COE Exchange

Archive for March, 2009

This incident most probably is not among the most important events that occurred in the world of education, but it does carry symbolic value. A fifteen year old girl who is undergoing treatment for cancer asked a Japanese high school to allow her to sit for the January exams which are taken by junior high school students in order to enter prestigious high schools. The cancer treatment has made her susceptible to infections and she asked permission to take the exam in a separate room. Her request was denied because all students have to sit in the same room to…

By exploring the Naturalistic Education Theory (NET) as a strategy to engineer an appropriate sequence of topics, it can be demonstrated how to produce a pedagogically-sound curriculum and more efficient instruction. There has been a vast discrepancy between the demand for effective and efficient curriculum materials and the framework and guidelines to fulfill that need. Without a major change in our fundamental approach to pedagogy we will not be able to increase the low percent science literacy rate by an order of magnitude that is needed to serve a technology-based society. NET acknowledges the brain’s rules for meaningful and lasting…

The British National Union of Teachers (NUT) is calling for a cap on the number of hours that teachers will be interacting directly with students and that 20% of their time would be reserved for preparing to teach or grading student assignments. The annual Workload Teachers Diary Survey, published last summer, estimated the average teacher works at least 50 hours per week. NUT insists there is need to “set some kind of standard for teachers in England” as to their weekly work load. In 2001, Scotland introduced a work cap for teachers. The McCone Agreement established a 35 hour week…

Covered here is a collection of concepts and how-tos that for the lack of a better method, are collected loosely under this heading: Duplicating CDs & DVDs If you have the money, pickup Roxio Toast for all of your optical media needs.  Copying and authoring CDs and DVDs is made incredibly easy using their simple and intuitive interface.  Unfortunately, UM Saint Louis doesn’t provide this app on its standard Macintosh lab workstation.  In truth, however, it isn’t required. Most of your needs will be answered using OS X’s built-in application, Disk Utility.  While certainly not as intuitive as Toast, Disk…

http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=57&dir=2009/January/Wednesday14 Children entering school in Botswana are referred to as “Ma One” and they tend to be nervous individuals at the prospect of being with strange students and a person called a teacher. Many children entering Botswana schools are even more nervous because their mothers waited until the first day of school to get around to registering them as students. Headmaster Justice Kobamelo Kgabeng complained the school was hit by numerous parents insisting their children be registered even as he attempted an orientation meeting with parents who already had registered their child. An ongoing problem in Botswana schools is being…