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• Maynard Institute I'll run through the date specific observations (in order) here with a few, hopefully helpful links. February 2 - Groundhog Day
February 5 - The Super Bowl
February 14 - Valentine's Day
As usual, KABOOSE has a bunch of clip art, cards, and activities suitable for classroom Valentine's Day activities. And remember those days when we art challenged folks had to purchase CDs full of clip art? Now, there's tons of free stuff available on the web. • Christmas Graphics Plus February 20 - Presidents' Day
February 21-22 - Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday Keyboards I switched keyboards this week - twice. I made the first switch to test a new "spill-safe" Kensington Keyboard for Life
So...I decided to try another cheapie Kensington keyboard, as the Keyboard-in-a-Box had been a pretty good keyboard. And I quickly found that it has no soul. It's a cross platform keyboard, but its Control, Windows, and Alt keys aren't mapped when hooked into my Mac the way they should be, making me use the Windows key (instead of Control) for the Mac Command key. At least the Alt key defaults to the Mac equivalent Option key. The numerical keypad omits the equal key. I found that every time I did a calculation or a cut and paste I had to watch the keys and think about which key I should be using to match the Mac's Command and Option keys. And the feel was simply cheap. It reliably took input, but had no good sense of touch that gives one a feel for where their hands are on the keyboard. But hey, they say it's spill-safe. After using it for two days, I wanted to throw the thing out in the cold rain. Instead, I ordered another, new, backup keyboard. I went with the Macally I'm now back to using my white, Apple pain-in-the-ass-to-keep-clean keyboard, after carefully, carefully cleaning it with Formula 409 Degreaser And of course, with shipping charges, I could have had a new Apple M9034LL/A pain-in-the-ass-to-keep-clean keyboard for what I've paid for the two, new, backup keyboards. Mice I've used more expensive mice with far more features, but the simple, old Mouse-in-a-Box has been the best computer mouse I've used. And if and when I finally move up to a new, Intel powered Mac running whatever is Apple's latest and greatest operating system, I'm sure the old mouse will be incompatible. But until that time comes, I hoard my remaining mice. There's something to be said for an easy and familiar feel to ones input devices. Odds 'n' Ends Deborah Meier stepped outside her usual education subject matter yesterday on the Bridging Differences blog with a timely piece, It's the Economy. Since nearly everyone has already watched, heard, or read about the President's State of the Union speech, I'll leave politics alone (except for linking to Margaret and Helen) and list a few other interesting items I ran across recently:
Have a great weekend!
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I ordered to replace my venerable Kensington Keyboard-in-a Box. It failed after a roof leak poured a gallon or so of water into it, and the old model (#64350) is no longer available. The backup keyboard was hooked up to my backup G5, and as luck would have it, the keyboard got drenched instead of the more expensive computer. It had served me well on my last job and in short term use as a replacement when I was cleaning my main keyboard.
Let me to digress and tell you about cleaning the stock, Apple M9034LL/A keyboard that was supplied with the 2004 series of G5 towers. I've cleaned three or four of them. And I've killed two or three of them when I let the "electronics safe" foam cleaner drip down into the inner workings of the white keyboards. So...I've become much more cautious in cleaning my main keyboard, especially since they now run around 
from the few third party vendors who still have them in stock. If that particular model didn't have such a good feel, I wouldn't put up with its under-protected electronics and a design that catches way to much dust and dirt. 
brand this time around, but still carefully checked the images on the sale page to insure it truly was a Mac keyboard and had an equal key. This one may be as soulless as the Kensington, but at least it will have the keys where I expect them to be. 
using paper towels and Q-tips. I sparingly sprayed the cleaner only on the paper towel and Q-tips, spending hours polishing key tops and running countless Q-tips along the sides of the keys.
While I'm just taking up space here on an otherwise slow news Friday (And yes, I'm ignoring the debates, speeches, and rebuttals of the last few days.), let me add a few words about computer mice. Just as Kensington has "improved" their keyboards to the point I don't want to use them anymore, they've also discontinued one of the best products they ever sold, their model 72123 Mouse-in-a-Box optical mouse. It's a hollow sounding, lightweight two-button mouse with a scroll wheel that usually retailed for $10-15. It was really bottom-of-the-line, but happened to fit my hand perfectly and did exactly what I wanted. I've worn out several of them and am down to my last two of the model.
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Wolfram Launches Educational Portal The folks who make the heavy duty academic calculation tool, Mathematica, have launched a new portal for students and educators. The Wolfram Education Portal currently includes algebra and calculus textbooks from cK-12 enhanced with interactives from Wolfram. The portal is just getting started, so the offerings so far are pretty limited.
eSchool News has a story about the launch, Wolfram Alpha launches free portal with tools for math instruction. I've written here before about the Wolfram Alpha "computational knowledge engine" that's been around a couple of years, but it's definitely worth mentioning again. An easy to add javascript places a search bar, on ones web page or blog like the one at right that will handle mathematical searches and stuff as mundane as ones city and state. The scripts for the search bars come in small, medium, large, and annotated large with a sample question.
