Is social networking harming students’ grades? The quick answer might be yes, because it distracts students from studying. And in fact, a 2009 study at The Ohio State University found that students who admitted logging onto Facebook several times a day to check status updates, correspond with friends and relatives, or join common-interest groups, had a GPA as much as a grade lower than non-users. [...]
A recent phenomenon known as the "Glee Effect" is taking this country’s school music programs by storm. Show choirs—song-and-dance troupes that saw their beginnings in the Midwest years ago—are quickly becoming the new groups in schools that everyone (or almost everyone) wants to join. These music groups have been gaining in popularity at many high schools across the country as a result of the popular [...]
I can still remember the packets elementary teachers handed out to us on the last day of school. Along with our report card, we were each given a long list of books, separated by grade level with a cover page: “Suggested Summer Reading.” Although other kids usually threw theirs into the garbage, or onto the floor of the bus, or simply left them [...]
The dip in the U.S. economy is having an effect on class sizes. As state revenues go down, the number of students in an average classroom is going up. As a result, classrooms across the country will be more crowded when school starts in the fall. A recent survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that 44 percent of school districts [...]
I only graduated high school two years ago, but my learning experience has already become outdated. In a classroom at Emerson College this past year, I was asked to use social media, much to my bewilderment. My professor set up a crowdsourcing website—a form of media I had never even heard of—for us to compile each day’s notes. Crowdsourcing has been used for many [...]
Parents are making their voices heard regarding the amount of homework their children are bringing home each day. Many school officials are starting to listen. How much is too much? A Duke University psychology professor says students should have 10 minutes of homework each evening for each grade they are in school. So a fifth grader would have 50 minutes of homework a night. As [...]
The American Student Association of Community Colleges (ASACC) seeks to enhance student leadership by helping student governments at member schools address issues that affect students. Founded in 1984 by nine community colleges in the Great Lakes area, ASACC has been steadily growing and making a tangible impact on education legislation. On its website, ASACC credits itself with the passing of Section 127 of [...]
An extremely popular topic among the education community at present concerns new developments in technology and their implementation in American classrooms. Most media coverage on such topics cites computerized textbooks, electronic homework platforms and instructional video games as the teaching methods of the future. To this end, many public schools are beginning to embrace these new methods as their sole educational tools, even [...]
President Barack Obama is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment in the nation's community colleges, a $12 billion effort over ten years to help the two-year institutions reach, teach, and train more people for "the jobs of the future." Some of the money could be available by the 2010 budget year that begins Oct. 1. Half a billion, or $500 million, would go toward online education [...]
For over 50 years, Advanced Placement (AP) testing has been a way for students to earn college credit while still in high school. The tests have been geared mainly toward the memorization of facts, and with thousands of pages of content that is all fair game on the exam, teachers rarely have time to cover any one topic in depth for fear that [...]