Archive | May, 2013

The 05/07/13 Joy Jar

6 May

 

It was 87 today in Seattle and in terms of Seattle weather, it was approaching hot. Other parts of the country might say it was downright pleasant. Ice is wonderful on a warm day because it cools everything. Moi is grateful that ice is so readily available. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is ice.

“If I offer you a glass of water, and bring back a cup of ice, I’m trying to teach you patience. And also that sometimes you get ice with no water, and later you’ll get water with no ice. Ah, but that’s life, no?
”

Jarod Kintz, Ah, but that’s life, no?

“He who cannot put his thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of dispute.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

“Like there’s actually a need for Greenland. You can get ice at 7-Eleven.”
Steve Kluger

“ice contains no future , just the past, sealed away. As if they’re alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That’s the essence of ice, the role it plays.”
Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

“One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it.”
Alec Wilkinson, The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

“You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks”

Eskimo Proverb

“If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance”

Unknown

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TED teams up with PBS: What is TED?

6 May

Elizabeth Jensen reports in the New York Times article, TED Teams Up With PBS on Ideas for Education:

Television viewers — even those who watch the more sober-minded PBS — are generally not keen on sitting through long speeches. But TED, the nonprofit group that sponsors conferences on ideas, thinks it has found a way to bring its signature 18-minute talks to a TV audience that may not have found them on the Web or through mobile apps.

In its first television foray, TED has joined forces with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the New York public broadcaster WNET for a one-hour special, “TED Talks Education,” to be broadcast on PBS on Tuesday. If it is successful, the program could become a template for future joint projects, said Juliet Blake, one of the show’s executive producers and the TED official charged with bringing the conferences to television.

The program was 18 months in the making, a short time for public broadcasting but long for TED, which is accustomed to the more immediate online world. Other suitors have also sought to do TED television projects, Ms. Blake said, but “to reach the audience we want to reach, public television was the place.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting paid for the show’s $1 million costs under the auspices of an initiative that addresses the high school drop-out problem in the United States. “It was the perfect marriage of ideas that matter and our core value of education,” said Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s chief executive. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/ted-partners-with-pbs-for-education-program.html?ref=education&_r=0

That prompted moi to ask, what is TED?

This is how TED describes itself at its site:

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference on the West Coast each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

The two annual TED conferences, on the North American West Coast and in Edinburgh, Scotland, bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).

On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 1400 TED Talks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks are subtitled in English, and many are subtitled in various languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

Our mission: Spreading ideas.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. This site, launched April 2007, is an ever-evolving work in progress, and you’re an important part of it. Have an idea? We want to hear from you.

The springtime TED Conference is held annually on the West Coast and simulcast at a nearby city. The breadth of content includes science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter presentations, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.

TEDActive is a curated community of curious and energetic leaders who share an immersive week of watching TED Talks and surprising experiences designed to inspire conversation, exchange and immediate action around ideas worth spreading — all in a creative and casual setting.

TEDGlobal is TED’s summer conference. The themes of the global conference are slightly more international in nature, and the full TED format is maintained, with a wide-ranging roster of speakers and performers over four days of TED mainstage sessions — plus the famous TED University, where attendees share their own knowledge with one another. TEDGlobal was held in Oxford, UK, in 2005, 2009 and 2010, and in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2007. TEDGlobal is now held annually in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED also hosts events around the globe. TEDIndia was held in November 2009 in Mysore, India, celebrating and exploring the beckoning future of South Asia. TEDWomen was held in December 2010 in Washington, DC, asking the question: How are women and girls reshaping the future? TED also hosts smaller events around the globe, including many TED Salons, evening-length events with speakers and performers, and TED@ events, exploring a topic or location.

The TED Prize is awarded annually to an exceptional individual, and is designed to leverage the TED Community’s wide array of talents and resources. In 2012, the cash award was raised to $1 million to provide powerful seed funding for “A Wish to Inspire the World.” After several months of preparation, the wish is unveiled during a ceremony at the TED Conference. Over the life of the prize, wishes have led to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact.

TED Talks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker “ideas worth spreading,” talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website has been reengineered around TED Talks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices. As of November 2012, TED Talks have been viewed more than one billion times.

