Tag: education

  • How Free Online College Courses Are Changing the Game for Early Childhood Educators

    How Free Online College Courses Are Changing the Game for Early Childhood Educators

    BEAVER, Utah — On a recent morning in early October, when the day is in full swing, Dacie Derbidge settles onto a bean bag in a back corner at Little Leapers, the early learning center she opened two years ago, and hoists two girls onto her lap, balancing one on each thigh.

    The girls, both toddlers, are immediately entranced by Derbidge’s animated reading of “Big Smelly Bear,” a children’s book by Britta Teckentrup. As she moves through the pages, Derbidge switches tones, adds inflection, pauses for dramatic effect and occasionally interrupts herself to ask the girls questions about the plot, testing their comprehension.

    Behind her, and on a shelf in front of her, are signs that spell out the word “library,” with Spanish translations beneath them: “biblioteca.”

    Across the room, next to where assistant director Erica Shotwell is teaching four of the children how to play bingo, is a poster spelling out the daily schedule—free play, then snack time, then outside play, then circle time and so on—recently updated to feature an image of what each activity looks like.

    Daily Schedule at Little Leapers
    Images on the daily schedule help children visualize upcoming activities (Emily Tate / EdSurge)

    These subtle, yet significant visual and auditory cues are woven into the learning experience to support the children’s development—from bolstering language to fostering independence. Shotwell and Derbidge, the director of Little Leapers, have gradually remade the center and revamped their own instructional techniques over the last 10 months, thanks to experiential lessons and eye-opening discussions with peers that were made possible through Utah’s statewide rollout of free college courses for early childhood educators.

    “It has changed the whole way we speak to the children and how our interactions take place within the classroom,” Derbidge says. “It has totally changed the dynamic of our center.”

    Derbidge grew up in the small mountain town of Beaver, located about 200 miles south of Salt Lake City. After graduating high school in 1999, she held a series of positions working with children, eventually opening a home-based early learning program for children from birth through age five in the mid-2000s.

    In a town like Beaver, which is home to 3,000 people and a single stop light, everyone knows one another, Derbidge says. Families in the community knew her and trusted her with their children. As a result, her program took off. She was soon serving 16 children, unusually high for a home-based provider, and had to hire additional staff.

    During her nearly eight years as a home-based child care provider, Derbidge developed an understanding of just how critical it is for early learners to get a high-quality education. “I don’t think people realize how important it is to read to them, and sing to them, and talk to them, even as an infant,” she explains.

    Yet she worried that, with so few child care options in town, many families were missing out on those early learning opportunities for their children. “I knew some of the kids weren’t getting what they needed. I saw a need for a deeper education in early child care” in the Beaver community, as well as within her own program.

    On a whim, Derbidge decided to tour some buildings in town.

    “It was time to step it up, and that’s when I was like, ‘OK, we’re just going to do it,’” she explains.

    She bought an old Jehovah’s Witness worship center and turned it into Little Leapers in June 2017.

    During her first year at the center, her enrollment numbers more than doubled to a total of 45 part- and full-time students, and she beefed up her staff, which now includes Shotwell, two other full-time teachers and a few part-time teachers.

    Erica Shotwell Bingo at Little Leapers
    Erica Shotwell, assistant director of Little Leapers, teaches some of the children to play a fall-themed game of bingo. (Emily Tate / EdSurge)

    At first, Derbidge was just trying to keep the operation running; she wasn’t zeroing in on the curriculum or the children’s learning outcomes yet. But as she settled into the new center—and attended more trainings as part of the 20 hours of annual professional development the state requires of its educators—Derbidge realized that the students at Little Leapers weren’t leaving prepared for kindergarten.

    While Derbidge and her staff were considering how they could “bring in a more enriched learning environment for the kids,” the state was rolling out a suite of competency-based courses developed by the EarlyEdU Alliance, a collaboration of early childhood education experts led by the University of Washington. The courses were created to make higher education more accessible to early childhood educators and improve the quality of teaching in the field.

