Big Small World

The internet is amazing. While is connects us all, it does not deal with the underlying cultural differences. I'm thinking about this since I just wandered across the website of an old friend of mine. Did I mention that I was in the Peace Corps in 1980-82 in Cameroon in West Africa.

Emmanuel, who I knew well back then, has emmigrated to the states and teaches cross cultural communications as well as some language work. He also has some games, one of which caught my eye: Yan-koloba the Game. And I quote:

Yan-koloba is a character education activity whose roots reach back in the cultures of Africa. It is an intellectual and highly participatory tool for character and multicultural education. Players learn the concepts of compassion, respect, tolerance, trust, responsibility, interdependence, leadership, in a fun and very relaxed and enjoyable environment.

The purpose of the game is for players to develop great concentration and move wooden blocks simultaneously, rhythmically and continuously to their neighbors within a closed circle, at a given speed while chanting the accompanying song. The game starts with each player holding a block in hand. The leader gives the signal to start the game, and calls players' names incorporating them into the song.

Check it out. And say hi to my kumbi....




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This post sponsored by Vocabulary Builder software.

Curriculum Mapping - Concept mapping

Many school systems are involved in "curriculum mapping:. Quoting Heidi Hayes Jacobs, the guru of curriculum mapping and president of Curriculum Designers, Inc:

Curriculum mapping is a procedure for collecting and documenting the operational curriculum anchored in the actual school calendar. Each teacher in the building enters critical information about the basic elements of the operational curriculum—that is: what has actually been addressed via content, skills, and assessment.

I've seen schools and talked to teachers who found the curriculum mapping exercise, when they review what the students are learning in the previous years and what they are expected to know before going to the next year, to be a very fun and productive exercise. BTW - any time that you get teachers EXCITED about doing something that is related to administration and curriculum, it's really special! I think it's partially that they get to think holistically about their students' education, it's partially that they have a very focused way to discuss curriculum with their colleagues.

BUT, in all my experiences working curriculum, the problem of the underlying "language" remains. Are we talking about performance standards, learning outcomes, or benchmarks? Are we using our state standards as "primitive"? I for one, have found the state standards to often be confusing to work with.

I saw an interesting different approach this week. A company started looking at the high stake tests (FCAT and AP exams). They studied how children did on the practice tests. The results were then mapped back to mathematical concepts. A single question on a test could map back to several math concepts.

They build a database for each student of the right/wrong answers and which math concepts they map to. Then, for intervention, they build a list of the concepts which would be most useful in improving performance and teach. They start teaching on the concepts that would have the most impact on test results.

I'm now looking at the third grade math curriculum trying to figure out how I would map some little part of it, just getting my feet wet.



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6 out of 10 Americans Cannot Locate Payless

(this post turned out to be a farce) woops

WASHINGTON—An alarming new study conducted by the Department of Education has found that 60 percent of all Americans are unable to locate the major retail outlet Payless Shoes when presented with an ordinary shopping-center map.
The study, which surveyed 200 consumers, has raised a number of troubling questions about the public's grasp of basic mall geography, its ability to identify key regional chains, and its awareness of the diverse brands and logos that make up today's world.

Dr. Howard Saunders decries the nation's lack of basic shopping-center knowledge.
"Not only did a majority of Americans fail to find Payless Shoes on the map, but, more disturbingly, many didn't even know which floor to look on," said Dr. Howard Saunders, a cultural studies professor and the study's lead researcher. "To see countless men and women point to the outline of a parking garage and call it the largest footwear retailer on earth—well, it makes you wonder about our priorities as a society."
Saunders, who stressed that knowing the location of various stores is one of the most relevant real-world skills Americans can possess, said he was deeply discouraged by the study's results. Of the 60 percent of participants who struggled to find Payless Shoes on the map, nearly 30 percent seemed to be guessing at random and 20 percent reportedly confused the shop with the similar-looking Foot Locker. Another 5 percent searched for assistance, but were unable to figure out how to get to a nearby information desk.
Even more shocking, Saunders said, was the inability of many Americans to pinpoint their own location, despite it being accompanied by a bright green star and the words "You Are Here."
"These results are far worse than we could have anticipated," continued Saunders. "It's almost as if these people had never traveled outside of a JCPenney before."
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who personally monitored the study, said that the United States ranked behind 130 other nations when it came to mall-map comprehension—an embarrassment considering one-third of the countries surveyed didn't even have shopping center




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Education should teach people how to live or how to make a living

"Education should teach people how to live or how to make a living" said John Adams.