The TED Fellows program helps world-changing innovators from around the globe become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities. TED Fellows, TEDGlobal Fellows, and TED Senior Fellows are drawn from many disciplines that reflect the diversity of TED’s members: technology, entertainment, design, the sciences, the humanities, the arts, NGOs, business and more.

The TEDx program gives communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TEDx events are planned and coordinated independently.

The TED Open Translation Project brings TED Talks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, interactive transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. We launched the project with 300 translations, 40 languages and 200 volunteer translators; now, there are more than 32,000 completed translations from our thousands-strong community. It’s an ambitious project that radically enhances the accessibility of the talks — for the hearing-impaired, for those who speak English as a second language, for search engines (which can now index the full transcript of a talk), and of course for the vast audience of non-English speakers worldwide.

Today, TED is best thought of as a global community. It’s a community welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world.                                                                                              http://www.ted.com/

See, About TED » Who we are » Who owns TED http://www.ted.com/pages/42

Here is information about the Sapling Foundation from Guidestar:

Basic Organization Information

SAPLING FOUNDATION

Physical Address:
New York, NY 10013 
EIN:
94-3235545
NTEE Category:
T Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Grantmaking 
T99 (Other Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Grantmaking Foundations N.E.C.) 
Year Founded:
1996 
Ruling Year:
1996 

Sign in or create an account to see this organization’s full address, contact information, and more!

http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/94-3235545/sapling-foundation.aspx

Nilofer Merchant writes in the Business Insider article, Is TED Elite?

Five common myths of TED and my take on them:

1. It’s Snobby.

To get into TED Long Beach, you have been picked because you are at the top of your game, in business, politics, education, social media, or whatever. There’s a definite snobbiness to that. I got rejected the first time I applied. So in some ways, this myth is completely true, yet I’ve already shared that being with this crowd has allowed me to stop playing small. Because most people are already established, the energy that many take into impressing each other is (largely) gone. That let’s us have more real conversations.

That said, you’d be surprised if you looked around at the demographics to see that there’s a vast range of economics, age, sex, and geographies represented at the TED Long Beach conference itself.That tells me TED is being intentional about the mix of who they bring together.

It has about 25% of the stage full of women, the highest I know of, besides an all-women’s conference. And, about 30% of the participants are women, which represents a pretty good mix. Not great – I’d love to see more gender parity, and this is a place of improvement that SheTalksTED advocates.

2. It’s pretentious.

This is a tough one.  I don’t believe the #TED organizers are not aiming to be pretentious. What I do see is a lot of people who come to TED for the first time, tweet comments from it to show their friends’ back home that they are at TED and their friend’s are not. I can see the temptation of tweeting that you are, say, sitting next to @ev, or Cameron Diaz, or Jeff Bezos or Tony Hsieh. But I think that’s the behavior that happens when first-timers are just a wee-bit impressed that they are “in” the club. Most people, thankfully, do not do this.  And perhaps if the new-bie understood the cultural norms of TED better, they would be more self-managing.  

The ideas developed in 18 minutes don’t lend themselves to tweetability. So sometimes we sound inane, as Jeff Jarvis was right to point out.

The actual curators of TED see what they do as a huge responsibility. One curator works in a sort of 24×7 way and is currently helping curate and support the folks in Cairo, and other Middle Eastern cities have neutral (non-political, non-sectarian) conversations that could truly change the world. He won’t get credit, or money, and neither is his goal. TED has come to represent the best ideas to change the world. His goal is truly to help change the world by the possibility of great ideas, being told well, and then discussed amongst that community. I don’t know about you, but I am so seriously hoping for what might happen. (I don’t have permission to share his story but I’m hoping he’ll forgive me)

3. There is no action out of it.

A good friend of mine, Michael Dila, said something a few years ago that has stuck with me: conversations are truly the only way in the world is changed, not technology. Conversation drives a new way of thinking, therefore new states of being, and the results that follow from that. The purpose of having loads of white spaces into the conference is to talk about ideas. I got into an interesting conversation with the head of WPP, one of the largest advertising organizations in the world about the situation in Nigeria, which was a deeply thoughtful idea about how to change an entire country known best for corruption. I don’t underestimate this discussion or what could happen if the head of WPP thinks about how to change the world with any of the ideas presented but without this venue, there is little likelihood most of us would spend 18 minutes thinking about Nigeria and corruption and how to influence the situation. Action follows from a shift in mindset. So I think TED creates context, the rest is up to us.

