John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Hillsborough Community College president Ken Atwater signs a "reverse transfer" agreement Monday as University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft looks on. The agreement allows students who transfer to the University of South Florida to earn credits toward an associate's degree from one of four Tampa Bay colleges.
Students who transfer to the University of South Florida can still earn a degree at their former school.
USF and four Tampa Bay colleges signed a “reverse transfer” agreement Monday.
That means when a student completes a class a USF, the credits can count toward an associate’s degree at Hillsborough Community College, Pasco-Hernando Community College, Polk State College and St. Petersburg College.
HCC president Ken Atwater says students who earn enough credits at USF will automatically receive their degree.
“It’s a great opportunity, because just think about this: This is almost seamless for the students because this will all be electronically done,” Atwater said. ” The students records will be electronically transferred to us. We’ll analyze the records. And if they earned a degree we’ll award the degree.”
Vince Verges with the Florida Department of Education presented a rundown of what’s different about the test on the final day of the FETC education technology conference in Orlando.
The highlights:
1) The test is computerized, and can be taken on a tablet computer as small as 9.5 inches. Verges believed students will be allowed to use a separate keyboard with tablets. Some of the answers will require students to type in their reasoning, including students as young as 3rd grade.
We played with the latest toys and sat in on a few discussions about how schools in Florida and elsewhere are using technology.
Here’s what we learned:
1) Use The Old Bait And Switch
Palm Beach Gardens High School media specialist Deb Svec showed off a product called Cranium CoRE, a quiz program made to look like a television game show.
The growth of the education technology, such as interactive whiteboards, has also put more emphasis on researching which products work. Experts say the best reviews still come from classroom instructors.
Today’s status symbol in classroom technology is the interactive white board.
For teachers who have one, it’s a flashy way to rev up lesson plans and add content from throughout the Internet. Teachers who don’t have one are envious.
But Duke University business professor Aaron Chatterji asks whether interactive white boards actually improve instruction.
“My mother’s a teacher,” Chatterji said. “She has a smart board in her classroom and a lot of teachers have those across the country. To my knowledge, we don’t have great data to know whether smart boards actually make a difference.
“As we invest all this money on new technology and new hardware, we ought to know if we’re spending our money on the right things.”
It’s a chance for Florida school districts to learn more about two big approaching changes: The switch to new, tougher education standards known as Common Core and Florida’s requirement that schools begin using more digital instruction materials.
StateImpact Florida reporter John O’Connor spoke with Jennifer Womble, who helps organize the event.
“There’s been a transition from technology being a tool on the side of education,” Womble said, “to technology being completely integrated into the education day.”
When 12th grade English teacher Mariolga Locklin’s students started thinking Shakespeare was nothing but an old fogey, she told them to pull out their phones and pull up Google.
A quick search proved The Bard was occasionally bawdy.
Locklin found allowing her students at Miami Palmetto Senior High School to use their smart phones and other high-tech devices in class kept them involved.
“I’m techy. I have an iPhone,” Locklin said. “I’m always looking things up.
“When we have vocabulary, they prefer to look up the words on their phone,” she said. “They have their phone out anyway, and I just turn to them and say ‘look this up.’”
About 10,000 of Locklin’s fellow techy teachers will gather in Orlando this week for FETC, one of the nation’s largest education technology conferences. The 33-year-old conference used to be called the Florida Education Technology Conference, organizers said, but was renamed as the event grew and began to draw a national following.
Chancellor of Public Schools Pam Stewart explained how Common Core standards are different during a discussion Wednesday night at St. Petersburg College.
Florida is one of 45 states and the District of Columbia to adopt new, tougher education standards. The standards, known as Common Core, requires students to prove what they know — but also to show how they know it.
Educators across the state are preparing parents and students for the switch and trying to explain how the new standards will work. The new standards will be fully in place by the fall of 2014.
Pam Stewart, the chancellor of public schools at the Florida Department of Education, told a story Wednesday at a forum at St. Petersburg College to try to provide an example.
Pinellas County school superintendent Michael Grego discusses the switch to new state education standards Wednesday night.
Florida schools are in the midst of switching to new, tougher education standards adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.
Known as Common Core State Standards, educators say the new requirements will not only ask students what they know but require them to demonstrate how they know it.
Wednesday night, St. Petersburg College hosted a discussion about the switch to Common Core and what it will mean for Florida students.
Here’s five things that jumped out to us as we listened:
1) Schools have a lot of public relations work to do.
Most public displeasure with Florida’s accountability system centers on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test — and the consequences of what test scores mean for students, teachers, schools and districts.
Between new technology needed for tougher state standards and Gov. Scott's proposed teacher raises, budget writers are looking at more than $1 billion in education budget requests.
The new standards include a new, computerized standardized test, so schools need the network infrastructure and computers or tablets to handle the annual testing rush.
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