Mon | May 20, 2024

Stories by Gen Clacken

Published:Friday | June 22, 2018 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

Last year, the grade four literacy rate stood at 84.6 per cent, moving from 79.1 per cent in 2016. The literacy rate at the national level is also encouraging. The 2015 UNESCO Report on World Literacy puts Jamaica's overall literacy rate at 88.7 per...

Published:Friday | May 18, 2018 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

Over the past few decades, teachers, school administrators, and other education officials have watched and lamented the decline of the home-school connection. Economic and other push-and-pull factors have especially affected the relationship that...

Published:Friday | April 20, 2018 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

In the 2017 academic year, the CSEC mathematics examination saw only 50 per cent of the summer cohort passing the subject. At the primary level, the situation was no different.The average score attained on the 2017 GSAT math exam was 62 per cent....

Published:Friday | March 16, 2018 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

There are ongoing discussions about what other languages apart from English should be taught. A few decades ago, it was Spanish, and more recently, Mandarin has come into focus.There is one language however, that has not received much attention in...

Published:Friday | February 23, 2018 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

In today's world, time has, seemingly, become scarce and with technology giving us tools to effectively manage time and also tasks at hand.Research indicates that some of the best strategies for navigating projects, tasks, and errands, involve...

Published:Friday | October 27, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

It is not an uncommon experience the slow death of droning words that accompany a million slides of content of a presentation, which was commonly referred to as "death by PowerPoint", a tool that is often used for content delivery today. To address...

Published:Friday | September 29, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

The phrase life is a cartoon has never had greater meaning than it has today. Our fascination with cartoons can be dated, far back as 1843 when an Englishman John Leech, shared his comic-like satire, Etchings and Sketchings.By the 1960s, the cartoon...

Published:Friday | September 8, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

As the 21st century bustles on, technology is determined to mirror natural life in the digital or virtual world, at least, or augment and redefine it, at best. This is what technology has done for the concept of 'flipping', a term that until a few...

Published:Friday | August 25, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

Last year, sixty-seven per cent of the students in the Caribbean passed the CSEC English A summer examination.This year, the region is hoping for even marginal improvement in the ability of school leavers to demonstrate their competence in the use...

Published:Friday | August 4, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

Khan Academy, created by educator Salman Khan in 2006, hosts one of the largest collections of instructional videos and related activities for the classroom. Their initiatives have now become invaluable assets to teaching and learning across many...

Published:Friday | July 14, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

In 1440, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, the door to knowledge was flung wide open and the 'book', as they knew it then, was never the same again.Today, e-books are further revolutionising how content is presented in the classroom....

Published:Friday | June 30, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

Scientists are in agreement that the human brain operates based on connections, associations, and triggers. They say that the brain does not process information in very linear ways but, rather, iN ways that can seem very random, very non-linear, and...

Published:Friday | June 9, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

It is concern raised by researchers and education policymakers and school practitioners, who tend to agree that we are a visually illiterate society.Visual literacy is defined by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) as "the...

Published:Friday | May 26, 2017 | 8:59 AMGen Clacken

Many teachers and parents bemoan the potential of modern technology that distracts students. In the past, it was the television that was accused of turning our children's brains to mush. Today, it is the games they play on mobile and hand-held...

Published:Friday | May 12, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

According to statistics, approximately five billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. This medium has made its way into the classroom as in the last decade or so, online videos have become a staple in many of our training and classroom...

Published:Friday | April 28, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

If you are in the classroom and you are still using PowerPoint to support your delivery, then you are generations behind the kind of dynamic and multifaceted tools available online today.This April, approximately 85 million users across the world...

Published:Friday | April 14, 2017 | 7:46 AMGen Clacken

As teachers embrace their 21st-century role of 'guide on the side' and move away from the traditional posture of 'sage on the stage', the capabilities of new and emerging technologies are making that role shift easier and more effective than ever....

Published:Friday | March 31, 2017 | 12:00 AMGen Clacken

The paradigms of teaching have changed over the years. in this age of information superhighway, the black and white boards are being complemented by touch screen 'smart' devices. As an educator, there are tools out there which help enhance course...

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