Teach Effectively!

Speaking to researchers attending a conference sponsored by the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that educational reforms should be be predicated on research about effectiveness.

“Education reform is not about sweeping mandates or grand gestures,” Duncan told the group of researchers who conduct research for IES, which is an independent section of the Education Department. “It’s about systematically examining and learning, building on what we’ve done right, and scrapping what hasn’t worked for kids.”

Continue reading ‘US ED Secy Duncan: Effectiveness data should drive reforms’

Joanne Jacobs covered a story about a professional development consultant advising a teacher to dodge a question about whether introducing calculators will hinder students’ acquisition of basic computation skills. There’s video! With transcription by Wayne Bishop, one of Teach Effectively’s Much Admired Folx, the inanity of the consultant’s response becomes quite clear. If the presenter wasn’t so serious, it’d be humorous, sort of like a parody.

Link to Ms. Jacob’s post.

Geoffrey Borman and colleagues conducted an evaluation of the popular Fast ForWord™ program, and they reported that, “The Fast ForWord Language program did not, in general, help students in these eight schools improve their language and reading comprehension outcomes.”

This is a well-conceived and conducted evaluation. There are multiple schools with many children at different age levels, and the researchers used sophisticated methods. Still, the results must be discouraging to many folks.

From the beginning, the implementation of the program and the level of support from within the school system and from the program developers, Scientific Learning Corporation, were exemplary. Site visits, observations of the training, communications with the Scientific Learning Corporation, and communications with the teachers and principals implementing Fast ForWord revealed a consistent level of commitment and support across district leadership, school-level leaders, the schools’ teaching staffs, and representatives from Scientific Learning Corporation. Nevertheless, impact analyses of assignment to the Fast ForWord program revealed few encouraging signs of academic benefits approaching those claimed by the program’s developers. In this way, the results raise several questions regarding the potential and the appropriateness of Fast ForWord for improving reading and language outcomes for nonclinical “at-risk” student populations served in school-based settings.

Continue reading ‘Fast ForWord doesn’t’

Zig Engelmann, principle author of a sweet suite of instructional materials that cover the range from beginning language skills to core concepts in physical sciences, has revised his Web site, Zig Site. If you’ve ever heard of “Direct Instruction” (sometimes said, “Big DI”), you’ve heard of Zig’s work. The new site has somethings new and somethings old. Rather than précis the changes, here’s how Zig describes it:

Starting in 2009, Zigsite is going to have an emphasis on training through videos. The first will be a series of 13 video sessions on teaching English pronunciation to non-English speakers. It will be followed by a series of training videos on teaching our new program, Direct Instruction Spoken English.

The longer printed works on Zigsite include, Rubric for Identifying Authentic DI Programs, Low Performers’ Manual, and the log of the first formal study I did in education—Comparative Preschool Study: High and Low SES Preschoolers Learning Advanced Cognitive Skills. These are constructive. Most of the other works are constructive only in the sense that they help clarify why education has gone basically nowhere in the past 40 years. Only now are educators starting to “invent” some of the stuff we used back in the 60s.

Continue reading ‘Zig site morphs’

Todd Oppenheimer, who wrote The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology, published an op-ed piece in the San Francisco (CA, US) Chronicle recommending that US President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan avoid plans to invest heavily in computer technology for US schools. In “Technology not the panacea for education,” Mr. Oppenheimer argues that promoting technology will not improve US competitiveness.

Rather than promote technology, Mr. Oppenheimer recommends—gasp!—preparing students to read, write, and compute!

Continue reading ‘Tech not’

Could this be for real? Anyone seen any data? (Not likely.)

New iPhone Application to Help Children Learn to Read using Phonics

London, UK – Apps in My Pocket Ltd launches PocketPhonics for iPhone. Children can now enjoy learning to read using phonics on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Phonics is the reading system recommended by education specialists in both the US and UK.

Teacher, Sue Keen, said: “As a teacher of young children, I am always anxious that new resources for the classroom have a strong educational basis and actually work. I’ve used PocketPhonics with children aged 4 to 6 and the results have been very encouraging. You know you’re winning when the child doesn’t want to stop.”

John Friend, company director at Apps in My Pocket, said: “PocketPhonics starts by saying the sounds and showing children how to write them. It’s been developed from scratch with children in mind, for parents to use with their children or for use in the classroom. Children love to copy the writing on the handheld screen using their finger, and shake the iPhone to make their writing disappear. Sounds are taught in small groups so they can be quickly used together in a game to make short words.”

Pricing and Availability:
PocketPhonics costs $2.99 (USD) in the US and £1.79 in the UK, and is available to download now from Apple iTunes. It uses touch, graphics, animation and sound to make learning to read both fun and engaging for younger children. There’s also a free “lite” version so that people can see how it works before they buy.

Apps in My Pocket
PocketPhonics
PocketPhonics Lite (free version) Download Link
PocketPhonics purchase link
Main screen
Phonics game screen

Apps in My Pocket Ltd started in October 2008 to create useful and usable applications for Apple’s iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch. PocketPhonics is the first app to be launched. More information can be found at their website. Copyright 2008 Apps in My Pocket Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.

[MacMegasite]

Since 1997, the first Children and Technology Committee of the US American Library Association has maintained a list of Web sites for children that should be on the list of to-be-visited-locations-on-the-Web for readers of Teach Effectively. Here’s a snippet about the content:

The Web is a lot like a flea market: there’s a vast selection of sites to choose from but not a lot of order to it. Some sites are offered by reputable “dealers” and some from individuals who want to show off their personal favorite items. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a hidden treasure, what’s worth taking a look at, and what’s a waste of time.

It’s not hard to find sites if you use a search engine like Google, or a subject directory like Yahoo (or Yahooligans for kids). But how can you tell if a site you find is worthwhile?
Continue reading ‘ALA sites for kids’

My colleague Dan Willingham has posted a marvelous video that’s an introduction to thinking about neuroscience and education. Under the title “Brain-based Education: Fad or Breakthrough,” he illustrates important elements about what are reasoned extrapolations from cognitive neuroscience to education and what are not.

• D-Ed Reckoning
• Eduwonkette
• Will Talheimers’ Will at Work (an unusually well reasoned commentary on digital learning): Be Skeptical of Brain-Based Learning

Update (7 June 2008): A couple of days ago, Dan posted a new version of the video; I’ve modified the links in the box accordingly.