The unique self-paced, competency-based model will allow students to start classes anytime and earn credit for what they already know. Students will be able to demonstrate college-level competencies based on material they already learned in school, on the job, or on their own, as soon as they can prove that they know it. By taking...
Category: economy
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Does the fate of America rest on how well our children bubble in answer sheets?
does the fate of the nation rest on how well 9- and 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets? I don’t think so. Neither does British economist, S. J. Prais. We look at the test scores and worry about the nation’s economic performance. Prais looks at the economic performance and worries about the validity of the test...
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The percentage of low-skilled manufacturing jobs continues to decline
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
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We need to foster a diversity of talents
First, much research has shown that what makes a nation or a community prosperous is a diversity of talents (Florida 2002; Chua 2007). Even honeybee colonies with more genetic diversity are more productive (Mattila and Seeley 2007). A society cannot rely only on one type of talent to meet the challenges of the sophisticated, complex,...
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Iowa’s anemic Internet access
3 Megabits per second (Mbps). That’s the peak download speed of Sprint’s 3G mobile phone service. That’s also how Iowa and the United States define ‘broadband’ Internet access: a minimum of 3 Mbps download speed and 0.75 Mbps upload speed. Only 66% of Iowans have access to even this minimal level of ‘broadband’ in their homes....
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Do your graduates have a what-they-have-done file?
Shawn Cornally says: I asked the lead tech developers of several Cedar Rapids companies what they look for when hiring, and they all responded with, “The applicant’s Github [open source] portfolio.” Not their GPA. Not their test scores or transcripts. Their what-have-you-done files. The only way a student can have a Github portfolio is if they have...
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Which schools are the true ‘miracles?’
Let’s imagine that we lived in an era in which change was occurring incredibly rapidly. An era in which our information landscape was undergoing drastic transformations into new, previously-unimaginable forms. An era in which our economic landscape was destroying rock-solid, stable livelihoods due to threats from geographically-distant workers and/or devices that replaced not just human...
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The declining economic value of routine cognitive work
Workforce data show that U.S. employees continue to do more non-routine cognitive and interpersonal work. [Note: these data tend to be fairly similar for most developed countries, not just the U.S.] Fewer and fewer employment opportunities exist in America for both routine cognitive work and manual labor, and the gap is widening over the decades....
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What helps students get good jobs?
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
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Schools aren’t preparing freelancers and entrepreneurs
[I’m back. I took an actual winter break. It was awesome. I highly encourage it!] Freelancing is on the rise, with perhaps as many as a third of American workers now engaged in some kind of freelancing work. Of course this has enormous implications for overall employment, health benefits, and workforce and job stability. Dennis...
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