Both search tools are fully functional on this page. Try them! Full disclosure: Wolfram Research is an Educators' News affiliated advertiser. On the Blogs
Leading off the newly discovered blogs, many of which will probably only make a one time cameo appearance here on Educators' News, is a great posting from the Defend Wisconsin News Roundup blog, Scott Walker PR blunder in Janesville. It features the photo at right and a video of "a billboard in Janesville, Wisconsin, featuring a smiling Scott Walker" that read:
The blogger notes that the problem with the billboard is that it was "placed directly in front of the now closed GM plant in Janesville!" An update related that the billboard got pulled in a hurry, but I'd guess the image might reappear in ads during the upcoming Wisconsin recall election. The story also got picked up on Daily Kos, Scott Walker Billboard Fail (another Bwuhahaha moment). Blue Lollipops from KauaMark's Just a Substitute Teacher blog is a riot. Marcia Beckett's Art is Basic blog has a potential gem for art teachers in her Art Teacher Blog Directory.
For teachers looking for an unusual clock to adorn their classroom and possibly provoke a little thought from observant students, there are a bunch of math and science wall clocks available.
The image links above are to Amazon A brand new blog, The Digital Native Teacher, began its first posting, The Internet: Simplified, "If there is one ting that I am good at it is teaching." Obviously, spelling, grammar, and proofreading aren't some of his strengths. On to the next one... I really like Katie Regan's weekly feature, Hilarious Student Quotes of the Week, on her Katie is a Teacher blog. You may have to scroll a bit to find them from the link provided, but it's worth it. Here's an example:
I wondered if Zombie Math Teacher Mandy Bellm had totally lost it in a recent posting, Revolutionary new Zombie algorithm: the Cookie Monster inequality!!! She began in good shape:
Then it appeared she was beginning to ramble with talk of Pac-Man, Cookie Monster, Oreos, and algorithms:
Her writing may seem all over the place at times, but it would seem that Mandy has a talent for getting her concepts across to her students in effective and entertaining ways. It's a blog I plan to visit again. And while we're talking about math that I don't understand very well, Mr. D links to 3 [free] Fun Online Games For Reviewing Slope and Linear Equations on his I Want to Teach Forever blog.
As I looked through the nominees, a couple of commercial sites kept popping up in links and/or as nominated sites. Again, while I generally don't do commercial sites, both Teacher's Market and Teachers pay Teachers might be worth a look.
While not on the list of nominees, Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers is an incredible site and blog. It sorta sneaks into this listing, as a nominee did a simple cut and paste of Byrne's work (with a credit) into her blog and got nominated. The posting used was Byrne's listing of Search Engines for Students. I think I like the posting partly because he writes about Wolfram Alpha which is mentioned elsewhere in our posting today. Beyond the search engine posting, a recent Byrne gem is GE Teach - Teaching With Google Earth, which tells of and leads to Josh Williams' excellent geography tool, GE Teach. "Visitors to GE Teach can select from a variety of physical geography and human geography layers to display and explore." Another gem from Byrne is Another Earth - Compare Maps Side-by-Side, which leads to, of course, the Another Earth site that allows one to use a split screen to compare earth views of the same places in the world at different times. There's lots more in the online app, but I only had so much time to One last blog from the list of 100 nominees worth watching is Dave Dodgson's Reflections of a Teacher and Learner. Dave is an English Language teacher at a private primary school in Ankara, Turkey. His blog ranges from issues to technology, but is consistently interesting.
I still need to give the primary folks another look, as I got pretty well overdosed with "cute" early on in my screening. I came to appreciate the need for "cute" when I taught a third grade class for students with developmental delays early in my career, and later when I wound up my teaching years in a K-3 special education assignment. Of all the put-offs of this self-assigned writing misadventure, the absolute worst experience was seeing the constant begging for folks to vote for their site. I can live with a single "Vote for me" on a site, but many of the sites were running contests and expensive giveaways in order to buy votes and "followers." That's pretty lame. I plan to get back to our regular list of education bloggers next week for our On the Blogs feature with possibly a few of those way too "cute," primary blogs thrown in that I may have slighted today. Odds 'n' Ends Just a few items here so far today:
Newbery, Caldecott Awards Announced
The American Library Association announced its Youth Media Awards at the Association's mid-winter meeting in Dallas yesterday. The Newbery Medal for best book in children's literature went to Dead End in Norvelt The Caldecott Medal for the best picture book of the year went to A Ball for Daisy Note: Title and image links above are all to Amazon.com. I'd guess that Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million A long list of other awards announced was included in the ALA news release. The Associated Press has a good story about the combined awards, "Dead End" Wins Newbery, "Daisy" Takes Caldecott. NPR also has a good story with some interesting quotes from author Chris Raschka in A Ball (And A Caldecott) For "Daisy" The Dog. A Story with a Happy Ending Kenneth Chang's After Hardship and Homelessness, National Science Fair Honors in the New York Times is the story of Samantha Garvey, an 18-year-old senior at Brentwood High School on Long Island, who is one of this year's semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. What makes the story special is that Garvey's family were evicted from their home and had been living in a Suffolk County shelter for two weeks before Ms. Garvey received word of her selection for her work on mussels and a predatory, non-native crab species. It appears that the story will have a happy ending (beginning?), win or lose in the science fair competition, as Ms. Garvey received a scholarship after appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and "Suffolk County officials said they had found a home for the Garveys." Odds 'n' Ends Yep, I had to break our Monday-Wednesday-Friday publication schedule once again. I decided to get the Caldecott and Newbery announcements up today, as the format I used for illustrating the covers would sorta bang up against a special edition I have under development for tomorrow's On the Blogs feature. Without a true headline story for today, I'm left with three pretty good stories to use here. The Orlando Sentinel's Kate Santich tells of a pilot food pantry program at 13 Orange County elementary schools that is set to expand to 17 more schools this year. She tells in More Orange schools to offer food pantries for needy students of the successful pilot program backed by the nonprofit Christian Service Center and other Florida school food pantries. Santich notes that "the demand is a somber indicator of the current economic climate." Leslie Linthicum relates in the Albuquerque Journal what is becoming an all too familiar tale. In School Doesn't Sound Like an F, Linthicum writes of the Sandia Base Elementary School in Albuquerque that "had improved steadily on the standardized tests that measure a school’s achievement," but recently received an "F" under New Mexico's A-F School Grades system. Linthicum observes that "An F school doesn't look and sound and feel much different from an A, B or C school. It's just a little more demographically challenged and a little more demoralized right now," in relating the negative effects on students, parents, teachers, and administrators from the new rating system.
