EDUCBLOG

Spotted on Bizcommunity

The Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) convened a Media Literacy and Culture of Reading Summit on the weekend of Saturday 28 - 29 March 2009 at the Council Chambers, Alfred Nzo District Municipality, Mt Ayliff, in the Eastern Cape. The theme for the summit was “Basic media literacy education - ‘Constructing Views of Reality'”.

Learners and teachers from 10 schools in the Umzimvubu and Matatiele Municipalities were invited to attend.

Quoting from the press release on bizcommunity: 

The long term goal for MDDA and its partners is to see the Media Literacy and Culture of Reading programme included in the school curriculum and schools producing their own media products. The intention is to assist young people to be more critical consumers and producers of media as well as to stimulate an interest in media as a field of study. It is envisioned that through this initiative a platform will be set to develop media literacy skills which can be used across the curriculum, thereby contributing to the upliftment of educational standards and promotion of a culture of reading. The promotion of a reading culture amongst South Africans will extend the pool of creativity and communication skills in the country. There is an immense hunger amongst South African youth for information which they can use to improve their lives and empower them to have an effective say in governing.

 

Spotted on iLibrarian

Quoting:-

Spotted in the Guardian 

The controversial new GCSE science papers, which feature multiple choice questions, have been accused of 'dumbing down' the subject.

An example of a question:

Sunbeds give off ultraviolet rays. They are used to get a suntan. Sara says: "I know I shouldn't really use them, but I'm going on holiday soon and I don't want to be the only one on the beach without a tan." How could you explain Sara's decision?

1. She is aware of a risk but decides to go ahead
2. She believes the benefit outweighs the risk
3. She is aware of a risk and decides not to go ahead
4. She believes the risk outweighs the benefit

Rest of the questions here.

 

Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal is a free, Web-based scholarly publication about academic advising in higher education.     The journal is published by the Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies.    According to the website the goal of the journal is to provide a mechanism for the rapid dissemination of new ideas about advising and for ongoing discourse about advising issues.  

From the Guardian  

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in Primary School.

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow  schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

It emphasises traditional areas of learning - including phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic - but includes more modern media and web-based skills as well as a greater focus on environmental education.

The plans have been drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, the former Ofsted chief who was appointed by ministers to overhaul the primary school curriculum, and are due to be published next month.

The papers seen by the Guardian are draft plans for the detailed content of each of six core "learning areas" that Rose is proposing should replace the current 13 standalone subject areas.

 The proposals would require

• Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.

• Children to be able to place historical events within a chronology. "By the end of the primary phase, children should have gained an overview which enables them to place the periods, events and changes they have studied within a chronological framework, and to understand some of the links between them." Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones. Schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the second world war, but they would not be required to. The move is designed to prevent duplication with the secondary curriculum, which covers the second world war extensively.

• Less emphasis on the use of calculators than in the current curriculum.

• An understanding of physical development, health and wellbeing programme, which would address what Rose calls "deep societal concerns" about children's health, diet and physical activity, as well as their relationships with family and friends. They will be taught about peer pressure, how to deal with bullying and how to negotiate in their relationships.

The six core areas are: understanding English, communication and languages, mathematical understanding, scientific and technological understanding, human, social and environmental understanding, understanding physical health and wellbeing, and understanding arts and design.

Full story, and comments here  

 

Spotted in the Guardian

The Tamer Institute for Community Education,  an organisation which works with children  promoting reading across the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been awarded the £422,000 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

The prize, which is intended to increase interest in children's literature around the world, is given annually to an author, illustrator or an organisation that encourages reading.

Set up in 1989 in response to the educational needs of the Palestinian community during the first intifada, the Tamer Institute for Community Education works across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with children and young people to develop alternatives and supplements to formal education.

 

Spotted on several alerts including BuaNews Online, Newstoday and AllAfrica.com,  is the news that the Presidency has a new website aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 13, aiming to " educate young minds about government and encourage them to use the internet" (AllAfrica.com). The link to the official statement from the Presidency is here. 

Minister in the Presidency Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said that it was government's intention to continuously improve on the website so that in the future it can include critical information such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of children

Check out the website. 

 

Finance Minister Trevor Manual was speaking at the launch of Census@School Project. 

Quoting:   Minister Manuel said it was important for learners to be involved in the project because the outcomes of the questionnaires would help government take certain decisions.

He was greeted by loud applause by learners at the school when he conceded that Mathematics was a "tough" subject to learn and teach.

However, he highlighted that it was an important proficiency to have. "So much of what we do in life needs some unit of measurement," he told learners.

The minister, responding to a question from a learner about how well he had done in Mathematics at school, said he had battled and did not have high marks until he came across a teacher who helped him.

The objective of the project, which targets learners between Grades 3 and 12, is to enhance the statistical and numerical literacy of learners as well as raise awareness of the national population census.    Here's the link to the Statistics South Africa information about the project.Read the rest of the story from BuaNews Online. 

