Monday, July 21, 2008

The Next Kind of Integration

Emily Bazelon has written an excellent piece on how some school districts are dealing with the Supreme Court's decision last year declaring the racial-integration efforts of two school districts unconstitutional. In The Next Kind of Integration Bezelon tells of diversity plans based on socioeconomic measures that in some cases appear to lift test scores significantly.

Bible Classes in Texas High Schools

Terrance Stutz reports in the Dallas Morning News that the Texas State Board of Education has approved optional Bible classes in Texas high schools for this coming school year. In State Board of Education approves general guidelines for high school Bible course, Stutz relates that "local school officials will have to figure out how to design those classes so they don't violate religious-freedom protections."

Google SketchUp

Frequent reader Tom Rademaker of Oak Hill High School (IN) sent along a tip on a free application that may prove useful for many teachers. He wrote in part:

I have been fiddling around with a program I found recently called SketchUp. SketchUp is a 3D modeling tool from Google. There is a free version available to anyone, but I got a free educators license for the Pro version. If you aren't already familiar with SketchUp it's worth a look.

Tom's definitely right: It's worth a look. I downloaded the free version and found myself wishing SketchUp had been available to do some cold frame plans I'd drawn up years ago. Also, be sure to check out the Google More page, as it contains a growing list of mostly free Google tools.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

The Perseids (again)

As I mentioned last Friday, there will be several columns and articles published in the next few weeks as we approach the date of the Perseid meteor shower. Science@NASA had a very readable piece this week (easily readable by students, that is) in The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower.

Girls Math Scores on Par with Boys

A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation revealed no gender differences in test performance in math for girls and boys. Tamar Lewin tells the story in Math Scores Show No Gap for Girls, Study Finds, or you can read the report in Science Magazine's Girls = Boys at Math by David Malakoff.

Strange Week

It's been another slow week for education news, unless you count Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings appearance Tuesday night on The Colbert Report.

Our satellite internet service, which had seemed to be getting steadily slower, dropped to dialup speed this week after a series of storms. While some better now, I'd guess our satellite got knocked out of alignment.

While right up there with "the dog ate my homework," That's My Story (link opens to iTunes) for just two postings this week. Yeah, it's a weak excuse, but there were beets, onions, and carrots to harvest in the garden, grass to mow, and an ornery computer that I mentioned last week to get working.

BTW: The HP Pavilion 7695 returned to life after a thorough cleaning, and not much else. It was the second dirtiest computer I'd ever cleaned out. (The first was an old Mac SE/30 that had dried mud in it...and still ran!) The main hard drive and the CD burner both had to be replaced and the secondary hard drive had to be wiped due to viruses. The thing still gives off a bit of odor, despite the cleaning, making me wonder if there may be more fun in store (power supply?) in the future.

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