Carol On Education » Carol J. Carter

Social Networks are the R&D Teams of the Future

CAROL’S SUMMARY:

All of learning is changing because of technology. The more that we as educators, authors and administrators understand the way students learn and the need to have a learning â€œexperienceâ€, the more students will be motivated, engaged and challenged. Here are questions to consider:

What changes might you need to make to harness this potential?

1) How will you have to be different?

2) How will your students need to interact as teams?

3) How will you measure the outcomes of this new learning world versus the more lecture-based formats of the last one hundred years?

4) How can more students who struggle show their ability and their knowledge through technology?

ARTICLEÂ

ASCD
Author name not posted
This morning’s session “Professional Learning Networks Using Web 2.0 Tools,” presented by Meg Ormiston, shared a bunch of networking tools (find the liveblogged rundown on the session’s wikispace) and some big ideas:

“Social networking for educators is about breaking down isolation. Imagine if every 2nd grade teacher was on Twitter and their network was primarily other 2nd grade teachers. It would accomplish so much more than all our binders of curriculum.”

To view entire article visit http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/prof-learning-networks-using-web-20.html

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Start Over as an Intern

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
In this job market, many mid level and middle-aged employees are going back to intern for companies for which they have a passion and an interest, but no experience. While this may mean a temporary financial hit for some, it may produce long-term benefits on a whole new career path. It can often obviate the need for business school, or it can help ensure you are accepted to business school if you are convinced you need that degree and learning for your career advancement.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1) If there is an industry or field about which you have a deep passion, how could you pitch a one-month internship to both show your capabilities and truly verify your interest in that area?

2) Financially, how can you supplement your income so that you can work without pay on an internship? Can you get a minimum wage job, or even work as a consultant for your former employer?

3) Who are at least three people who can provide strong recommendations for you so that you can get your foot in the door for the internship? Have these in hand or as part of your electronic portfolio when you make the pitch for securing the internship.

ARTICLE:

Wall Street Journal
By ALEXANDRA LEVIT
When I was in school just over a decade ago, internships were only for college students. The jobs we performed were unglamorous. But in today’s professional world, internships have gotten a facelift, and mid-career adults are flocking to them as a way to reinvent their careers.

Marieka Torrico, 31 years old, of Alexandria, Va., chose an unpaid internship in Bolivia to jumpstart her career in public health. She had been a medical-records assistant for nearly five years. “I felt that I needed to start living my life in a way that would make a difference to others,” Ms. Torrico says.

To view entire article visit
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123768268795705241.html?mod=article-outset-box

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Report Shows Steep Gains by Students From Abroad

All children bring unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the classroom. ELL students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds can offer many advantages for the entire classroom by bringing a different perspective about the world based on their customs and beliefs. One way schools can help boost English profiency among ELL students is to learn who they are and value their uniqueness. When the experiences and perspectives of ELL students can be seen as a resource and used for instruction, the whole class benefits. Here are questions to consider:

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Researchers Propose 6 Ways to Keep Community-College Students Beyond the First Few Weeks

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Community colleges lose almost half of their freshmen before their first year is over. Administrators are carefully observing, for the first time ever, what maze of experience a typical incoming students goes through in their first three weeks on campus. Many students don’t have the coping skills to negotiate finding the right people, getting the right signatures or even finding the right classroom on time. So, what can community colleges do to streamline the process, make the steps more simple and provide more direction in that first month of school?

Additionally, how can we better equip most community college students with the wherewithal to persevere beyond the things which daunt them, intimidate
or stymie them? Certainly, many things in life are frustrating and perplexing and hard to figure out. Those who use their minds and abilities to work through road blocks, can make their way safely to the other side, ready for even more complex challenges next time. So, how do students need to be challenged more in high school to develop college and life coping skills?

ARTICLE

By STEVEN BUSHONG
March 18, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Ed

Thanks to online video sharing, academics’ lecture missteps, intentional and otherwise, are sometimes preserved for posterity.

Some students at community colleges never make it into the enrollment statistics. They drop out before the first count is taken, usually a few weeks into the semester.

A report to be released today by the Center for Community College Student Engagement seeks to help officials understand the student experience in those critical first three weeks, and how they might engage those at-risk students and prevent them from becoming dropouts.

The report, “Imagine Success: Engaging Entering Students,” is based on data from the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or Sense, conducted this fall. Its findings come at a time when community colleges are being called on to help achieve a national goal set by President Obama: to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

To view this entire article you must submit to www.chronicle.com

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A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Universities and colleges are not exempt from the economic woes facing virtually every other industry across the country, yet in higher education the stakes are higher because our students will experience the blunt of the fallout in higher tuition rates and possibly a compromise in the quality of their education.Â Here are a few questions to consider:

1) How many public research universities can the nation afford?

2) WhatÂ could be the long-term consequences if ourÂ colleges fail to educate students so that they achieve upward mobility?

3) As colleges struggle to stay afloat, how can they harness the power of the students themselves to help solve some of these issues? After all, when students enter the real world of work, they will encounter similar challenges.

ARTICLE
Chronicle of Higher Education

Times are tough, very tough. The great majority of colleges are looking at 2009 and 2010 and beyond, in anticipation of the deepest budget cuts in more than a generation. But as bad as the financial situation may be, colleges can survive if they take swift and strong emergency action.