Second thing related to action. Bill Gates curated a session where he highlighted the Khan Academy. I didn’t know of this organization, founded by a former hedge fund creating YouTube videos, to help people learn. This was where I wanted people to tweet and many did. Education could be changed dramatically if this idea that Jennifer Pahlka captured: reverse homework and classwork, let them watch the videos at home and work on problems in class. So while no action was done right at that very moment, the 1000 or so conversations people had when they called home might just bring that idea into the system so that 100, 1000, or 10,000 educational institutions try something new in the next few years.

Of course, many other good efforts that flow from the TEDPrize to help create the change we wish to see in the world.  Architecture for Humanity, an amazing organization creating a more sustainable future, through the power of architectural design. They got hyper-boosters on their mission, by TED and the TED community.

3. Money goes to line their pockets.

One big myth is that Chris Anderson and the folks at TED must be doing this to be rich.  TED is owned by the Sapling Foundation, a 501(c)3 foundation and all the profits are reinvested in things like the TED Prize and distributing the talks free online. Chris Anderson doesn’t even take a salary (he made his money when he founded Business2.0) and he took over the TED conference and a short 7 years later he (and his team) opened it up with TEDEd, TEDFellows, TED.com, TEDx and so on.  I don’t know about you but I get pretty tired when I just think of all they have done…

Add to this mix, the 40 or so TEDFellows, a group of innovators, artists and change agents,  curated by Tom Reilly, from around the world,  to amplify the work of people who are working to change the world. All those Fellows need funding and support and the Sapling Foundation does that.  So if my measly thousands of dollars can help fuel access to ideas globally, I gladly give.

One important thing that Todd Lombardo helped me remember is the Sapling Foundation may not be transparent enough to ward off the critiques. How much money does it cost to run these events? Are all the amenities necessary? Palotta Teamworks who ran the AIDS Rides were registered as a for-profit company and weren’t transparent about the flow of capital through their organization… This ultimately ruined that company. I suspect the TED braintrust is working on this. 

4. You limit access to great ideas by limiting who gets to see it live.

While I love the immersive experience of TED Long Beach, I recognize there are many ways to experience it. Did you know there’s the simulcast at $500 where people can organizer a crowd of people in a high school gymnasium or one’s own living room (and split the costs to $1-25/head)? That means anyone who really wants to see it live, can.

Add to that, TEDActive and TEDx audiences and you can’t possibly say “it’s limited” cause “it” is now available to “us”. Laura Stein has set the TEDx licensee policy so that one **cannot** charge for attendance. Anybody could organize a TEDx, curate the best TED talks or local TEDxtalks and create something themselves. So, definitely not limited if you consider how accessible TED can be, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves. 

TED talks are translated, for free, by people from around the world, allowing 15 million people to view the well-produced talks online. In some ways, by editing well, instead of streaming live, it creates a library of high-production content that will let it be seen by more people than the streaming version would allow.

5. Aren’t they Hypocritial?

Consider the Sarah Silverman episode of 2010. She did what she was asked to do, Her brand of humor, her story. But because some (Steve Case was notable visible around this) felt uncomfortable with what she did, she was viewed as banished by Chris and some of the TED community.

I was there when this happened, and frankly I thought Chris was very genuine when he posted he hated it, but then he retreated. I think he could have said he hated it, others liked it and that’s what TED is all about — many ideas being discussed. A slightly awkward moment on twitter got caught into a huff but perhaps it was a learning moment… I don’t know.

In Summary

While I do think TED is full of elite people of many disciplines, ages and economics, it is not, in my opinion, Elitist. I have never seen a more open, curious group of people who truly want to understand the world better and to hopefully apply their skills and talents to contribute their part to make the world a better place. I tweeted yesterday that a great audience allows a speaker to step up his/her game and deliver the best idea that could change the world, well. So having TED the conference is important in the mission.

I notice that most of the people who “hate” on TED are people who have never been, as demonstrated by Sarah Lacey, Umair Haque, and Jeff Jarvis. Sarah posted a one-sided argument from someone this week that could have benefitted from a little more journalism. Umair posted something that could have been much tighter given a simple Google search. And Jeff Jarvis, whom I respect, was definitely taking jabs from afar calling it a cult. Can I ask you to come? Or at least attend a simulcast. Robert Scoble did a very thoughtful critique of TED, called Elephants in the Room, after coming and I respect him for what he shared….. http://www.businessinsider.com/is-ted-elite-2011-3

It will be interesting to see where the PBS and TED collaboration goes.

