* Ed U. Cation

Forum probes Conn. education
By Tom Stanley-Becker

Contributing Reporter
The Yale Daily News
Published Monday, January 25, 2010


More than 400 people, including Connecticut state legislators and parents, students and education experts from across the country, descended on the Law School on Saturday afternoon for a town hall meeting and symposium about education reform.
At the four-hour conference, titled “The New Politics of Education Reform: Real Change for Communities of Color,” 12 speakers and panelists offered a broad range of proposals for how to close the education achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and white suburban students. Policy suggestions included strengthening...

#1 By Smuggle it in 5:13a.m. on January 25, 2010

Watch what students are interested in and smuggle it in to the curriculum: cell phones; ipods; video;YouTube.

Smuggle is the key word. You don't throw out the curriculum and replace it with these devices you ADD these devices TO the surriculum.

For instance: practicing definitions for any class can be turned inot to game by dividing the class into two teams. Each team has a cell phone and the teacher "borrows" a cell phone from a third student. The first team to correctly text message the definition and spelling of the term to the teacher phone "wins".

Dramatize a few lines from a text (even a math text). Have the kids video the "dramatic production" on a cell phone. Deposit the video on the teacher's computer. Show the result on the computer (or wall screen if the computer is hooked up to a projector.) Entire process takes 12 minutes.

Allow students to listen to their iPods when working silently in class, as long as they WORK. No more than one minute on
"menu search".

Reward the class with a bribe: You (ENTIRE class) work 40 minutes, you get 5 minutes down-time at end of class with cell phone/iPod privileges.

Paul Keane
M.Div.'80
http://theantiyale.blogspot.com

#2 By PS : Smuggle it in 5:31a.m. on January 25, 2010

PS If students do not have (for economic or other reasons: school rules?) any of the tech devices mentioned (cell phones; iPods; video camera) use teacher's cell phone video option and create a classroom video for YouTube.(Rehearse famous moments in history; literature; mathematics; science; foreign langauage with translation). YouTube accepts 9 minute videos. Convert video to MP4 and submit. BINGO!
GUARANTEED student interest and involvement.

#3 By Active.Urban.Instructor 11:22p.m. on January 25, 2010

#1 & #2:

R U for real?......W/all due respect, sir, a less than naive teacher would not enable such behavior so as to not be complicit (a.)in a student's ears getting damaged/blown out by the time that they're 21 yrs. old & (b.)create a cause to constantly call out &/or shout out(not to mention employing the use of others to get such a student's attention)whenever a need arises.
Rather: employ a zero tolerance school electronics policy.....w/violators NOT dealt with punitively, but simply & politely separated from their device which is subsequentally placed in a small, marked manilla envelop 'til the end of school day (or even beginning of next day if there are bus departure time constraint issues).
Alternative resolution: Employing the use of school PA system, allowing for exclusively instrumental background music(i.e. w/o lyrics!)of all types to be softly playing throughout the day (or @ least within the hallways & caf.)....."Now that's the anthem......."

#4 By Prohibit Prohibition 6:23a.m. on January 26, 2010

Go with the flow. Technology is here to stay. The challenge is to INTEGRATE it into the classroom. Prohibition turns teachers into cops, just as it turned the country into enforcers/violators. The discipline game then becomes the curriculum.
PK