Report: ‘Top-third’ teachers essential to U.S. success
Improving teacher effectiveness has risen to the top of national education priorities, but the key to attracting, training, and retaining truly effective teachers may lie in the “top-third” concept, which seeks to recruit students who perform in the top third of their academic discipline into the teaching profession.
A professor’s review of online cheat sheets
At this time of year, students are buying textbooks and looking for ways to avoid reading them. Nothing is new about that, the New York Times reports. CliffsNotes guides, with their familiar yellow and black covers, have been in book bags since 1958. What has changed is how many study guides, or cheat sheets, are available online and on mobile phones.
Texas education board to consider rule on Islam’s portrayal in textbooks
Just when it appeared the State Board of Education was done with the culture wars, the panel is about to wade into the issue of what students should learn about Islam, the Dallas Morning News reports. The board will consider a resolution next week that would warn publishers not to push a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoint in world history textbooks.
Facebook denies it is secretly building a phone
The tech blogs were abuzz Sunday with a report in TechCrunch that Facebook is secretly building a phone. But the company says it’s not true, according to the New York Times. In an eMail, Jamie Schopflin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said the company is, and has for some time, been developing various features and services to integrate its social functions into various mobile phones and applications.
Google Apps adds two-step verification
InformationWeek reports that Google on Sept. 20 plans to offer its users improved security through the introduction of a two-step login verification process. Initially, two-step verification will be available to Google Apps Premiere, Government, and Education edition users, at no extra charge.
Music instruction goes virtual
As online courses spike in popularity across the nation, students are finding that even the most traditional face-to-face courses offer virtual options that are just as thorough as in-person classes—and music instruction courses soon could follow suit.
Learning by playing: Video games in the classroom
A New York Times Magazine writer asks: What if teachers gave up the vestiges of their educational past, threw away the worksheets, burned the canon and reconfigured the foundation upon which a century of learning has been built? What if we blurred the lines between academic subjects and reimagined the typical American classroom so that, at least in theory, it came to resemble a typical American living room or a child’s bedroom or even a child’s pocket, circa 2010 — if, in other words, the slipstream of broadband and always-on technology that fuels our world became the source and organizing principle of our children’s learning?
Google tablets may pass iPad with more accessibility
Tablet computers running Google Inc.’s Android will start taking sales from Apple Inc.’s iPad this holiday season and may surpass it in a few years as device makers adopt the software for a slew of models, analysts said in a Bloomberg report. Samsung Electronics Co. showed the newest Android-based tablet for the U.S. market at an event in New York.
Midwestern states revamp teacher evaluations; Duncan talks education, technology
Illinois is not alone in the recent changes it has made to teacher evaluations. Several other Midwestern states are taking similar steps, reports the Catalyst Chicago. But a new analysis by nonprofit education consulting group Learning Point Associates has found that “most of the states do not have a cohesive, intentional system for developing, recruiting and retaining effective teachers and school leaders.”
The School of Hard Drives
In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “I think every student needs access to technology, and I think technology can be a hugely important vehicle to help level the playing field. Whether it’s in an inner-city school or a rural community, I want those students to have a chance to take A.P. biology and A.P. physics and marine biology.”