    Other states, including Nebraska and Alaska, have recently introduced the EarlyEdU courses as well, but Utah is furthest along and, so far, the only one to complete the pilot phase.

    Utah has few educational requirements for early childhood educators, most of whom only need to complete 2.5 hours of training prior to service and are not required to have completed a degree or credential. Only about 4 percent of early childhood educators in Utah have either an associate or bachelor’s degree, and just 10 percent have earned their Child Development Associate (CDA) credential, says Kellie Kohler, the state’s Head Start collaboration director and one of the people responsible for getting the EarlyEdU partnership off the ground in Utah.

    State leaders are trying to change those stats. In 2016, state officials began to discuss creating pathways for educators to obtain accessible, affordable degrees in the field. The governor’s office and the Utah Head Start Association joined forces on the effort and began to build out the EarlyEdU platform, hosted for free by the Utah Education Network on Canvas, a learning management system. In fall 2017, the first Head Start pilots began. The following spring, the Office of Child Care joined the collaboration and hosted its own pilot course.

    As of this fall, the courses are fully implemented. So far, 64 educators across Utah have completed an EarlyEdU course, 11 of whom have gone on to take one or both of the other offerings. Another 36 educators are on track to finish a course this fall.

    Many more have started the courses but eventually withdrew, often due to scheduling conflicts or demanding assignments. But Heather Thomas, a professional development specialist in Utah’s Office of Child Care, says her team is getting better about communicating “what the course entails up front” and retaining the students who enroll.

    Thomas adds that priority is given to particular groups and regions where access to the courses would have outsized impact: leaders like Derbidge who are positioned to make center-wide changes based on what they learn, rural areas with few high-quality child care options and child care facilities serving children from low-income families.

    The state offers three courses in early childhood: Applied Child Development and Family Engagement, Positive Behavioral Support for Young Children, and Supporting Language and Literacy Development in Preschool. The courses—each 15 weeks long and offered in the spring and fall—are not meant to replace a degree, but rather to introduce early childhood educators to higher education by allowing them to earn up to nine college credits at minimal personal cost. Educators can take them for free, aside from an optional $63 fee to add the credits from Southern Utah University to their transcripts.

    “It’s a stepping stone, a way for people to get their feet wet,” Thomas says of the courses. “It’s a way to try it out without too much risk.”

    When an email about the courses first made its way to Derbidge, who has her CDA and a National Administrator Credential for child care center directors, but no college degree, she was ripe for the opportunity. After talking with her staff, she and Shotwell enrolled in the language and literacy course for spring 2019.

    Video is a hallmark of the online courses. Educators record themselves in the classroom and upload the videos for discussion with classmates and feedback from instructors.

    At the start of the language and literacy course, for example, educators upload a video of themselves reading two books to the children during class story time. Mid-way through the semester, and for a third time at the end of the semester, they upload another video reading the same books. Each time, they incorporate new strategies they’ve picked up in class, such as emphasizing alliteration, repeating letter sounds and pointing out rhyming words.

    Derbidge recalls her experience playing back earlier videos from the course. “We would go back and watch our last video to see how we have grown,” she explains. “It was crazy—the change. I mean, even the way the children interacted with the story. They were way more interested.”

    And in addition to learning from their instructor, Derbidge and Shotwell say they have taken note of dozens of ideas and approaches from their classmates, who are other early childhood educators living and working across Utah, and have already integrated them into their own practices.

    “We’re always like, ‘Oh, we’re saving that idea! Oh, we are trying that tomorrow!’ And I think that’s part of it—our interaction back and forth with the other teachers,” notes Derbidge, who lives in a community with few other early childhood educators.

    Since taking the language and literacy course, the Little Leapers teachers read more than children’s books to their kids; they introduce menus and maps as well. To support their bilingual students, they have also added Spanish translations to the labels they use in their classrooms, from posters with shapes, numbers and colors, to bins full of toys and different stations or “centers” in the room.

