How many kids would benefit from grade skipping? According to the study team at Johns Hopkins, two out of seven children test at a grade level higher than their current one—“staggeringly large numbers of students,” in their words, who might benefit from jumping ahead by grade or class. Advocates of accelerated learning point out that skipping a grade is just one way to jump ahead. In middle and high school, students can more easily move in and out of higher-level classes without missing an entire grade. And technology has eased the way for accelerated learning. Children living in remote parts of the country, for example, can move up by taking AP classes online.
Interesting how things can come full circle and we’re now re-visiting the one room schoolhouse. Arguments about grade levels come up when the date to start kindergartners is discussed, but in the grand scheme of things, no matter where you set the date, each grade level will still have students that can be practically an entire year different in age.
However talented, no one is a natural-born teacher. Honing the craft takes significant care and effort, not just by the individual, but also by the school at large. Though experience does matter, it matters only to the extent that a teacher — regardless of how long he or she has been in the classroom —…
Remember One Laptop Per Child? They distributed a few million cheap, brightly-colored XO laptops running a weird version of Linux called “Sugar OS,” and then… what happened? Well, I’m not sure actually. But OLPC Australia is carrying the torch, sort of. This offshoot now calls itself “One Education,” and has just announced the Infinity:One. Gone…
The Nautilus is a research vehicle operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit founded by Robert Ballard, one of the people who helped us find the Titanic. It conducts scientific research and offers live video and audio streams to those of us who are unable to come along. This year, it’ll journey along the…
I took a speech class one semester when I was in undergraduate school. For our first assignment we had to give a short speech that the teacher videotaped. Our extended assignment was to watch the recording and critique our performance. That proved to be a very eye-opening experience for me. If you had asked me…
Along with the release of iOS 13.4, iPadOS 13.4, and macOS 10.15.4, Apple also released several exciting new features aimed to simplify the lives of its enterprise and K-12 customers. Among the new features are Shared iPad for Business, Assessment Mode for Mac, Shared iPad Temporary Session for K-12, and Proxy support for APNs. Source: Apple debuts Shared iPad for…
In a world full of fancy development tools and sites, the kernel project’s dependence on email and mailing lists can seem quaintly dated, if not positively prehistoric. But, as Greg Kroah-Hartman pointed out in a Kernel Recipes talk titled “Patches carved into stone tablets”, there are some good reasons for the kernel community’s choices. Rather…