I briefly wrote about the cK-12 program here on Educators' News in 2009 and again in one of our annual Free Stuff for Teachers, Homeschoolers, and Students features. I noted at the time that downloads from cK-12 were a bit slow, and they still are. But they're also still free, pretty good stuff, and still under development, review, and improvement. The textbooks can be viewed online as well as downloaded as PDF documents. After Midnight Just about the time I uploaded the first version of today's Educators' News (a little after midnight), the New York Times' RSS feed produced a dandy rip of the Obama/Duncan Race to the Top program. Michael Winerip's In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom focuses on just one currently non-tested subject in New York, band, as an example of the craziness and needless paperwork Race to the Top causes while producing little to no improvement in education. There's a lot of good food for thought in the column, but I think the best quote from it is:
Mike Klonsky has a photo on his blog of Arne Duncan's Race to the Top bus that was mentioned in Winerip's article! Another Great Teacher Lost The Odessa American's Caylor Ballinger relates the sad story of Odessa High School teacher Teri Cowan calling it quits in Teacher: It's a feeling of us vs. them. Both the article and Cowan's letter of resignation (29K Word document) reveal how top down administrative "improvements" and "reforms" can be counterproductive...and drive good teachers out of the profession. Cowan told Ballinger of "a process of being worn down for two years with 'micromanagement' from administration, and a series of events that she said led her to feeling unvalued and replaceable by the district." Quotes from the district superintendent and Odessa High's interim principal about Cowan come off as patronizing, if not downright insulting and showing their total lack of understanding of education. On the Lighter Side Having stayed up way too late Sunday evening writing most of what appears above and below this section, I didn't run across a really good human interest story until around 10 A.M. Monday morning. Teresa Watanabe's A simple "Go to the dance with me?" doesn't cut it anymore on the Los Angeles Times should fill the bill for something interesting that might even make you grin a bit. Odds 'n' Ends Everything else so far today just goes in this Odds 'n' Ends section, as the stories don't merit (to me) a separate section, but may be of interest.
Doug Martin's piece linked above is about the "parent trigger" law currently being considered by our Indiana Republican majority (who are hellbent on ruining our public schools). But at the bottom of Doug's article, he adds a few brief quips, the last of which is a classic:
Note that I did change Doug's last link in the blurb to go to a page where Elvis's, er, Bruce's constituents are unloading on his voting record and refusal to respond to their letters and emails. Bruce outdid himself at a Crackerbarrel session last March, accusing the crowd of bullying him because they demanded he answer questions about his positions that hurt his own community (but helped his rich Republican backers). Race to the Top for Districts Education Week's Michele McNeil interviewed Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Wednesday. She begins her article, Duncan: It's Time to Create Race to Top for Districts, "Flush with $550 million in new Race to the Top money, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he intends to use the vast majority of it to design a new competition just for school districts." From both the article and the text of the interview, A Conversation With Arne Duncan, it appears that Duncan continues to believe contests are the way to go for school improvement. Tucson NPR's Michel Martin conducted a softball interview on Wednesday with John Huppenthal, Superintendent of Public Instruction in the state of Arizona and one of the chief architects of the law to punish the Tucson United School District and its Mexican American Studies program. Martin came to the interview ill prepared to challenge self-serving statements by Huppenthal. He was able to sidestep the question of whether the law was a reprisal for ill treatment of an education department speaker by students, claim the program had been ruled illegal by the courts (when it was an administrative law judge that made such a ruling, not a federal court), and claim the program had been studied and found wanting when an earlier study of the program that lauded the program was ignored by Huppenthal and the state. Roberto Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, wrote of the controversy in Arizona's 'Banned' Mexican American Books:
It's more than a little sad that the media, especially those east of the Mississippi, are willing to let yet another outrage in Arizona die so easily. Martin lets Huppenthal, a real bad guy in this story, come off sounding almost reasonable. The school system is still trying to get away with denying book banning by retracing their steps and saying that just seven titles were boxed and shipped to storage. According to Rodriguez, posters and other materials and far more than seven titles were confiscated, boxed, and removed from classrooms in some cases right in front of students. A Little Fluff to Lighten and Fill Out the Page
The outcome of the story so far is that a no-grinding rule has been passed by the school district. Having chaperoned a few high school proms in the past, I feel for the faculty and staff who get to enforce the new regulation. Did Santorum Win in Iowa? As I looked around the Des Moines Register yesterday, it was hard to miss their headline story, 2012 GOP caucus count unresolved, that stated Rick "Santorum finished ahead by 34 votes" in the certified count for the Iowa Caucuses! By the time I got back to the Register to grab a screenshot of the news, it had been replaced with a headline proclaiming that Rick Perry had dropped out of the Republican presidential nomination race and endorsed the Newt. Having just watched the South Carolina Republican debate on CNN, I was amazed that the subject of education was never raised. Maybe that's a blessing in this time of near constant teacher bashing from politicians. Hmm..."Santorum" just got challenged by my spellchecker. Think I should google it? A Reader for the iPad Apple Computer announced the availability of iBooks 2.0 What I didn't find in any of the articles and press releases about the announced app and textbooks was any mention of a reader for desktops, laptops, and netbooks, Mac or PC. Odds 'n' Ends
