I found this article at Parent Dish written by Christopher Healy and it raised some interesting thoughts on my mind. Link to source article below.
“You don’t need to work very hard to decipher the message behind Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
The new ABC reality series, which documents the amiable British chef’s campaign to reform school lunch programs, doesn’t shy away from blatant, unequivocal statements about how American schoolchildren have horrible eating habits.
But there’s also a subtler (perhaps unintended) moral that viewers can draw from the show: The reading habits of these kids are just as bad.
On the show’s second episode, which aired this past Friday, Oliver presented a classroom full of kindergartners with a visual pop quiz on produce. He held up one vegetable after another and asked the children what it was. The kids couldn’t identify any of them (as far as the program’s editing showed us, at least).
Many of the veggies received nothing but blank stares, and the ones that did inspire the children to take guesses only garnered wrong answers (beets were thought to be celery, an eggplant mistaken for a pear). Very common food items, like tomatoes, potatoes and cauliflower stumped the kids.
The scene is rather unsettling, really, and makes the obvious point that these children have had little or no exposure to fresh produce. But that’s not all it tells us.”
Some very interesting comments have also been left. Personally I find it shocking that kids can’t identify vegatables such as a potato [I can understand not being able to identify a beet] don’t parents go shopping with their children or prepare freshly made meals at home?
Schools are about the future, learning skills and gaining knowledge to broaden our horizons. So you would think that this forward-looking perspective makes educational establishments a perfect place to study sustainability, which is all about protecting our environment for present and future generations.
You may think that schools would have sustainability high on their agenda, but Mark Orlowski found that this isn’t necessarily the case when he started examining how green and socially responsible college and universities are. He’s head of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, which issues an annual College Sustainability Report Card.
Listen to the full interview here which was broadcast on Sea Change Radio.
Co-Host Kelsey Flynn then chats with Josh Stoffel, the new Sustainability Coordinator at the University of Massachusetts, and Monty Archbald, chair of the Green Campus Committee at Greenfield Community College. And finally, Bill talks with Neil Drobny of the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.
So if schools are preparing our children for the future is enough covered in the curriculum about protecting the future via sustainability? How far does your school/college support sustainability? What do your kids learn about this in their school/college?
January 23 celebrates National Handwriting Day. I admit my own handwriting has become worse as I have become more comfortable with a keyboard and screen than a pen and paper. But what about our kids? My own children prefer to type up their homework than write it. Is the art of handwriting to become a lost skill?
“Though computers and e-mail play an important role in our lives, nothing will ever replace the sincerity and individualism expressed through the handwritten word,” David H. Baker, WIMA’s Executive Director, is quoted as saying on the WIMA Web site.
Curtis Bonk, professor emeritus at Indiana University, focuses on the idea of technology as a way to have multiple perspectives on international matters and analyze data at a deeper level for school pupils. This short video discusses some ideas for using technology in the classroom to enhance a students understanding of a concept at a deeper and a global level. Transcript below.
Robin Good: I am receiving this idea that those kids and those pioneers among us pushing the envelope will be the models of this emerging revolution, but the resistance from the existing educational system is very strong.
Also what I noticed is that these so-called digital natives are not as schooled as they are painted to be. They are cool because they have those tools as natural tools in front of them, but most of the time they are clueless on the best use of these tools on themselves, out of the very easy superficial social tools that they start to learn right away.
Digital natives do not seem to get what are the possibilities in front of them because they do not really have models inside their educational institutions that help them think critically about the opportunities available to them. The education system also makes them think in ways quite opposite in the way of forming them as humans that can have value inside society, that are kind of opposite to the once being offered by those very technologies. I am having some conflicts with all that. Curtis Bonk: Let’s think about the Flat Classrooms Project.
The Flat Classrooms Project is the only one discussed in my book, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat book, Don Tapscott’s WIKINOMICS book and Growing Up Digital.