Roger Schank: "Our schools do neither. They teach how to pass tests about meaningless knowledge that never comes up in real life."

I would agree that today's curriculum and our understanding of what education is and how to go about it are way overdue. Of course, the current national debate has only to do with how testing and the whole NCLB method fit into today's model. Sigh.

As long as I'm here, I'll plug two a few of my more successful efforts.

Why do I blog?
Vocabulary Learning Resources
Expand Vocabulary
GRE Vocabulary
Increase Your Vocabulary
Power Words
Vocabulary Builder
Vocabulary Software





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News Stories to Study History with

I read an article on a homeschool curricula blog and I'm intrigued. It takes a news story and discusses using it as a lesson play to teach with. I'm going to pick up on this and hopefully, build an entire website and educational effort around it. Anybody think this would be interesting? Of course, it's probably much more useful to homeschoolers than their standards-leadened school bound counterparts.

News story from earlier this week: Kosovo Breaks Away: Province declares itself sovereign; Serbia says it's illegal. Kosovo's regional parliament declared independence Sunday

Questions for discussion and research:

Has anything like this ever happened in American history? Two likely answers, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The American Revolution was punctuated by a Declaration of Independence. Did Kosova issue a declaration of independence? If so, how did they justify their actions? In fact, lets revisit the US Declaration - What was it's purpose? How did we justify our acts? When the Confederacy declared it's independence, did it issue a declaration? What justification did it give?

Who in Kosova declared independence in terms of what organization? What claim do they have to speak for Kosova? In America, what organization did we have that declared independence and what claim did it have to speak for the colonies? And what organization was there in the Confederacy?

What do we think the Serbs will do? What did the British do when the US declared independence? What did the Union do when the Confederates declared independence? What will decide whether this will be called a War of Independence or a Civil War?

When Kosova declared independence, the US recognized them as a nation. Any idea why? The US recognition, is it important? Did anyone recognize the US as a nation after our July 1776 declaration? Why did they? How much and how did they help us (Answer; France recognized us and sent $s, generals, soldiers and support. Mostly to hurt their rival the UK). Did anybody recognize the South?

Anybody want to talk or research other efforts for independence? Anybody want to talk about the Kurds in Iraq? The Mexican war of independents? How about the Declaration of Independence by Texas (from Mexico).

This post brought to you by: online kids learning, where you get website info on reading comprehension, and math help, for home school.



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The Paradox of Proverbs

I've long been fascinated with proverbs. Not just how they sound, which is comforting, but also by theparadox.

While proverbs are great at encapsulating a point of view, they are useless at providing guidance. In fact, worse than useless.

Proverbs are frequently used by people to justify really stupid decisions when they don't feel up to really thinking about it.

They're useless because there is contradictory folk wisdom for any point of view.

You want to move quickly without considering the implications and you justify it with:
"He who hesitates is lost" and Strike while the Iron is Hot".
Well, what about: Look before you leap.

A penny saved is a penny earned. You need to spend money to make it (OK, not as good an example but I'm in a hurry to get my run in).

The point that I want to make in my opus on proverbs has something to do with following your own internal compass, not the wisdom of others.

BTW, while you might have noted that my use of the word opus is self-mocking, this is a project that I've thought about for years. Be careful, with just a little support, I might pursue it. For instance, I just bought myself a pair of domains (proverbparadox.com and proverbsparadox.com). It was just 15 months ago that I dusted off another old project and created my spelling web site. My point is that I might just dive into it.

Readers. Please help. Can you come up with some pairs of proverbs that express opposing points of view? I'd appreciate the help.

I got into this today when I read a "just keep churning" story with some folk history supports it. Beth, the just keep churning lady, had a teaching story by Paramahansa Yoganandato to support her quest: to get a motivational call from Diane Sawyer (I'm not kidding!). Apparently, she has long idolized Diane and this would be meaningful to her.

