Monday, June 9, 2008

Virtual Field Trips

Ben Arnoldy has an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about virtual field trips augmenting and sometimes substituting for the real thing in Now Students Take Field Trips Online. He notes how podcasts and other multimedia can be effectively used for pre-teaching before students embark on a field trip. And sadly, with the fuel costs for field trips, he also writes about virtual experiences being used when the real thing can no longer be afforded.

An inset in the article mentions a Glacier National Park podcast about a grizzly bear at Lake McDonald in Montana. I poked around a bit and found a link to Glacier's podcasts.

Record Public School Enrollment in US

Maria Glod reports in the Washington Post that "public school enrollment across the country will hit a record high this year with just under 50 million students. In 2008 Enrollment In U.S. Expected To Set Record, she also writes about the concerns of educators for closing the achievement gap, as "bout 43 percent of the nation's students are minorities."

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

More K-12 Online Education in Florida?

It's not a law yet, but the Florida Legislature has passed a bill "that mandates that every school district by 2009 offer some type of online education program, even to students as young as 5." Florida's current online education programs already serve approximately 60,000 students, mainly high school students via the Florida Virtual School.

Gary Fineout reports in Florida may expand online education in the Miami Herald that the move may help "accommodate a growing demand for online education" in the state. Supplemental course work not currently available in all schools could be offered. One source also noted the online education program could help "children who are sick or have to work during the day."

There are a lot of possibilities from such a measure, probably both good and bad. Parents fleeing public schools would have another option added to private schools or homeschooling. While online education programs still would require licensed teachers, teaching distance education is bit of a different animal than teaching in a regular classroom. And private vendors could end up supplying most of the course content.

If signed into law by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, this one will be interesting to follow.

Candidates on Education

An eSchool News article tells of a panel discussion by representatives of the Obama and McCain campaigns in McCain, Obama reps discuss education. Also, Education Week has a report today on the candidates views on NCLB and education in general, Candidates Are at Odds Over K-12.

Interesting Forum Posting

Educator Walt Gardner has posted an interesting discussion about the differing views of older and younger teachers in a San Francisco Chronicle Open Forum, Do new teachers mean a new era in education? He based his comments on his interpretation of a May report, Waiting to be Won Over, published in May by Education Sector. The full report (724K PDF document) is an interesting read and reveals views of the teachers surveyed on merit pay, unions, tenure, and teacher improvement.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Report on Ability Grouping

An article published last month on the British site, The Independent, showed up this week on a Yahoo Education search. Setting harms education of some young children, report warns by Sarah Cassidy suggests that "teaching young children in groups according to their ability does not increase their achievements and is damaging to those pupils allocated to the bottom groups." The article is drawn from a section of the Primary Review interim reports dealing with Classes, Groups and Transitions: structures for teaching and learning. While the report says ability grouping by class may have a detrimental effect on some children, it also strongly supports grouping within individual classrooms. The report also states, "The quality of the teaching seems to be the most important factor in determining pupil outcomes [ We knew that!], although pupils in the top groups can have an enhanced educational experience."

Kibo in Place

The Japanese laboratory module Kibo is now in place on the International Space Station, and the Space Shuttle Discovery crew is resting before their planned Saturday morning landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. As always, the mission has produced some excellent images.

The Astronomy Picture of the Day folks have cranked out a number of great images this week as well.

Mars Soil Sample Ready to Analyze Image Credit: Phoenix Mission Team, NASA, JPL-Caltech, U. Arizona	Saturn's Rings from the Other Side Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA	Dextre Robot at Work on the Space Station Image Credit: STS-124 Crew, Expedition 17 Crew, NASA

Education Reform

As election campaigns heat up, various groups have issued calls for renewed efforts in improving education. One group headed by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and the Reverend Al Sharpton "urged Washington to squeeze teachers and administrators harder to raise achievement among minorities," according to Sam Dillon in Democrats Offer Plans to Revamp Schools Law in The New York Times. One part of their call for reform stated:

We must insist that our elected officials confront and address head-on crucial issues that created this crisis: teachers’ contracts and state policies that keep ineffective teachers in classrooms and too often make it nearly impossible to get our best teachers paired up with the students who most need them.

Another large group, including Atlanta Superintendent Beverly L. Hall, Miami-Dade County Superintendent Rudy Crew , former Boston Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, civil rights leader Julian Bond and former Attorney General Janet Reno, issued a statement that "criticized the federal No Child Left Behind law and argued that schools alone could not close a racial achievement gap rooted in economic inequality. They urged a new emphasis on health clinics and other antipoverty programs that could help poor students arrive at school ready to learn."

The full statement is available on the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education web site.

Related stories:

• The Huffington Post - A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education - by Pedro Noguera
• The Washington Post - Standing Up for the Children - by Bill Turque

Also, let me add a related story link here. Sheryl Gay Stolberg tells an very interesting story of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and her efforts for NCLB in Bush Loyalist Fights Foes of ‘No Child’ Law.

OLPC Music Software

Ah, it feels good to get away from the political stuff and write about technology and teaching again!

The Wall Street Journal has a cool article about TamTam, a suite of music software applications that are part of the OLPC Linux-based Sugar user interface. In Can OLPC's Software Teach The World to Play Music, Elva Ramirez relates that "children as young as two can hammer on the laptop's keyboard to make noise, while more advanced users can compose music with tools called TamTam Jam and synthLab." The article also includes a great demonstration of the software by Berklee Professor of Music Synthesis Richard Boulanger.

Related link: One Laptop Per Child site

Been Busy in the Garden

I sorta let the stories for Educators' News pile up this week until today, as we finally have had a stretch of good weather. I got busy outside catching up on mowing and gardening once things dried out.

I wrote last March about a trick I tried getting my peas in early on ground that really wasn't worked up as it should have been. I bought some cheap, bagged top soil and some very expensive sphagnum peat moss as a cover. I put landscape fabric over a bit of ground for a flowerbed, but put the pea seed right onto the ground and covered it with the topsoil and peat.

While our harvest wasn't anything like what we've had in some good years with properly prepared soil and better weather, the "trick" worked and we had a nice harvest of peas this week. We also had a hot spell (like a lot of folks) that pretty well shortened the pea harvest, so I pulled the plants for the last picking, pulled back the mulch, worked in a lot of 12-12-12 and lime, and replanted Sugar Snap Snap Peas along the same temporary trellis.

One part of the trick that didn't work was planting two different varieties in the same row. I was using some year and two year old seed (that had been frozen...a great way to preserve your garden seed). One variety was a dwarf, bush type. It was far more vigorous in germination than my favorite, Eclipse, a slightly taller variety. If I'd gone just with the taller variety, I think we might have gotten a better harvest.

BTW: While planting two varieties in the same row wasn't such a hot idea, canning is a different matter. Something I've noticed over the years is that canned green beans always seem to taste better when I put up several varieties together.

The hot weather spelled a short harvest for our early peas. Note the yellowing on the plants towards the rear of the patch.	The last picking (of about four pickings) is shown in the foreground. Slim pickings, but ah, early peas grown at home are incredible!
The view out my office window of the garden, well, it can make me a lot less productive! The partial view of the patch on the right reveals that there's a lot more space to be planted. Unfortunately, the ground is still way too wet. Like many others, we had torrential rains last weekend. We're fortunate to be on high ground. Lots of folks in the Wabash Valley (and elsewhere) have had their homes ruined by flooding.

We've already harvested some fantastic cauliflower (variety Amazing) and some good broccoli. Our lettuce that I interplanted with our garlic didn't fare well with the hail. It's recovering, but some of it looks as if it had been shot with a shotgun!

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