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BOSTON Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT
From street gang to college, thanks to basketball As a young teen in Chelsea, Orlando Echevarria weighed nearly 300 pounds and had little time for school. He had trouble controlling his temper, joined a gang, was arrested, drank alcohol, and smoked weed. Basketball was his salvation. He kept working, sweating off the pounds, and finally focused on his education, and a future. Echevarria earned all-region honors at the court at Bunker Hill Community College, and now as a 22-year-old, 6-foot-5, 222-pound senior at Keene State, he will earn his degree.
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BOSTON Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT
The local district’s “21st Century Afterschool’’ program is starting a new session Tuesday, and still needs adult volunteers to help teachers run clubs at the town’s middle schools from 3 to 4:30 p.m. At Cameron Middle School, volunteers are needed for the Monday and Tuesday afternoon sessions of Cooking Club. And at Walsh Middle School, volunteers are needed for the Cooking Club and Beginning and Advanced Archery clubs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Volunteers commit to one afternoon per week, and although staying on for the entire session - which lasts until April 5 - is ideal, a six-week commitment is all that’s required. Volunteers are also needed at Framingham High School to tutor students in math, science, English, and writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m., and for enrichment club support at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. Contact volunteer coordinator Sybil Schlesinger at sschlesinger@framingham.k12.ma.us or 508-626-9115 for more information. - Megan McKee ..
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:01:05 GMT
TEDxObserver is our day-long festival of ideas, where some of the world's most interesting and committed people share their vision of a better world. Join in and you too can be 'fascinated, enthused, exhilarated, moved and amused'
This paper has been a devotee of TED.com for some years. TED is an organisation dedicated to "ideas worth spreading". It does this in many ways. It hosts two annual four-day events in the US and the UK, the TED conferences, packed with a remarkably diverse range of speakers and performers whose talks never exceed 18 minutes. These are then available to view – free – on its website, TED.com.
There are now more than 1,000 talks on TED.com. Although TED stands for Technology, Education, Design, the ideas discussed travel some distance beyond these disciplines. A quick trawl through the site and you stumble on topics as diverse as "Can Astronomers Help Doctors", "How Games Make Kids Smarter", "How to Spot A Liar", and "Building A Park in the Sky". The.......
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:03:03 GMT
There's a difference between bad bad teachers and good bad teachers
Michael Gove is right to say we need fewer numbers of bad teachers. Or less numbers of bad teachers, as bad teachers might teach. In a week when a Celebrity Big Brother contestant failed to find America on the map, heads dropped into hands and, rightly, bad teachers were blamed.
Perhaps there's a difference, however, between bad bad teachers and good bad teachers. The first group know nothing and can impart nothing. The second group know everything and can impart nothing. But where would we be, bonding in a bar, without tales of the second group – of, say, the physics teacher who tried to demonstrate E=MC² by firing an airgun into blocks of wood suspended right above pupils' heads and hitting, instead, a child's ear? Or the English mistress with a lifelong disavowal of anything Shakespearean; the divorced geography teacher who will for unsavourily complex reasons refuse to recognise the existence of Spain? We.....
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GUARDIAN Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:55:12 GMT
Why send 10 writers to a country of their choice and tell them to write something related to education?
More than four years ago Rachel Holmes, Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru, Nick Laird and I sat down in a cafe with Hugh McLean, director of the Open Society Foundations' education support programme. Hugh had a proposal for us, sparked by an article Zadie had written about Liberia, which caught the attention of OSF's founder and chairman, George Soros. If we were willing to find writers and send them to different countries to write education-related articles, OSF would fund the project, with no editorial strings attached. It sounded easy enough, though I'll confess I wasn't entirely sure what would come out of it – were we really being asked to tell writers to go to a country of their choice to write "something education-related"? Give writers such broad parameters and they could end up doing anything. Further queries to OSF resulted in the following guidelines: "cultural, sociological,..
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GUARDIAN Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:00:03 GMT
As an Oxford admissions tutor, I recognise some elements of Jeevan Vasagar's examination of the Cambridge admissions system (G2, 11 January), but not the division drawn between "good" and "poor" schools. Some of us welcome applications from comprehensive school students, not because these candidates can do well in spite of their school, but because their education offers them an excellent foundation for university. Many comprehensives offer imaginative lessons, encourage independent study, and provide an unparalleled social education. Being educated alongside pupils from a wide range of backgrounds gives these candidates the ability to negotiate cultural and social difference in debate, and the confidence to relate abstract or scholarly theory to the wider society in which they live.
They also know that academic success is founded on hard work and effort, not on family background and wealth – the criteria for entry to private schools – or the innate "talent" that selective........
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GUARDIAN Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:32:47 GMT
Widow speaks in support of husband's best friend at whose home the leading astrophysicist was found dead
The sudden and unexplained death of a leading Oxford University professor whose body was found at his best friend's home was "a tragic accident", his widow claimed on Friday.