Where information leads to Hope. ©                               Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                      http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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The 05/06/13 Joy Jar

5 May

Most of the folk in the South or any tropical region would refer to Seattle folk as weather wimps. We are in the midst of a Seattle ‘heat wave.’ That means the temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If it gets close to 90, then many folk indigenous to the area complain. Transplants from warmer climes love it because it reminds them of the home they left. The great thing about the Puget Sound region is that after a while the natural air conditioning kicks in. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar is the rhythm of weather in the Puget Sound region.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn’t hear the barbarians coming.
Garrison Keillor

“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat”

Lao Tzu

“Although an ass is tired, he continues to carry his burden; he is unmindful of cold and heat; and he is always contented; these three things should be learned from the ass.”

Chanakya

“Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal.”

Dante Alighieri

“HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode Of motion, but I know now how he’s proving His point; but this I know –hot words bestowed With skill will set the human fist a-moving, And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
_Crede expertum_ –I have seen them, child. –Gorton Swope”

Ambrose Bierce

“Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers”

William Penn

“I have discovered that the world over, unusual weather prevails at all times of the year.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.”
Kim Hubbard

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Harvard-Smithsonian study: The subject matter knowledge of science teachers is important element of student science learning

5 May

Moi has written about teacher quality in Studies: For struggling math students, teacher quality matters https://drwilda.com/2013/04/14/studies-for-struggling-math-students-teacher-quality-matters/

and New Harvard study about impact of teachers:

The Guide to Teacher Quality lists several key attributes of a quality teacher:

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TEACHER QUALITY

• Experience is very important. The ability of a new teacher to support student learning

increases greatly during his/her first year of teaching and continues to grow through at least the

first several years of teaching (Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2007; Clotfelter, Ladd & Vigdor, 2004;

Hanushek et al., 1998).

• Teacher attrition matters. Districts and schools with relatively high rates of teacher

attrition are likely to have more inexperienced teachers and, as a result, instructional quality

and student learning suffer (Alliance for Quality Teaching, 2008).

• Ability matters. Teachers with higher scores on college admission or licensure tests as well

as those from colleges with more selective admission practices are better able to support student

learning (Gitomer, 2007; Rice, 2003; Wayne and Youngs, 2003; Reichardt, 2001; Ferguson

& Ladd, 1996; Greenwald, Hedges & Laine, 1996).

• Teachers’ subject matter knowledge helps students learn. Students learn when their

teacher knows the subject, particularly in secondary science and mathematics (Floden &

Meniketti, 2006; Rice, 2003; Wayne and Youngs, 2003; Reichardt, 2001).

• Preparation and training in how to teach makes a difference. Knowing how to teach

improves student learning, particularly when a teacher is in his/her first years of teaching (Rice,

2003; Allen, 2003; Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb & Wyckoff, 2005).

• Teacher diversity may also be important. There is emerging evidence that students learn

better from teachers of similar racial and ethnic background (Dee, 2004; Dee, 2001; Hanushek

et al. 1998).

One of the important attributes is the subject matter knowledge of the teacher. These findings are particularly important in light of the study, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: TeacherValue-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood by Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER , John N. Friedman, Harvard University and NBER, and Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University and NBER .

Here is a portion of the executive summary:

Many policy makers advocate increasing the quality of teaching, but there is considerable debate about the best way to measure and improve teacher quality. One method is to evaluate teachers based on their impacts on students’ test scores, commonly termed the “value-added” (VA) approach. A teacher’s value-added is defined as the average test-score gain for his or her students, adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores. School districts from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles have begun to use VA to evaluate teachers. Proponents argue that using VA can improve student achievement (e.g. Hanushek 2009), while critics argue that test score gains are poor proxies for a teacher’s true quality (e.g. Baker et al. 2010).

The debate about VA stems from two fundamental questions. First, does VA accurately measure teachers’ impacts on scores or does it unfairly penalize teachers who may systematically be assigned lower achieving students? Second, do high VA teachers improve their students’ long-term outcomes or are they simply better at teaching to the test? Researchers have not reached a consensus about the accuracy and long-term impacts of VA because of data and methodological limitations.

