Monday, June 1, 2009

National Education Standards

In an effort led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, forty-six states and the District of Columbia will begin work on a set of national education standards this summer. Maria Glod reports in 46 States, D.C. Plan to Draft Common Education Standards that Texas, Alaska, Missouri and South Carolina have not as yet agreed to the effort to create a national set of benchmarks. As the standards are completed, "each state would decide individually whether to adopt it." While not quite a true set of national standards, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the effort "a new day for education in our country" and "a huge step in a direction that would have been unimaginable just a year or two ago."

Gates Foundation May Shift Education Focus

eSchool News reports in Gates Foundation: Teachers trump class size that "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions of dollars exploring the idea that smaller high schools might result in higher graduation rates and better test scores. Instead, it found the key to better education is not necessarily smaller schools but more effective teachers."

More on Merit Pay

Jay Mathews weighs in on merit pay in his column Charter Schools Provide Good Model On Teacher Pay. Some of his comments are a bit surprising:

Extra pay for better work sounds as logical as sharpened pencils and multiplication tables. But if done in the public and routinized way indicated by (D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle] Rhee and the president, it could ruin the team spirit that has produced the most successful public schools, particularly in urban and rural areas.

New Affiliate Advertiser...and a Senior Moment Confession

Last Christmas I decided to send my Dad a popcorn and sweets collection from The Popcorn Factory. In one of those senior moments, I garbled his street address number and didn't discover my error until I received the shipping confirmation. His order ended up somewhere in Wisconsin. Dad, now 96 years young, lives in Indianapolis!

Fortunately, the recipient told UPS the errant shipment wasn't theirs. The Popcorn Factory's customer service called me, got the correct shipping address, and reshipped the order to my father at no extra charge! At that point I was really impressed with the folks there.

Dad called a few days later to say that he was thrilled with the Holly Dots Sampler he received. I poked around online a bit and found that The Popcorn Factory was a member of the LinkShare affiliate program, and I immediately applied to add them to the list of affiliate advertisers on Senior Gardening and Educators' News . Months passed with no word on my application, so I emailed the company. I received a prompt response (again) and found that I had been added to their affiliate program.

So...I guess that's a long promo and endorsement for our new affiliate advertiser, The Popcorn Factory. Do note that I don't often add an endorsement for advertisers and have in the past actually dropped affiliates where my readers have written with confirmed negative experiences with the advertiser!

I may just send Dad some more popcorn and goodies for Father's Day, but I'll make sure to double check the address before I hit the order button!

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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Innovation Gone Awry

After posting an eSchool News report yesterday, Gates Foundation: Teachers trump class size, I was a bit surprised today to see another eSchool News article on a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation effort, School of the Future: Lessons in failure. Philadelphia's School of the Future opened in 2006 to "teach at-risk students critical 21st-century skills needed for college and the work force by emphasizing project-based learning, technology, and community involvement." eSchool News associate editor Meris Stansbury writes that "the project's failure to date offers several cautionary lessons in school reform."

Odds 'n' Ends

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for today is melee, which might be appropriate for the education reform "discussion" currently going on in the United States. I'm not going to get into merit pay, charter schools, teachers' unions, vouchers and such here, as my intent is to share the widget for the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. At right is a screenshot of today's word, as if I just embed the widget itself, it will change words tomorrow!

I've done several postings about using Spring Widgets and Earthshots, EPOD and APOD, and other Pictures of the Day (POD) on school web pages. I really need to put it all together in a column or feature sometime, but for now, maybe the links above can get you started on an interesting summer project. It's really not very hard, and the widgets and various POD's can add a lot to a school web page.

My dad clued me in a few weeks ago to the financial problems at the ISTA Insurance Trust. The Trust was started in 1985 or so to give Blue Cross and/or Anthem some serious competition in school health insurance. Today, I read that the parent organization, ISTA (Indiana State Teachers Association) of which I was a member while teaching, is also in serious financial difficulty. Indiana State Teachers Association Is More Than $4.2 Million in the Red tells that an NEA appointed trustee will now try to steer the union out of its financial problems. (Also see NEA TAKES OVER ISTA.)

And while rambling a bit, I pulled together the most popular columns for this site and my other site, Senior Gardening, for the month of May. Both sites had their best month of the year statistically in May. While my Top Ten will never compete with Letterman's, I always find it interesting to see the mix of new and old columns that are still popular.

I really don't write many Mac-related columns anymore, but since folks keep visiting some of my older pieces, I try to keep the links updated where possible.

Most of my "mail" these days comes from readers of the Gloxinia feature. Lots of folks who used to grow gloxinias are trying them again along with a few newcomers. They're an easy to grow, gorgeous houseplant with about the same requirements as an African Violet. I usually keep one or two of them in a west kitchen window along with my wife's wandering jew plant. When the afternoon sun pours through the window, it creates a really pretty effect. (And yes, the plants are using inverted coffee "can" tops as their watering base.)

Our gardens this year are...well, totally out of hand. I got a little crazy during a warm, dry spell last March and tilled up a patch of around 30' x 120' in a small field the farmer lets us use. I've planted it to mostly sweet corn and melons this year after growing our most successful melon crops ever there last year. It's probably way more than I can handle, but I couldn't resist the opportunity one more time to grow a big sweet corn crop and some watermelon and cantaloupe. They all take lots of space that just isn't available in our main garden.

Our main garden plot has already produced lots of broccoli, cauliflower, and peas for our dinner table. I froze a couple of pints of peas yesterday.

As you can see above, we've enclosed a couple areas of the main garden in raised beds to control soil erosion and allow the edges of the garden to be worked even in wet weather.

I keep a fairly regularly updated garden blog on Senior Gardening. I hope you're having as much fun with your summer as I am with mine!

Friday, June 5, 2009

NOAA Game Site

A brief posting on eSchool News this week led me to the Games@NOAA site. The site provides several educational games for K-12 students that focus "on ocean and air themes."

Senate Pushback on Obama Education Budget

Education Week has a couple of good articles about how President Obama's education proposals are faring in Congress. The President's budget proposals for Title I funding and the Teacher Incentive Fund (merit/performance pay) appear to be coming under some close scrutiny.

• Senators Grill Duncan on Obama's Budget Proposal
• Federal Performance Pay Gets Pushback at Senate Hearing

Odds 'n' Ends

NASA announced that it "completed a review Wednesday of space shuttle Endeavour's readiness for flight and selected June 13 as the official launch date for the STS-127 mission to the International Space Station."

• NASA Gives 'Go' for June 13 Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour
• Shuttle Home Page
• STS-127 Image Gallery

Have a great weekend!

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