two percent of all students -- will be homeschooled. These are just a few of the statistics contained in "Back to School Stats," compiled by the Institute of Education Sciences' research and statistical centers.

[ 2010 Drop Out Rate ] Does Culture Wire the Teenage Brain?
The teenage brain, like the teenage skull, is a work in progress. Its wiring is incomplete. The various parts of the brain are not yet working in the harmony (or well-tuned disharmony) which comes with adulthood. The research of Janet Werker and others indicates that culture plays an enormous role in the wiring of the infant brain. To what extent does culture and one's position in it, one's interests, occupation, or place in the hierarchy, guide the cerebral wiring which takes place during the teen years?
Skulls, by the way, are arranged in plates. These plates slide over each other, allowing the head to virtually fold like an accordion when the about-to-be newborn is pushed forcibly through a very tight place--the passageway leading from the womb to the outer world. Surprisingly, these skull plates are still not completely knit together when a young adult has reached the ripe old age of 25. It is not so shocking, then, that the brain too is a work still in the making when one is old enough to date and possibly to even pick a mate.

 

[ WORK READY = COLLEGE READY ]
What do an electrician, construction worker and plumber have in common with college freshmen? They all need comparable reading and math skills to succeed. The new report, "Ready for College and Ready for Work: Same or Different? compared 476,000 high school juniors' results from 2001 to 2004 on two exams: the ACT college admissions test and WorkKeys, an assessment of employability skills. ACT determined that similar reading and math skills are required to pass first-year college courses as are needed to succeed in entry-level "family wage" jobs.
http://www.partnership4learning.org/eBriefing/May06/

HOW TO GET INTO COLLEGE - WHO'S YOUR DADDY
Don't forget that getting into college is all about the connections.

[ No Jobs for that College Graduate ]

The Information Society - Nothing is produced in the U.S. anymore, so collecting information amd selling information is the money

Where is Vocational Training?
No more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor's degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. We are going to need nurses' aides and much of their training, can happen without college. Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor's) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives, and store clerks. None of these require a bachelor's degree, but all would benefit from applicants who had been trained in "work readiness" -- the ability to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict, and communicate effectively.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/weekinreview/16steinberg.html
Related: http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/purposes-college
Related: http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/should-we-give-college

VERY SPECIAL:
K-12 INTERNET HISTORY

 

 

The NetHappenings Mailing List, is the first and oldest education list in the US started in 1989. Please consider joining this community or one of the other education mailing lists we moderate and keep up with the latest info about education and nethappenings.

School Directory is also the first and oldest database created for school websites when they first came online. This area is organized by state or grade level. Citizens are invited to list your school's website into the Hot List Master Registry where you can see what the other schools have done with their sites.

Educational CyberPlayGround Ring Leaders Don't be shy - you can ask any expert for help. Original K-12 education and internet pioneers they were the first netizens.

[ Social Networking web 2.0 ]

Protect your privacy online using social networks like Twitter, facebook and all the others.

Kids know how to use technology but teachers don't. Teachers who participated in the Bell South Foundation's Power to Teach project reported that they had made significant strides in integrating technology into the learning experience. However students reported seeing few changes in classroom instruction, they see it as nothing has changed, technology is still only an add on and not really a seamless part of the ONLINE CURRICULA.

Students, Teachers Differ on Technology Use. It is still a disaster in the K-12 classroom according to the children PDF.

Special Topics and Issues

• EDUCATION > PLAY > TOYS it's so hard for people to think 50 or 100 years out but give them a toy and they can experience these long term dynamics into short term experiences because in just a few minutes, it is an entirely different point of view where we are using the game to remap our intuition. Computer Simulation can re calibrate your instinct across vast scales of both space and time.
• David Perry says tomorrow's video games will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences -- more involving and meaningful to some than real life.
• As Real as Your Life by Michael Highland Learn about The Video Game Addict starts at 9:45 of the David Perry Talk
• Teachers learn How to Teach Non Fear Based Internet Curriculum to kids
• Censorship, Plagiarism, Copyright, and CopyLeft, plagiarism checker and detection
• Webcam Spy Caught! A school district pays for insurance to cover their wrong doings. Teachers need their own insurance.
  
• K-12 Classroom Law
  Music contract, music copyright laws, free music download, free mp3 download, Family Rights, Privacy, Standards, HomeSchoolers
• 2008 New technology standards for teachers issued by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
• Children's Rights, Family Rights A report from the Alliance for Childhood warns that the nation is "blindly pursuing educational policies that could well damage the intellectual, social, and physical development of an entire generation." Classic play materials like blocks, sand-and-water tables, and props for dramatic play are disappearing, and in many kindergartens there is no playtime.
• Websites that are good for little kids

Teacher Resources and Tools

• New to the classroom? Find Classroom Management tips and the New Teacher Tool Kit.
• Classroom Resources the element song, periodic table song, presidents song, health, brain music, baby timeline, child development chart
• Different Teaching Styles
  teach reading, san diego quick assessment, light retention scale.
• Music and Reading
• Search Engines
• Grants and Scholarships
• 12th Grade Seniors Going To College - Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
  'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
  This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

 

beginners Tutorial

[ NEED TO KNOW ]

If you are new to the interent start by playing with the interactive tutorial for beginners where you will how to click and scroll to rock'n roll around the net.

United States Department of Education Statistics, Educator Resources, Teaching Styles, US Census

Source U.S. Census
A HALF-CENTURY OF LEARNING:  Historical Census Statistics on Educational Attainment in the United States, 1940 - 2000
2006 Report, National Spending Per Student Rises to $8,287. U.S. public school districts spent an average of $8,287 per student in 2004, up from the previous year's total of $8,019. In all, public elementary and secondary education received $462.7 billion from federal, state and local sources in 2004, up 5.1 percent from 2003." Summary Direct to Federal, State, and Local Governments 2004 Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finance Data.

The National Education Association has estimated that the current average cost per student for public schools across America is $7552.  For a special education pupil, add $9369 per pupil for an average cost of $16921.

"Findings from the Pilot Teacher Compensation Survey: 2005-06" This pilot test collected data from the administrative records of seven states (AZ, AR, CO, FL, IA, MO, and OK), including base salary, total salary, benefits, highest level of education, and years of experience.

U.S. Department of Education http://www.ed.gov/
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202-0498
1-800-USA-LEARN (1-800-872-5327)
Current Education Press Releases

The Digest of Education Statistics, 2009, is the 45th in a series of publications initiated in 1962.  Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education -- from pre-kindergarten through graduate school -- drawn from government and private sources, but especially from surveys and other activities led by NCES.  The digest contains data on the number of schools, students, and teachers, as well as statistics on educational attainment, finances, libraries, technology, and international comparisons.

Contracts and Federal Spending -- Major Contracting Agency is the Dept. of Education

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Do you already have experience building school websites?
Do you know how to Bury Your Dead Ed Dot With Dignity?
Do you know how to prevent your site from showing up in a school classroom as a nasty /xxx/ site?

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."  ~ Mark Twain

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