Readers Survey 2008
- Readers' Survey 2008 Home
- Best Blog for Educators
- Best Educational Podcast
- Best Virtual Field Trip
- Best Site from Which You Can Download Free Lessons and Materials
- Best Site for Grant Information
- Best Technology Product for Less Than $100
- Best Technology Tool for Students
- Best Education Software
- Amount You Spend Out of Pocket Each Year on Classroom Supplies
- Best Way to Get What You Need for the Classroom
- Best Public Advocate or Role Model for Educators
- Best New Book About Education
- Top Concern of Parents
- Top Concern of Teachers
- What's Missing from Education Degree or Certification Programs
- Who, from the Past or Present, You'd Like to Teach Your Class for a Day
- Subject That Typically Isn't Taught in Schools That Should Be
- Best Way for Schools to Keep New Teachers from Burning Out
- Best Way to Find Inspiration
- Best Way to Create an Educational Community
This year's Readers' Survey was conducted at Edutopia.org March 26-April 30, 2008. Participants responded to questions in their own words, and their answers were tabulated to yield the top three to five vote getters in each category. The top responses for each question appear with voting buttons to encourage our visitors to participate further.
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Readers' Survey 2008: Best New Book About Education
Credit: iStockphoto
New York Times education columnist Samuel G. Freedman calls education a switchboard through which all the most defining forces in society flow. Our readers' favorite books touch on such issues as globalization (Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century), immigration (Rafe Esquith's Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56), environmental degradation (Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder), and race (James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks's Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives).
Among the popular subjects were two of the most important frontiers in science, society, and, through the aforementioned switchboard, education: technology and the human brain. Readers appreciated books that taught them about how brain science and new technologies can and should intersect with their teaching, books such as Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools, by Gwen Solomon, and Lynne Schrum and How People Learn, from the Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning and the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.
On the whole, the answers we received suggested that our readers want both instruction and inspiration. The education life being what it is, however, several readers responded with laments such as "I do not have time to read!" But summer's coming, and if the reading urge strikes such respondents, their peers' recommendations will provide them with plenty to choose from.
What do you think? Weigh in on the results.
Reinventing Project-Based Learning
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on May 30, 2008 - 13:14.
Has anyone brought this book to your attention, authored by your own Spiral Notebook blogger Suzie Boss? Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. It's practical and lofty at the same time, a great handbook for teacher teams wishing to change practice--together.
Fast Food
Submitted by Ellis (not verified) on September 24, 2008 - 10:58.
What about "Fast Food Education" by Taylor & Brock? They explain learning in a way that makes sense and is easy to understand. Moreover, they challenge us to think in a way consistent with the philosophy of Edutopia.
Is this survey an April Fool's Day prank?
Submitted by Gary S. Stager, Ph.D. (not verified) on May 29, 2008 - 18:46.
First of all, the notion that Daniel Pink's deeply flawed book is about education is outrageous. I'm even more concerned that his competition is a National Book Award winner and 40-year advocate for children, Jonathan Kozol.
Please read my review of Pink's book here:
http://tinyurl.com/33ftt8
Nominating the benefactor of this magazine in the advocacy category violates the most basic tents of fairness and journalistic objectivity.
The nominees in the blogging category are not all blogs and your setup piece demonstrates a profound ignorance of the medium.
Not all of the nominees in the podcasting category are podcasts.
Nominating Office as best "educational sofware" is about as ridiculous as using Math Blaster as an exemplar of non-drivel.
How could Computer Science not be nominated for courses not offered, but should be?
The choices for most important issues to parents and teachers assume that schools are dangerous miserable test-prep boot camps. Where's your imagination Edutopia?
I sure hope heads will roll as a result of this most shoddy journalistic exercise. Readers deserve better from the George Lucas Foundation.
Editor's note: The choices
Submitted by Editor (not verified) on June 2, 2008 - 16:48.
Editor's note: The choices listed here were simply the top vote getters in our annual Readers' Survey. We’ve inserted language to make that more clear.
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