Schools Embrace Digital Tech
Posted on May 17th, 2010 by Jaimie Schock
Digital technology’s reach into the classroom is complete. A new Department of Education report found that every single public school in the United States is in someway using computers for instruction. The mean number of students per computer is 3.1 and 76 percent of the computers are desktops. Only 2 percent of public schools are not connected to the Internet.
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Tags: Computer Science, Research on Learning, U. S. Department of Education
Science textbooks provide students with lots of useful facts, but science is not about spoon-fed answers. “Learning doesn’t work that way in the lab. You might start with a phenomenon that gets you wondering and leads to questions. We’re helping them (students) build critical thinking skills,” Rebecca Smith, co-director of the Science and Health Education Partnership.
President Obama wants American high schools to graduate kids who are college- and career-ready. But, statistics on remedial education indicate that that’s not going to be an easy goal to meet. In 2007-08, a third of first-year college students required at least one remedial education course in either math, science or English.
Giving students compelling, hands-on lab exercises is a way to ignite their curiosity and interest and should be commonplace in all American high schools, writes Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. Yet, he adds, too many school labs are “dismal at best” and these sub-par facilities are a big reason why students get turned off by science and don’t go on to study it at college.
Math and science teachers are having a tough time making the transition from traditional teaching methods to more effective inquiry-based learning, a prize-winning elementary school teacher told U.S. senators May 6, appealing for more professional development programs. Susan Naylor, a mathematical instructional coach from Woods County, West Virginia, testified before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
A recent survey of 1,000 students ages 12 to 17 conducted for Junior Achievement and the Allstate Foundation found that 63 percent of respondents admitted that tight finances have forced them to change their college plans. How? By working more hours, opting for instate schools, delaying enrollment for a year or going to a community college.
We can do better. That’s the bottom-line assessment of STEM education in the U.S. by John P. Holdren, the former Harvard physicist who now directs the Office of Science and Technology Policy, making him President Obama’s chief science advisor. “Too many of our children, particularly too many of our girls and minorities, are steering away from science and engineering, and we’re trying to address that.”
It was Girls’ Night Out with a twist for 60 Pittsburgh-area girls investigating a mock crime scene. The hands-on forensics experience was part of a yearlong program at the California University of Pennsylvania that encourages young woman girls to pursue STEM careers.
Up to 300,000 K-12 and public university teachers and staff face layoffs in the next academic year. Members of the U.S. Senate Education Committee are hoping to pass a $23 billion measure to keep many of them on the job.
