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Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions
by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana on September 1, 2011
Students in Hayley Dupuy’s sixth-grade science class at the Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif., are beginning a unit on plate tectonics. In small groups, they are producing their own questions, quickly, one after another: What are plate tectonics? How fast do plates move? Why do plates move? Do plates affect temperature? What animals can sense the plates moving? They raise questions “that we never would have thought of if we started to answer the first question we asked,” says one of the students. “And just when you think you already know the question you want to focus on, you realize: ‘Oh, wow, here’s this other question that is so much better, and that’s really what you need to think about.’”
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Eight Tools for Charter School Entrepreneurs
by Peter Frumkin, Bruno V. Manno, and Nell Edgington on September 1, 2011
Charter school quality varies substantially from state to state, school to school. Nevertheless, the charter approach continues to hold promise as a potent catalyst for innovation, including empowering parents and teachers and catalyzing district school reform.
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Five Myths About the Common Core State Standards
by Robert Rothman on September 1, 2011
The Common Core State Standards are one of the most significant initiatives in American education in decades. Yet the swiftness with which they were developed and adopted has left educators uncertain about exactly what they are. A number of myths about the standards have emerged.
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Good Teachers—the Movie You Will Never See
by Colleen Gillard on August 30, 2011
It all began with a trip to the cinema to see Cameron Diaz in her new comedy, Bad Teacher. It was a bad choice, really. But what can I say? My editor was curious.
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Increase the Representation and Advancement of Women of Color in STEM
by Muriel Poston on August 1, 2011
What are the factors that sustain women of color through higher education and contribute to their educational and career success? What strategies can increase the representation and advancement of women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields?
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Q&A with Laura Pappano
by Staff on July 28, 2011
Laura Pappano, award-winning journalist and writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women, discusses her book, Inside School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories.
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35 Years After The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science
by Evelynn M. Hammonds on June 29, 2011
In December 1975, thirty Native American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Black American women met under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). These minority women (this is the term they used to describe themselves) in science, engineering, medicine, and dentistry met to "discuss their unique position as the most underrepresented and probably over selected group in the scientific disciplines."
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“I Used to Think . . . And Now I Think . . .”
by Richard F. Elmore on June 14, 2011
At the end of a course or a professional development session, I frequently ask the learners I work with to reflect on how their thinking has changed as a consequence of our work together. This reflection takes the form of a simple two-column exercise. In one column, I ask them to complete the phrase, "I used to think . . . ," and in the other, "And now I think . . . " People often find this a useful way to summarize how our work together has changed their thinking and their habits of mind, and how we have influenced each other.
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It’s an Amazing Time to Be a Learner
by Will Richardson on April 27, 2011
Whether it's the two billion teachers we can now connect to on the Web, the myriad of entertaining and at the same time educational video games we can play with our friends (or by ourselves), or the potential to answer almost any question we can pose through a few keystrokes on the phones in our pockets, we live at a moment of ubiquitous learning, one few of our ancestors could have imagined. It's a moment that in many ways we ourselves are still struggling to make sense of, struggling to imagine the endless possibilities that we find ourselves swimming in.
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Is Online Learning a Disruptive Innovation?
by Peter J. Stokes on April 14, 2011
Depending on the sources you turn to for your higher-education reading, you might come away with the perception that online learning is a risky experiment taking place in the margins of higher education--largely under the oversight of profit-seeking, fly-by-night diploma mills.
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