    This fall, Derbidge and Shotwell are taking their second EarlyEdU course, on positive behavioral supports, where they upload videos of themselves teaching or interacting with children nearly every other week, Shotwell says.

    Halfway through the course, they’ve already made some changes: rearranging their classroom to eliminate open spaces for running, making their centers smaller, developing a routine around transitions, and promoting self-regulation and expression.

    Little Leapers Hot Potato
    While Shotwell changes diapers across the room, Derbidge plays hot potato with the children to signal the transition between snack time and outside play. (Emily Tate / EdSurge)

    That course is also where they got the idea to put a photo of each activity on the daily schedule. The visual cues and other strategies, like singing during transitions, help the children “mentally prepare” for what’s coming, Shotwell says.

    Shotwell has also used some lessons from the positive behavior course to work closely with one of the girls in her class who frequently acts out, often by hitting, kicking or screaming. Shotwell now spends one-on-one time with the girl in the mornings and assigns her jobs—like being in charge of the soap dispenser when the class washes their hands—to give her a sense of responsibility.

    “That has helped so much with her behaviorally,” Shotwell notes.

    Erica Shotwell Little Leapers Outside
    During outside play, Shotwell helps several of the children use sand and water to develop their sensory skills. (Emily Tate / EdSurge)

    According to Derbidge and Shotwell, the EarlyEdU courses have effectively overhauled the instruction at Little Leapers, transforming it into a learning environment where kids leave better prepared and further developed than when they arrived.

    And it’s not just the staff who think so. In October, Derbidge got word from the state that, after conducting on-site observations and evidence-based evaluations of Little Leapers, the Office of Child Care had issued the center a “high quality” rating, the second-highest of four tiers in Utah’s new Child Care Quality System. Derbidge attributes the score to many of the changes she and her staff have made as a result of the EarlyEdU courses.

    “The word we use all the time now is ‘intentional,’” Derbidge says. “We are being intentional. Everything goes deeper than it did before.”

    Kaynak: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-11-12-how-free-online-college-courses-are-changing-the-game-for-early-childhood-educators

  • Cybrary Lands $15 Million Series B Round to Train Cybersecurity Workforce

    Cybrary Lands $15 Million Series B Round to Train Cybersecurity Workforce

    Ryan Corey remembers when his business plan would get him and his team laughed out of a room with potential investors. Back in 2015, when the Cybrary platform for cybersecurity learning was founded, it didn’t matter that Corey had amassed over 175,000 signups in six months.

    Investors didn’t like his business model, based on attracting users with free lessons. And it probably didn’t help that his website was a work in progress. “When you give something away, they tend to cringe,” says Corey, the 39-year-old CEO. “And our look was so ugly. But users were using the crap out of it.”

    Now, his company, Cybrary (that’s cyber library) has grown to more than 2.6 million users, with 2,000 new users a day. The company claims to offer thousands of hours of courses and hundreds of hands-on learning exercises in its catalog.

    Those are numbers that investors can’t mock. Cybrary has landed $15 million in a Series B funding round. BuildGroup led the deal, with participation from Arthur Ventures and Gula Tech Adventures. As part of the deal, Gray Hall of BuildGroup and Ron Gula of Gula Tech join the company’s board of directors.

    The College Park, Md.-based company will use the new round toward hiring more employees, adding more content and improving a network of creators and industry subject matter experts that have helped populate the platform with lessons and mentorship services, Corey says. The company has raised a total of $23 million to date.

    Cybrary’s growth is perhaps partly owed to a boom in the cybersecurity field. Data breaches command headlines and can keep executives up at night. IBM and Ponemon Institute reported this year that breaches cost U.S. companies $8.19 million on average.

    The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects job openings for information security analysts to grow 32 percent from 2018 to 2028, faster than the average for all occupations. And online jobs board Indeed reported that the U.S. saw a 7 percent increase in the share of cybersecurity job postings from 2017 to 2018. India saw a 40 percent jump.