What they do in the flat classrooms, in Digiteen Project, they take a book like mine, or whatever book they might have, my blended book or whatever they have got, and they analyze the book. And in this case, these kids in secondary schools, work with other kids around the world to understand the technologies that make learning open. This semester they are using my book actually, The World is Open book. It is making them aware of what are the technologies for learning. Last year they looked at Growing Up Digital, the book from Don Tapscott, and they analyzed it across the world.
You are right, kids today have pretty savvy skills for their mobile devices, they can use them for chats and all this. But they are not for learning.
How do we transform the mobile devices or these synchronous conferencing tools?
In the Flat Classrooms Project they use Ning to form groups with other kids around the world, wikis to summarize the book across cultures, video conferencing like this to discuss what they have learned and do peer interaction. They use other kinds of tools like Twitter, microblogging and blogs. How can that one-off project become the norm?
How can those synchronous as well as asynchronous collaborative technologies push all through all schools? This is the power of technology I have been talking about since 1987. I think that video conference like this can let kids stand in each others shoes. They can see perspectives. That to me can change the whole teaching and learning arena. We have to pushing the global head, international head for perspective taking.
So I understand people in Italy better, which I do not admittedly, or people in Pakistan or some other places around the world. To me this is the most powerful way to use technology. It is to do cross-cultural collaboration like the ePals projectsand others, there is something called the IEARN Project. That will get kids in K-12 schools thinking about collaboration, teaming, these digital skills that you are talking about to critically analyze data. Not just accept what they see, but to analyze it with their peer groups. When they see a group in Italy critiquing a document that they thought was great, they will see that they really were not thinking about the credibility of the sources, the quality of the resources.
When I have done any international collaboration with my students, with my teachers, they see that once we go to Finland, Peru or Korea, those students are analyzing the data in a different way, and they are opened up to the fact that they are really not going as in-depth as they need to go. I really think that international collaboration pushes us up to ego-centric points of view to multiple perspectives. That is one way of using technology that can help with this digital teen issue.
What a simple concepts for using technology in a way that opens children up to the powerful way in which these technologies can be used for collaborative learning at a global level.
Research by The National Literacy Trust on 3,001 children from England and Scotland showed that schoolchildren who blog or own social networking profiles on Facebook have higher literacy levels and greater confidence in writing.
The key objectives of the survey were to explore how much young people enjoy writing, what type of writing they engage in, how good at writing they think they are, what they think about writing and what the role of technology is in young people’s writing.
So what were the key findings?
75% of young people said that they write regularly. Technology-based formats were most frequently written. For example, 82% of young people wrote text messages at least once a month, 73% wrote instant messages (such as messages on AIM or MSN), and 63% wrote on a social networking site.
61 per cent of bloggers and 56 per cent of social networkers claimed to be good or very good at writing, compared to 47 per cent of those who had neither.
Pupils who write online are more likely to write short stories, letters, song lyrics or a diary, the research revealed.
Most young people said they used computers regularly and believed that computers are beneficial to their writing, agreeing that a computer makes it easier for them to correct mistakes (89%) and allows them to present ideas clearly (76%). Overall, nearly 60% of young people also believe that computers allow them to be more creative, concentrate more and encourage them to write more often.
Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said: “The digital age often gets a bad press but the findings of this report demonstrate that social networking sites and blogs are linked to young people’s more positive attitudes to writing. “Confidence and enjoyment are closely linked to the development of skills. Therefore, in order to improve standards we need to encourage children to write more and to enjoy writing, which could be supported by celebrating forms of writing they enjoy. Our research indicates that, for many, these are without doubt technology-based forms.”
Since 1969, “Sesame Street” has been connecting people from nations all over the world by inspiring and educating children each day in its television broadcasts.
Independent academic researchers have conducted more than 1,000 studies, making “Sesame Street” the most researched TV show in history. A recent study found that teens who watched “Sesame Street” in pre-school had higher grades than those who did not.
40 years on and children and parents still tune in to learn about letters and numbers. Pretty impressive for a TV show that is based around literacy! My guess is that it is because it is fun. When learning is fun kids want to do it again and again.
