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New study visit report: ’Strategies to Include Computational Thinking in School Curricula’
New study visit report: ’Strategies to Include Computational Thinking in School Curricula’: Computational Thinking (CT) marks a new focus on learning programming as a new thinking skill that develops crucial 21st century skills such as logical thinking, problem-solving skills, creativity and collaborative and social skills. Programming is also increasingly recognised as one of the new skills needed for students to succeed in our digital society. European Schoolnet conducted a first study visit in Norway and Sweden aiming to learn from the two country examples about the purpose of teaching CT/programming, strategies to implement it and how to assess it. The new report ’Strategies to Include Computational Thinking in School Curricula’highlights the results of this visit.
Some can not improve – blacks and Hispanics?
Important update: I have to apologize to Ben Wildavsky. I have made an accusation of him expressing racist views and now find out that he actually argued the total opposite. I strongly urge every reader of this post to read his WSJ review and you will see that he disagree strongly with Murray. Murray however seems to be the one totally responsible for the idea of some people having inherent intellectual limitations. I am deeply sorry for not reading the whole article which hopefully would have prevented me from this mistake.
When Learning Has a Limit – WSJ.com: ”The problem with American education, according to Mr. Murray, is not what President Bush termed the ’soft bigotry of low expectations’ but rather the opposite: Far too many young people with inherent intellectual limitations are being pushed to advance academically when, Mr. Murray says, they are ’just not smart enough’ to improve much at all. It is ’a triumph of hope over experience,’ he says, to believe that school reform can make meaningful improvements in the academic performance of below-average students. (He might have noted, but doesn’t, that such students are disproportionately black and Hispanic.)
Thus students are being steered toward college when many should be directed toward jobs for which they are better suited. At the same time, Mr. Murray argues, we’re giving short shrift to the academically gifted, who ought to be offered a rigorous education appropriate to their abilities rather than having their classroom experience dragged down by low-IQ underachievers.”
(Hittat via Old Whigs tweet.)
This is a quote from Wall Street Journal and the author is Ben Wildavsky, former education editor of U.S. News & World Report, and a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Wildavsky agree with the idea of Charles Murray from his book Real Education that some students (which I have not read therefore unclear how many and who they are) just are not smart enough. Although Wildavsky know who they are – black and Hispanic. Could you imaging an article in a Swedish major newspaper publishing the same kind of explicit rascist views.
However, the issue is of course valid. Could it be that some people just are not smart enough to make meaningful improvements in academical performance. I would say, with some extreme exceptions, that this is not true. Peoples capabilities to improve are almost endless. They can be hampered by their background, socio-economic and other, by circumstances and of course by a school system that do not support them.
Technorati Tags:
Skola, Utbildning, Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray, Ben Wildavsky
More on tests like PISA and TIMMS – what can we learn
West vs Asia education rankings are misleading – opinion – 07 January 2013 – New Scientist: ”We might instead consider that in a global economy, where the answers to almost any standard question are a few smartphone taps away, skills like creativity and initiative will be the true drivers of prosperity. None of these traits can be measured easily by tests. When testing consumes precious educational time, focus and money, they get squeezed out.”
(Hittat via Christian Lundahls tweet.)
MacGregor Campbell argues that there is a week, if any, correlation between results on tests like TIMMS and PISA to the success of a country in terms of economic groth, innovation etc. He refers to Christopher Tienken, who in 2008 compared 1995 TIMSS scores with the 2006 Growth Competitiveness Index. For developed countries there was no statistically significant relationship. Tienken has according to Campbell done ”a similar analysis of the 2003 PISA mathematics rankings and two measures of economic success: per-capita GDP in 2010, and the 2010-2011 Growth Competitiveness Index. The study, to be published in April, again found no statistically significant relationship.”
What interests me with Tienkens studies is partly methodological. He seems to have realized that the success of an educational system should be measured by the impact it has on the society it works within in the long term. It means that we can not know how well it works based on the evaluation done today (i.e. standardized tests) but rather on how successful people (and/or the country) is several years after they have left school (reforms have taken place). Seems to me that even 10 years is a bit short as perspective – we have to consider when in a life we are most productive, most innovative and try to measure changes in these kind of things and their relationship to education. Of course there are exceptions, young people making great innovations but in general a countrys level of prosperity depends on many peoples contributions during a longer period of time.
