Page 12 of 24
1 10 11 12 13 14 24

Kenya: Varsity suspends 19 Students in the aftermath of the unrest

Africa/Kenya/13-10-2019/Author and Source: www.kbc.co.ke

Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology management has suspended 19 students perceived to be the masterminds of the unrest that led to the closure of the institution last month.

According to the memo seen by KNA on the students’ notice board dated October 4 and signed by the Acting Registrar Academic affairs Prof Thomas Sakwa, the students have been suspended indefinitely.

The Students’ Governing Council Chairman Vincent Lumala, the Secretary General Gerald Maina and the Treasurer Amon Kiptarus are on the list.

The varsity administration has started recalling the students and began with the first years who reported back on Tuesday and were to pay 950 shillings fine for the destruction of property during the strike.

The students said their other colleagues are to report on October 14.

The varsity staff camped at the gate and only those students who had cleared the first semester fees and signed a commitment to adhere to the institution’s rules and regulations were allowed in.

The strike had been prompted by the action of the university management to lock out students who had not cleared fees from sitting end of semester examinations.

A student leader who sought anonymity said the suspension is unfair as the victims had not been given a chance to be heard.

He accused the varsity authorities of sidelining the students’ representatives in the decision-making process.

The acting Vice Chancellor Prof Asenath Sigot declined to comment on the matter.

Source and Image: https://www.kbc.co.ke/varsity-suspends-19-students-in-the-aftermath-of-the-unrest/#

Comparte este contenido:

Russia: Fight club for school kids: Shocking MMA-like VIDEO sparks police probe

Europe/Russia/06-10-2019/Author and Source: RT

A random tip-off reportedly helped uncover a chilling sweepstake frequented by a bunch of Moscow high schoolers – but they weren’t the ones who were relentlessly fighting for bets and recognition.

Schoolchildren as young as 10 or 12 were taking part in bizarre ultimate fighting contests, which their older handlers were betting on and then pocketing the winnings, according to Russia’s popular Telegram channel Baza.

The schoolyard gladiators had no incentives, except for cheers from the onlookers, but they appeared to be disturbingly serious about the cruel pastime.

The brawls – which would usually take place in the woods – involved punches, kicks, throws and other Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) – style techniques.

The story was only uncovered after a fifth-grader filmed the fighting and showed it to her father, who apparently made public the upsetting video. In the footage published by Baza, the boys are seen engaging in group or head-to-head fights.

Principals of the school affected denied that the ‘fight club’ ever existed, saying that the schoolchildren were simply having an argument. But parents insist that the fighting sessions were happening frequently and weren’t what a typical backyard altercation looks like. Moscow police are now investigating the matter, it was reported.

Information reference: https://www.rt.com/russia/470117-moscow-school-fight-club/

Comparte este contenido:

United States of America: Meta-analysis: reading on paper improves reading comprehension

North America/United States of America/29-09-2019/Author: Paulette Delgado/Source: observatory.tec.mx

By: Paulette Delgado

A professor at the University of North Dakota analyzed 33 studies to find an answer to the long debate about whether it is better to read on paper or on a screen.

Since 2008, numerous studies have compared reading from paper and electronic sources. To find out which method provides the best comprehension, Virginia Clinton, an assistant professor of education at the University of North Dakota, conducted a meta-analysis of 33 high-quality studies.

Out of all the studies, 29 of them find out students tend to absorb more information when they read on paper, especially if it’s a long read. These findings differ with the recent emphasis on digital texts from publishers like Pearson, the largest textbook publisher in North America, who announced in July a focus on a digital strategy.

The results are also problematic because, according to a report from the National Association of College Stores, in 2019 22% of college students are using free online texts and materials, compared to 3% registered in 2015.

The different studies did not include the supplements that give advantages to the digital format. These elements range from whistles, quizzes, questionnaires and the option to instantly search for unknown words. Without a reliable study that analyzes the impact of add-ons, it’s hard to tell if they would’ve made any difference. Clinton is determined to study them in her laboratory to find answers.

Experts have different explanations about why reading in print helps students. Some argue that it is easier for them to remember what they read because they recognize the location of a passage on a physical paper.

Another disadvantage of digital format found in the study is that digital readers usually overestimate their reading comprehension, thinking that they performed better than actual results. On the other hand, readers who read printed texts were more precise in their self-analysis. The difference may be in excessive confidence because it can affect the student by putting less effort into their reading.

