Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Facebook DC Live: Facebook for Educators

Join Linda Fogg Phillips, co-author (along with myself and BJ Fogg) of the new Facebook for Educators guide, Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, and other panelists for a discussion of how teachers and administrators can connect safely and appropriately with students on Facebook and other social media sites to extend learning outside the classroom.

Facebook will also discuss some recent efforts both on and off of Facebook to thank teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week.

To watch at 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT on Tuesday, click the "FB DC Live" navigation link on http://www.facebook.com/FacebookDC or go directly to: http://www.facebook.com/FacebookDC?v=app_141125442599532.

Ask questions for our guests on the wall of this event.

Study: One in Four Young Adults Say the Education System Has Little to No Understanding of Their Values and Goals

As part of its commitment to education, Viacom partnered with The Associated Press to conduct "Young Adults' Perspectives on American Education 2011," a groundbreaking study based on a combination of peer-to-peer interviews and a large-scale poll of more than 1,100 American 18-24 year-olds.

Viacom and The Associated Press approached the study by looking at 18-24 year-olds as "core consumers of education" and evaluating how the education system is meeting their needs.  

According to the study, young adults are optimistic that high schools and colleges can prepare them for the working world, but also feel these institutions aren't adapting quickly enough to meet students' changing needs.

As a result, more and more 18-24 year-olds are taking a less traditional approach to higher education, via self-directed curricula, internships and self-teaching.

Recognizing the important role young people can and should play in reaching their goals, Viacom launched Get Schooled, which provides the tools and guidance young adults need to succeed in today's competitive environment.

The full "Young Adults' Perspectives on American Education 2011" study is available on the Get Schooled website at www.getschooled.com or on the Get Schooled Facebook Page.

According to the study, students are increasingly creating individual, self-tailored curricula by cherry picking schools and courses. They're also taking longer to graduate because they feel that, by combining school with work and internships, they stand a greater chance of finding a desirable job.

Young adults are relying more on themselves, their families and friends and less on community or religious organizations and high school counselors when it comes to education decisions.

Detailed findings from the study include:

• Overall, 27 percent of young adults say the education system has little to no understanding of their values and goals. More than a third (36 percent) report it is ambivalent to their values and goals.

• Only 37 percent say the education system mostly or completely understands them.

• Among those surveyed with a high school diploma, but no college experience, 33 percent say the education system has little to no understanding of their values and goals.  

How College Leads to a Better Life is Unclear

The most consistent theme among those interviewed – from those with no college experience to those with bachelor degrees – is that college should prepare one to join the workforce.

But today's pragmatic, goal-oriented young adults are unsure that the education product being offered to them will deliver the job or career that they want.

• More than half of young adults say it's more worth the money to get "an education that is focused on success in the world."

• In fact, 28 percent of those who have attended college say college doesn't adequately prepare you for the workforce, while almost twice as many young adults (55 percent) say high school doesn't prepare you for the workforce.

• Thirty-one percent say college doesn't provide enough practical skills to survive as an adult and 51 percent say the same about high school.

Young Adults' Perspectives on American Education 2011

Skype In The Classroom: An International Social Network For Teachers [VIDEO]

Skype realizes full well its software is used by many school teachers and students from around the globe, and today announced that it has built a dedicated social network to help them connect, collaborate and exchange knowledge and teaching resources over the Web.

This morning, the company launched a free international community site dubbed Skype in the Classroom, an online platform designed to help teachers find each other and relevant projects according to search criteria such as the age groups they teach, location and subjects of interest.

How to create a profile and find a teacher from Skype in the classroom on Vimeo.

The platform, which has been in beta since the end of December, already has a community of more than 4,000 teachers, across 99 countries.

Teachers need only sign up with their Skype account at the website, create a profile with their interests, location and the age groups they teach and start connecting with other teachers by exploring the directory, where they can also find projects and resources that match their skills, needs or interests.