Spotted on UN Pulse.

The World Bank report on Girls’ Education in the 21st Century: Gender Equality, Empowerment, and Economic Growth has been made available.   It notes that overall primary school enrollments for girls in poor countries jumped from 87 percent in 1990 to 94 percent in 2004, with also more girls than ever before now in secondary school.     

The fulltext is available as a downloadable pdf from both UN Pulse and World Bank  (large file, very slow). 

Spotted in the University World News: -

 " Since the end of apartheid, access to universities for poor students in South Africa has grown phenomenally. Enrolment of (mostly disadvantaged) African and mixed-race students rose by 268% in the decade to 2006. But in the face of low pass rates the debate has moved on from access to success, and government is considering extending three-year degrees to four years to include the foundational learning many under-prepared students need."

Something lightweight on a Thursday afternoon.    Spotted on the South African social bookmarking site,  Muti,  is this link to an article "Most Beautiful Schools in South Africa"    in Property : the property magazine. 

Featured in the article are Herschel,  SACS,  Bishops, Grey College, St Andrew's College, Diocesan School for Girls, St Cyprians, and St John's College. 

Source: Educause Review (vol 31, no 4 Oct - Dec 2008)

The mantra of the information age has been “The more information the better!” But what happens when we search the web and get so much information that we can’t sort through it, let alone evaluate it? Enter the semantic web, or Web 3.0. Among other things, the semantic web makes information more meaningful to people by making it more understandable to machines.

Consider a simple example. If you want to know my mailing address, currently you need to go to my web page and root around until you find it. That’s because the current coding system used to build web pages, largely HTML, displays information without identifying it in any meaningful way. That is, my address is not coded as “an address,” it is simply presented as a series of characters on the screen. Contrast this with a database about your friends that contains a specific column called “mailing address.” Even if your database included millions of entries, locating my address is easy.

Web 3.0 makes the leap from “display only” to meaningful information by tagging information with descriptors like “mailing address.” Further, it allows users to find relationships between tagged information using inference rules and data organizational tools called “ontologies” that provide logic and structure to the information embedded in web pages. As a result, machines can do a lot of the information grunt work currently required of humans. When it comes to a web search, for example, the semantic web makes a reasonable pass at collating, synthesizing, and cross-referencing the results for you. It does this by employing software agents that can locate and combine information from many sources to build meaningful information collages. Simply tell your agent the focus of your interest—whether a person, subject, activity, question, or whatever—and set it to roam the web, finding and distilling information and exchanging information with other agents.

Read the rest of the article here. [pdf version]

 

Spotted on IOL. 

Plans to split the Education Department into two - one focusing on schooling, the other on higher education - are at an advanced stage, African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe has said.

He told members of the Progressive Business Forum in Cape Town that the ANC would finalise the plan in two weeks.

The decision was a response to the crippling skills shortages the country faced, he said.

CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT (CHED)

STELLA  CLARK  TEACHERS’  AWARD*
 
Do you know of an excellent secondary school teacher?

 
If so read further …

 
UCT students and staff are invited to nominate a secondary school teacher, who in your opinion
deserves recognition for years of dedicated teaching to students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds

 
v     The successful teacher will receive a monetary award of R5000, and will be
 expected to give a talk at an award ceremony

v     The school will receive R1000 towards educational resources

v     The UCT staff member or student who nominates the successful teacher will receive
an ipod or R1500 cash equivalent

Each nomination should include:

·         Your name and contact details

·         Teacher’s name and contact details

·         Name and address of school

·         The name and contact details of at least one UCT student who has been taught (whilst at school)
 by the teacher being nominated

·         a detailed motivation providing reasons why in your opinion you believe that the teacher
you are nominating has acted as a role model in encouraging students from educationally
disadvantaged backgrounds to register at UCT.

The motivation should also answer (as far as possible) the following questions:

Can you provide any information on your teacher's results, especially at grade 12 level? eg.
pass rates or distinctions achieved by students
Can you think of any specific classroom teaching method/ form of testing that really helped you
and others to understand and/or enjoy the subject?
§         Can you think of any specific efforts that your teacher made outside of school hours
that helped you and your fellow students?

Can you provide any information about how long your teacher has been teaching his/her subject and at what levels?
§         Can you recall anything that your teacher said or did that motivated you to further your studies?

CLOSING DATE: 31 MARCH 2009

Submit nominations to :

Kathy Erasmus, CHED, Hlanganani Building, kathy.erasmus@.uct.ac.za

 

* Stella Clark was a language development lecturer in the Academic Development Programme in CHED from 1996  until her death in March 2005. Her family and friends have established the Stella Clark Teachers Award to  honour her many years of dedicated service to teaching students from educationally disadvantaged schools in  the Western Cape and at UCT.