    Other companies have also seen an opportunity in the industry. Coding bootcamp Lambda School said it’d use a round of funding raised this year toward adding cybersecurity classes. And coding bootcamp Trilogy’s cybersecurity courses helped sell it as an acquisition for online program manager 2U in April.

    More than 60 employees now make up Cybrary, Corey says. In particular, he wants to double the number of engineers on staff to 24 over the next two years.

    The free version of Cybrary comes with introductory courses, syllabi, assessments and a live chat feature to help users. A premium license, which costs $99 per month, gives access to the entire course catalog, live online training, practice exams, scenario-based virtual labs and a mentor network.

    The company also offers a service to train teams of employees for businesses, a package that includes analytics around how the team has progressed.

    The platform’s content ranges from a single 10-minute course to a six-month program, where users are expected to commit 10 hours a week to prepare for jobs like network engineer and penetration tester.

    Corey considers the experts network part of his company’s secret sauce. In a field like cybersecurity, having the most updated lessons is pivotal to pleasing customers. “That group of people is the most valuable thing to me,” he says.

    About 1,700 experts make up a network of mentors, instructors and content creators. Course instructors are paid a one-time fee for content. Others sign up to access more Cybrary content or to build a reputation as an expert within cybersecurity.

    Before he became a member of the mentor and instructor network, William Carlson started as a free user of Cybrary, which he came across while looking for ways to prepare for an information systems security professional certification exam.

    Carlson, a 38-year-old IT and cybersecurity director in the Fort Worth area of Texas, says the exams require years of previous experience, cost hundreds of dollars and can last up to three hours. “I was not only looking to learn, but I wanted to know my blind spots—what did I know, and what didn’t I know,” he says.

    He passed the exam on his first try and used Cybrary resources to gain certifications as an information security manager and payment card industry professional. Carlson decided to pay for a subscription for the virtual labs and mentor network, communicating with mentors through Slack and Zoom calls. He decided to join the expert network to help others who are uncertain about breaking into the industry.

    Cybrary is not currently profitable, but is on its way, Corey says. He said competition isn’t much of a concern. Still, he’s open to acquiring another company. “If a piece of that network grows enough, we’d have to make a move.”

    Kaynak: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-11-13-cybrary-lands-15-million-series-b-round-to-train-cybersecurity-workforce

  • School curriculum slimmed down

    School curriculum slimmed down

    İngiltere’de “Evrim Teorisi” ilkokullarda okutulacak

    By Angela Harrison Education correspondent, BBC News

    State-funded schools have to follow the national curriculum
    State-funded schools have to follow the national curriculum

    The government has published its plans to slim down the national curriculum followed by primary and secondary schools in England.

    Foreign languages will be compulsory for older primary school children.

    And computing will replace the more general information and communication technology (ICT) subject, as expected.

    The new curriculum sets out detailed “essential knowledge” expected for core subjects of English, maths and science from children aged from four to 16.

    But schools are to have more freedom in what they teach on other subjects, so there is less detail on those.

    The new courses for children up to the age of 14 are due to come in from autumn next year. GCSE-level changes are due to come in a year later, tied in with changes to GCSEs for some subjects.

    The curriculum has to be followed by state-funded schools that are not academies.

    More and more schools – especially secondaries – have become academies. These are free to set their own curriculum, although the government says the national framework it is setting out can be a guide for them.

    The new draft proposals for the curriculum say all state-funded schools must provide an education that is “balanced and broadly based and which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life”.

    All schools have to publish their curriculum online.

    ‘British progress’

    The government says the new curriculum will promote more rigour in mathematics, where there will be a greater emphasis on arithmetic, while scientific programmes will be “more ambitious” with a stronger focus on scientific knowledge.

    For the first time, primary school children will have to taught about evolution.

