Friday, April 3, 2020

How students can learn during coronavirus without internet: Teacher union leader

How students can learn during coronavirus without internet: Teacher union leader

How students can learn during coronavirus without internet: Teacher union leader


The coronavirus pandemic may offer a good opportunity for students working remotely to revisit term papers, or capstone projects, Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president, said.
“If we trust teachers, particularly for a high school graduating seniors, to kind of come up with projects, to sum up the year then and… if somebody doesn't have the internet or somebody doesn't have online to kind of create a delivery system like we have with the grab and go meals, then we can actually help sum up the year in as productive a way as possible,” Weingarten told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday.
School closings throughout the country have forced classes to be held online using online platforms like Zoom and Google Classroom, which has been effective, Weingarten said.
However, teachers are still learning as they go, she said.
“We often use the expression building and… flying the plane at the same time,” she said. “And I would actually say that's pretty apt right now because… virtual learning has been around for a long time -- it has actually not really worked effectively. And so everybody within, I would say like five to seven days had to learn how to do it very quickly.
Georgia joined a growing list of eight other states to announce that schools will be closed for the remainder of the year. Weingarten said once the coronavirus could partially change how students learn in the future.
“Parents are now seeing kind of just how hard it is to teach,” she said. “And so we need to actually build those relationships again, see people again, connect with people again and have schools that actually wrap services around -- it’s going to be actually more important to have some of those other services past this virus.”
But Weingarten also believes that technology will not replace teaching.
“Technology does not supplant teaching and learning," she said. "It has to supplement teaching and learning. And that's what you're seeing here."
How students can learn during coronavirus without internet: Teacher union leader

What the Covid-19 Pandemic Should Teach Us about “Science” – radical eyes for equity

What the Covid-19 Pandemic Should Teach Us about “Science” – radical eyes for equity

What the Covid-19 Pandemic Should Teach Us about “Science”


For about twenty years now, I have been writing about misconceptions about and misrepresentations of “scientific” as it relates to what evidence supports teaching practices and school policy. The problem that I confront over and over is complicated since scientific evidence absolutely does matter in making large and small educational decisions, and educators and policy-makers must remain vigilant in monitoring who determines what “science” matters in those processes.
For example in the early 2000s, the National Reading Panel as a major component of No Child Left Behind was charged with examining the scientific evidence behind how to teach reading. Along with the problems exposed after NRP released their findings, I raised red flags about handing over what science matters from disciplinary structures to bureaucratic/political mandates.
At least one concern raised about the conclusions of NRP is that this bureaucratic body made a contested decision about which studies met the bar of “scientific,” a debate that has existed for some time in academia and research broadly as well as in each discipline.
For the most part, NRP’s decision does reflect a traditional bias for quantitative research and experimental/quasi-experimental methods, but that decision effectively erased a huge body of evidence about how to teach reading.

Friday’s Resources To Help Teachers Cope With The School Closure Crisis | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Friday’s Resources To Help Teachers Cope With The School Closure Crisis | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Friday’s Resources To Help Teachers Cope With The School Closure Crisis



Ed Tech Digest

Eight years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in THE BEST ED TECH RESOURCES OF 2019 – PART TWO , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this
Friday’s Resources To Help Teachers Cope With The School Closure Crisis

Markus Winkler Here are new additions to either The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! or The “Best Of The Best” Resources To Support Teachers Dealing With School Closures: The Monterey Bay Aquarium has some pretty interesting self-guided courses for students . RESOURCES FOR CONTINUITY OF LEARNING looks like a nice colle
Martin Luther King, Jr. Gave His “Mountaintop” Speech 52 Years Ago Today – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

WikiImages / Pixabay Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech fifty-two years ago today, one day before he was assassinated. I’ve brought together some resources about that speech in this post. You might also be interested in: The Best Websites For Learning About Martin Luther King, Jr The Best Sites For Learning About The Martin Luther King Memorial The Best Resources To Reme

YESTERDAY

Video: “Trump’s ‘Chinese Virus’ Rhetoric Part Of A Long U.S. Tradition Of Scapegoating”

Allie Smith I’m adding this new NBC News video to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS:
Video: “How Are Schools Dealing With The Digital Divide?”

