![Data Never Sleeps: 2014 [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://mrmck.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/dataneversleeps2014.jpg?w=842)
A few years ago, Domo created a wildly-popular infographic that illustrated how much data is created every minute by popular web services. Since the web continues to evolve and morph so quickly, they thought it would be interesting to revisit the topic in 2014 and see what’s changed, using the same metrics. Take a look and fathom the immensity of the ongoing proliferation of data happening right before our eyes!
Reposted from McKinsey Insights & Publications:
“It’s evident that digitization has become a critical asset in many companies’ quest for growth. More than three-quarters of executives say the strategic intent behind their digital programs is either to build competitive advantage in an existing business or to create new business and tap new profit pools.
Many companies (and leaders) have recognized the importance of digital and focused their digital strategy and spending. Yet many still have a long way to go in creating an organization that is well positioned to see digital efforts scaled across the company and achieve the large financial impact that respondents expect. One such challenge is the struggle to recognize value from existing digital efforts. When asked about the funding of and impact generated from digital projects, just 7 percent say their organizations understand the exact value at stake from digital, and only 4 percent of respondents report high returns on their companies’ current investments.
Many executives also agree that digital talent remains a trouble area for their organizations. Only one-third of respondents say at least one in ten of their employees spends any time working on digital projects. Of the challenges companies face in meeting their digital priorities, difficulty finding talent often tops the list. Roughly nine out of ten executives say their companies have some pressing need for digital talent in the next year—especially in analytics, which CIOs and chief technology officers cite even more frequently than average.”
From Woodville Gardens School in South Australia, teachers discuss how gaming is being used in instruction to reach disadvantaged and disenfranchised students. “We’re not necessarily doing what other schools are doing for students, but we’re doing what we think is best for learning for our students.” How does this learning philosophy compare with yours?
![Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://mrmck.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/google-analytics-education-infographic-2014.png?w=842)
In Google Analytics’ “Sharpening Your Skills for the Data-Driven Age” infographic, the case is made for data fluency and its associated skills and the data to back it up. Links to vital resources to dig deeper are included and worth perusing.
Reposted from the Brilliant Report:
“While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.
This is not a story of the familiar “digital divide” – a lack of access to technology for poor and minority children. This has to do, rather, with a phenomenon Neuman and Celano observed again and again in the two libraries: Granted access to technology, affluent kids and poor kids use tech differently. They select different programs and features, engage in different types of mental activity, and come away with different kinds of knowledge and experience.
The unleveling impact of technology also has to do with a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”: the tendency for early advantages to multiply over time. Sociologist Robert Merton coined the term in 1968, making reference to a line in the gospel of Matthew. Now researchers are beginning to document a digital Matthew Effect, in which the already advantaged gain more from technology than do the less fortunate. As with books and reading, the most-knowledgeable, most-experienced, and most-supported students are those in the best position to use computers to leap further ahead.”
Reposted from Washington Monthly:
“Even though the Common Core has been promoted as a means of better preparing America’s children for college and careers, the people who run higher education have, for the most part, gotten involved only late in the process, they and others say. Despite years of blaming each other for precisely the lack of preparation among students that the Common Core is supposed to address, educators at the various levels of the education system have proven tough to bring together. Everybody at the table is thinking, ‘Why should I spend my resources? Why should I spend my time? Am I going to get an award for my work? What’s in it for me?’”
But their comparative absence until now was not a big surprise to Anand Vaishnav, a senior consultant at Education First and project manager of the Core to College initiative, a network of 11 states – Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington – that are trying to align their primary and secondary schools with higher education.
“These sectors are completely different, with completely different cultures and leaders and governing structures and incentives, and the lines aren’t always clear,” said Vaishnav. “The Common Core is a great way to put an end to the blame game.”
Reposted from All Things Education:
“Olivia wrote the following in response to DCPS’s question on the Declaration of Intent to Not Return Form for Resigning or Retiring Teachers: ‘What could we have done to retain you in the district?’
I truly don’t think that there is anything that you could have done to retain me in the district. Our educational philosophies do not align, specifically what those philosophies look like in action, not necessarily how they are written and presented. Although it would seem that your will and proclaimed dedication to educating all students and improving struggling schools are aligned to my own beliefs; stating your beliefs and acting on them can be extremely different.
In my opinion and based on five years of experience in a struggling school (which I believe you now call a “40-40” school), the actions that you have imposed that are supposed to be helping to educate all students and improve the education of underprivileged students are backfiring. I know some of your test scores are going up, but that means so little when morale decreases and discontent from the community, teachers and students increase. Additionally, student behavior continues to worsen as their teachers are “impacted out”, the students are over-tested and the constant change in leadership causes students to lose faith in anyone sticking around long enough to invest in their successes. Your standards are higher while our resources are lower and the teachers are less effective because of constant turnover and poor training programs (Yes, I am referring to Teach for America and DC Teaching Fellows).”
A nice synopsis of the current higher ed cloudscape, including:
– 55% of institutions want increased efficiency, and believe that cloud computing is the answer
– By the end of 2014, 4 out of 5 higher education students are expected to take coursework online
– 68% of institutions use (or will use) the cloud for conferencing and collaboration
– 65% of institutions use (or will use) the cloud for storage
– 65% of institutions use (or will use) the cloud for office/productivity suites
– 62% of institutions use (or will use) the cloud for messaging
– 59% of institutions use (or will use) the cloud for computing power
– MIT, Berkeley, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, Harvard and the University of San Francisco are all using the cloud
– Many popular services and applications are cloud based, like Evernote, Amazon and Prezi
Christine Terry offers valuable insight in how shifts towards personalization in education helps advocates for children with special needs. Very well-written and very pragmatic. Thank you Christine!
Applied Learning. You’ve likely heard the phrase floating around the education world for a while now. Life Hacks and School Hacks are some other prominent ideas making their way to the mainstream. These new terms of art give us a peek inside the new ways forging precedent for using your education as a stepping stone rather than an end goal.
And we should prepare our students for this new reality. For so many families the end goal is getting their kid to college. I caution families that a college degree alone should not be the ultimate goal. Rather, college gives a student a foundational skill set. What they do with that skill set, however, is not something college can teach.
Apply your conventional education to an unconventional path
I recently read an article directed towards law students and new grads–people, like myself, who had intentionally chosen a conventional path…
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Reposted from MindShift:
Sanborn High School in New Hampshire was a mediocre school with mediocre test scores. When the state passed a policy mandating that schools develop a competency-based system — advancing students based on mastery of specific skills and concepts instead of time spent in each grade — school leaders seized on the model as a way to turn the entire school around from the bottom up.
It hasn’t been an easy task and the journey isn’t complete, but in the past five years, Sanborn has moved away from many practices that have long defined traditional high schools, said Brain Stack, Sanborn’s principal. “In some ways we were building this model with the hope it would all work out,” Stack said. Sanborn is one of the few comprehensive public high schools in New Hampshire going after competency-based teaching and assessment aggressively. Most other schools in the state showing leadership in competency are charter schools whose systems don’t easily map to Sanborn’s existing infrastructure and staffing. “It’s not like we are a new school where we can say this is going to be our model and hire accordingly,” Stack said.
A team of five teachers share a group of students, who stay with them for the whole year — a little like a middle school model. Teachers share information about how students are progressing through competencies and have complete control over student schedules for three to four hours each day. They distribute students to different teachers depending on where they need to strengthen their skills. It’s a collaborative, creative approach and it allows teachers to share the responsibility for competencies like collaboration and critical thinking that are needed in every subject area.
Actualization 