New Desktop Photo for my "New" Computer I'm now up and running with my new-to-me, seven-year-old twin 2.0 GHz PowerMac tower. I opted to go with a "new" box, as its cost was just slightly higher than a replacement motherboard would have run for my old twin 1.8 GHz tower. Along with the replacement unit purchased on eBay, I picked up more RAM, as the 2.0 tower has more slots, and now have it maxed at 8 GB of RAM. I notice the difference in RAM the most when using Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The slight increase in processor speed really isn't noticeable.
Both images above are available for download and use as desktops on our free Desktop Photos page. Have a great weekend! Wikipedia, Others (including Educators' News) Closed Today The English language version of Wikipedia will be blacked out worldwide today in protest "against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia." A long list of other web sites may also enforce a twelve hour blackout in what is being called the "SOPA Strike." Educators' News, in support of the protest and in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, will be blacked out today from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. (EST).
• The New York Times: Protest on Web Uses Shutdown to Take On Two Piracy Bills by Jenna Wortham The Public Knowledge web site distilled the dangers of SOPA and PIPA in a recent posting, Act Now: This Bill Seriously Screws with the Internet:
Linda Darling-Hammond: Why Is Congress Redlining Our Schools? Linda Darling-Hammond's Why Is Congress redlining our schools should be a must read for anyone concerned with the current direction of education "reform." Darling-Hammond was President Obama's education advisor during the 2008 presidential campaign, and many thought she'd become Obama's Secretary of Education. Instead, the President chose Arne Duncan as SecEd, and the direction of education "reform" was steered towards more high stakes testing, turnaround plans that often included closing neighborhood schools, firing half of the school's staff, or replacing the school with a charter school, merit pay, ending career protection for good career teachers...the list goes on and on. In an article that first appeared on The Nation, Darling-Hammond doesn't pull any punches about her former boss and Secretary Duncan in their misguided efforts to improve America's schools:
Besides dismembering the Obama Administration's unproductive plan for improving education, Darling-Hammond concludes her excellent column with a clear vision of "what we should do instead" to create "a new approach to federal policy that makes it possible for all students to succeed and creates the momentum we need to regain our status as an educational leader among nations." On the Blogs Paul Hamilton's Tumblr Offers Easy Blogging for ALL Learners on Free Resources from the Net for Every Learner tells of the "free blog platform that seems ideal for anyone who is new to blogging." Diane Ravitch adds her 2¢ worth to the discussion about the recently released study on teacher evaluation in What Value Did the Chetty Study Add? Michaele Sommerville is into Coloring Books in the Classroom big time on her Kindergarten's 3 R's: Respect, Resources, and Rants blog this week. The Super Bowl, Professional Football, and Union Busting While doing some late updates to this page "after the lights came back on," I ran across Sally Kohn's opinion piece about SOPA on, of all places, Fox News, whose owner is one of the biggest proponents of SOPA and PIPA. A link on Sally's personal site led me to her excellent piece about the push by big business in Indiana to pass "Right-to-Work" legislation, The Super Bowl, professional football and union busting. After relating the sad story of retired NFL player Dave Duerson's suicide, she drops the bombshell:
She goes on to unmask Governor Mitch Daniels and the Republican majority's big business backed plan to weaken unions by fooling Indiana residents into believing the legislation will improve their lives. She calls it "Right to Work… For Less," and then provides the numbers to back up her statements. The link between Indiana's proposed "Right-to-Work" legislation and education might at first seem tenuous, but this bill is simply Round Two of an attempt by Republicans to fatally wound Indiana's major labor unions. In Round One last year, they stripped teachers of many bargaining rights, imposed merit pay based on high stakes testing, and began diverting millions of dollars from Indiana's public schools to private and parochial schools via school vouchers. Indiana's labor unions stood shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers in protesting Governor Daniels' rape of public education last year. It's only fair, even if we lost last year, to stand with Indiana's labor unions against another deceitful attempt by Republicans to destroy the protections unions provide workers. Maybe this time around, we'll have some big NFL linebackers and linemen standing with us. Odds 'n' Ends It's almost 1 A.M., and I'm just finishing up the second edition of our Wednesday posting. Earlier, I uploaded a quick version that also contained the javascript that will black out this page for most of the day. If it weren't for today being our charity web banner day, I might have totally blown off doing any posting at all. I did manage to find a few interesting, educationally related articles for this section today. I ran across the first one in my Boston Globe RSS education feed. Unfortunately, the Globe has decided to no longer allow registered users to see their content, restricting it to subscribers only...even for wire service postings. Guess I need to chuck that username and password! I did a quick search and found the Associated Press posting elsewhere...for free.