    In English, officials say the curriculum should “embody higher standards of literacy” and have a new emphasis on the great works of literature.

    Another aim is “to develop their [children’s] love of literature through reading for enjoyment” and to help them “appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage”.

    As expected, there is also an aim to help children learn confidence in public speaking and debate.

    In history, children should be given a clear “narrative of British progress” with an emphasis of heroes and heroines of the past, the proposals say.

    As expected, children will learn a complete history of Britain under the new curriculum.

    The youngest children, as today, will be taught about key historical figures and from seven, youngsters will be expected to learn a detailed chronological history of Britain, from the Stone Age through to the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

    In geography, there will be a focus on using maps and learning key geographical features – from capital cities to the world’s great rivers.

    Computing replaces ICT and this will include online safety and programming.

    The plans for children from four to 14 are out for consultation and a further consultation on GCSE-level changes will follow later.

    via BBC News – School curriculum slimmed down.

  • John Steinbeck attracts the wrath of parents in Turkey

    John Steinbeck attracts the wrath of parents in Turkey

    John Steinbeck attracts the wrath of parents in Turkey

    Both Of Mice and Men and José Mauro de Vasconcelos’s My Sweet Orange Tree were declared unfit for educational use – though luckily the culture minister had other ideas

    Kaya Genç

    The Guardian

    East of Sweden … John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men faced isolated calls for censorship in Turkey.

    East of Sweden … John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men faced isolated calls for censorship in Turkey. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

    A few months into my secondary school in Turkey I was assigned to read three books that changed my life for ever: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos and The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. Their sexuality, slang and angst were hardly news to those of us already familiar with such matters. What impressed us were the adult minds who had the ability to put our childhood problems into perspective.

    Last week, the first two of these books were in the headlines of Turkish newspapers for all the wrong reasons. A parent in Istanbul had complained about Vasconcelos’s tale on the grounds that it was obscene, and called for the teacher who assigned it to face an investigation; another in Izmir found Steinbeck’s work unfit for educational use and wanted parts of the text removed.

    The culture minister condemned the censorship calls as tactless (both books are on the education ministry’s list of recommendations). His choice of words seemed perfect: the complaints showed a lack of sensitivity in dealing with children and their issues. Zezé, the protagonist of My Sweet Orange Tree, is the five-year-old son of an impoverished Brazilian family who wants to grow up to become “a poet with a bow tie”. In Of Mice and Men, two men working in a ranch visit some prostitutes. I am yet to be convinced that any reader of Steinbeck will end up at the local brothel after reaching the devastating finale of that short novel. Nor can I believe Zezé’s use of slang will make eccentric poets out of readers (although I sometimes wish it did).

    Perhaps the problem has partly to do with etymology. In Turkish the word for literature, edebiyat, comes from the word edep, which may be translated as decorum or manners. In secondary school, it is precisely those works that question decorum that become favourites with pupils. These titles make adults out of them; attempts to ban such books would constitute banning adulthood, which is absurd. Now all I hope is that nobody thinks of filing a complaint against Holden, the true teenage rebel.

    via John Steinbeck attracts the wrath of parents in Turkey | Books | The Guardian.

  • Turkey and Kosovo build educational ties

    Turkey and Kosovo build educational ties

    Turkey funds schools in Kosovo, and Kosovo students are flocking to Turkish universities.

    By Muhamet Brajshori for Southeast European Time in Pristina — 28/6/2011

    ”]1,000 students from Kosovo are currently enrolled in Turkish universities. [Reuters]With help from Turkey, the city of Lipjan in Kosovo is becoming an important educational centre. In 2000, Turkish investors opened the Mehmet Akif College, the first private school built after the armed conflict in Kosovo. Covering kindergarten through 12th grade, it provides instruction in Albanian, Turkish, and English, and also has campuses in Prizren and Gjakova.

    The Turkish government also plans to open a university in Lipjan, pledging to invest more than 100m euros in its construction. The municipality has already earmarked 400 acres for what the mayor says will be the most advanced university in the region.

