There are no limitations for what you can accomplish. That’s the message Keith Poston from the Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences imparted to 300 middle and high school students, teachers and parents assembled this week at the museum for the fourth STEM Career Showcase for Students
It's Digital Citizenship Week (#DigCitWeek, #DigCit) and Connected Educators Month, so in today's post we're focusing on how connected educators can teach digital citizenship. (Phew, is that enough buzzwords for you?) One of the best resources for teachers is the internet. And with the increased prevalence of mobile devices in education, internet
A common fallacy in educational technology is the assumption that since kids know how to use phones better than their parents do, they also know how to use them to learn. Almost any educator can tell you this is not the case. Technology often wins in the battle for students' attention in the
Last December, The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law to ensure opportunity for all students in the United States. As part of this federal legislation, states now have the flexibility to design their own accountability systems following certain parameters outlined in ESSA. These accountability systems include academic and non-academic indicators. By
Are you happy with the ROI on your analytics investments? Recently we’ve seen an upswing in organisations investing in analytical platform capabilities. One can assume the goal of these investments is to turn transactional data into a strategic asset. However, analytics alone will not do it. Unless your organisation is
Recently, I was talking to a director of analytics from a large telecommunications company, and I asked her, “Do you think we have a skills shortage?” She replied, “NO, I think we’re just looking in the wrong place.” I wanted to hear more as this analytics expert may have just
The SAS Curriculum Pathways team visits a number of schools throughout the year--rural, urban, small, large, low- and high-performing. Given the nature of our work, we pay close attention to technology integrations. Do teachers share device carts? Are there computer labs? Are students encouraged to use their own devices? Is
As teachers, we lean into our experience. We trust our judgment about students and our instruction. We trade teaching stories with colleagues. And increasingly, we examine student growth data that illuminates our practice and occasionally suggests we refine our approach to individual students. In the past decade, states and districts
Reporting can reveal last year’s graduation rates or this semester’s completion rates at a local community college. But drilling further into that data to ask why students aren’t graduating or why they aren’t enrolling requires more complex analysis. At Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, college administrators and professors are
Growing up, my parents were obdurately hands-off when it came to influencing my and my siblings’ career interests. This may explain why, at age 6, my sister announced she would be pursuing full-time work as a butterfly. (To her credit, she currently manages a garden shop, which for a
What information should you make easily available from the top page of your website? This Venn diagram might help you decide! Have you ever gone to a website to try to find some information, and had a (expletive) difficult time trying to find that info? I think there is often a
It's no secret: there is a growing gap between the number of STEM jobs available and the number of workers qualified to fill them. Of even greater concern is the under-representation of women and minorities in STEM careers compared to the general population. Organizations like Change the Equation and the Department
Teacher salaries have been a hotly debated issue in our state for the past few years. In this blog post, I examine a graph that recently appeared in our local news, point out some deficiencies, and create an alternate graph. But before we get started, here's a picture of my
When your job involves making decisions that affect thousands of college students, making the right decisions can have a large impact on the future. Giving college administrators easy access to reliable analytics can help improve enrollment and graduation rates – and find answers to complex questions that cut across many
I sometimes feel bad about being born. Not so much the actual event, mind you, just the timing. I was born during what should have been my mother’s last year of college. At many colleges in those days, when a woman got married, she was forced to move out of
We're so excited for EDM 2016 in Raleigh, NC this year and even more pleased to announce that we'll be hosting a tutorial on using free SAS tools for educational data mining. This tutorial will take place on June 29 and will include a hands-on* demonstration of SAS® University Edition and an
The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. It can process emotion, memory, and learning while controlling body functions such as heart rate and breathing. How do our 100 billion neurons work together to accomplish the greatest human achievements in art, science, mathematics, engineering, government, and language?
Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. At this year’s SAS Global Forum 2016, so many exciting things happened that I have to share some highlights. From the use of analytics in college administration to the teaching of analytics in the classroom, the range of information presented was quite
Regardless of grade level, subject, or academic setting, you can become a global educator and teach global competence. Here are some ideas to get you started. Get Informed – Start by broadening your own global citizenship and developing a multicultural awareness. Evaluate your own culture; think about your traditions, values,
For thousands of years, the human experience has been recorded by storytellers. Stories tell the tale of our lives: beginning, middle and end. Stories document the triumphs and tragedies of heroes and villains and everything in between. Human beings are storytellers -- it's a trait as uniquely human as an
With the recent changes to federal education policy, I wanted to learn more so I interviewed Emily Baranello, Vice President SAS Education Practice and Susan Gates, SAS Special Advisor on Education. In part 1 of the interview, they were helpful in explaining the new policies, impact, opportunities and challenges for
With the recent changes to federal education policy, I wanted to learn more about those changes and the impacts they'll have on P-12 education across the U.S. So, I decided to interview Emily Baranello, Vice President SAS Education Practice and Susan Gates, SAS Special Advisor on Education. Here's part one
My high school calculus teacher once asked the class, “When do you know that your new shoes have just become your normal shoes?” Answers varied: “when the majority of the shoe shows wear or dirt,” “when you buy a newer pair of shoes,” “when the season changes.” I mused, “When
North Carolina has over 300 miles of wide, flat Atlantic beaches as well as the highest mountain in the eastern United States, Mount Mitchell. The variety is impressive for a state that isn't even in the top half of the 50 states by size. One key reason is geometric: North Carolina
How do public higher education institutions get funded? In the past, state funding was tied to enrollment, but now more states are tying funding to institutional performance. State Legislatures want more accountability for money spent on higher education and have turned to performance-based funding (also called outcomes-based funding). As such,
My social studies teacher, Mrs. Rupert, had a favorite response to sleepy, disengaged students: "Not to decide ... is to decide." Turns out it is a quote from Harvard Professor Harvey Cox, but she adopted it as her mantra. Back in the 1980s in western Pennsylvania, disco and Reaganomics were the
“The number of chats I follow on Twitter is out of control! The information on my dashboard is overwhelming!’ I know the feeling. My monitor often looks like something you’d expect to see in an air-traffic control tower or the cockpit of a fighter jet. To preserve my sanity
Computer science is everywhere, and its prominence is growing as our economy depends more and more on technology. Computers and technology are, by all measures, booming industries whose influence will only increase in the years to come. So you may wonder, if computer science is at the heart of all
“(Teaching) is an incredible opportunity to be a catalyst for what we want the future to be," says Shannon Hardy, a 21-year math and science teacher from The Exploris School, a Wake County charter school in Raleigh, NC. Ms. Hardy uses data not just as a summative measurement tool, but
You could argue that it’s misguided for someone like me to say data science doesn't have to be difficult. After all, I’ve been in the industry for many years and should have a few tricks up my sleeve for dealing with data. But with the latest data visualisation technology –