We address these two questions by tracking one million children from a large urban school district from 4th grade to adulthood. We evaluate the accuracy of standard VA measures using several methods, including natural experiments that arise from changes in teaching staff. We find that when a high VA teacher joins a school, test scores rise immediately in the grade taught by that teacher; when a high VA teacher leaves, test scores fall. Test scores change only in the subject taught by that teacher, and the size of the change in scores matches what we predict based on the teacher’s VA. These results establish that VA accurately captures teachers’ impacts on students’ academic achievement and thereby reconcile the conflicting conclusions of Kane and Staiger (2008) and Rothstein (2010). These methods provide a simple yet powerful method to estimate the bias of value-added models in any district; interested readers can download computer code to implement these tests from this link.

In the second part of our study, we analyze whether high VA teachers also improve students’ long-term outcomes. We find that students assigned to higher VA teachers are more successful in many dimensions. They are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, live in better neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers.

Teachers’ impacts on students are substantial. Replacing a teacher whose true VA is in the bottom 5% with a teacher of average quality would generate lifetime earnings gains worth more than $250,000 for the average classroom. VA estimates are less reliable when they are based on data from a small number of classes. However, even after observing teachers’ impacts on test scores for one year, estimates of VA are reliable enough that such personnel changes would yield large gains on average.

Teachers have large impacts in all the grades we analyze (4 to 8), implying that the returns to education remain large well beyond early childhood. Teachers’ impacts on earnings are also similar in percentage terms for students from low and high income families. As a rough guideline, parents should be willing to pay about 25% of their child’s income at age 28 to switch their child from a below-average (25th percentile) to an above-average (75th percentile) teacher. For example, parents whose children will earn around $40,000 in their late 20s should be willing to pay $10,000 to switch from a below-average to an above-average teacher for one grade, based on the expected increase in their child’s lifetime earnings.

Overall, our study shows that great teachers create great value – perhaps several times their annual salaries – and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers. However, more work is needed to determine the best way to use VA for policy. For example, using VA in teacher evaluations could induce undesirable responses that make VA a poorer measure of teacher quality, such as teaching to the test or cheating. There will be much to learn about these issues from school districts that start using VA to evaluate teachers. Nevertheless, it is clear that improving the quality of teaching – whether using value-added or other tools – is likely to have large economic and social returns.

See, Annie Lowrey’s New York Times article, Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain

Erik Robelen writes in the Education Week article, Knowing Student Misconceptions Key to Science Teaching, Study Finds which finds that teacher knowledge matters in science teaching.

It seems obvious that teachers need to understand the content they’re trying to convey to students. But a new study finds that what’s especially critical to improved science learning is that teachers also know the common misconceptions students have. And in science, there are plenty of things that young people—and a lot of adults—don’t correctly understand, such as what causes the change of seasons.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, targeted middle school physical science. The researchers enlisted 181 teachers to administer a multiple-choice test of student knowledge of science concepts. Twelve of the 20 items were designed to have a “particularly wrong answer corresponding to a commonly held misconception,” explained Philip Sadler, the lead author and a senior lecturer at the Harvard-Smithsonian center.

The “unusual” part of the study, he said, was that teachers also took the test, and were asked to identify both the correct answer and the one students were most often likely to incorrectly select. Although the teachers overall did “quite well” at selecting the correct answer, the results were more mixed in predicting students’ incorrect response.

“Teacher knowledge was predictive of higher student gains. No surprise there,” Sadler explained in an email. “However, for more difficult concepts where many students had a misconception, only teachers who knew the science and the common misconceptions have large student gains.” What’s key, he said, is knowing “what was going on in their students’ heads.”

The study, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, was recently published online in the American Educational Research Journal. The study also is the focus of an article published yesterday in Science Daily.

The researchers acknowledge that many educators question the value of tests composed of multiple-choice items, but said in the study that when items are written to include popular misconceptions as “distractors, they function well in diagnosing misconceptions that impede the learning of science.” The test questions were based on concepts covered in a set of science content standards published by the National Research Council in 1996. Topics addressed included properties of matter, motions and forces, and transfer of energy.