To read the entire article please visit http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=SjpTXfspzvT3nNFcmd6q5Ny6MvRKJmHr

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State Colleges Also Face Cuts in Ambitions

CAROL’S SUMMARY: Universities, many hard hit by the economy and their own endowments which have suffered record losses, are asking some hard questions about their mission, their future and the best way to deliver quality education with fewer resources than ever. It will take a lot creativity to develop ways that we can still give the majority of students access to what they need with few resources. Here are some ideas:

1) Analyze which courses, like student success, can be taught the summer before freshmen enter in an on-line, self-paced environment.

2) Recruit and train peer leaders to teach classes or assist teachers who have large class sizes in areas such as Student Success.

3) Recruit the retired to come and tutor your students for free. They have a wealth of experience which undergrads desperately need.

4) Work with faculty to hold students to higher levels of accountability. To succeed in our new global economy, students need high expectations and the personal governance to deliver their bestâ€”not just skate by. If our economy is going to turn around, students need to know that their ethic, drive and ambition will be the engine.

ARTICLE:
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: March 16, 2009
TEMPE, Ariz. â€” When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it â€œThe New American University,â€ with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state.

To view entire article visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17university.html?emc=eta1

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Where Education and Assimilation Collide

Nearly two-thirds of English learners are second or third generation Americans born in the United States. Those numbers have seen a huge spike in the last twelve years. These students, called English Language Learners, make up the fastest growing group of students in the country. In the last few years, these students have been thousands strong in rural towns and suburban districts which are all equipped to deal with their needsâ€”states like Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina.

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Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?

CAROL’S SUMMARY: With the current financial downfall, some blame the way business schools are taught. Schools like the University of Phoenix have become a popular alternative in the last decade because their classes are taught by business professionals, not professors studying business.Â Certainly, if traditional business schools emphasized more leadership, initiative and project-based learning more students would be â€œdoingâ€ business than studying about how to do business. Some of the case-based and project-based learning should involve consequences of poor actions as the ones we are living out right now in this depressed economy.Â If students could have a sense of the fallout of their actions, they would likely behave differently.

Questions to consider:
1. Do you agree?
2. What fundamental aspects are business schools neglecting?
3. How can business schools team up with more people from the world of business?
4. What experiences do business studentsâ€”or any student who wants to enter businessâ€”need to be a responsible, measured leader?

ARTICLE:

By KELLEY HOLLAND
Published: March 14, 2009

JOHN Thain has one. So do Richard Fuld, Stanley Oâ€™Neal and Vikram Pandit. For that matter, so does John Paulson, the hedge fund kingpin.

Yes, all five have fat bank accounts, even now, and all have made their share of headlines. But these current and former giants of finance also are all card-carrying M.B.A.â€™s.

The masterâ€™s of business administration, a gateway credential throughout corporate America, is especially coveted on Wall Street; in recent years, top business schools have routinely sent more than 40 percent of their graduates into the world of finance.

Visit www.nytimes.com to view the entire article

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Helping Students Find a Sense of Purpose

Motivated by the increased coverage of student misbehavior, the school-reform movement is working to bring back moral education to the intellectual learning students do today. Bringing moral, or character education, back will help students see the purpose to their studies. Even lack of purpose has a deep impact on the character education of youths, showing just how important these are.

Questions to consider:

1. Do you know the importance of what is taught in each of your classes?
2. Does this or would this help you become more invested in your education?
3. What are the pros of character educationâ€”academic, emotional and social intelligence? What are the best ways to promote these issues in and out of class?
4. What are the potential costs short term and long term to avoiding the character education piece of learning?

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ARTICLE:

A Q&A With William Damon

By SUSANNAH TULLY
March 13, 2009

William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford University, has long advocated “character education” as a key component of school reform. The author of several books on the subject, his latest is The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life (Free Press, 2008). The Chronicle Review asked him to discuss the role of schools in moral development and how they can encourage students to define their goals and aspirations.

To view this entire article you must subscribe to www.chronicle.com

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Experts Wonder How Education Goals Will Be Met

Carol’s Summary: Experts Wonder How Education Goals Will Be Met

Obama has a strong and formidable vision that the US will lead the world by 2020 with the most number of college graduates. However, with 25% of high school graduates currently not going to college and the drop-out rate once students get to college hovering at around 40%, we have a lot of work to do.

One of the most encouraging parts of Obamaâ€™s current plan is to give a $4,000 tax credit to students who can prove that they spent 100 hours or more doing community service. There are numerous advantages to students with this plan:

1) In this economy, many older twenty and thirty-somethings are taking minimum wage jobs typically held by college and high school students. There will be fewer of those jobs this summer, but the wise student can volunteer with a cause of his choice to put this tax credit in his pocket.

2) One of the biggest limits currently with American students is that they often lack experience. They can wander in college or drop out because they donâ€™t know themselves, their interests or their abilities. Volunteering fosters self discovery, leadership and purpose. The more students who have volunteered for 100 hours before or during the freshmen year, the more focused and committed those students will be.

3) Volunteering teaches real world skills like how to manage a project, keep deadlines and work as part of a team. These skills are necessary for college, career and life. A volunteer job done well can turn into a much earned letter of recommendation or better, continued participation or a paid position.

Students need experience to compete in the global worldâ€”volunteer experience, travel experience and experience outside of the â€œcomfort zoneâ€. This proposition will get students in a mode to begin early in their lives to make a contribution and, with luck, continue that for the rest of their lives.

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