SchoolPRPro / Pixabay I thought that this new video from Newsy gave a pretty good overview of the problem:
Today Is International Fact-Checking Day – Here Are A Ton of Teaching & Learning Resources

geralt / Pixabay Today is the fourth annual International Fact-Checking Day . You might be interested in The Best Tools & Lessons For Teaching Information Literacy – Help Me Find More .
Statistic Of The Day: Nobody Is Going To School

It’s crazy out there. 9 Out Of 10 Children Are Out Of School Worldwide. What Now? is a new piece at NPR that puts it all in good context, along with discussing its future implications….
The Best Sites Where You Can Find Cool Things That Happened On Your Birthday

cbaquiran / Pixabay I have several students who have had birthdays this week or having ones coming up, and I know they re less-than-thrilled with being at home. I’ve encouraged them to try video conference parties, but they’re not yet comfortable with using this kind of tech. I did send them some of the tools on this list and that at least said they enjoyed them. Of course, they might also have b
Ten Million People Applied For Unemployment In Two Weeks – We Better Keep That In Mind When We’re Teaching

In addition to the technical and pedagogical challenges of teaching online, we teachers MUST be VERY sensitive to the impact of financial stress on our students’ lives https://t.co/7laopkVa4D — Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) April 2, 2020 Our economy is in “free fall,” and we teachers have to bear this in mind when we’re leading distance learning over the next few months – as well as remembering


“Author Interview: ‘Cultural Competence Now'”

Author Interview: ‘Cultural Competence Now’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Vernita Mayfield agreed to answer a few questions about her book, “Cultural Competence Now: 56 Exercises to Help 
https://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

Advice to Parents: Forget the Worksheets! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Advice to Parents: Forget the Worksheets! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Advice to Parents: Forget the Worksheets!


Joel Westheimer has advice for parents who are at home organizing their children’s days.
FORGET THE WORKSHEETS AND TRYING TO REPLICATE SCHOOL
I am really struck by the variety of media inquiries I’ve been getting about the impacts of Covid-19 on education, what parents should be doing at home, and so on. The interest doesn’t surprise me (I am an education columnist on public radio), but the preoccupation with whether kids will “fall behind” or with how they will “catch up” has. I see hundreds of stories, websites, and YouTube videos that aim to help parents create miniature classrooms at home. Maybe some parents have folding chairs they can bring up from the basement and put in rows. Where’s that big blackboard we used to have? Is there a run on chalk at Costco?
Stop worrying about the vague and evidence-less idea of children “falling behind” or “catching up.” This is a world-wide pause in life-as-usual. We’ve spent the last 25 years over-scheduling kids, over-testing kids, putting undue pressure on them to achieve more and more and play less and less. The result? Several generations of children and young adults who are stressed-out, medicated, alienated, and depressed.


This is not a time for worksheets. This is an opportunity CONTINUE READING: Advice to Parents: Forget the Worksheets! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ed Notes Online: Another Teacher Dies of Corona Virus -- A disturbing timeline and possible coverup

Ed Notes Online: Another Teacher Dies of Corona Virus -- A disturbing timeline and possible coverup

Another Teacher Dies of Corona Virus -- A disturbing timeline and possible coverup

Unlike other city agencies, including the police department, the education department has declined to say how many of its employees have died due to the coronavirus or are infected. A principalparaprofessional, and school safety agent are among those whose deaths have been publicly reported.

Asked Wednesday about why the education department has not confirmed infection or fatality rates, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said: “You have to keep in mind that the police and fire department are out right now serving the public.” ..... Chalbeat
And teachers aren’t?.... Leonie Haimson

“there is no mechanism” for the department to track how many teachers have tested positive.... Chalkbeat
WTF - they track everything else - too busy with the usual DOE bullshit that doesn't seem to change no matter who is in charge. Here's another beauty:

.... some educators have criticized the department for its shift in policy to no longer confirm coronavirus infections, leaving it to educators to inform each other if they are concerned the infection is spreading within their school community. 

Department officials have countered that because the coronavirus is widespread in New York City, educators were not at greater risk when reporting to school than they were elsewhere in the community.
Double wtf.

I posted the Sue Edelman piece on coverups at the DOE over teachers who were testing positive: Carranzavirus: Sue Edelman, NY Post: DOE, DeB Blood on hands.

Chalkbeat also did a piece on the Brooklyn Tech story on March 19, the last day they had to report as the teacher  CONTINUE READING: 
Ed Notes Online: Another Teacher Dies of Corona Virus -- A disturbing timeline and possible coverup


CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Path Opens To Killing Public Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Path Opens To Killing Public Schools

FL: Path Opens To Killing Public Schools


If there was a state most likely to grab the coronaviral opportunity to gut its public school system, it would have to be Florida, some those ducks appear to be lining up.


Florida Virtual School (FLVS) has had its share of rough times. Started by the state in the 90s, spun into a private business (a "publicly-funded non-profit," so a charter school), and then mired in a mess of incompetence and corruption, the entire shooting match had its board replaced by the state, which installed a bunch of politically connected board members, and a half-assed audit was ordered up. Now the Board of Trustees is the Sate Board of Education, headed by evolution-denier Andy Tuck. That was just last year, but apparently everyone is feeling much more confident about FLVS no because, as trumpeted by reformster cheerleading site redefinED, FLVS is "preparing to blast off."

By "blast off" they mean "get a huge infusion of money." FLVS has already been handed some great help from the state legislature, which mandates that all Florida students must take at least one on-line course in order to graduate. That's a great deal for FLVS, which is paid by taxpayers based on CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: FL: Path Opens To Killing Public Schools