A members-only community, Skype in the Classroom lets teachers easily add each other to their Skype contact lists or message one another.

via TechCrunch

Global Youth: How Kids Can Help Japan

On Friday, March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake struck Sendai, Japan, resulting in a devastating tsunami that ravaged the coast just 180 miles from Tokyo.

In response, Students Rebuild has partnered with DoSomething.org, to ensure students worldwide have a way to support their Japanese peers.

Help Japan by making paper cranes

These simple yet powerful gestures will trigger a $200,000 donation from the Bezos Family Foundation - $2 for each crane received - to Architecture for Humanity's reconstruction efforts in Japan.

Once we reach our goal of 100,000 submissions, the cranes will be woven into an art installation - a symbolic gift from students around the globe to Japanese youth.

Why Cranes?

Cranes are sacred creatures in Japanese culture. According to legend, anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish by a crane.

While anyone can contribute to the virtual mosaic on Facebook, our goal is to collect 100,000 origami cranes from young people to represent 100 wishes of support and healing for Japan. A list of wishes will begin to appear when we receive the first 1,000 cranes by mail.

Related Resources

• Tutorial: Make an Origami Crane
• Students Rebuild on Facebook
• Students Rebuild on Twitter

Chicago Students See Success Hitting the Gym, Then Hitting the Books

 

At Naperville Central, a public high school of nearly 3,000 students, educators believe exercise will not only get kids fit, but will improve learning and academic performance.

And they're putting that idea into practice for a group of students who struggle in reading and in math. At 7:45 a.m., these freshmen and sophomores start the day in the gym.

This excerpt tells the story of an academic transformation that began with a gym teacher.

Related: More Strokes Hitting Young, Middle-Aged

When snow hit, one American U class moved to Facebook

"Setting up this Facebook page was one of the first things I did after I created my spring syllabus for this class, International Public Relations. It wasn't my idea; it was something I learned from students and junior colleagues when I returned from sabbatical.

After eight months of being in research la-la land, stepping back onto a high-speed, wi-fi campus was like moving from the cave wall paintings to, well, digital walls.

I attended a one-day university-sponsored teaching symposium and zeroed in on technology sessions to get myself up to speed. The line that really stuck with me was: "If you want to fish, go where the fish are." The fish, is seems, were all on Facebook, and I wanted to cast my net."

• Read more about how this professor used Facebook in a educational setting over on The Washington Post.

via voices.washingtonpost.com

Pearson Learning Study: Social Media in Higher Education [PRESO]

General Social Media Stats From the Pearson Study

Facebook

• There are over 500 million users on Facebook with over 50% logging in at least once per day.

• In the United States alone there are, as of February 2010, 108 million users at a growth rate of around 5 million new users per month. That is a 35% penetration rate of the total US population.

• The average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook.

Twitter

• At the end of 2009 Twitter had approximately 75 million active users with a growth rate in Q4 of between 6-8 million new users per month.

• There are over 50 million tweets per day as of March 2010. This is up from 3 million tweets per day in March 2008.

Pearson Social Media Survey 2010

View more presentations from Pearson Learning Solutions.

YouTube

• On YouTube alone, there are over 1 billion views per day.

• There are 20 hours of video uploaded every minute. That’s the equivalent of 130,000 full-length Hollywood movie releases every single week.

• YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world.

• Approximately 82% of Internet users in the USA view videos online.

LinkedIn

• There are over 60 million registered users on LinkedIn with about 100,000 new users per week.

Blogs

• There are approximately 126 million blogs as tracked by BlogPulse.

Google Global Science Fair for Teens

At Google, the only thing we love as much as science is science education. We want to celebrate young scientific talent and engage students who might not yet be engaged with science.

So, in partnership with CERN, the LEGO Group, National Geographic, and Scientific American we’ve created an exciting new global science competition, the Google Science Fair.

Students all over the world who are between the ages of 13 and 18 are eligible to enter this competition and compete for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences, internships and scholarships.

