Monday, January 5, 2009

The Happy New Year image above came from the NASA Image of the Day and the Cassini-Huygens mission team.

Due to a death in our family, Educators' News will remain on a reduced posting schedule this week.

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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Google Releases Picasa for Macintosh

Michael Calore reports on Wired that After an Agonizing Wait, Picasa for Mac Finally Arrives. Picasa is a free desktop application for editing, organizing and sharing digital photos from Google Labs. It's long been available for Windows and Linux users, but a beta for Mac (Intel CPU only) was released Monday to coincide with the 2009 Macworld Expo.

Strange Teacher Dismissal in California

Richard C. Paddock has an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times about a teacher who was dismissed for allegedly plagiarizing in a college class. In Tioga High students push to recall school board, Paddock tells about Tioga students mounting a recall effort to remove all five board members of the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District who dismissed the teacher. Interestingly, the teacher has been cleared of any plagiarism allegations, but the school board has refused to reinstate him.

More D.C. Schools Reform

Bill Turque writes in Rhee Plans Shake-Up of Teaching Staff, Training in the Washington Post:

At the heart of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's vision for transforming D.C. schools is a dramatic overhaul of its 4,000-member teacher corps that would remove a "significant share" of instructors and launch an ambitious plan to foster professional growth for those who remain.