In his email, Sadler said the study was sparked by the reaction many educators have had to a video he helped to develop, called “A Private Universe,” in which graduating Harvard University seniors reveal “the same wrong ideas” about science as middle-school students. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/05/it_goes_without_saying_that.html

Citation:

The Influence of Teachers’ Knowledge on Student Learning in Middle School Physical Science Classrooms

  1. Philip M. Sadler,

  2. Gerhard Sonnert,

  3. Harold P. Coyle,

  4. Nancy Cook-Smith and

  5. Jaimie L. Miller

+ Author Affiliations

  1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning for 9,556 students of 181 middle school physical science teachers. Assessment instruments based on the National Science Education Standards with 20 items in common were administered several times during the school year to both students and their teachers. For items that had a very popular wrong answer, the teachers who could identify this misconception had larger classroom gains, much larger than if the teachers knew only the correct answer. On items on which students did not exhibit misconceptions, teacher subject matter knowledge alone accounted for higher student gains. This finding suggests that a teacher’s ability to identify students’ most common wrong answer on multiple-choice items, a form of pedagogical content knowledge, is an additional measure of science teacher competence.

This Article

  1. Published online before print March 6, 2013, doi: 10.3102/0002831213477680 Am Educ Res J March 6, 2013 0002831213477680

  1. » AbstractFree

  2. Full Text

  3. Full Text (PDF)

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Resources:

National Council on Teacher Quality

How I was evaluated as a first-year teacher – 10/04/2012

A first year teacher, ripe for feedback and improvement, gets none.

What’s the Latest on Teacher Evaluation? – 10/02/2012

We’ve got the skinny on what states are doing to evaluate their teachers and award them tenure. Read more

2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook

January 2012

State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies

October 2011

State of the States 2012: Teacher Effectiveness Policies

October 2012

Center for Teaching Qualityhttp://www.teachingquality.org/

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality http://www.tqsource.org/

Related:

Linda Darling-Hammond on teacher evaluation https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/linda-darling-hammond-on-teacher-evaluation/

Report: Measuring teacher effectiveness                   https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/report-measuring-teacher-effectiveness/

Where information leads to Hope. ©                               Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                      http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©                                             http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda ©                                                                                                    https://drwilda.com/

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The 05/05/13 Joy Jar

4 May

 

Moi saw Silver Linings Playbook and understood why it was so widely acclaimed. Besides a good story with great characters, it dealt with the subject of mental illness is a realistic and compassionate way. The movie was about HOPE. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ are those inspirational movies which move our emotions and make us think about the way we think about life.

“Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”
Alfred Hitchcock

“It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”
Roger Ebert

“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.”
Anthony Burgess

“Books and movies, they are not mere entertainment. They sustain me and help me cope with my real life.”
Arlaina Tibensky

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
Stanley Kubrick

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
Walt Disney

“Film is one if three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
Frank Capra

“Never compare your love story to those you watch in movies. They’re written by scriptwriters, yours is written by God.”
Efren Peñaflorida Jr.

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The 05/04/13 Joy Jar

3 May

 

The weather is heating up in Seattle. For many parts of the country that have vary defined seasons with high temperatures and high humidity, Seattle warm would be no big deal. Still, warm weather means a warm weather beauty routine. Tie the hair back to get it off one’s face. Moi went to the dollar store and got a bunch of hair ties in various colors. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ are hair ties.

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
Lily Tomlin

Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can’t put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do you hair with any sort of fun or joy if you’re doing it from a position of correction.
Kevyn Aucoin

Beauty isn’t seen throughout the makeup brushes or hair products; beauty is seen by those who choose not to see imperfections, and by those who you love and those who love you. Everyone is beautiful, but some people choose to hate on others for things they don’t like. Forget about those who make your days miserable, and live for those who make your life beautiful.

Unknown

I’m far from perfect. I could have a flatter stomach, clearer skin, whiter teeth, better hair, etc. But at least I don’t have an ugly heart.

Unknown

There’s many a man has more hair than wit.
William Shakespeare

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The 05/03/13 Joy Jar

2 May

 

The next few days will be ‘Seattle warm’ with temperatures headed toward the 80s. Time to drag out the bright colors and the summer clothes. Time to drag out the red shoes. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is moi’s red shoes.

“The red shoes dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day.”
-The Red Shoes 1948

“Every woman loves shoes, and every woman has a pair of red shoes, which is good news.”

