Monday, May 19, 2008

Globalization in the Classroom

Winnie Hu has a really interesting story in The New York Times about a school integrating globalization into its curriculum in District Puts All the World in Classrooms. It's a nice read about things being done right in the classroom.

Another column by the same writer slipped by me last week, but Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops is a good read about 1:1 computing. While reasons for dropping 1:1 computing initiatives often revolve about funding, it's important for those of us involved with technology in education to keep our focus on improving instruction, not just adding technology.

Field Trips Down

We already all knew this, but Los Angeles Times staff writer Seema Mehta tells the tale pretty well in Schools can't spare time or dimes for field trips. When funding dries up, field trips are one of the things that disappear pretty quickly. What Mehta adds that is new is that time on task requirements for our current high stakes testing also knocks out field trips. How sad.

More on OLPC

With the recent announcement of OLPC offering its computers with Microsoft Windows, a lot of talk on discussion boards has centered on a former OLPC employee's comments about the program. Former OLPC security director Ivan Krstic shares some "insider" views of the program in his blog posting, Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi.

Send Feedback to

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Kids Taste Testing for School Cafeteria

Washington Post staff writer Lori Aratani has an interesting story today about kids taste testing for their school cafeteria. In Young Food Critics Offer Schools Insider Help, Aratani tells of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at Wolftrap Elementary in Vienna, Virginia, testing pizza, cheese sticks, and Italian Ice for possible inclusion in school menus. She notes that "all items are engineered to meet the school system's nutritional standards and contain no more than 30 percent of calories from fat and 10 percent of calories from saturated fat on average over the week."

NCLB Stuff

The AP's Nancy Zuckerbrod has an interesting article on how states set their testing standards for NCLB and how some who used easier initial standards face a tough few years in a quest to reach the 100% proficiency mark in math and reading by the federally mandated 2014 deadline. Half of states' schools face steep achievement requirements Zuckerbrod notes that "many states having to make steep gains now saw the 2013-14 goal as unrealistic and likely to be changed, so they just put off the law's effects."

Along this line of thought, I ran across an interesting forum on the NEA site about the Reading First component of NCLB.

Impacts on the Moon

Dr. Tony Phillips's Science@NASA site has another intriguing posting in 100 Explosions on the Moon. While it makes sense, I'm not sure I realized that the moon was bombarded with meteorites that sometimes produce visible explosions. Phillips has posted a great animated gif showing one of the explosions.

Do Science and Math Competitions Help?

Patrik Jonsson has an interesting read about the effectiveness of science fairs and math competitions drawing students to the subjects in Can competitions raise 'cool' factor of math, science.

Wet Spring

We've had a very wet spring in west central Indiana this year. While farmers just a bit north and south of us are in fair to good shape on spring planting, around here, they're way behind. (Note untilled, unplanted field in background of the May 21 shot below!) The wet spring also has slowed our gardening, but some of the early crops we got in are doing great.

I ran out to the garden yesterday to grab a shot of our peas in bloom and was surprised to find a few of the plants already had set pods! We "mudded in" our peas in mid-March, so I really shouldn't have been so surprised.

While our "main garden" for this year looks pretty good (section with timbers creating a raised bed), our larger plot is still not planting ready. I had it close at one point, but didn't get our beans, tomatoes, and corn in before the rains came again.

Our brassicas (here, broccoli and cauliflower) are doing great. We transplant as early as possible, as these plants can handle late frosts pretty well. We also mulch them in with grass clippings from the yard to hold the moisture for them. The row on the right is filled with peppers. Originally, this row wasn't mulched in, as I'd seeded spinach into it. The spinach drowned out in the heavy spring rains, so I just scuffed up the surface a bit with an action hoe, transplanted the peppers into it, and mulched them in.	We do employ intensive gardening techniques in some areas of our garden. Even though we have lots of space in the country, we don't have that much good soil, so we concentrate on small areas. Above are rows of onions, radish over carrots, beets, and more onions. Some are planted in double rows just four inches apart with twelve inch spacing between the main rows. This area will receive grass clipping mulch once the beets and carrots are off to a good start. The carrots share their rows with radishes, as the radishes help break the soil surface until the much slower germinating carrots break the surface. By the time the carrots need the space, the radishes are ready to be harvested.
We have lots of hanging baskets on our front and back porches this year. That is, in part, due to the wet weather allowing time for such stuff. Here are some impatiens I put in what is a new type of pot for us, a coco mat basket.	We usually just recycle old hanging baskets we have. It seemed that every petunia seed we started germinated this year, so we have lots of petunias in hanging baskets!

