Monday, March 17, 2008

Astronomy Picture of the Day Courtesy NASA

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) by James N. Brown was a dandy. Shown at left, it's a great shot of the glow from the night launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour last Tuesday morning. I noticed the photo on a web page where I have a table similar to the one at right that pulls in and sizes the daily APOD offering. Such blocks can be a great addition to a classroom web page.

The Astronomy Picture of the Day doesn't offer an RSS feed, although there is an unofficial one available. I borrowed the idea and a bit of code that originally used the unofficial RSS feed from Tom Rademaker of Oak Hill High School in Indiana and modified it to use the direct, daily image from the APOD site. You can grab the code for it here.

California Schools

California remains in school news as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "blue-ribbon committee on education released a list of sweeping recommendations Friday to overhaul California's public school system at an additional annual cost of $10.5 billion." Blueprint to help schools: Tough budget year overshadows panel's report tells of the recommendations and notes that the state's schools are still preparing for Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed "$4.4 billion cut in K-12 education" in the next budget. With jobs on the line, teachers explore their options is another column on the impact on teachers from the proposed cuts.

Here in Indiana, we appear to have dodged school funding shortfalls for this year, but Governor Mitch Daniels's recently passed property tax relief package will leave schools and communities cutting services in 2009 and 2010. AP writer Mike Smith concludes his article, Property tax relief package draws praise, some trepidation, with some surprisingly candid comments from Indiana House Speaker Patrick Bauer and himself.

Bauer: "I worry that this grand experiment might not provide everlasting property tax relief. It could lead to income tax increase and cuts in both education and public safety."

Smith: It will take months or longer to determine the results of the plan, but there is no doubt that it will be part of the political fray for the rest of this election year...Daniels has big bucks behind him, and he can tour this property tax plan during the campaign as a victory for average Hoosier taxpayers. He has the luxury of time, too, because it will be a long time before the true impact of his plan will be known.

A Good Effect of NCLB

I don't have a lot of good things to say about the No Child Left Behind law, but it has served to focus attention on minority and disabled students. Maria Glod's Law Opens Opportunities for Disabled in the Washington Post tells about some of the positive outcomes possibly from NCLB for students with disabilities.

Good Open Source Software Lists for Schools

Some recent postings on the Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators listserve led me to a couple of good sources of free and open source software suitable for the classroom.

• Free/Open Source Software from the Saugus Union School District in California
• Open Source Alternative to Commercial Software on Downloadpedia

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Rain Fade

Wikipedia calls it rain fade. "Rain fade refers to the absorption of a microwave Radio Frequency (RF) signal by rain or snow, and is especially prevalent in frequencies above 11 GHz." They also mention it in their current section on satellite internet connections.

Alas, it was raining cats and dogs here this morning, so just checking my email took a very long time and doing any sort of update to Educators' News was totally out of the question. By afternoon, the rain had slacked off to just a steady, somewhat heavy rain, and limited connectivity was restored.

As it turns out, there isn't a lot new going on out there in education news today, so a late update isn't all that bad. In California the news is still not promising: State's school districts prepare for cuts, layoffs. NASA's Image of the Day today features a photo similar to the one APOD used Sunday, and Science@NASA has another good, new posting, The Vanishing Rings of Saturn.

Larger Font Sizes for Old Eyes

I'm experimenting this week with larger font sizes on Educators' News. Let me know how you like it.  

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

NCLB Changes

The Bush Administration has announced a pilot program that will allow up to ten states to try differentiating between schools that are not meeting standards across the board from those with one consistent area of non-attainment. The change in No Child Left Behind has drawn praise from some as needed and long-overdue improvement and criticism from others as simply a band-aid to a program requiring a dramatic overhaul.

• Los Angeles Times - White House is willing to ease up on No Child Left Behind
• New York Times - U.S. Eases ‘No Child’ Law as Applied to Some States

A Look at Inclusion

Washington Post staff writer Daniel de Vise looks at the pros and cons of inclusion for students in In the Mainstream but Isolated. De Vise describes some specific cases where inclusion (or mainstreaming) has been effective and others where it has proved to be a disaster. It's a good read, as many schools have forced inclusion where it really isn't indicated for some students.

Flooding Closes Southern Indiana Schools

While we're past our rain fade of yesterday, it's still raining heavily here in southwest central Indiana. Extensive flooding shuts Southern Indiana schools tells of the woes of some school corporations. After many snow and ice day closings and delays, this one just adds to the breaks in instruction for students and teachers we've experienced this year.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

How Many Do Graduate?

Sam Dillon has a timely column in today's New York Times, States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School. Dillon writes about how one state "keeps two sets of books" on graduation rates, and then shows through some numbers and quotes that the practice is fairly widespread. States reporting one graduation rate to Washington often have a far lower figure publicly posted elsewhere. Possibly one of the more telling sections of the column is:

Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law’s mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school’s performance can rise.

I didn't get this posting up until afternoon, as I had a morning dentist appointment. My dentist's wife is a choir teacher turned choir/special ed teacher, due to potential cutbacks at her school a few years ago. The dentist and I ended up talking about the number of dropouts we see in our communities, and beyond that, the lack of motivation among students to complete, much less excel in high school. We didn't solve the dropout problem in our chat, but were in agreement that caring, dedicated teachers with time to focus on individual student's needs was the beginning of the answer. 

Friday, March 21, 2008 - TGIF

"For drama, it's hard to beat a child in a garbage can."

Nanette Asimov uses the line above in her article, Californians upset by school funding cut plan, in the San Francisco Chronicle. In protest of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed gutting of education spending in California, Alameda residents, students, teachers, custodians, "or another expendable soul from a local school" lined the streets of Alameda standing in garbage cans! (Please see Ad campaign aimed to save schools and Alameda teachers, students protest throughout city over state cuts for images.)

Asimov writes, "'If they trash the schools, kids would be trashed too,' said Ben Holmes, 7, explaining with a first-grader's clarity why he was standing in a gray trash bin on the corner of Park and Central earlier this week."

In the Chronicle Open Forum posting Education budget cuts are not in California's interest, Carlos Garcia and Mark Sanchez, the superintendent and board president of the San Francisco Unified School District, speak out against the proposed cuts.

Oceans Found Under Titan's Surface?

The Cassini has found evidence that oceans of water and ammonia may exist about 60 miles under the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.

• NASA Press Release - Cassini Spacecraft Finds Ocean May Exist Beneath Titan's Crust
• Space.com - Evidence for Ocean Found at Saturn's Moon Titan

Have a great weekend!

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