The genre also matters. According to several studies, there is a considerable advantage in reading nonfiction texts in print but almost no difference in narrative fiction, like a Jane Austen book, for example.

Due to the high cost of printed books, it is easy to understand why companies like Pearson are becoming digital. Even so, Clinton recommends that teachers, if using screens, take extra time to show students how to read better online. One example could be to implement reading comprehension exercises to ensure that they do not miscalculate their understanding.

Still, each format has its benefits. It is a matter of knowing how to take advantage of each one. For example, digital books are excellent for younger students since the digital medium is usually more practical and affordable, which can help encourage reading. On the other hand, texts printed on paper are better for those who are easily distracted and need to pay more attention.

What is your preferred reading media? Share with us your reading habits.

Information reference: https://observatory.tec.mx/edu-news/meta-analysis-reading-onpaper-improves-reading-comprehension

Comparte este contenido:

Students going without the basics: ‘I was heartbroken when I missed school’

 

By: 

Bec* loves school and wants to go to university so she can become a social worker, and help children who grew up in similar situations to her own.

The Aboriginal teenager missed a lot of classes when she was younger – from grades five to seven. Her mum was in an abusive relationship, and money was so tight affording petrol just to get to and from school was difficult. Her Naplan test results nosedived in that period, her principal says.

“I was heartbroken when I missed school from years 5-7,” she wrote in her application to the Public Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that provides financial aid to students in public schools.

“Not only did I have to face what was happening at home, I was missing out on learning, new friends, and skills.”

By the time she was in year 10 though, Bec was living in a more stable situation with her brother and his partner, and her attendance was back at almost 100%.

“If I was granted $5,000 it would improve my learning and my knowledge,” she said.

“It would help me access internet at home, hire a tutor to help fill gaps in my learning, and cut my hours at work so I can focus on my studies.

“I would like to attend university and become an Aboriginal caseworker to help young children that were like me to know that there is a good ending to it all.”

Bec’s story is far from unique. Guardian Australia was provided with a range of anonymised applications for these scholarships; all were from ambitious students swimming against a current of financial hardship to try to get the best education possible, and to one day make a generational break with poverty. They needed the money not for expensive school fees, but for everyday basics – uniforms and well-fitting school shoes, laptops, internet access and excursion fees.

One student hoped to study nursing at university after spending so much time with her single mum in hospital, two years after her dad died. She said the scholarship could help her get there by covering the cost of tutoring, uniforms and stationery. Another Year 12 student wrote her application while living in refuge accommodation. She was already financially independent and working two casual jobs, and said the scholarship money would make a huge difference in alleviating her financial strain and allowing her to complete school and attend university without going into major debt.

A Torres Strait Islander boy wrote that his mother left home when he was little, then his father committed suicide after a car accident left him with chronic pain and depression. He and his two siblings moved in with their grandma.

“We live in a housing commission and my grandma has low income and struggles to pay for education, resources, excursions, and uniform. My grandma never went to Tafe or University however she has always encouraged me to do my best, my attendance at school is very good, I try my best at school but with all the things that have happened in my life, it’s very hard.”

David Hetherington, who oversees the disbursements as executive director of the foundation, says: “The promise of public education is that any student can attend a public school at no cost to themselves and can get a proper education.

“But we know that there are students who are going without these educational basics.”

Though the scholarships aim to address these immediate financial needs, their aim is something bigger – to disrupt, if only for a select few, the ongoing link that exists in Australia between poverty and poorer educational outcomes.

Despite decades of school funding wars, the landmark Gonski report and major increases in commonwealth funding to schools, children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds in Australia are still falling well behind their wealthier peers at school.

By Year 9, Australian teenagers from the most disadvantaged quartile are still, on average, around three years behind their peers from the most advantaged group in science, reading and maths.

More than a third of students from this most disadvantaged group still do not finish high school, and only a quarter go on to university.

Though the general public may have grown weary of discussions about inequality and education, experts stress there is still much unfinished business. Too many public schools in particular continue to be funded below government targets, while the problem of school segregation – particularly of disadvantaged kids being concentrated in disadvantaged schools, that are being abandoned by other families – is worsening.

It’s a much bigger problem than charities and not-for profits can fix alone.

“Educational investment can break the cycle of economic disadvantage – that’s the wonder of education,” says Hetherington. “But it’s got to be properly resourced and properly managed, and I think that’s still where we’re falling down in Australia.”

***

“Demography is not destiny” was a favourite mantra of former prime minister Julia Gillard, and one she said guided her government’s signature education reforms.