 

We’ll be accepting submissions from 11 January to 4 April 2011. Students who make it to the finalist stage will be invited with a parent or guardian to our celebratory event at Google headquarters in California in July, where they’ll be able to showcase their project and meet some of the brightest minds in science today. We will select and announce our winner at this event.

The competition is open to students aged 13 to 18 from around the world working on their own or in a team of two or three. For more details, visit the Science Fair Rules page.

Here are some tips for getting started:

1. Direct students to the sign up page to register either as individuals or teams of up to three.
2. Discuss project requirements and entry process with students.
3. Get familiar with Google Sites so that your students are prepared to complete their project submission. Their Google Site will become their official project submission. The Materials section is full of resources for using Google products to help students illustrate their work.
4. Start immersing students in the scientific method using some tips from the table below and in our Science Resources section.
5. Assist students in developing their project and learn along with them!
6. Review the contest rules and FAQs with your students

via Google Science Fair

Blackawton Bees: Eight-Year-Olds Publish Bee Study in Respected UK Science Journal

Royal Society Publishing science journal Biology Letters is releasing a paper about the way bees use color and space to navigate between flowers. It was written by 25 co-authors, all of whom are between the ages of 8 and 10.

Really: The 25 kids, all from the Blackawton Primary School in Devon, England, designed the experiment from the ground up, and wrote every word in the paper.

The students who published the paper were participants in "i, scientist," a project set up to engage kids with science in a hands-on way. A very hands-on way.

I Scientist film from Storymakers TV on Vimeo.

With help from neuroscientist Beau Lotto (whose son is in the class), the 25-person team began by thinking about the way animals—in particular, bees—perceive the world. You can read more about the Blackawton Bees study and other projects by Lotto by clicking here. The Blackawton Bee paper is available here.

This is a briliant and hands on way to teach kids science. Instead of sitting in classroom and listening to a teacher, these kids are getting a hands on experience that makes science move from theory into actual practice and proves that anyone can do science.

via gawker.com

Infographic: Education 2.0 - U.S. Students & Social Networking

This graphic, created for Socialcast, looks at how educators are encouraging students to engage in social media, and how the education and social media sectors are being integrated to create a whole new way of learning.

via www.columnfivemedia.com

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Infographic: Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

 A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.

 

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

According to a study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced.

In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures.

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.

A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Henry Jenkins: Participatory Culture & Media Education

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace.

Trend Watch: Parents Want to use Facebook to Connect with Teachers

A recent poll conducted by YouGov found that 58% of teachers would like parents to help more with their child’s learning and more than one-third of parents want to be more involved in the youngster’s schooling.

But with half of mothers and fathers only seeing their child’s teacher once a term, parents and staff both said they wanted more opportunities to discuss feedback about pupils in less formal situations than at parents’ evenings.

The study also found that one in five parents in Glasgow wants to be able to contact their child’s teachers through social networking sites such as Facebook.

Two-thirds of mothers and fathers said email would be a good way to discuss any issues, while 22% said they would like to be able to text or swap messages over the internet.

via www.heraldscotland.com

Social Learning: Teachers Using Facebook Groups to Connect With Parents

When it comes to classroom management and keeping parents informed, a lot of teachers are now using Facebook Group as an effective tool for classroom management. In the past they might have sent home a flyer with students', but it usually got lost or vanished in thin air.

Now, since most parents are one of the 500 million people on Facebook, teachers are finding Facebook Groups to be an effective and engaging way to get parents more involved in their kids' classroom.

In this news clip from CNN, teachers in Nebraska explain how they use Facebook in their classroom to help keep both parents informed and kids engaged in the curriculum. There are some really great ideas here, well worth checking out.

 

Related: Facebook and Social Media in Schools

How to Make Social Networking an Educational Experience for Kids [VIDEO]

 

Education and parenting expert Amy James, founder of Knowledge Essentials & author of the Success Series books for parents, shares tips for kids using social networking sites.

In this video, you'll learn how to make social networking an educational experience along with safety tips and other ideas.