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After the long campaign, it's finally time to vote tomorrow. Click here or on the image at right to find your polling place. Maria Glod has an interesting article in today's Washington Post about student mock elections in As Kids Go, So Goes the Nation. Eat Your... Mary MacVean tells of the success of the USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program in Federal program aims to get students to eat fruits and veggies. The program is still a pilot program, but has shown good results in the states where it's been tried. Student Incentive Programs Bill Turque has a brief article about some of the cash for attendance, grades, and behavior programs currently going on. In Incentives Can Make Or Break Students, Turque tells of various systems around the country offering cash incentives for student progress. One example is in Chicago where "freshmen and sophomores at 20 Chicago high schools get $50 for each A in a five-week marking period, $35 for a B and $20 for a C. An F negates any cash reward for a given period. Half of all student earnings are withheld until graduation." Turque tells of some successes, but also includes the observations of critics of such reward programs. Google Moves a Step Closer to Settling Book Scanning Lawsuits An eSchool News posting reports that Google has settled lawsuits with publishers and others that will allow its Google Library Project to go forward if approved by the court. Google settles book-scanning lawsuit says that the agreement will give library users full-text access to many works not previously available online. Online Grades Change Student-Parent-Teacher Dynamic Daniel de Vise writes in his poorly named Online Grading Systems Mean No More Changing D's to B's, "The proliferation of online grading systems has transformed relations among teachers, parents and students and changed the rhythm of the school year." With grades available 24/7 online, "Prospective failure is no longer a bombshell dropped in a parent-teacher conference." Weekends Annie and I did another of our getaway weekends recently. We took in a concert by Foreigner on Thursday night at the Rosebud Theater in Effingham, Illinois. It was a good concert, and the group performed most of their hits from the last 20 years. As often happens on such trips, we discovered a gem along the way. On our trip home on Friday, we stopped by the Cameo Vineyards in Greenup, Illinois. We sampled wines and talked to co-owner Sonya Webb for a while. Send Feedback to
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - General Election Day (US) Another Autism Study A study released yesterday afternoon in the AMA Journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine very tentatively links high levels of precipitation with a higher risk for developing autism. The press release for the report and articles describing the results suggest "that something about wet weather may trigger the disorder [autism]." The authors of the report describe their findings as "preliminary," but also note, "further research focused on establishing whether such as trigger exists and on identifying it is warranted."
Election Night With the Presidential election going on today in the United States, there's not a lot of education news. Political junkies such as my wife, Annie, and I, will be spending the evening glued to the TV watching the returns. One perk for us is that Indiana, traditionally declared by the networks as going Republican about a minute after the polls close, appears to be a competitive race this time around. Election Reactions by Students Avis Thomas-Lester and Michael Birnbaum have a good article in today's Washington Post about student reactions to the Presidential election. One compelling item from Election Analysis In Class, Embraces And Tears Outside It is the sense of pride expressed by students with the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Election Reactions by Educators eSchool News assistant editor Meris Stansbury tells that "Barack Obama's election as 44th president of the United States indicates that the nation is ready for change--in economic policy, in health care, and especially in education." In Most ed leaders bullish on Obama's win, Stansbury writes of Obama and Democrat's plans for education:
Indianapolis Residents Okay School Tax Increase In an election cycle often dominated by talk of tax cuts, Indianapolis residents approved the "Indianapolis Public Schools' request to raise taxes to pay for school renovations." In Voters get a voice on IPS school referendums, Indy Star writer Andy Gammill tells of "one of the first tests of a new state law giving voters direct say in whether to raise taxes for large school building projects." The bond issue, which will allow as much as $278 million in some desperately needed renovation and construction projects, passed with 78 percent of the vote! NCLB University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Sarah J. McCarthey published findings in the October issue of Written Communication that said "because the federal government uses only math and reading scores to measure a school's progress, there's little incentive for schools to teach students non-tested subjects such as writing, music, art and science." McCarthey's research found "that teachers, especially those in low-income schools, are increasingly jettisoning writing from their language arts block in favor of reading comprehension" in an attempt to shore up standardized reading scores. 'No Child' law gets an 'F' from education professor at Illinois tells the story, while the full version of her report is available to subscribers only from Sage Journals Online. Another ADHD Study A recent report on ScienceDaily, Is ADHD More Likely To Affect Movement In Boys Or Girls, "found that girls with ADHD and the control group of children without ADHD were twice as likely to be able to control their movements for their age compared to boys with ADHD, who showed continued difficulties." I missed a good posting last week on Science@NASA, Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth. Dr. Tony Phillips begins with:
The Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to be launched next Friday (11/14/08) on its mission (STS-126) to the International Space Station. Mission plans call for repair of the station’s solar alpha rotary joint and delivery of a multi-purpose logistics module, both of which will enable the space station to support twice the crew currently living there.
STS-126 image galleries are available on the shuttle mission page and the Human Space Flight site. If you're on the hunt for shuttle imagery, you might want to check both, as they seem to have some different photos on each! Another Slow Day Once again there's not a lot of education news going on today, but oh, what a week it's been! I did find one interesting article about an exchange teacher in the Fullbright Program, A Latvian Teacher's American Experience. Great Stocking Stuffer
Great APOD So that there's at least a little bit of educational relevance to today's posting, here's a great photo from the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive. I ran across it earlier this week, but didn't get to use it the day it was published. While the photo is eye catching, the last line of APOD caption was interesting to me.
"The above image was taken last week by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to demonstrate the ability of its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 after some recent technical difficulties."
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©2008 Steven L. Wood