A very interesting attempt to do just that was, according to Campbell, done by Keith Baker (US Department of Education) who in 2007 ”made a rough comparison of long-term correlations between the 1964 mathematics scores and several measures of national success decades later. Baker found negative relationships between mathematics rankings and numerous measures of prosperity and well-being: 2002 per-capita wealth, economic growth from 1992 to 2002 and the UN’s Quality of Life Index. Countries scoring well on the tests were also less democratic. Baker concluded that league tables of international success are ”worthless” (Phi Delta Kappan, vol 89, p 101).” There is something to be learned here.
Hopefully people at least understand that comparing results from the latest PISA study with any current ranking on such things as innovation or democracy tells us absolutely nothing.
Technorati Tags:
PISA, Skola, Statistik, TIMSS, Utbildning, Christopher Tienken, Keith Baker, Christian Lundahl
Questions about US results in PISA
What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?: ”Although the U.S. sample included disadvantaged students in appropriate propor- tion to their actual representation in the U.S. 15-year-old population, the U.S. sample included a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students who were enrolled in schools with unusually large concentrations of such students. Because, after controlling for student social class status, students from families with low social class status will perform more poorly in schools with large concentrations of such students, this sampling flaw probably reduced the reported average score of students in the bottom social class groups (perhaps Groups 1-3).”
(Hittat via Pasi Sahlberg.)
I am not a statistician even if I consider myself qualified to discuss a lot of statistician issues. This however I do not understand completely. Martin Carnoy, Stanford Graduate School of Education and EPI
and Richard Rothstein, EPI argues that the conclusions based on US results in international tests like PISA and TIMSS are oversimplified, frequently exaggerated and misleading (anyone thinking the same here regarding Swedish results?).
However, Carnoy and Rothstein have made a detailed analysis of the PISA 2009 database and found that the US results are much better than reported if one would consider the ”sampling error” described in the quote above. Question is however if this argument is valid – I thought PISA is supposed to present a result fot the whole educational system in a country regardless of which schools the students attend. In Carnoy/Rothsteins perspective it is reasonable to take the fact that ”students from families with low social class status will perform more poorly in schools with large concentrations of such students” as a reason to exclude them from the sample or at least not count their results. To me that seems a bit strange, it is like as if we would exclude the results for students att schools in poor performing schools in certain areas with the same argument. Although this is something I would like comments on.
Technorati Tags:
Pasi Sahlberg, PISA, Martin Carnoy, Richard Rothstein, TIMSS
Really?
Daily Kos: Really?: “We’re not the Republican Party, Joe. We’re not, as a group, going to jump onboard whatever policy President Obama pushes. Anyone who thinks so hasn’t been paying attention.”
(Hittat via Daily Kos.)
Gives some hope. Obama is not about radical change.
Swedish regime falling freely
Swedish filter regime charges critical blogger: "Swedish spy authority FRA today filed a complaint with the chancellor of justice (state’s attorney / judicial watch dog) concerning a secret document published by libertarian blogger Henrik Alexandersson. The move is the latest in a longstanding effort to crack down on online content and stifle bloggers, which are seen by the government-media complex as irresponsible anarchists in a traditionally unidirectional system governed by consensus policies. The action taken by FRA has also given rise to the latest in a series of protests in media and among blogs.
At the core lies an attempt to bring the national intelligence service up to par with modern technology, effectively allowing it to monitor the entire Swedish internet flow. A law to that end was passed in June by the Swedish rubber stamp legislature, the Riksdag, after several failed drafts. Four members of the center-right conservative Alliance government threatened to strike down the law in an unusual protest, but were eventually brought back into line by the party whip after a heated debate. Ultimately, only one member of the parliament had the courage to go against the government – as a result, she was bombed with flower bouquets by the populace."
Blogge Bloggelito is a well known Swedish blogger with strong libertarian believes. So far so good, he makes a reasonably fair description of the FRA-affair. He just stumbles on one thing – ultimatly there was tre parties from the opposition opposing the FRA-legislation and one member of the majority voting against. So the law passed with just a handful of votes.
The three parties against the privacy violating law are the social democratic party, the greens and the left wing party (vänsterpartiet).
Olympic Games should permanently be held in Sweden
Olympic Games should permanently be held in Sweden (Blogge Bloggelito regeringsblogg): “As Gert Gelotte so eloquently puts it, it is certainly no secret that Communist China is a Communist dictatorship, that Tibet is occupied and that ethnic minorities in China are oppressed – in fact, every single one of the fifty-five minorities that coexist with the Han Chinese majority group are oppressed, for instance by letting them be fruitful and multiply to the extent that they grow seven times faster than the majority group – clearly a measure of genocide. As for Tibet, every nation in the world, including the United Nations, recognize that Tibet is and always was a free and sovereign nation, a lost paradise that had its magnificent culture devastated by the brutal Communist oppressors. This is according to the trustworthy Tibetan gubmint in exile in India, the true and legitimate ruling body of Tibet which we credit for their independent statistics of casualties in Tibet, ranging in the hundreds or thousands or even millions – we don’t really know – over the last week.”
