Happy New Year 2025!

 

I’m taking a little break from researching and writing blog posts to celebrate the December holidays and the New Year. Hope you have been doing the same (enjoying quality time with family and friends).

 

Here’s a few highlights from 2024 if you’re looking for something to read:

 

·      The 50 Best Education Blogs

·      100 Best E-Learning Blogs and Websites in 2025

·      Top E-Learning Trends of 2024

·      The Top 10 Online Learning Platforms for 2024

·      7 Critical Education Trends That Will Define Learning in 2025

 

 

I’d love to hear what online education topics you, our readers, are interested in learning more about.  Email me your suggestions here, and we’ll see what we can do.

 

Happy New Year!

 

AI Wants to Help You Get Hooked on Phonics … Again …

 

Depending on how old you are, you may have learned to read by sounding out the letters. A teaching method exemplified by the Hooked on Phonics program. The aspiring reader moves from sounding out individual letters, to sounding out words, to sentences, to paragraphs. It’s a highly successful approach, but it does not necessarily inspire a love of reading in its students.

 

At some point, schools starting switching over to a more holistic approach to teaching reading, the “whole language approach.” Kids learn entire words and do not sound out individual letters. The educational focus is on meaning-making, communication and social interaction inherent in the reading process. Young children’s reading scores have been dropping, however, using the whole language approach.  One teacher in LA said: “This is how I learned, but I think it doesn’t work for 95% of kids, in my experience.”

 

More recently, educators have moved back to a more methodical skills-oriented approach, talking about the “science of reading.” The science of reading combines the mechanics of phonics with the whole language focus on reading context and comprehension. The science of reading approach is required in 39 states, plus the District of Columbia. Preliminary study results suggest that the new blended approach to teaching reading is better helping students learn to read.

 

Now, there is an AI-powered reading tutor that helps students with their phonics-based reading practice. EPS Reading Assistant uses voice-recognition technology to provide real-time feedback to a student while they are reading out loud. AI acts as a personal tutor. The Reading Assistant also provides student-specific targeted data to help the teacher work with each student’s individual reading needs. The Iowa Department of Education is offering the program in all the state’s elementary schools.

 

Looks like the old is new again … Hooked on Phonics has been updated with AI and continues to work its magic.

No Need for an Ivy League Degree to Be President of the US

 

A close relative recently got intrigued about the educational background of US presidents. After talking to him about it, I followed the thread with a few more questions.

 

The United States has had 45 individuals serve as President so far (and we’ll be electing another in less than two weeks). Here’s their education back story:

·      26 former presidents graduated from a private undergraduate college. Of those, 12 (almost half) went to Ivy League schools (John F Kennedy transferred from Princeton to Harvard, but he’s only counted once).

·      9 former presidents graduated from a public undergraduate college.

·      12 former presidents did not have an undergraduate college degree; some attended college or professional school, but did not graduate.

·      20 former presidents attended graduate school (including medical school, law school or business school), but only 11 (about half) received a graduate degree. 8 of the graduate schools attended  (less than one-third) were at Ivy League schools.

 

Everyone in President Biden’s cabinet graduated from college, with only 3 individuals having attended Ivy League schools.

 

Moving on to federally elected officials, 99% of current US Senators and 93.8% of US House of Representatives members graduated from college. Over half of the elected officials in both bodies also have a graduate school degree. I was not able to easily find information about which schools these individuals graduated from.

 

 

All to say, you don’t need to go to an Ivy League school to be elected to high office in the United States, nor does an Ivy League degree guarantee that you’ll be elected. That said, I didn’t see any Presidents with degrees from an online institution … yet … 

 

10 Renowned Colleges That Pay You To Attend In 2024

 

I was so thrilled to find this article about US colleges that pay you to go to school, I’m just going to post the link for you to read it directly: 10 Renowned Colleges That Pay You To Attend In 2024.

Spoiler alert, here are the 10 colleges: 

Berea College (Berea, Kentucky) 

 Barclay College (Haviland, Kansas) 

Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 

University of Missouri (Columbia, Missouri)

Deep Springs College (Dyer, Nevada) 

Lipscomb University (Nashville, Tennessee) 

 Lewis University (Romeoville, Illinois) 

University of Texas at San Antonio (San Antonio, Texas) 

 Davidson College (Davidson, North Carolina) ·

 University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wisconsin)

Written by Michele Straube- 

Banning Cell Phones in the Classroom

 

Before I retired, I was a mediator and facilitator of large-group collaborations. I started this work many many years ago, before cell phones were as ubiquitous or as essential as they are now. Even so, in working with a particular group of politicians and business executives more than twenty years ago, I noticed that we couldn’t get any work done because so many of the participants were on their phones, not paying attention, and we’d have to catch them up on the conversation when it was their turn to weigh in. I decided for the final meeting to have a box at the front door of the meeting room and to require them to drop their phones into that box for the duration of the meeting. This didn’t go over well … but … they reached agreement by the end of that meeting!

 

About ten years later, my daughter was sitting in the back of my university classroom waiting for me to give her a ride home and had a good peek at what my students were doing during class. Playing computer games, scrolling Facebook, checking their email, texting friends. Often toggling between their note-taking of my lecture, but still not fully focused on learning. I established a policy of no devices in the classroom (laptops, ipads, cellphones) and the class discussions improved immediately. After the initial shock, my students welcomed the new policy, understanding that they couldn’t help themselves from multi-tasking if the device was available for use. In the mid 2010’s, banning devices from higher education classrooms became popular, especially when the devices were used solely for note-taking.