Addressing the inequity in Australia’s education system was a major focus of the landmark 2011 report by David Gonski and a committee of experts, which set the framework for reform for the decade that has followed.

At its core was a new “needs-based and sector-blind” funding model, to distribute higher levels of public funding to those schools educating students with the highest levels of disadvantage. The report established these schools were overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, public schools: almost 80% of students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds attended a public school, along with 85% of Indigenous students and 83% of students from remote areas.

But eight years on, many schools, particularly public schools, are not meeting the government’s own funding benchmarks set in the wake of theGonski reforms.

Attempts to ensure “no school would lose a dollar”, a web of special deals in the years and shortfalls in funding, particularly from some state governments, have left the full vision unmet.

“Funding is not everything, I agree,” says Trevor Cobbold, the convener of the public school advocacy group Save Our Schools.

“But it’s pretty fundamental to being able to employ extra teachers, extra support staff, and so on … we have to direct much larger funding increases into disadvantaged public schools than we have been.

The Gonski model was built around a tool called the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), the amount of money a school needs to properly educate each child, made up of a base amount of funding plus additional loadings for key areas of disadvantage.

In 2017, government schools were only reaching, on average, 90% of the SRS, while non-government schools were reaching 95%, according to the Grattan Institute.

Julie Sonnemann, a school education fellow at the Institute, points to the funding split between the commonwealth, which is the primary source of funding for non-government schools, and the states and territories, which are the main source of funding to government schools.

“There has been a lot of progress made in channelling more funding to disadvantaged schools, however still a long way to go,” she says.

“Because some state governments have been less effective in meeting the new school target set out under Gonski, government schools have got the short end of the stick.”

Under current Coalition policy, the amount the commonwealth will contribute to government systems will be at least 20% of SRS by 2023, and education minister Dan Tehan has touted the fact education spending has grown every year the Coalition government has been in power.

“We are providing a record $21.4bn for schools which is an extra 66% since we came to government and we can afford to pay for it without increasing taxes,” he told Guardian Australia.

Labor is pledging an additional $14bn for public schools over a decade, effectively lifting the commonwealth contribution to at least 22% of the SRS in the first term, as well as cracking down on some deals that allow states to deduct costs such as transport from their spending on public schools.

Those policies would, according to the Grattan Institute’s Peter Goss, “put government schools on track to reach 97.2% of SRS.”

“Not quite full funding, but within touching distance.”

***

While the wide gap in achievement between kids from the lowest SES group and their more advantaged peers may seem like an intractable problem, many experts don’t agree – for a simple reason. The size of gap varies significantly between different countries.

In Canada, a similar country to Australia in many ways, this gap between students is markedly less, at 2.4 years (compared to 3.1 in Australia) and Canadian students from the most disadvantaged quartile routinely outperform disadvantaged Australian students in international PISA tests.

Canada spends a higher proportion of GDP per capita on school education than Australia, but researchers point to another factor too.

“The thing that I keep coming back to is that schools are more socially mixed in Canada than they are in Australia,” says Laura Perry, an associate professor at Murdoch University .

“Canada has one of the highest proportions of kids in the OECD that go to a socially mixed or diverse school … Australia is the opposite.

“School choice”, the idea that parents should pick the “best” school for their child and not necessarily attend the local comprehensive high school, has long been a governing philosophy in Australia, and one encouraged by the generous public funding of non-government schools and supercharged by publicly available comparison data on the MySchool website.

One result is that disadvantage is increasingly concentrated in particular schools, and the social mix of students from a range of socio-economic backgrounds is often missing.

More than half of students (51.2%) classified as coming from a disadvantaged background in Australia attended disadvantaged school in 2015, according to a recent OECD analysis, while less than 5% attend a socio-economically advantaged school (the remainder attend schools classified as socio-economically average).

Those figures are more polarised than they were a decade earlier, when the proportion of disadvantaged students at disadvantaged schools was 46%.

The trend comes despite a growing proportion of parents choosing public over private schools, in a recent reversal of a decades-old trend.

Research conducted by Chris Bonnor, a former Sydney principal and fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, shows that more advantaged families are seeking out more advantaged public schools – such as selective schools, or ones that have a higher socio-economic profile. As a result, some public schools serving poorer populations are getting left behind.

When Bonnor taught in Mount Druitt in the 1970s, a working class suburb on Sydney’s western fringe, he says there was more socio-economic diversity in the local public high schools than today.