My instinct was to remind her that a definition of insanity is to keep trying the same thing over and over and over again and expect different results. Perhaps, better goal setting would be a good exercise for her? For instance, motivational calls by Ed Mouse are amazingly effective and they come with a complementary coffee cup. Plus, they can be arranged quikcly so that she can get on with her life. Or, maybe, she should stick to her guns (note, all paradoxical proverbs contributions gratefully accepted but without any right to attribution, royalties, or other moral rights in my opus)

Education, learning, & homeschool
Here are three more educational directory sites that might benefit from a little goosing...Reading Comprehension is one of the major goals of education.We all need more help with math.And, while school seems like the place to learn and make friends, the homeschool world is fast showing how false that can be.there's also the big homeschool world website.

By simply listening, a mother helps her child learn

This is so obvious (to me) that I'm amazed and pleased that somebody took the time to validate it. I also think that it's the tip of the iceberg (which I'll explain below) And I quote:

“We knew that children learn well with their moms or with a peer, but we did not know if that was because they were getting feedback and help,” Bethany Rittle-Johnson, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, said.

“In this study, we just had the children’s mothers listen, without providing any assistance. We’ve found that by simply listening, a mother helps her child learn.”....

Although the researchers used children and their mothers in the study, they believe the same results will hold true whether the person is the child’s father, grandparent, or other familiar person.


Personally, I believe that anytime somebody revisists some recently-learned materials and tries to express or explain it, they reinforce the learning and broaden their understanding (making new connections) as they strive to articulate it. This is, I believe, the basis behind book reports. If you think about and try to explain what you've read and what it meant, you will build your understanding of it.

The article continues: “The basic idea is that it is really effective to try to get kids to explain things themselves instead of just telling them the answer,” she said. “Explaining their reasoning, to a parent or perhaps to other people they know, will help them understand the problem and apply what they have learned to other situations.”
The research is currently in press at the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Rittle-Johnson, along with co-authors Megan Saylor, assistant professor of psychology, and recent graduate Kathryn Swygert, set out to determine if 4- and 5-year-olds learn more when they have to explain the solution to a problem to someone else. They were shown a series of plastic bugs, and then had to say which bug should come next in the series based on color and type of bug, a problem that is challenging for 4- and 5-year-olds. The children were told to explain the solution to their moms, to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud.

The researchers found that explaining the answer to themselves and to their moms improved the children’s ability to solve similar problems later, and that explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve more difficult problems.

“We saw that this simple act of listening by mom made a difference in the quality of the child’s explanations and how well they could solve more difficult problems later on,” Rittle-Johnson said.

The researchers also found that children experience the benefit of explaining a solution at an earlier age than previously thought.

“This is one of the first studies to examine whether or not explanation is useful in helping children under 8 apply what they’ve learned to a modification of a task,” Rittle-Johnson said. “We found that even 4-year-olds can use explanation to help them learn and to apply what they’ve learned to other tasks.”

I'd like to know more, I think I'll google Rittle-Johnson , Megan Saylor, and Kathryn Swygert. I think this might be one of the keys to why homeschoolers get such a great education. They talk about it.

How to Build a Homeschool Program for Your Child

The Internet can dramatically improve education. Homeschoolers take full advantage of the educational use of the net. In the discussions about the growth of homeschooling, the impact of the Internet is often overlooked.

The general population of course, would be surprised that "those backward homeschoolers" are benefitting to a greater degree than their school-bound counterparts. But arguably, one of the root reasons that homeschooling is growing so fast is the role of the Internet in providing educational resources to homeschoolers, the simplified shopping, and the web-based homeschool communities and support groups.

“Kids like using the computer to learn and to develop their skills. Time4Learning's educational teaching games gives students independence as they progress at their own pace.” - Time4Learning

When starting to homeschool, many parents’ first instinct is to go shopping and to buy a year's worth of curriculum. This is one of the most common errors that new homeschooling parents make. When a parent begins homeschooling, they must first understand where their children are academically. We recommend that you start out with two weeks of working with and observing your child across all subjects while you consider your choices in terms of curriculum and programs. You could borrow textbooks from the library or purchase new or used books for this effort. Time4Learning is a simple low cost resource for this exploration period. After a few weeks, you are in a much better position to start making curriculum commitments.
Also, parents should get connected. Find some mentors and friends. Try to find some like-minded homeschooling families and ask them what they do and recommend. Try to find local families with whom you can share ideas and activities on an ongoing basis. Be aware that the homeschool world is a collection of many strong-minded people with a range of views. There will be plenty of people who have widely divergent views from yours. Expect to have to meet ten families to be sure to find two to three that you will consider "like-minded".

