Teaching Today

A Miscellany of Issues and Challenges Related to Teaching in Today's World

Fred Haas
Writing
Writing as a Tool for Reflection
edutopia.org - Laura Lee
Setting aside time for regular writing practice is a way to process the Tilt-a-Whirl that is teaching, writes Justin Minkel, a first- and …
August 28
Fred Haas
A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy
The Atlantic - Jack M. BalkinJonathan Zittrain
Doctors and lawyers are prohibited from using clients’ information for their own interests, so why aren’t Google and Facebook? We tell online services what we like, who we love, what we are doing, and
Oct 3, 2016
Fred Haas
The University of Arizona is tracking students' locations to predict dropouts
Quartz - Amy X. Wang
At the University of Arizona, school officials know when students are going to drop out before they do. The public college in Tucson has been quietly collecting data on its first-year students’ ID card
Mar 13, 2018
Fred Haas
Education
Early Academic Training Produces Long-Term Harm
psychologytoday.com - Peter Gray Ph.D.
Many preschool and kindergarten teachers have told me that they are extremely upset—some to the point of being ready to resign—by the increased …
May 5, 2015
Fred Haas
How An Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab for Cyberwar
WIRED - Andy Greenberg
It was a Saturday night last December, and Oleksii Yasinsky was sitting on the couch with his wife and teenage son in the living room of their Kiev …
Jun 20, 2017
Fred Haas
Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach
The Guardian - Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison
Whistleblower describes how firm linked to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon compiled user data to target American voters The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the Brexit
Mar 17, 2018
Fred Haas
Tim Berners-Lee: we must regulate tech firms to prevent 'weaponised' web
The Guardian - Olivia Solon
The inventor of the world wide web warns over concentration of power among a few companies ‘controlling which ideas are shared’ Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has called for technology
Mar 12, 2018
Fred Haas
A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case against Turnitin
hybridpedagogy.org - Sean Michael Morris
Students often find themselves uploading their content — their creative work — into the learning management system. Perhaps they retain a copy of the …
Jun 15, 2017
Fred Haas
How big data is helping states kick poor people off welfare
Vox
Technology is being used to target and punish poor people in America, according to a new book by Virginia Eubanks, a professor of political science at the University of Albany, SUNY. Here’s one example:
Feb 6, 2018
Fred Haas
Inside The Virtual Schools Lobby: 'I Trust Parents'
NPR - Anya Kamenetz
A free day at the aquarium! For Marcey Morse, a mother of two, it sounded pretty good. It was the fall of 2016, and Morse had received an email offering tickets, along with a warning about her children's
Feb 13, 2018
Fred Haas
Classes should do hands-on exercises before reading and video, Stanford researchers say
stanford.edu
A study from the Stanford Graduate School of Education of how students best learned a neuroscience lesson showed a distinct benefit to starting out …
Jul 16, 2013
Fred Haas
Government moves to scrap national standards and charter schools
stuff.co.nz - Brad Flahive
The Government has introduced a bill to scrap national standards and charter schools in New Zealand. However, charter school operators wanting to be …
Feb 9, 2018
Fred Haas
Here's What Happened When the Supreme Court Ruled on Whether Students Can Protest During School
TIME - Olivia B. Waxman
High-school students nationwide have already taken to the streets in response to the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 dead. Pressing for a variety
Feb 23, 2018
Fred Haas
The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’
The New York Times - By MOLLY WORTHEN
I teach at a big state university, and I often receive emails from software companies offering to help me do a basic part of my job: figuring out what my students have learned. If you thought this task
Feb 24, 2018
Fred Haas
The six big privacy concerns for edtech
edscoop.com - Patience Wait
Priscilla Regan, a professor at George Mason University, has been thinking and writing about privacy policy since the late 1970s. Her work has led …
Feb 23, 2018
Fred Haas
Groundbreaking empirical research shows where innovation really comes from
Vox - Matthew Yglesias
Gaps in opportunity for talented kids with low socioeconomic status don’t just hold back poor, female, black, or Latino children as individuals — they also impose potentially enormous losses to society
Dec 5, 2017
Fred Haas
Second Guessing My Kids of Color?
williamferriter.com - Bill Ferriter
Blogger’s Note: This post is on race in America. It’s full of ideas I’ve been wrestling with for a long while. Like the issue, there’s nothing neat …
Sep 26, 2017
Fred Haas
The Very Seriously Humorless Education of Students
wordpress.com - plthomasedd
I am a junior in college during the early 1980s, sitting attentively in Dr. Richard Predmore’s upper-level English course; I am an English education …
Sep 23, 2017
Fred Haas
James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil
The New Yorker - Clint Smith
“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time.” So opens “A Talk to Teachers,” which James Baldwin delivered to a group of educators in October, 1963. (He published it in the
Sep 23, 2017
Fred Haas
Understanding Poetry Is More Straightforward Than You Think
The New York Times - By MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
Do you remember, as I do, how in the classroom poems were so often taught as if they were riddles? What is the poet really trying to say here? What is the theme or message of this poem? What does this
Jul 10, 2017
Fred Haas
Does Bad “Grammar” Instruction Make Writing Worse?
wordpress.com - drkhturner
Most students’ writing—in fact, most people’s writing—could use some improvement: in content, organization, coherence, style, and editing. However, …
Nov 23, 2015
Fred Haas
Why Revise? Because You Have an Authentic Audience
edutopia.org - Dylan Fenton
Undoubtedly, the answer is that millions of people around the world would be listening to the speech, and thus he wanted his writing to be clear, …
May 23, 2016
Fred Haas
“The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out.” https://t.co/KlVl7ERMF7 Interesting. https://t.co/p04mAMFyWb
“The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out.” https://t.co/KlVl7ERMF7
Will Richardson on Twitter
Jul 11, 2017
Fred Haas
Teaching
The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies
cultofpedagogy.com
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase “We will …
Oct 15, 2015
Fred Haas
The Guilty Secret of Distracted Parenting
The New York Times - By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
Your phone can seem to call to you in an especially seductive way when you are a parent on playground duty. And one reason is, let’s face it, that playground duty can get old long before your children
Mar 20, 2017
Fred Haas
For Online Class Discussions, Instructors Move From Text to Video
edsurge.com - Jeffrey R. Young
For many students, participating in online class discussions feels like a chore—a box to check off for participation points rather than a lively …
Dec 27, 2018
Fred Haas
Perhaps it is the English teacher in me but I am not even a nutter about these kinds of things. I definitely believe in Oxford
Fred Haas
Perhaps it is the English teacher in me but I am not even a nutter about these kinds of things. I definitely believe in the Oxford comma and this certainly brought out all the wonks. Still, I love stories
Apr 2, 2017
Fred Haas
Not all heroes wear capes - but some carry tubes (Pi Day 2017)
www.youtube.com
Mar 7, 2017
Fred Haas
The Critical Thinking Skills Cheatsheet [Infographic]
globaldigitalcitizen.org - Lee Watanabe-Crockett
We'd like to share this critical thinking skills cheatsheet for you to use with your students. Get them asking questions on any topic! We'd like to …
Dec 9, 2016