The next two links are sorta interesting. After a massive outcry about censorship and book banning, the TUSD now claims it hasn't banned any books. It just had the books "that were used as supporting materials for curriculum in Mexican American Studies classes" boxed up and stored, as they were no longer being used in the banned classes. A press release stated, "None of the books have been banned by TUSD, and they are still available to students through several school libraries." For those of us experienced in sorting out student tall tales, the TUSD release sounds sorta fishy.
Monday, January 16, 2012 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Warm, Fuzzy, Human Interest Stories It used to be that when you opened your Sunday paper, there would always be a story somewhere in it about an educator doing something extraordinary for their students. In September, I resolved to try to begin each week here on Educators' News with similar warm, fuzzy, human interest stories about students, parents, and/or teachers doing wonderful things. I didn't reveal what I was trying to do until October, when my plan crashed and burned on a Monday that had absolutely no feel-good stories! Since that time, I think we've had a good human interest story to start our Monday posting about 40% of the time. I'm sure folks are still doing great things out there in the classroom, and I probably just miss some of the stories. But it's a sad commentary on where we are in education when the media are almost totally focused on bad teachers, failing schools, high stakes testing, merit pay, and so on. I really looked extra hard this week to find a real "grabber" of a story, but didn't find one that just blew me away. I did, however, find a lot more stories than usual that at least leaned towards being warm, fuzzy, human interest stories. Here's what I found:
Tucson Update From a Salon.com article by Jeff Biggers, Who’s afraid of "The Tempest"?
And yes, Shakespeare's "The Tempest" was one of the books banned. A letter to the editor that appears in today's Arizona Republic, Banning ethnic studies won't end idea, gives a good idea of the outrage some Mexican Americans in Arizona are feeling. It begins, "My cultural heritage has been outlawed."
Jim Crittenden, who has kept me updated with what is going on in Arizona, sent me a link last night to his incredible panoramas "of the high desert lands where I get to live," Landscape Panoramas using Zoomify. Thanks again, Jim. Indiana Voucher Program Upheld A Marion County (IN) Superior Court judge has upheld the new Indiana voucher law in its first test before a court. The bill voted into law by an anti-public education Republican majority a year ago was designed specifically to circumvent the prohibition in the Indiana Constitution against using state funds for parochial schools. Judge Michael Keele agreed with the state that the program doesn't violate the state constitution, as it gives scholarship vouchers to parents, who can choose where to use them. The decision was expected, and the Indiana State Teachers Association has vowed to appeal the ruling. Sarah Carr mentions in School voucher program gets fresh look in Louisiana in the New Orleans Times-Picayune that governors in other states, encouraged by developments in Indiana, are now trying to push through or widen school voucher programs in their states. Indiana "Right-to-Work" Study A Ball State University economist, fiscal conservative, and an admirer of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has released a study that predicts Indiana's proposed "right-to-work" legislation will not be a "significant and long-term job creator." Michael J. Hicks, director of Ball State's Center for Business and Economic Research, stated to the press, "If you look at the right-to-work states in the South, you could argue their right-to-work laws had less impact on job growth than air-conditioning." Hicks' findings were released in Right-to-Work Legislation and the Manufacturing Sector (957K PDF document), a study that examined "right-to-work" regulations in the lower 48 states and District of Columbia from 1929 through 2005.
Odds 'n' Ends Fernanda Santos doesn't do much commentary in Mayor Bloomberg's Promises for Education: An Annotated Scorecard, but lets the Mayor's record of missteps in education speak for itself. Other stuff around the web:
If you're in school today and still looking for one more activity for MLK Day, KABOOSE has a good Martin Luther King Jr. Day page. The text of Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech is available from American Rhetoric, and a video of it is on YouTube. The FREE site also has all sorts of related material. Announcements Google kicked off its second annual Google Science Fair on Wednesday. The online competition is open to students 13-18 years old anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Audrey Watters adds some history and details about the event on KQED Mindshift's Ready, Set, Invent! The Google Science Fair is Launched. And Google's For Educators page includes some helpful downloads for teachers to help their students get started. Watters noted that "prizes for the winners are not insignificant: the grand prize is a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos lead by a National Geographic Explorer, a hands-on internship at Google, CERN or LEGO, access to the Scientific American archives for their school and a personalized LEGO trophy. Two other finalists will each receive $25,000 scholarships, access to the Scientific American archives, and a LEGO trophy." The entry deadline is April 1, 2012.
It's been a long time since we've had a Turkey of the Week Award winner here on Educators' News. There's certainly no shortage of non-feathered turkeys in education out there, but many of them hold elective office, an automatic disqualifier for this award. Our elected officials, often totally unresponsive to voters but highly responsive to the major donors who finance their campaigns, don't need any extra publicity to feed their oversize egos.