Use the net! The Internet provides an amazing ability to find people with similar situations. Are you looking for secular curriculum for children with reading difficulties but gifted in math? Are you looking for interactive curriculum appropriate for a Christian family or for attention deficit children with aspergers?

You can find collections of people with just a few hours searching on the net. On the Time4Learning homeschool forum, there are moms with decades of experience homeschooling, ready to answer questions on all sorts of topics. Discussions include questions like how to set up kid-safe email and how to blend Time4Learning with other curriculum.

Learning State Capitals

I watched my daughter try to memorize all the states capitals last night and this morning for a test today. I remain annoyed at these efforts. Very stressful, time-consuming, and of unclear benefit to me. While it's fun to be able to rattle off (Maine-Augusta: Maryland-Annapolis) the names, I'm not convinced that it's worth the time and effort. While name recognition is pleasant, I feel that it's a hollow exercise. But it's an effort made by most schools and most students. When I was small, my brothers and Dad used to take great pleasure in learning them and firing them back and forth over breakfast (including mottos: The ShowMe State?)

American Colleges: Their Branding

Everybody knows that MIT stands for brilliant engineering. Stanford represents the highest academic standards in a very tight symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley. Harvard and Yale also have clear brands.

What about The University of Texas, the University of Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and lots of other schools? They are known for their football teams. They are not known for student fitness or a high level of excellence. They are known for their football teams and the general giddiness and celebration around their teams, the games, and their campuses. These are schools with a big Greek system. I mean fraternities.

I just spent a few days with a friend of mine who had been at a conference with some major university presidents, Fortune 200 Presidents, and public education people. One of the university presidents was particularly outspoken on why this country is over-reacting to the threat for leadership from China and India in the future. He had recently visited China and saw universities with shoddy construction and poor facilities which, compared to his well constructed campus, seemed lame.

I hear this and worry for tthe future. Our educational system is our future and the universities are dominated by a corrupt dysfunctional alliance with sports. With semiprofessional sports. I feel that these schools have sold their soul. In terms of the future, here's a simple summary.

Our big schools are about the prestige of big time sports, the associated parties and drinking, and the fraternity partying system. Our professors all know this and are very cynical as a result.

Their schools are about education, national competitiveness, and a chance to get ahead. We have frats, they don't. They'll win. And they deserve to.

Christian Homeschool

Many Christian parents who are just beginning to homeschool start out seeking a curriculum that not only meets their learning needs but one that also fits in with their Christian beliefs. As time goes by many of those parents find that their homeschool curriculum is really good at one... or the other... but not both.

As Kerry from North Carolina says in her article about Homeschooling as a Christian "We are Christians, but aren’t really homeschooling for religious reasons..." and I suspect the difficulty finding curriculum to handle both concepts may have had a hand in making that decision. Either the religious content is first priority and the educational content suffers or vice-versa.

Religion is personal. Your education is something you will show to everyone you ever come in contact with. When it comes to homeschool curriculum and religion, I see them as completely different animals who should be contained in two separate cages for the sake of the trainers (parents) and the audience (students).

Educational Reform - Higher Education Thoughts

While my eldest is just in 8th grade, I have alot of friends whose children (and families) are going thru the ordeal of applying to and selecting a college.

I'm struck by the fact that while elementary and primary school education are in a period of wild-change, I'm unaware of any dramatic re-engineering that is going on at the college level.

For primary and secondary education, the great waves are:

• A major new vote with their feet by 4% of the population to homeschooling
• An attempt from above to control and impose rigor by No Child Left Behind
• An attempt to privatize with school vouchers and school choice
• A massive investment by parents in supplementary education materials and services
• Much attempts to move to magnet schools, centers of excellence, and other choices within the system and away from the large high schools which supposedly provided resources for everyone (but turned into a scary environment for everyone)

At the college level however, it seems to be business as usual. Anyone who lives near a large state university campus can tell you that education appears to be the last thing on most students' minds. The professors all know that undergraduate education is the last thing on their mind as they compete to publish and for perks. But the budgets of so many families and states are built around providing four year access to these institutions of "higher learning". In the case of most schools, this expression is a joke.

