NYTimes - Education- Standards

Interesting article about standards-based testing and a critical look at standards. Picks up where our last GK12 meeting left off.

Askwith Education Forums

I can't vouch for all of these, but I've been to a couple and they have been interesting. If you're interested in topics in education and specifically topics about schools, not necessarily research, these fora can be pretty cool. Tomorrow night's forum is on Community Organizing and School Reform. Here is a link to the fora descriptions.

March 1 Weekly Meeting Notes

This week we discussed the idea of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This concept was presented to the CEEO staff at a Febrauary seminar by David Rose from the Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST). To summarize, UDL looks as how to make materials accessible to all students in the classroom. This includes how sudents recieve information, how they work on lessons/projects/etc, and how they report or share what they know. While it stems from Universal Design which was an architectural movement to provide better access to facilities for people with dissabilities, UDL presents us with concepts that should be applied to every classroom. For students with dissabilities are not the only ones that benefit from representing material in many different ways. One of the examples used in the meeting was Andy's design process assessment. He as allowed the students to present the steps of the design process and the reasons for them in any media they feel comfortable. This can take the form of a paper, presentation, skit, rap or anything else. By allowing students to present what they know in a method most comfortable to them, you are providing greater access to the classroom for the entire body of students. We also discussed how the actual "doing" can be considered when designing lessons. Perhaps providing the students with input on how they'd like to solve a problem or complete a project. Ask them how they would like to tell you what they know. Getting input from students like this makes them feel more involved in the classroom while also providing better modes for students to learn and share. The discussion went very well, in my opinion, and I think there were some great ideas that were passed between fellows. We will most likely revisit this topic later in the semester.

Water Wheels Presentation

Andy did a cool presentation with audio and a built in quiz that he's posted at this site. The presentation ishttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif on the Saugus Iron Works and the particulars of water wheels. Click here to view the presentations. Although a valiant attempt to gain lead in the TOTY standings, the award remains up for grabs!

What to do after GK12?

I'm curious about engineering outreach options after grad school is over. I really enjoy this work and hope to continue my involvement. It is hard, however, to find other organizations that the CEEO that do this work. Perhaps this post can be edited to include a list of organizations for interested parties to investigate?

UPDATE... Found a couple:
The Exploratorium in San Francisco
Adventure Playground in Berkeley

February 15 Weekly Meeting notes

Linda ranhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif the show today, getting a good overview of what each fellow is currently doing in their classroom. It had been a while since we'd had a catch up meeting so this was good timing. Especially as Linda continues to do classroom visits and observations. For those of you who have not set something up with Linda, please do that ASAP. Points of interest were the idea of modeling work for students. Jarred showed the drawings he used in his project to guide the students as to what a "good" engineering drawing is. This idea of providing students with a model of the work you'd like them to complete is good practice and I encourage all fellows to try this.

We ended the meeting talking a bit about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) the and talk David Rose gave at the CEEO. Here is the website for his organization CAST. Linda also handed out a paper discussing the points of UDL that we will cover in the next meeting. That meeting will be held on March 1 at 4:15 PM.

Enjoy the week of February vacation and not having to go into schools. I recommend you use this week to write up some of the ideas you've all been sharing in meetings. There are some fantastic projects going on and I want to make sure we have all the documentation for these to pass along to teachers. And don't forget to update your own blog!

January 25 Weekly Meeting Notes

We had an abbreviated weekly meeting on Wednesday where Eric Chilton showed us his idea for using Blogs as a method of communication of ideas, activities, schedules, etc. between Fellows and teachers in the GK-12 program. He also demoed Writely, a free document sharing system, that integrates nicely with Blogger (also free!) software. We decided that next week, February 1, at 4:15 PM Eric will host a Blog workshop in the Building Room at the CEEO.

We also discussed the projects all graduate Fellows are required to complete over the course of the year. I've posted a few example papers from last year in PDF format at this site www.ceeo.tufts.edu/cool/TENSpapers. The project overview and discription can be found here.

Next week's meeting is the CEEO Seminar on Monday at 3:30 PM - Rebecca New from Tufts' CD Department. See you there.