Kristof has also ventured into the teacher bashing arena with naive comments such as, "An essential answer: more good teachers. Or, to put it another way, fewer bad teachers. The obvious policy solution is more pay for good teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers." The value of merit pay in improving education is an unproven, devisive tactic of corporate education "reformers." And any words written about good teachers and getting rid of bad teachers just adds to the public perception pushed by phony education "reformers" and politicians funded by for-profit charter schools that most public school teachers are inadequate and need to be replaced. He also accuses teachers' unions of resisting focusing on teacher quality. The charge has the ring of validity only because unions strive to protect their members from the unfair whims of administrators and evaluation systems based on dubious practices and data. In much of the nation, if teacher evaluations were done properly according to union contracts, many lesser educators could have been weeded out long ago. While Nick mentions the effects of poverty in passing, he quickly brushes aside the proven number one factor in predicting success in the classroom. So while clearly a good writer, I think Nick truly deserves his Turkey of the Week status for his most recent column. Odds 'n' Ends Hey, it's Friday, and I'm just going to throw everything else in education news today into this section. Deborah Meier's Two Golden Opportunities Lost in the 1990s definitely deserves a bit more than a bullet list link, though. Her first paragraph is a real grabber:
Other stuff around the web includes:
Just for the fun of it, I threw together the animated gif at right of 50 of the better shots that are mine that grace my computer screen. That number excludes family photos, some really bad shots that I still like, and some great astronomy shots that aren't mine. It only took ten or twelve tries to get it to work right! I think all of the images in the anigif are available for download and use as wallpapers or backgrounds from our Desktop Photos page. I added a page of outtakes, shots bumped off the main desktops page, and shots waiting to go the main page a few months ago called The Cutting Room Floor, so a few of the shots may come from that page as well. Our Desktop Photos page has the distinction of having more advertising per square inch than any other page on the mathdittos2.com. The good news is that the photos are free for use as wallpapers or desktops. All other use requires prior consent, massive royalty payments, your left pinkie finger... (Actually, I'm a pretty soft touch on non-commercial use of my photos. Just
, please.)
Have a great weekend! Tucson Schools Shut Down Mexican American Studies Program Rather than file a federal lawsuit to fight the Arizona law that targeted the Tucson United School District's Mexican American Studies program, the TUSD school board voted 4-1 last night to shut down the program to avoid losing millions of dollars in state aid. Stephen Ceasar reports in Tucson schools suspend Mexican American studies class:
A federal lawsuit filed by eleven teachers and two students that contends the law violates their First Amendment rights remains, but U.S. Circuit Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima in Tucson refused to grant an injunction Tuesday evening that would have put the state sanctions on hold until the suit was resolved. On the Blogs
A posting on Bulletin Boards to Remember, Even Picasso Cleaned Up His Mess, caught my eye yesterday and led me to another good art teacher blog, Lines, Dots, and Doodles. The bulletin boards at left appeared on both sites, but originated from Lines, Dots, and Doodles. I like the gentle hint to clean up after oneself and the advice that we can sometime learn from our mistakes. Lines, Dots, and Doodles has lots of well illustrated lessons grouped by elementary grade level and topic. EHT, writing on her History is Elementary blog in When Cross Curriculum Intentions Go Wrong, unloads about some "insensitive questions within a math assignment" that recently made the news, big time. She links to WSB-TV's Parents outraged over math problems referring to slavery, beatings, but also shares her utter dismay that folks would do such a thing. Huffington Post blogger, Christopher Emdin, adds to the discussion with his Five Messages From the "Slavery Math Problems." Michele McNeil writes in Big Race to Top Problems in Hawaii, Florida, N.Y., Says Ed. Dept. on the Politics K-12 blog on Education week that "the U.S. Department of Education today [January 10, 2012] commended the 12 winners for working hard to implement the first year of their reform plans - but raised specific red flags about the pace of change in Hawaii, New York, and Florida." James Boutin specifically addresses the problems in New York City about teacher evaluations based on student test scores in In Case You Misunderstood Their Power for Something Lesser on his An Urban Teacher's Education blog. James doesn't have any kind words for UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who "appeared in a poorly prepared" for television and radio interviews about the impasse. Diane Ravitch had another excellent piece yesterday on the Bridging Differences blog, NCLB: The Death Star of American Education. She describes the No Child Left Behind law as "the Death Star of American education," inflicting "damage on students, teachers, schools, and communities." She also tells a heart wrenching story of a teacher at one of her speeches who began to ask a question, "I teach the lettuce-pickers' children in Salinas. They are closing our school because our scores are too low." Diane relates that the "teacher couldn't finish her question because she started crying." She goes on to tell more of "the wreckage caused by NCLB" she's witnessed as she continues to tirelessly tour the nation, encouraging teachers and fighting the misguided efforts of "education reformers." Mrs. Chili gets two stars today for good postings. On her A Teacher’s Education blog, she shares a note she sent a complaining parent that includes her Justification for a short story assignment given. On her The Blue Door non-education blog, she linked to Ministry of Truth's (Jesse LaGreca) An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America in her Quick Hit: This posting. LaGreca, clearly on a delicious rant, wrote:
Sara Wu's Fed Up with Lunches had another great guest blog last week by Carrie Fehr, chef teacher for the cooking and gardening program in the Berkeley Unified School District. Wu writes in an introduction that Fehr "has developed an expansive repertoire of cooking lessons that skillfully integrate core academic subjects, culinary concepts, and nutrition education." In Berkeley Schools, A Sustainable Food Model, Fehr writes of the Berkeley program:
In a guest posting on the Curriculum Matters blog that should have been named, "Let the bloodletting begin," Nirvi Shah writes that a new set of national standards "outlines the minimum that students should learn about their sexuality from their earliest years in school until they leave high school." In New National Standards Address Sexuality Education for All Grades, Shah writes:
Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes (a cut and paste from their announcement) The Library of Congress is now accepting applications for its 2012 Teaching with Primary Sources Teacher Institutes in Washington, D.C. The free, five-day institute will provide educators with the tools and resources to effectively integrate primary sources into classroom teaching. Institutes will take place on the following dates:
There is no charge for the program or materials but participants must cover costs for travel to Washington, DC and lodging and meals while in Washington. Participants may earn three graduate credits from George Mason University for completing all Summer Teacher Institute requirements (fee). Application Deadline: February 17, 2011 Stop the Presses! Replate! First, I found a lot of great postings for our On the Blogs section and put up our first edition for today at around 10 P.M. last night. It did include a dandy photo of the filler stories that never saw the light of day. Maybe readers should send the bloggers a thank you note for saving them from my stories about making animated gifs, plumbing follies, and a really funny one I may use in the future about someone asking me to run for office. (Can't you just hear the skeletons in my closet rattling to get out!) The animated gif got repurposed for use on our Senior Gardening website. Then this morning I saw the reports about the Tucson Schools caving under the pressure of possibly losing massive amounts of state aid and canceling their Mexican American Studies program. And again that guy in the background would have been shouting, "Stop the presses! Replate!" So just ten or so hours after putting up the first edition of today's posting which was really the second edition of today's posting, I'm getting one more revision ready to upload to the server. While the Tucson story makes room for another charity web banner at the top of this posting, I'm really sorry for the students impacted by the loss of their Mexican American Studies program. Odds 'n' Ends
Currently, the main G5 is torn down, and the replacement unit is going through an extensive burn in process. At some point, the two will become one, and the computer I'm composing this posting on will return to backup duty. It's a slow process. It turns out the processors on a G5 are anchored with torx screws that require a long shaft T-10 torx screwdriver to remove. I just happen to have a long shaft T-15 from my days of disassembling Mac SEs and SE/30s, but not a T-10. I ended up brutalizing the old G5 to remove the processors, but am patiently waiting on a long blade T-10 from Amazon When done, I should have a twin 2.0 GHz G5 tower with 8 GB of RAM and a lot of G5 spare parts to sell. We use Charity Navigator and GiveWell to review the charities for the banner ads that appear on Educators' News on Wednesday. Charities that have high administrative and/or fundraising expenses simply don't appear here or on our listing of banner ads for webmasters and bloggers to use. Instead of a specific charity this week, I decided to go with the Charity Navigator banner below.
Wish My Kids Had Gym Classes Like That! The San Francisco Chronicle's Julian Guthrie had a brief, but fantastic human interest story yesterday about Bain LaPlant, P.E. teacher at Mill Valley school. Guthrie writes of Bain's daily 30 minute phyical education classes at Strawberry Point School in Mill Valley, California. She quotes Bain as saying:
And:
In a time when P.E., art, music, instrumental music, and other classes are being eliminated due to funding cuts, it's good to read about a program where every student gets physical activity in gym class every day in an interesting way. More on the Tucson Mexican American Studies Program I posted a section on Saturday about funding being cut next month to the Tucson Unified School District over their Mexican American Studies program. If you're not up to speed on the controversy that recently has again flashed red hot, take a look at NPR's Threatened In Tucson: Mexican American Studies. When I wrote the last line of the section, I had an old friend in mind. Jim Crittenden was a pioneer in using technology to help his students at the Kayenta Middle School on a Navajo reservation. I'd asked the rhetorical question, "I wonder if the law that "bans classes primarily designed for a particular ethnic group" also applies to teaching their cultural heritage to those living on reservations in Arizona?" I called Jim on Saturday afternoon. He related that some reservation schools like Kayenta are state public schools and do fall under the potentially unconstitutional law that was specifically framed and passed to punish the Tucson Unified School District. He also related that some reservation schools are federally controlled and are not subject to the new Arizona law. Jim also shared a video link that showed "a peaceful student takeover of the TUSD board meeting on Apr. 26, 2011." The students chained themselves into the school board members' chairs, chanted, and finally delivered their demands for the Mexican American Studies program to continue. Their chant was pretty good: Our education is under attack. He also sent a link to a video of the next TUSD school board meeting, where according to DA Morales in John Pedicone orders the arrest of Mexican-American History professor while attacking Mexican-American History classes, conservative superintendent John Pedicone had "a 69-year old Mexican-American History professor, Lupe Castillo, who walks around with two crutches due to a disability, arrested by a swarm of about a dozen police in full riot gear and helmets, guns and tazers ready." According to the Morales article, the meeting was being held to dismantle the Mexican-American history program. Jim added a little more perspective with a link to his To E.L.L. and Back Again - an Essay on Indigenous Peoples' Civil Rights and a perceptive quote in an email later in the day:
And as Jim wrote, the whole thing will have to be tested in federal court. But the ugliness and potential repercussions to a school district with a program with an excellent reputation that began over a slight to the current Arizona attorney general is an incredible testimony to the bigotry that still exists towards minorities in America today. Social Learning Platform
When I registered and accessed the site index, I found that current offerings are for grades 5-8. I took a look at their Makeup of Living Organisms and Dividing by 1-Digit Divisor lessons and found a lot of resources, but also had trouble zeroing in on the skill lesson(s) I wanted. I found myself wondering "Where do I click next," repeatedly. But on the whole, this looks like another good online resource for teachers and students. On PBS LearningMedia An email this morning let me know that PBS LearningMedia is currently featuring a series of lessons on mastering measurement. PBS LearningMedia is a consolidation of sources of several other PBS sites, including content from one of my favorites, WGBH Boston's Teachers' Domain. A section of the email, pictured below left, linked to a number of featured resources.
