Blurts

I encountered this source arguing there are at least three common misconceptions when it comes to K12 curriculum. The false assumption that caught my attention involved the belief that the most effective teachers create their own curriculum materials. In arguing the contrary, the source suggested that teachers average 7-12 hours per week searching for or creating curriculum content and this time either extends the workload of educators or cuts into the time educators spend with students or providing feedback on work completed. With present concerns over teacher workloads and related stress and the competing suggestion that educators should “ditch the textbook”, educators and the public are getting mixed messages. The source proposes that modern commercial curriculum offerings offer far more than content to read and worksheets to complete and these resources are prepared with an eye to solid learning theory, content quality, and a plan for how learning experiences fit together to meet standards and assure learners are prepared as to what is to come. 

My professional work included teaching in a graduate-level instructional design program and while I am an applied cognitive learning researcher by training and experience, exposure to the issues that educational designers address in generating learning materials and procedures has been enlightening. There are so many important things that go beyond authoring lesson plans. I have tried to identify and explain many of these considerations in a resource I have written for interested educators titled “Designing instruction using layering services: Educators and students guiding learning”. For those educators interested in instructional design and wanting to build instructional content based on online resources, my focus was on identifying the issues that are important in curriculum generation and how the issues can be addressed in creating learning resources. So, I see both sides of this issue. If you want to “ditch” the use of commercial materials and act as an instructional designer, I explain what the design process involves.

The resource on commercial curriculum and educator time I reference identified one issue that requires consideration. A high proportion of educators complain that they receive inadequate professional development when it comes to the implementation of modern commercial curriculum materials. My personal reaction to complaints about professional development tends to focus on the challenge of continuing support as what are perhaps initially explained as good ideas are put into practice. Who to blame? This is a tough call and much ends up being a function of financing. To me, this would seem the point at which “curriculum coaches” and teacher collaboration should be the emphasis. 

I encountered this post with what I see as shocking data on the production of PhDs. One in eight of the PhDs granted in the U.S. are produced by just five institutions.

Why is this an issue? Because PhDs are crucial to the knowledge generation of academe and the job market for this select group of individuals is quite limited. By dominating the production segment of training, a small number of institutions are threatening the productivity of other institutions. Without a record of employment, few will become willing to commit the time and work required to earn an advanced research degree.

Academic research depends on advanced students to man/woman the research labs of academics. At the advanced level, training and education are based on what is essentially an apprenticeship model. There is a great deal of labor in research activity and great benefits to the general public of having the diversity of research academic institutions produce in comparison to business and industry. The competitive nature of institution to institution attraction of external money – the grant money on which the research factory of higher education runs depends on reputation and existing infrastructure – means the rich get richer and less numerous.

Google’s Ngram viewer allows the production of a graphic representation of the frequency with which words or phrases appear within the content Google can access by date. It can be used as a way to explore trends. Here are a couple of examples.

I have become interested in the concept of a “second brain”. The concept refers to the uses technology can serve in externalizing and extending brain functions such as storage and retrieval. Efforts are even being made to extend such obvious uses to the identification of associations. Recently, the phrase appears in several book titles.

It is hard to resist Googling yourself. Ngram appears to indicate that I am past my prime. I guess this makes sense because after my retirement from academia my name would appear less frequently in print. 

I would think various trends could be proposed and investigated with this tool. 

Grammarly is a great tool for writing and the free version works great. It is available as a standalone application or a browser extension. The basic version should be on all learner computers and some educators may see value in paying for a premium version.

It is very easy to use. The defaults work great, but you can also control basic settings for areas of your writing you want to emphasize.

The damage done to educational progress can now be calculated using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The exam has been used since the 1970s to measure the math and reading achievement of 9 year older learners. The pandemic resulted in the largest decline in both areas since the beginning of the use of this test. 

Here are some of the findings.The impact can be interpreted as about 3 weeks of learning time for each point of decline. 

• Students lost 5 points in reading and 7 points in math compared to 2020.
• Students initially performing at a lower level were most adversely impacted. In math, the top 10% lost 3 points and the rest of the learners lost 12 points.

• The decline was more damaging for black than for white students. (13 points vs. 5 points)
• More recent testing indicates that returning to face to face instruction has stopped the decline.

In the accounts reviewed, the specific reasons accounting for the declines were offered only as speculation. Some clues would seem available in the findings that preexisting race and achievement differences were predictive. Because the tactics employed in distance learning may be related to tactics adapted to future applications, understanding the limitations quantified as a consequence of the pandemic will be important to understand. Were the methods flawed or were the engagement with the methods most responsible? For example, if expecting students to learn from educator generated video is less effective, then ongoing tactics such as are employed in flipping the classroom would become suspect. 

NYTimes

CNN

Wall Street Journal

Time

Journey North allows citizen scientists to participate in tracking migrations. Some of the organisms tracked are familiar to all and this makes participation in studying and participation in the study of migrations a great topic for K12 science classes.

The monarch butterfly should be familiar to students who live in many parts of the country. The species receives lots of attention because there have been concerns about population numbers related to the destruction of habitat suited to be a food source. This reality can lead discussion of many scientific issues. Since monarchs can be observed close up in gardens and ditches, finding them is a reasonable task. Often students also collect the caterpillars at certain times of the year a watch the caterpillar go through the metamorphosis process to become a butterfly.

I took this photo a few days ago walking near my home when I saw several monarchs on this particular flower. Monarchs begin to assemble in groups before migration. The Journey North has lots of information about this species.