Some Concerns About Facebook

“Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet?” asks novelist Stephen Marche in this troubling article in The Atlantic. He quotes John Cacioppo (University of Chicago’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience): “If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, it increases social capital… It’s like a car. You can drive it to pick up your friends. Or you can…

Can Parent Involvement Be a Negative Factor in a School?

In this American Journal of Education article, Linn Posey-Maddox (University of Wisconsin/Madison) explores the phenomenon of middle- and upper-middle-class parents raising funds, writing grants, and volunteering in their children’s urban schools. The contributions from these parents can make a significant difference to school quality in tight budget times, providing art and music…

How Educators Sometimes “Enable” Students (an Oldie but Goodie)

(Originally titled “ ‘Enabling’ Undermines Responsibility in Students”)

In this 1989 Educational Leadership article, Wisconsin social studies teacher Steven Landfried writes candidly about teachers who are “enablers” – they let students (and colleagues) off the hook by allowing them to be lazy, avoid responsibilities, and miss out on opportunities for growth.…

Let’s End the Administrator War on Mobile Devices

Standardized Tests & Comparing Student Scores: Relics of 20th Century Ed Systems

Making School Work for Mobile Students and Others

As a public school student, I was required to read Ethan Fromefour times. My family moved frequently, and, as we crisscrossed the United States, I was regularly thrown…

Every Friday on Twitter, Tweeters will make recommendations based on their personal experience of exceptional people to follow on Twitter. As an educator, if I follow those recommendations I will almost certainly improve the quality and quantity of tweets I get on education since educators are the people who I follow for my own Personal Learning Network. Each of these tweets of recommendation will be tagged with the telltale hashtag #FF. This identifies them as such a recommendation and…

Weeping in the Workplace

Should educators cry at work? asks Allison Vaillancourt (University of Arizona) in this Chronicle of Higher Education article. Is it a sign of weakness and lack of control? Is it unprofessional? Vaillancourt thinks not, and cites a new book (It’s Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace by Anne Kreamer, Random House, 2013) that found 41 percent of women and 9 percent of men have wept in the…