 

Fast forward to 2024, cellphones are a necessity of life and even the youngest children have them. Smart watches often are used in the same way as cellphones. Now K-12 schools are grappling with how to manage the distraction factor of having cellphones and smart watches in the classroom. At least eight states have established policies seeking to limit K-12 students’ phone use at school, whether by enacting laws or issuing orders or establishing rules. One primary issue is the distraction caused by cell phone availability, but some schools are also concerned about the phones being used to bully or otherwise harass fellow students.

 

Schools are trying various approaches to control cell phone use during school hours. None as simple as the cardboard box I used twenty years ago! Some simply require students to keep their cellphones in their school lockers. Some have built cell-phone-specific storage devices in a highly secure location (think how we used to store DVD’s). Some use lockable bags to store the cellphones while not in use. School policies differ on whether to prohibit cellphone use throughout the entire school day, or to allow students to access their phones during breaks.

 

Reaction to the cellphone bans has been mixed. Many parents are opposed, as the bans reduce their 24/7 access to their kids or access in the case of an emergency. In addition to not being able to text their kid at all times, they also can’t monitor their kids’ location if the cellphone is locked away somewhere. Students, predictably, don’t like being told what they cannot do, but the biggest push-back from students has been from those who need to use their phones to make time-sensitive arrangements (e.g., for after-school activities or jobs).

 

I’m not taking a position on whether or not to ban cellphones in the K-12 classroom. But I will point out that mindful cellphone use in professional/educational/social situations is a life skill that many people, young and old, seem not to have learned yet.

Quality Higher Education Can Be Found in the US at Little or No Cost

 

The objective of the Straube Foundation is to show how anyone anywhere can obtain quality education at little or no cost. Our primary focus is online education as the vehicle to meet this goal, but educators and philanthropists are finding many ways to provide a quality post-high school education at little or no cost.

 

Some political jurisdictions are spending tax dollars to offer free education at local community colleges and technical certificate programs.

 

In 2015, the State of Tennessee was the first state to offer free two-year community college education to every in-state high school graduate, without regard to income or GPA. At least twenty other states have followed suit, although each program has differing eligibility requirements and covers different types of post-high-school programs: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington.

 

Local jurisdictions are getting into the act as well. In 2018, the City of Seattle started a similar initiative. In 2023, Seattle Promise received 2,500 applications, with 1,400 high school graduates actually enrolling in one of the three eligible community colleges. To enable low income students to take advantage of this opportunity, Seattle Promise now also offers “equity scholarships,” providing up to $1,000 in living expenses per quarter.

 

Some benefactors are creating very large endowments at professional schools to ensure that any qualified individual can attend medical or law school. In early July 2024, Bloomberg Philanthropies created a $1 billion endowment at Johns Hopkins University to ensure that medical students from low-income families can attend medical school for free (including tuition, living expenses and fees). In February 2024, Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, intending that all medical students can attend the school tuition-free, regardless of family income. In 2018 and 2023, NYU Grossman School of Medicine received endowments totaling $300 million to provide free tuition for all its medical students. These endowments have dual purposes: (1) to enable all interested individuals to become doctors, regardless of family income; and (2) to encourage medical students to go into less lucrative practice fields such as primary care, mental health, and rural and underserved communities.

 

Law schools are playing catch-up with the growing trend of free tuition at top-ranking medical schools. In February 2024, Harvard Law School announced a tuition-free initiative for students with the highest financial need. Yale Law School has a small endowment that provides free tuition for a few students from economically disadvantaged families each year. And there are at least three international law schools that offer free (or almost free) tuition: University of Bergen (Norway. Master in Law program), Heidelberg University (Germany, $1500 Euro/semester), and Arctic University of Norway (environmental issue focus).

 

 

Turn Books Into Conversations

 

Imagine that you could ask an expert questions about a book of classic literature as you’re reading it. Have that expert help explain difficult concepts, compare your perspective on the book with theirs. Turn reading a book into a conversation. Two philosophy professors have used the wonders of artificial intelligence (AI) to make this possible at Rebind Publishing.

 

This new way to read the classics on an e-reader offers the following enrichment techniques:

·      Choose the classic book you want to read.

·      “Prepare to read with beautifully-produced films, embedded right in the book,” along with a reading guide.

·      “Converse” about the book with experts to gain deeper insight. The experts were interviewed about the book. Their opinions have been expanded and enhanced via AI to be a comprehensive, interactive, analysis of the book in “book club-style conversations.”

·      Take notes while you read and write your own interpretation of the classic book, helping you to get the most out of your reading experience.

 

So, what can you read this new way? For right now, ten books. But more will be added to the library over time.

·      Selections from Buddhism. Converse with Deepak Chopra.

·      Selections from John Muir. Converse with Bill McKibben.

·      Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche. Converse with Clancy Martin.

·      The Dubliners, by James Joyce. Converse with John Banville.

·      Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. Converse with Chloe Cooper Jones.

·      Metamorphosis and Two Other Stories, by Franz Kafka. Converse with Deb Olin Unferth.

·      Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Converse with Sadie Stein.

·      The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. Converse with Roxane Gay.

·      The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Converse with Peter Catapano.

·      Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Converse with John Kaag.

 

If you’re interested in trying out AI-enhanced classic literature for free (for a limited time only), join the waitlist to be a beta reader. “A whole new way to read exists.”