    As projects such as these demonstrate, Turkey and Kosovo have developed a strong relationship in the educational sector. Not only is Turkey involved in building up Kosovo’s educational infrastructure, but many young people from Kosovo are going to Turkey for their university education.

    Privately funded scholarships, as well as those provided by the Turkish government, have made this possible for a growing number of students. Cultural affinities between the two countries also provide comfort for students looking for a home away from home.

    Compared to their European and US counterparts, Turkish universities are much more affordable, but still offer a quality education. According to the Kosovo Embassy in Ankara, approximately 1,000 Kosovo students are currently enrolled in Turkish institutions of higher education.

    Dritero Bala, a medical student from Kosovo, considers studying in Turkey a positive investment in his life due to the high quality of education and the friendships he has made.

    Many agree that Turkey’s welcoming atmosphere, as well as its shared culture and religion with Kosovo, make it an ideal place to study.

    “It was easy to adapt to life in Turkey since I was born in Prizren, which has a large Turkish population and a rich history of Ottoman traditions,” says Bala. “Whenever I tell Turks that I am from Kosovo, they welcome me warmly with the response ‘bizim toprak’ (our land).”

    Fellow medical student Blerim Miftiu, currently at the University of Istanbul, explains that her prior knowledge of Turkey, as well as the proximity between Istanbul and Kosovo, led her to choose to study there.

    “Being an Albanian in Turkey is no different than being a Turk from Istanbul,” says Miftiu, adding that she “never felt like a stranger in Istanbul”.

    Like many, however, she worries that the situation back home will make it difficult to find employment despite the high quality of schooling she has received.

    “I will specialise in nine months and my plan is to go back to Kosovo. However, considering that nothing is changing there, I wonder whether I should stay. Hopefully I will be able to find a job in Kosovo which allows me to utilise the skills I acquired in Turkey,” Miftiu said.

    Turkish Ambassador to Kosovo Songul Ozan says investment in Kosovo’s education system remains a pillar of bilateral relations.

    Commentator Fatlum Sadiku agrees. “There is no doubt that every month Kosovo and Turkey have closer relations. Turkey is investing in tangible areas that improve the lives of citizens and prepare them for the future,” he said.

    This content was commissioned for SETimes.com.

    via Turkey and Kosovo build educational ties (SETimes.com).

  • Education of Turkish children in Germany overshadows Angela Merkel visit

    Education of Turkish children in Germany overshadows Angela Merkel visit

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has arrived in Turkey for an official visit overshadowed by disagreements over Ankara’s plans to join the EU.

    Merkel

    Mrs Merkel opposes full EU membership for Turkey, which began negotiations to become a member in 2005.

    There are also disagreements over the education of Turkish children in Germany in the Turkish language.

    Germany is Turkey’s biggest trading partner, and nearly three million Turks live in Germany.

    Turkey’s sometimes fraught relationship with the European Union won’t be helped by this visit.

    After months of avoiding the subject, Chancellor Merkel has chosen this moment to revive her idea of offering Turkey what she calls a privileged partnership with the EU, rather than full membership.

    Mrs Merkel has stressed that she does see integration as possible in up to 28 of the 35 so-called chapters of EU law with which Turkey has to comply before it can become a full member of the union.

    But her proposal has been firmly rejected by the Turkish government as a breach of the terms agreed when membership negotiations began five years ago.

    ‘Insulted’

    “Such a thing as privileged partnership does not exist,” said Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s minister for European affairs.

    “So we do not take that option seriously because there is no legal foundation of it. At times I feel insulted for being offered something which does not exist.”

    The chancellor does have plenty of other topics to discuss here, including Iran’s nuclear programme.

    Turkey has recently strengthened its relations with Iran and opposes the tougher sanctions threatened by Western governments.

    But their differences over EU membership will cast a shadow over any common ground they do find during this visit.

    BBC