“Even in those very difficult schools – Mount Druitt High, Shalvey High, there was always a small but significant group of high achieving kids,” he says.

“But what MySchool data clearly shows is that sort of critical mass of aspirant kids are less likely to be found in those schools now.”

This trend matters because the concentration disadvantage is compounding the difficulties students face, and is believed to be leading to poorer educational outcomes.

The same OECD analysis found that, on average, students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending more advantaged schools scored markedly better results in standardised tests.

“If you have a school with a significant disadvantaged enrolment there are negative impacts that build on each other,” Bonnor says.

“It’s partly about teacher expectations of kids, partly about resources that the school has, it’s certainly about the intellectual capital that kids bring to school everyday … There’s a whole pile of things that interact with each other to further reduce opportunities for students in low SES schools. And that’s often despite the best intentions of teachers and reformers.”

Concentrating disadvantage in these smaller, public schools also compounds the need for more funding, Perry says.

“When you concentrate students with high needs – and poverty is a high-needs, high stress situation – it makes teaching and learning a lot more difficult, and it also makes it a lot more expensive,” she says.

“Low SES schools are small. Even though their per student allocation is quite generous compared to other schools, you don’t have the economies of scale you have at other schools.”

But while debates about funding have featured prominently in education policy-making for some time, tackling the issue of segregation and residualisation has proved far more taboo in Australia.

Policy solutions could take the form of mandating non-government schools take more students from low SES backgrounds in return for their public funding, removing fees at some non-government schools, as well as changes to entrance policies to make sure selective public schools and more advantaged government schools take a wider range of enrolments.

“There are some parts of the US that have tried to tackle this issue with admissions policies, to ensure there is a diversity of kids in every school, and perhaps Australia should consider policy settings like that,” says Sonneman.

But most experts know this is likely to face deep opposition.

“There is a really strong sense of entitlement among the Australian community that they have the right to choose the best school for their child, and as long as that cultural norm exists, it’s pretty difficult for governments to do much.”

 

 

Fuente del artículo: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/12/students-going-without-the-basics-i-was-heartbroken-when-i-missed-school

Comparte este contenido:

Concord student showcases original game at learning innovation event

Por: concord.wickedlocal.com/13-02-2019

The following is from a submission by Kerry Crisley for Acera School.

Concord resident Liam Lurker took the stage at LearnLaunch Institute’s 2019 Learning Innovation Showcase at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston on Feb. 1.

The Acera School student and two of his classmates presented “Hail Caesar?” — an online multiplayer game they designed and created using Javascript.

Set in 44 BC, the game enables up to six players to take on the roles of Roman senators at the height of the conspiracies against Caesar. Each player has a unique set of goals that he or she must complete to win. The idea behind the game was to help history come to life for today’s students.

“The game gives us ways to learn creative and technical skills, along with systems thinking, perspective taking, and problem solving,” said Liam.

The Acera team was one of 23 middle and high schools from across New England selected to appear at this education conference showcase. The event is part of an annual national conference where educators, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers can see a range of edtech tools applied in real learning environments.

“We were very pleased to see the impressed reactions of many attendees who visited our table to play the game demo and learn about its development,” said Danny Fain, the lead educator representing Acera at the showcase. “One conference organizer even suggested these students might soon be ready to launch their own entrepreneurial venture!”

“Hail, Caesar?” was conceived and created by students in Acera’s middle school elective class, “Powerfully Playful Programming.” Acera, a nonprofit STEAM school for kindergarten through eighth grade based in Winchester, features hands-on electives such as science labs, architecture, woodshop and computer science.

For information: aceraschool.org.

*Fuente: https://concord.wickedlocal.com/news/20190212/concord-student-showcases-original-game-at-learning-innovation-event

Comparte este contenido:

New Zealand: On the job learning for new teachers a disservice to them and students

Oceania/ New Zealand/ 12.02.2019/ Source: www.stuff.co.nz.

I was very excited to see the outcomes of Bali Haque’s Tomorrow’s Schools Review. It is insightful, clear, and I think, largely correct. I hope we have the courage to implement the review’s recommendations – all bar one.

I don’t believe that school-based teacher preparation pathways will improve the quality of new teachers, and believe it will have a raft of unfortunate consequences for schools and their learners.

Preparing teachers has always been a tricky business. Between 1920 and 2018 there has been a review, a White Paper, a Green Paper, consultation, an advisory committee or report to government on New Zealand’s teacher education  about every 10 years. This despite the shift of teacher education over this period from school-based preparation to training colleges and colleges of education, to universities and private providers.