Unknown

“Give a girl some red heels and she can conquer the world”
-Bette Midler

And whenever I’m in a situation where I’m wearing the same as 600 other people and doing the same thing as 600 other people, looking back, I always found ways to make myself different, whether it be having a red lining inside of my jacket, having red shoes, it hasn’t changed.

Jeremy Irons


“When in doubt, wear red.”

Bill Blass

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The 05/02/13 Joy Jar

1 May

 

Moi like many folks goes in cycles with trying to get healthy. A part of the push toward getting healthy is to take vitamins and to have a healthy outlook. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a good multivitamin.

“Excuses, criticisms, and superstitions are vitamins for haters, but poison for the successful. Rise above!”
Steve Maraboli

“Gloves, shoes and vitamins, too.”

Rene Gayo

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you always attach positive emotions to the things you want, and never attach negative emotions to the things you don’t, then that which you desire most will invariably come your way.”
Matt D. Miller

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.
Mahalia Jackson

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Hip-Hop and rap represent destructive life choices: How low can this genre sink?

1 May

 

Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: The question must be asked, who is responsible for MY or YOUR life choices? Let’s get real, certain Asian cultures kick the collective butts of the rest of Americans. Why? It’s not rocket science. These cultures embrace success traits of hard work, respect for education, strong families, and a reverence for success and successful people. Contrast the culture of success with the norms of hip-hop and rap oppositional culture. See, Hip-hop’s Dangerous Values http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1107107/posts

 

The latest high-profile example of the value set of hip-hop occurred with the report that rapper Danny Brown performed oral sex on stage. Radio.com reported in the article, Rapper Danny Brown’s Onstage Antics Spark Oral Sex Controversy about an alleged oral sex incident.

 

 

Alternative rapper Danny Brown is used to performing for crowded clubs, like his sold-out Minneapolis show on Friday (April 26), but he’s answering to a much larger audience in the wake the allegedly X-rated performance.

 

Music fans have taken to social media, demanding answers from the rapper and posting personal accounts of the concert, where the rapper reportedly engaged in oral sex with a fan in the front of the crowd.

 

A Redditor who claims to have been at the show described the incident in detail, saying that Brown had been getting close to “random girls” in the front of the crowd throughout his performance, including the woman involved in the incident at hand.

 

“Then I’m behind her and I start getting pushed against her by the crowd shifting,” the Redditor wrote. “It [was] horrible and I hope you guys will be donating to my future therapy sessions, but also I came back with a story. He rapped the entire time during [it] too.”

 

Brown’s Twitter followers are using the site as a platform to ask questions and voice their opinions, with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar even chiming in.

 

Brown reportedly confirmed that the allegations are true, however his response has since been deleted, according to Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages.

 

Meanwhile, some people are outraged at the inappropriate act, while Brown takes their comments in stride by retweeting some of them, presumably to capture some ironic humor in the midst of controversy.

 

Brown did respond to one question, only saying that the incident is a “rumor” without officially confirming or denying it. http://news.radio.com/2013/05/01/danny-brown-x-rated-show/

 

The death cult of hip-hop has been on a lot of people’s radar for the past few years. Because of artistic freedom and the romanticizing  of some hip-hop and rap stars, those sounding the alarm about this death cult have been labeled as prudes, nervous ninnies, and anti-free speech. A 2005 Nightline story by Jake Tapper and Marie Nelson looked at the links between corporate America and hip-hop

 

“The blueprint now is an image that promotes all of the worst aspects of violent and anti-social behavior,” said Source editor Mays. “It takes those real issues of violent life that occur in our inner cities, it takes them out of context.”

 

Attorney Londell McMillan, who represents Lil’ Kim and many other hip-hop performers, says the record labels and radio stations push the artists toward a more violent image. “They all seek to do things that are extraordinary,” he said, “unfortunately it’s been extraordinarily in the pain of a people. They are often encouraged to take a certain kind of approach to the art form.”

 

Added NYPD Commissioner Kelly, “Whereas some of the other violence was sort of attendant to the business itself, now I think they’re trying to exploit it and make money off of it.”

 

But C-Murder says if he projected a more benign image his career would be over. “I wouldn’t sell a record because my fans would know that’s not me,” he said. “They don’t expect me to just sit in that booth and write about stuff that the news or the media want to hear about.”