Although there is a possibility to have some objections, Blogges ironic piece on having the Olympic Games permantly in Sweden is really something to think about. Categoriesed as fun:-)
Bourgeoisie lackeys like Aqurette
Aqurette.com: Bourgeois Pigs: “The Swedish Social Democratic Party has bought the domain name “borgarsvin.se”, Björn Pedersen reports. “Borgarsvin” is a pejorative word and an insulting epithet often used by hardcore communists. It derives from the term Bourgeoisie, which is synonymous with “middle class” and found in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.”
(Found by knuff.se.)
It is interesting to see that the bourgeois lackeys now round up to attack the so far not confirmed social democratic registration of the domain borgarsvin.se. So far we only know that the domain points to the IP-address of the social democratic party and that the owner of the domain is Thomas Söderlund (who is so far unknown).
As you of course would expect these lackeys don´t no a thing about marxism. They cant even read! Agurette thinks bourgeois is middle class. From Wikipedia (captured on Februari 29th 2008) I give you a pretty good piece about the marxist view:
One of the most influential of the aforementioned criticisms came from Karl Marx, who attacked bourgeois political theory and its view of civil society and culture for believing these concepts and institutions to be universally true; in Marx’s view, these concepts were only the ideology of the bourgeoisie as a new ruling class, which sought to reshape society after its own image.[citation needed]
Marxism defines the bourgeoisie as the social class which obtains income from ownership or trade in capital assets, or from commercial activities such as the buying and selling of commodities, wares, and services. In medieval times, the bourgeois was typically a self-employed proprietor, small employer, entrepreneur, banker, or merchant. In industrial capitalism, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class – which means it also owns the bulk of the means of production (land, factories, offices, capital, resources) as well as the means of coercion (national armed forces, prison systems, court systems). Ownership of the means of production enables it to employ and exploit the work of a large mass of wage workers (the working class), also known as the industrial middle class, who have no other means of livelihood than to sell their labour to property owners; while control over the means of coercion allows intervention during challenges from below.[1]
By the way, of course it happens that social democrats in Sweden sometimes play a little dirty – it´s sort of comes with the game. For anyone interested it could perhaps be a good idea to study the bourgeoise lackeys campaigns against social democratic party leaders especially from Olof Palme and onwards. You know – from pretty innocent remarks to celebrating the anniversary of the murder of Olof Palme.
Institute of Education University of London
Institute of Education University of London
The Institute is the venue for the SC36 March 2007 workgroup and plennary meeting. This Sunday I have spent in workgroup 4 on Management and Delivery. Behind this title the work on MLR – Metadata for Learning Resources. The discussion so far has been to some extend focused on questions about the framework – but a little to much on the structure of the document and details.
Now – at the end of the day – the discussion moved towards more interesting things. What is the purpose of MLR, what should be mandatory, should anything be mandatory, which are the real value MLR can bring to the learning community.
Can you be conformant to MLR without using some mandatory MLR-element? For leagacy systems which uses other schemas perhaps the use of MLR would be just to add the specific learning information, not nessesary any mandatory, from MLR. This would suggest the “user” to create an application profile which consists of their legacy schema and part of MLR.
More on my weblog.
Technorati Tags:
ICT in schools, IT i skolan, SC36, Standard, Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training
E-learning Nordic 2006 – Uncovering the Impact of ICT on Education in the Nordic Countries
The study we (together with the ministries/agencies in Denmark, Norway and Finland and performed by Rambøll) recently published has now been granted some attention at the European level. There is now an article published at Insight.
E-learning Nordic 2006 – Uncovering the Impact of ICT on Education in the Nordic Countries: “ICT has a positive impact on the schools’ overall target
E-learning Nordic 2006 shows that ICT has a positive impact on the schools’ overall target – improving the pupils’ learning. However, the study also shows that the full potential of ICT is not being fully realized in many schools. Teachers are mostly focused on using ICT to support the subject content. Still, a positive impact of ICT on teaching is also seen on pupil engagement, differentiation, creativity and less waste of time. The study also shows that the preconditions for using ICT for knowledge sharing, communication and school-home co-operation are at hand, and ICT is indeed being used for this in many schools. However the positive impact of this is as yet only moderate.”
(från Insight.)
Technorati Tags:
Education, ICT in schools, IT i skolan, English, Utbildning, Myndigheten för skolutveckling, MSU
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