Today was the first time I'd done anything close to an in-depth review of the PBS LearningMedia site. While I found a few glitches (occasionally I'd have to reload a page when I clicked on a link in the email, first getting an error message), the site is fairly easy to navigate and certainly has great free content for teachers and students. Do note that PBS will begin to occasionally spam you with messages advertising their not-so-free professional development modules once you register. But that's a small price to pay for the great content there. On Teachers' Domain
That's really quite a lot!
Publication Note (and some miscellaneous rambling): The PBS LearningMedia and Teachers' Domain sections were both late updates to this page (around 4 P.M. EST). I'd written most of the posting on Sunday afternoon and got it posted onlin Sunday evening. When I cleared my my email Monday morning and clicked into the Dunk Tank lesson and game, I knew I had to do a mid-day update. I ended up spending the whole afternoon playing around on the two excellent resource sites! Trekking the Planet Update
Answer Your Mail, Robert A. Niblock!
I'm doing an extra promo here for the column, as I feel a bit like the Jerry Fletcher character in the movie thriller, Conspiracy Theory Odds 'n' Ends eSchool News has added an online reader for their publication that includes their 2012 Readers Choice Awards: Fifty ed-tech products and services that are making a difference in schools. Valerie Strauss had a couple of good postings over the weekend on her The Answer Sheet blog on the Washington Post. A decade of No Child Left Behind: Lessons from a policy failure is the short, short version of Lisa Guisbond, Monty Neill, and Bob Schaeffer's recent No Child Left Behind 10th Anniversary Report on FairTest. Romney, Santorum, Paul on education issues summarizes the leading Republican presidential candidates' positions on education. Also see Alyson Klein's GOP Hopefuls Favor Scaled-Back K-12 Federal Role from last week on Education Week (requires registration, but not paid subscription to view). Larry Abramson's New York Suspends Federal Grants For 10 School Districts on NPR tells of school districts losing federal funding because they haven't yet acquiesced to the borg and accepted evaluating teachers based on high stakes student tests never, ever designed for that purpose (never mind the inequities of poverty and home and community conditions).
When I finally shut down all the various applications I use in constructing these pages on mathdittos2.com, I suddenly knew I wasn't quite done, I had to fire up the web editor and Photoshop again and share the screenshot below of my desktop. The image of the mourning dove, without all the desktop clutter, is available for use on our Desktop Photos page.
Have a great week in the classroom! |
I took a look at a few pages of the enhanced algebra book on the portal and found a few added bells and whistles to help students. A discussion of perimeter and area of a rectangle added a couple of interactive tools that dynamically showed the result of area when side dimensions of the shape were changed. (cK-12 text shown at far left - Wolfram additions shown at near left) Note that I found a required plug-in from Wolfram doesn't seem to work with Power PC Macs like mine, so I had to do my brief test drive on our Windows 7 equipped HP. 
Wolfram also has a whole bunch of 
on a commercial blog, 
, but you might save a bit by going to 
Alas, I digress. Back to Cookie Math. So... think about it... look at the solution, or dot, in the middle of these inequalities. Doesn't the open dot (x<2 or x>2) resemble the cream in the Oreo Cookie? And the (x<2 or x>2) look like the top cookie on those lovely cookie sammiches Cookie loves so much? Of course he prefers chocolate chip, but that just doesn't go along with my math plan ;) 
Being a bit of a glutton for punishment, I'm going to go back through the list one more time to make sure I gave all the nominees a fair shake. By the time I looked at the last third of the list, my attitude was pretty rotten from seeing spelling and grammar errors, recognizable student images, and blogs that existed only to pimp for teachers' products. I also endured some sites that suffered from way too much eye candy. There was even one blog included in the nominees that chronicled the different outfits the author wears to class each day as a fashion statement! I guess there's something for everyone on the web. 
I chased down a brief AP posting that eventually got the provocative title, 
Apple Computer, Inc., announced an announcement yesterday. Well actually, they 
before tearing down the replacement unit. (Note: The "new" unit's case has some damage, so I have to gut it and transfer its innards to my original G5 case.) 
, when talking about Educators' News and our new 
©2011-2012 Steven L. Wood