Shouldn't this be on the agenda? Any politicians want to step up to the plate?

Kumon

I just read an old article about Brian's experience working at a Kumon center: "Educating Ali". Basically, while inside the Kumon machine, he found a child who needed a little focused one-on-one attention and gave it to him.

I think it makes the basic point that with a little special help, many children's education can be greatly improved.

It struck a different cord with me. It was while sitting in a Kumon Center that I decided to launch myself as an entrepreneur. I was there with my 6 year old son and was very impressed by how crowded the waiting room was. Parents were lining up in droves for Kumon. I looked Kumon up in the almanac and found it was the single largest franchise in the US (in terms of number of centers).

A Kumon Jr. session for my son consisted of him sitting at a low table with 3-4 other kids and filling out simple worksheets while a para-professional watched and encouraged them. Then, the kids were given a large number of worksheets to fill out at home with the parents during the week along with a reading book.

For this, we were paying $250/month. There was nothing magic about the worksheets. They looked identical to the free ones on the net or the ones that you can get in a 200 page book for $4.99 at a discount store.

I asked myself why were all these parents paying so much for so simple a product. After considering a few possibilities (we were all dumb...?), I concluded that the answer was that it's not the worksheets per se, it's the fact that the kids get the right worksheet at the right time along with a motivational system that makes it valuable and effective. It was when I realized that and I looked at all these parents lining up for help. And I thought about all that driving and parking and followup by us parents at home that I decided to make the plunge and start Time4Learning.com.

For a little more info on the Kumon philosophy, here's a quote from Brian's blog...

Regular school maths usually seems to involve the children working through only a few rather hard problems. Kumon makes them do many more much easier ones. Instead of hoping that they get, say, about half to two thirds of their stuff right, Kumon says they must get nearly everything right. At the heart of the Kumon method is the difference between a child painfully working out that seven plus six equals, er, thirteen? (anxious glance at face of teacher), and knowing with real certainty that seven plus six equals thirteen, with no doubts or hesitations. The usual educational emphasis is on "understanding". The Kumon literature talks of "mastery".
Each child does a clutch of sums selected for him or her personally (there is no everyone-in-the-class-does-the-same-stuff rule) each day, which are supposed to take about twenty minutes to complete.

Or, as Time4Learning.com puts in (quoting from a page comparing Time4Learning & Kumon)

It provides a service for children and parents alike, based on the philosophy of repetition and self-motivated learning. This after-school program works primarily toward enrichment and a mastery of the basics through a standardized approach of workbook completion. The Kumon workbooks consist of several pages of sequential math or reading content. Students complete one workbook while at the Kumon Center. In addition, students are required to complete a workbook at home each day they are not in attendance (including weekends). Workbooks range from two pages a day to twenty pages a day, requiring a degree of parental supervision.

I watched a family member a few years ago, spend an hour per week in speech therapy. He was young - 6 years old - but his language skills were developing properly. We all noticed that his speech was hard to understand. Once he was tested, his vocabulary (understood and spoken) turned out to be small.

In therapy, there was a long series of exercises with his mouth and tongue to build muscles and habits to improve his enunciation. There were alot of flash cards and exercises to build his vocabulary.

It was all very pricey and, since the problems went away, we were pleased with the results. I was struck at the time by how technology-void the therapy was.

I've just seen an article which points out that some of the free online word games provide the type of therapy that many families pay for. Take a look at the article on games for word retrieval therapy.

Computers for Learning for Everyone

At Time4Learning, our mouse says: "It's Time 4 Learning. And Fun!". At times, we like to add : "For Everyone!".

If only this were true. Usually, we think of inclusiveness in terms of how our program works for special needs learning.

This thanksgiving week, we gave a thought to those who don't have access to computers and are on the wrong side of the digital divide.

We donated to Nick Negaponte's One Laptop one child...

Thank you for participating in the One Laptop per Child "Give One Get One" program. Your donation of $399.00 will bring education and enlightenment to children of the developing world. $200 of each $399 "Give One Get One" Donation is tax-deductible (your donation minus the fair market value of each laptop you receive). With Shipping and Handling, the total charge to your credit card is $423.95.