Devinder Sivia, 49, a mathematics in science lecturer at St John's College, was arrested in connection with the death after the body of Professor Steven Rawlings, 50, was found by police at his bungalow in Southmoor, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire at 11.22pm on Wednesday.
He was released on bail until 18 April as police described it as a "tragic incident" and said: "Ultimately the death may be a matter for a coroner's inquest rather than a criminal court."
The two men had known each other for 30 years after meeting as students at Cambridge University, and were described as "inseparable".
In a statement, Rawlings's widow, Linda, 50, a scientist with an American pharmaceutical company, said: "Steve and.......
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GUARDIAN Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:13:50 GMT
One of the UK's most eminent scientific institutions says British schools have lost their way in teaching computer science
British schools have more computers per pupil than almost every other European country, but our computing lessons are still "highly unsatisfactory", a group of leading scientists has warned.
The Royal Society, one of the country's most eminent scientific institutions, conducted an 18-month study into the teaching of computing in UK schools.
It found that teachers, academics and the computer science industry were in agreement that British schools had "lost their way" in teaching the subject. Schools are failing to expose pupils to the "interest, excitement and creativity that even a modest mastery of the subject offers", the study argues.
The shortcomings of computing classes – also known as Information and Communications Technology (ICT) lessons – have come under intense scrutiny over the last few months.
On Wednesday, Michael Gove, the education.......
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GUARDIAN Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:43:30 GMT
Education secretary, inspired by book on military, calls for collaborative approach to developing new curriculum
A "wiki" approach to designing the curriculum that would allow teachers and experts to collaborate in tailoring lessons for schools is being proposed by the education secretary, Michael Gove.
The new approach to the curriculum for every subject draws inspiration from a US military counterinsurgency strategy outlined in Thomas Friedman's latest book, That Used to Be Us.
Addressing reporters after a speech at the BETT education trade fair in London on Wednesday, Gove said: "I recently was inspired by a Thomas Friedman book. In it he used an example, funnily enough, from the field of the US military.
"What he explained is that those at the frontline were using their access to the wiki which was responsible for which government troops were deployed, and how hearts and minds could be won, to ensure that in real time they adjusted to the challenges of a life-or-death.......
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GUARDIAN Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:30:00 GMT
Today the Guardian will launch a campaign to improve IT and computer science teaching in schools and universities – and we want input from as many teachers, lecturers, pupils, parents and developers as possible
Starting this afternoon and running all this week, the Guardian will be launching a new campaign to improve the teaching of computer science and information technology in schools and universities – and we need your help.
Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday we will be running live Q&As with teachers, lecturers and experts from technology companies such as Google and Microsoft. The first Q&A will take place tomorrow from 12-2pm featuring Steve Beswick of Microsoft and Martin Harvey of e-skills UK – click here from tomorrow morning to read it and take part.
We want teachers, students, lecturers, developers and IT professionals to give their views on the teaching of IT and computer science. What is going wrong – and what can we do to improve the situation?
Throughout the week,..
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WASHINGTONPOST Sun, 8 Jan 2012 14:48:00 EST
A judge has dropped a second-degree murder charge against a 15-year-old who fatally stabbed another teenager after he was attacked, citing a law in Florida that allows an individual to meet force with force if they fear for his/her life.
The “Stand Your Ground” law says that a person has no duty to retreat if attacked and can use even deadly force if they feel their life is in danger . At least 17 states have a version of this law, including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Washington. If the boy had been in a state without the law, he might not have escaped prosecution. Read full article >>
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GUARDIAN Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:30:15 GMT
A network of chartered assessors would give validity and public credibility to the system of assessment by teachers
Michael Gove has carried out a major review of the national curriculum and has asked Ofqual to look into various aspects of assessment and examinations, including the errors that occurred in the summer of 2011 and the conduct of examination board training of teachers, following allegations that exam security was being breached. He has made announcements about examinations, such as the abolition of modular examinations and controlled assessment (a version of coursework). However, he has failed to set in motion the major review of assessment and examinations from which the previous government also shrank, but which is sorely needed.
In a sensible world, this would have been carried out at the same time as the curriculum review, so that curriculum and assessment could go hand in hand. An assessment-led curriculum, as we have had in this country for many years, does.....
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GUARDIAN Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:00:00 GMT
This form of education addresses particular needs within our community
Your article on the growth of Muslim schools, which highlighted Manara Education's flexi-schooling programme, was misleading (Safe as houses?, Education Guardian, 29 November).
From the subheading, which states that "local authorities are concerned that there is insufficient regulation" of "official and unofficial" schools, and the article's positioning above a piece on corporal punishment at madrasas, readers may have concluded that flexi-schooling by Muslims is a way of evading regulation rather than a principled educational choice, and that our pupils may be at risk.
In fact, Manara Education is a registered social enterprise; all our staff are Criminal Records Bureau-checked, our teachers are either fully qualified or have other relevant qualifications such as PhDs or MAs, and corporal punishment has no place in our school.
Whether or not we develop into a full‑time school, we are committed to........
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