 

Record executive Dash adds there is a double standard between predominantly black and predominantly white music. “I remember Woodstock Part II was a mess,” Dash said, referring to the 1999 rock ‘n’ roll concert festival that exploded in a mass of riots and rapes. But, Dash said, “nothing more about it than that” transpired. “There wasn’t any new laws, there wasn’t any investigations. It just was.” 

 

Lest you think I am anti-capitalism, the real kind, not the corporate welfare of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, you are wrong. Most inner city neighborhoods and poor regions like Appalachia and Mississippi desperately need investment and capital to encourage entrepreneurs.  As the motto of Homeboy Industries states, the best defense against violence is a job.

 

Moi has been railing against the hip hop culture for years because it is destructive, produces violence, but just as important it stereotypes Blacks whether they participate in hip hop culture or not.

 

Does Hip-Hop Culture Affect Student Behavior?

 

Gosa and Young’s case study about the oppositional culture of hip-hop is a good description of the possible impact of a certain genre of music on the educational values of the young listeners.

 

Given the prominent, yet controversial theory of oppositional culture used to explain the poor academic achievement of black youth and recent concerns that hip-hop is leading black youth to adopt anti-school attitudes, we examine the construction of oppositional culture in hip-hop music. Through a qualitative case of song lyrics (n=250) from two of hip-hop’s most influential artists – “conscious” rapper Kanye West and “gangster” rapper Tupac Skakur, we find oppositional culture in both artist’s lyrics. However, our analysis reveals important differences in how the two artists describe the role of schooling in adult success, relationships with teachers and schools, and how education is related to authentic black male identity. Our findings suggest a need for reexamining the notion that oppositional culture means school resistance. 

 

The study gives a good description of oppositional culture, but it is overly optimistic about the role of the market place in promoting the basest values for a buck.

 

Lest one think that hip-hop culture is simply the province of thugs and low- income urban youth. Think again, there are many attempts to market a stylized version of the culture. A 1996 American Demographics article, Marketing Street Culture
Bringing Hip-Hop Style to the Mainstream, describes the marketing used to cross-over hip-hop culture into the mainstream.

 

Many of the hottest trends in teenage music, language, and fashion start in America’s inner cities, then quickly spread to suburbs. Targeting urban teens has put some companies on the map with the larger mainstream market. But companies need an education in hip-hop culture to avoid costly mistakes.

 

The Scene: Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a bastion of the white East Coast establishment. A teenaged boy saunters down the street, his gait and attitude embodying adolescent rebellion. Baggy jeans sag atop over-designed sneakers, gold hoops adorn both ears, and a baseball cap shields his eyes. On his chest, a Tommy Hilfiger shirt sports the designer’s distinctive pairing of blue, red, and white rectangles.

 

Four years ago, this outfit would have been unimaginable to this cool teen; only his clean-cut, country-club peers sported Hilfiger clothes. What linked the previously preppy Hilfiger to jeans so low-slung they seem to defy gravity? To a large extent, the answer lies 200 miles southwest, in the oversized personage of Brooklyn’s Biggie Smalls, an admitted ex-drug dealer turned rapper.

 

Over the past few years, Smalls and other hip-hop stars have become a crucial part of Hilfiger’s open attempt to tap into the urban youth market. In exchange for giving artists free wardrobes, Hilfiger found its name mentioned in both the rhyming verses of rap songs and their “shout-out” lyrics, in which rap artists chant out thanks to friends and sponsors for their support.

 

For Tommy Hilfiger and other brands, the result is de facto product placement. The September 1996 issue of Rolling Stone magazine featured the rap group The Fugees, with the men prominently sporting the Tommy Hilfiger logo. In February 1996, Hilfiger even used a pair of rap stars as runway models: horror-core rapper Method Man and muscular bad-boy Treach of Naughty by Nature.

 

Suburban normed or middle class youth may dabble in hip-hop culture, but they have a “recovery period.” The “recovery period” for suburban youth means moving from deviant norms, which preclude success into mainstream norms, which often promote success. Suburban children often have parental and peer social pressure to move them to the mainstream. Robert Downey, Jr., the once troubled actor is not necessarily an example of hip-hop culture, but he is an example of the process of “recovery” moving an individual back into the mainstream. Children of color and low-income children often do not get the chance to “recover” and move into mainstream norms. The next movement for them after a suspension or expulsion is often the criminal justice system.

 

The data is shouting load and clear. Hip-hop and rap culture more often than not is a destructive life choice.

 

 

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