We still have lots more planting to do once the weather clears up and the soil dries a bit. Our back porch "holding area" still has lots of impatiens for our shady flower beds in front of the house, and lots of onion starts to go somewhere!

Although all are long out of print, Crockett's Victory Garden, Crockett's Indoor Garden, and Crockett's Flower Garden are still the best reference volumes I have on gardening. Fortunately for others, they're still available used at very reasonable prices through Amazon. Some of the things I've mentioned above and in other postings, such as intensive gardening and grass clipping mulch, came from Crockett's books and the old PBS TV show, Crockett's Victory Garden.

One I haven't mentioned as yet is growing asparagus from seed. Jim Crockett did a feature once about growing asparagus from seed. It takes some doing, as you have to freeze the seed and even sand or apply an emery board to it a bit to get it to germinate. We actually let ours grow for almost a year under plant lights in a seed flat indoors before setting out the asparagus roots in a well worked seed bed. (Lots of peat moss, cow manure, and lime were worked deeply into the seed bed.)

Starting an asparagus bed from seed is a bit slower than purchasing asparagus roots, but it has some advantages, as noted on the University of Illinois Extension site:

Growing your own plants delays establishment of your bed an additional year, but it ensures that you are starting with freshly dug crowns that have not lost vigor by being dug, stored and shipped. Also, variety selection is usually much greater when shopping for seeds rather than crowns.

One more advantage to growing from seed is that you can pick either the all male seed type or from the older male and female varieties such as Viking, Martha Washington, etc. We chose the mixed varieties, despite the fact that all male plantings may produce thicker, larger spears "because they put no energy into seeds." We find that the seed production is a good thing, as the seeds can thicken and reinvigorate the stand of asparagus as it ages and experiences good and bad seasons and some expected winter kill.

This is the third year for our asparagus from seed. Most garden references say you can take a light picking from third year asparagus, but we choose to give ours one more year before picking. Last summer was extremely dry here, and our asparagus suffered from it, so we're going to wait another year. This is the second bed of asparagus from seed I've done, as I did it years ago when I had a small farm. There, the asparagus planting thickened over the years as the female plants produced viable seed.

We're also in a bit of a holding pattern, both on gardening and until today, on Educators' News, as I had to go back in for a "tune-up" on my elbow this week. I'd had some large cysts removed a year ago and ended up wearing a brace the nursing staff called "the club" for six weeks last summer. I guess I'm lucky that the reoccurrence wasn't as serious this year, and I only have a mildly inconvenient dressing and just am restricted from lifting for two-three weeks. Yesterday, even typing was a chore. But then, doing anything more than snoozing in the easy chair was a chore, considering the pain-killers I was on.

So now, I'm one day clean and sober and can at least get this posting up :-) . (BTW: That's an attempt at humor and no disrespect to the wonderful folks in AA in the Terre Haute area. We love and respect you for your strength and courage!)

Friday, May 23, 2008 - TGIF

ADHD and Food Additives

A posting today in ScienceDaily proposes A Trial Of Removing Food Additives Should Be Considered For Hyperactive Children. An editorial in the British Medical Journal asks why, "despite evidence to the contrary, does the removal of food additives remain an alternative rather than a standard part of treatment for ADHD?" The report also states, "Of the three main treatments for ADHD in children--drugs, behavioural therapy, and dietary modification--only drugs and dietary modification are supported by data from several trials. Yet, behavioural therapy, which has no scientific evidence base, is still thought of as necessary for 'adequate treatment', he says."

For those of us in the classroom, the reality is usually that our ADHD children are treated only with drug therapy with only lip service given to behavioral therapy. The removal of some food additives may prove to be a very positive action for some ADHD children, but I'd add that all three main treatments for ADHD still need to be observed.

Another Science@NASA

Dr. Tony Phillips has posted yet another good article, Lunar GRAIL, suitable for use by students, on the Science@NASA site.

Harcourt Elementary

Today's Indianapolis Star carries a short article, Harcourt memories, containing letters from former students of Harcourt Elementary School in Indianapolis. Harcourt is closing next Wednesday, more due to budgetary cutbacks than anything else.

I taught a third grade class for children with developmental delays at Harcourt (1978-1981). At that time we at least thought we were on the cutting edge of education using the Project Read program that was then just in its infancy and supporting students and teachers with regular staffings where a committee brainstormed for suggestions. Administrators and special education personnel regularly visited my room to co-teach. A spirit of family existed where teachers helped each other without any competitiveness. We did a lot of things right there.

The experience of teaching at Harcourt helped mold me into a better teacher and ultimately paved the way for my later success as a special educator.

Have a great weekend!

Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News.