Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 01/31/2012

• Why Urban, Educated Parents Are Turning to DIY Education - The Daily Beast

  The homeschooling movement is growing. This hidden element of the edreform movement may have more impact than you think. Also, just because parents are doing it, are they learning?
  
  "There are an estimated 300,000 homeschooled children in America’s cities, many of them children of secular, highly educated professionals who always figured they’d send their kids to school—until they came to think, Hey, maybe we could do better."

  tags: education news homeschooling

• Research sheds new light on how the placenta shapes brain development | Mail Online

  "Last year, researchers at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of medicine, found the placenta's role in a brain development to be far more advanced than previously believed."

  tags: education brain development news

  • Last year, researchers at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of medicine, found the placenta's role in a brain development to be far more advanced than previously believed.

• Seth's Blog: (What you get) - (What you were hoping for)

  Great article by Seth Godin. We need to apply this to education. If people remember the last thing - are we giving them a great final experience in high school. Most likely -- no.
  
  "[One really important amplification: Research shows us that what people remember is far more important than what they experience. What's remembered:
  
  --the peak of the experience (bad or good) and,
  
  --the last part of the experience.
  
  The easiest way to amplify customer satisfaction, then, is to underpromise, then increase the positive peak and make sure it happens near the end of the experience you provide. Easy to say, but rarely done.]"  - Seth Godin

  tags: education news

• The Hindu : Education / Issues : Online learning set for big leap

  The IIT's in India are planning to offer an online master's degree for engineering college teachers. In this interview, a leader in online learning responds to MIT's open courseware, etc. Here is how India's IIT should respond, according to IIT-Madras Director, Bhaskar Ramamurthi. Open education will have a definite impact on education overall. 

  tags: education news opened openeducation

• Educators in Virtual Worlds on Open Sim – the pioneers… | Learn 4 Life

  My next port of call was with Vicki A Davis – award winning teacher from Georgia – and her students who talked to me over Skype about the Open Sim world they had built in four weeks on DigitTeen Island on Reaction Grid.
  
  
  
  
  Vicki is the person who first used the phrase ‘V Generation‘ to me. She beams confidence and authority and is one of the new breed of teachers, globally, who is trialling these technologies with her students in highly successful ways.
  
  
  
  
  She has an amazing ‘can do’ authority about her – no equivocation, nay-saying  or dithering, she just gets right on down and does it as she has done with Web 2.0 tools for the last four years. Like all the individuals I have met along the way – she’s a self starter with a whole raft of awards around the internet projects she’s been involved in.
  
  
  
  
  There’s no doubt who is in charge in her classroom but all her projects are highly collaborative and emergent with time built in for reflection on the part of the students. Vicki is one of those new breed of global teachers who just simply changes the system by sheer force of work and dedication.

  tags: in the news

• Being ignored hurts, even by a stranger

  Even eye contact makes a big difference because it helps promote a connection. 
  
  "People who had gotten eye contact from the research assistant, with or without a smile, felt less disconnected than people who had been looked at as if they weren’t there."

  tags: education news pscychology

• Teens migrating to Twitter -- sometimes for privacy

  Kids are going to Twitter like crazy now. Why? Their parents aren't there. Well, I'm there and now I'm cool. Better enjoy my moment of being cool for the 2 seconds it lasts before they move to something else.

  tags: education news socialmedia Twitter

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.