These reports have the same themes: selection and recruitment, what the content of teacher education should be, where it should be taught, and what the roles of the providers and the profession are in preparing teachers; all similar concerns to those raised by the Tomorrow’s Schools Review.

So is New Zealand particularly bad at teacher preparation? Actually, no. If we look internationally, exactly the same concerns predominate in English-speaking countries around the world. Essentially it comes down to whether you think teaching is a profession or not.

Professions are defined by having an established body of knowledge that is not held by the general population, and therefore require a period of advanced education before they can be practised. Because we’ve all experienced teaching at school in a way that most of us haven’t been exposed to law, accountancy or medicine, some people think there’s not much to it; that it’s basically managing children, a practical «craft» best learned on the job.

If teaching is a profession, advanced preparation is appropriate. If it’s a craft, it could be learned by doing. In practice, of course, it’s both; a highly intellectual activity, characterised by rapid high-stakes decision-making, and a practical task with routines and strategies that need to be mastered.

So which is the right way in: learn the professional knowledge, then practise the strategies, or learn the strategies and then gain the knowledge? I believe it’s a clever combination of the two, and the institutions best placed to develop it are not schools.

But why not? It’s tempting logic, followed by England in  its «School Direct» reform (an employment-based route into teaching). It’s had some successes, but hasn’t solved the variability and supply issues the New Zealand Taskforce highlights.

And a consequence has been the disestablishment of teacher education programmes in higher education, resulting in a loss of expertise in teaching and teacher preparation from the system. Just as the schools discover how hard teacher preparation is, the number of people who could help them diminishes.

Successful schools are good at teaching students. It turns out that teaching adults how to be teachers is actually another task entirely. Putting unprepared people in front of children to «learn as they go» clearly disadvantages those children, and trying to avoid this by preparing, mentoring and evaluating prospective teachers in schools is a serious challenge.

Do we want our schools to be both schools for students and teacher education institutions?

One of the reasons school-based routes appeal is because prospective teachers are paid.

Creating long, unpaid internships as part of teacher preparation reduces the number who can afford to prepare and reduces the diversity of the workforce. Paying people to become teachers is a great idea, we used to do it, but it doesn’t mean that preparation should be led by schools.

I think schools should play a larger role in teacher preparation and be rewarded for doing so. I don’t think, however, that they should be given the whole responsibility because they have another, extremely important, job to do – teaching their students.

In a post-Tomorrow’s School Review system, where supports like advisory services and education hubs are restored, why not retain a highly skilled teacher educator service that is seen as part of the profession, and works closely with schools to provide teacher preparation?

Rather than creating a dual pathway, let’s use all the resources we have to provide quality graduates for New Zealand’s schools.

Source of the notice: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/110510328/on-the-job-learning-for-new-teachers-a-disservice-to-them-and-students

Comparte este contenido:

The Jump Start: Transforming Lives, Creating Value for People

Por: igitallearning.eletsonline.com/09-01-2019

The Jump Start imparts quintessential knowledge and skills to the graduate talent making them employable and organisations future ready and competitive, says Mahesh Iyer, Co-Founder & Curator, The Jump Start, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).

The Jump Start is a skill formation and an employability enrichment venture curated by industry professionals who possess extensive experience in the field of human capital formation through talent identification and development, academia affiliations, training and consulting.Please describe briefly about the solutions developed by the organisation to help education institutes?

How does the solutions provided by your organization help in promoting effective learning among students?

The Jump Start team is committed to improve the employability quotient in the society by inducing a skill and value-based learning methodology which is industry-recognised and are aligned to the national occupational Standards prescribed by the MSDe. We believe that the inclusion of Tier 3 and 4 graduate talent and the unemployed workforce to the mainstream will address a larger socio-economic challenge of our country.

Industrial Revolution 4.0 is much talked about term nowadays, how important is the skill and training for students?

Researches revealed that the graduates lack the fundamental skills required by businesses. Further, formal training of employees in basic business frameworks and concepts is relatively missing. It is imperative that we demystify the gap. The missing threads are confidence building, application of concept into practice and the efforts from the institutes to fulfil the requisites for helping students to sustain in this dynamic and volatile job market.

*Fuente: https://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2019/01/the-jump-start-transforming-lives-creating-value-for-people/

Comparte este contenido:
Page 12 of 24
1 10 11 12 13 14 24