A group of academics signed off on a letter against school league tables. The stated logic may work in an academic research setting but is inappropriate to apply to the real world. We should instead publish the measurements, improve the measurements and their context over time and, most importantly, focus energy and resources on understanding …
Continue reading “Measure then fix – why 107 academics are wrong”
Michael Moore-Jones, a student at Scots College, nails it: “I’m a massive fan of the Khan Academy. I use it daily to learn content for a large number of my subjects. And I completely buy into the Khan Academy goal of “flipping the classroom” – ie. letting people learn the content of the subject from …
Continue reading “It’s time to flip education – who will be first?”
In an article in the NYTimes that focuses mainly on Shanghai’s stellar results we find a table, and in that table we find NZ’s education test results. This is the PISA test of 15 year olds. I’ve often said that NZ has a good average education, while the USA has a much wider distribution, and …
Amazing. Could any institution in New Zealand dream of doing something like this? They walk the line between sincere cheese and self deprecating irony beautifully.
Harry Simperingham, Ben Kornfield and Tessa Smith – remember these names. They are the three New Zealanders that will be part of the new class of 2012 at Yale University in Spetember. That’s a fantastic achievement – so well done to all. I briefly met both Tessa and Ben at the Whiffenpoofs event in Auckland …
Continue reading “Congratulations to three new kiwi Yale students”
Two astonishing reports on education from McKinsey. The first shows the effect that the USA’s poor schools have had on their economy – and was just released. It finds the economic loss in the order of US$2,400 billion to $4,200 billion of GDP in 2008 alone. That’s more than enough to compensate for the current …
Continue reading “Two McKinsey pieces on education – do read them”
Lance Wiggs 