The report published by Cranfield School of Management (UK) concludes that technology addiction amongst teenagers is having a disruptive effect on their learning.
The study of 267 pupils aged 11 to 18 found 63% felt addicted to the internet and 53% to their mobile phones.
They found 62% first used or owned a computer before the age of eight, 80% first used the internet between the ages of five and 10, 58% first used a mobile phone between the ages of eight and 10 and 58% have had access to a social networking sites between the ages of eleven and 13.
Over half (53.2%) indicated they spent up to around 30 minutes a day on their mobile, while 17% said they spent at least three hours on their mobile.
Over 30% reported spending between one to two hours a day using the internet and 26% said they spent up to six or more hours a day.
Over a third (39%) admitted that text shortcuts damaged the quality of their written English, particularly when it came to spelling.
And 84% openly admitted copying chunks of information from the internet into their homework or projects on a number of occasions. Pupils said the internet was by far the largest source of information for such work, with over 90% saying they used it compared with 43% who said books.
Their report concluded that modern gadgets worsened pupils’ spelling and concentration, encouraged plagiarism and disrupted lessons.
Yet nothing was reported about the positive impact of living in a highly connected, information rich world. It is easy for us to take this research and harp back to a time gone by, but is it really a bad thing that children today can readily access vast amounts of information? Shouldn’t education be about how to use this information and the technological tools available to enhance their learning? We have to find out what motivates the learner, provide meaningful content in “their world” and help them to use all technology available to them.
I came across this research report recently. It is still shocking to me that despite all the research available that there is a lack of awareness that reading to children and spending time on literacy activities between 3 – 5 years old is vital for their future success.
According to the survey 95% of Americans consider early childhood literacy an important problem, but they do not know that reading to children between the ages of 3-5 has long-term consequences for a child’s academic achievement and life-long success.
75% of the population is completely unaware that nearly 61% of low-income
families do not have any age appropriate books in their homes.
63% did not know that poverty is the best predictor of whether or not a child
will achieve in school.
53% are unaware that nearly one-half of children from low-income
communities start first grade up to two years behind their peers.
Research proves that children who enter kindergarten behind their peers will most likely never catch up and are three to four times more likely to drop out in later years. However, this new survey data shows that only 18% of Americans know that children who lack early literacy skills are less likely to succeed as adults.
The facts are staring us in the face. We need to read to our children. We need to make it part of their everyday routine to give them the best start we can.Find different formats to expose children to reading as much as you can. Make it a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone. Read, read and then read some more!
Great video showing how kids are engaging and learning using technology. We should be harnessing this enthusiasm and encouraging children to learn using the great applications that are available. If learning is fun and engaging kids are more open to learn. What do you think?
The NPD Group, in the USA, has released a new study called “Kids & Cross-Entertainment Behaviour Report”. Some findings;
* Households that have kids under 12 account for 45% of total videogame industry sales.
* 57% of kids ages 2 to 12 play videogames.
* 62% of kids ages 2 to 12 use a computer for leisure activities outside of school work.
* There are 53.4 million kids ages 12 and under in the U.S.
* Kids under 12 account for 17% of the population of the United States.
* 75% of the tween group play videogames.
* 81% of the tween group use a computer for leisure activities outside of school.
60% of children ages 6-10 ues the internet across Eurpope – this is as high as 87% in countries such as the UK.
By 2008, 6-17 year olds in all EC countries were much more likely to use the internet at home (65%) than school (57%) or anywhere else, and 34% are now going online using their own computer.
Livingstone, S, and Haddon, L (2009)
EU Kids Online: Final report. LSE, London: EU Kids Online.
(EC Safer Internet Plus Programme Deliverable D6.5)
So we might as well face up to the fact and start providing these kids with educational resources where they can learn whilst having fun. With the ever increasing rise in young children using video games, technology and the internet we must strive to engage them on their ground. Let’s work with them not against them.
