Monday, June 8, 2009

Just a few odds 'n' ends on a slow, summer Monday.

Winnie Hu has an interesting article about a school district that wrote its own online textbook in Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online. Libby Quaid tells of Arne Duncan's push for merit pay in Ed secretary: judge teachers on how students do. Michael Alison Chandler writes about Fairfax County's (VA) increasing use of student portfolios in Alternative Testing on the Rise. And Jay Mathews pushes for universal AP testing under the somewhat misleading title, Is AP for All A Formula For Failure?

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Friday, June 12, 2009

Longer School Days and School Year

eSchool News's Maya T. Prabhu looks at what education experts around the country are saying about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's push for a longer school year and longer school days in Increasing class time fraught with controversy. McGraw-Hill Education senior vice president Arthur Griffin voiced a concern that many other educators seem to hold, "Extending the school day without making any changes mostly likely won't improve anything."

Shuttle Launch

It appears there will be good weather tomorrow in Florida, and the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour is still set for 7:17 A.M. (EDT) Saturday from the Kennedy Space Center.

• NASA Press Release: NASA Announces STS-127 Prelaunch and Mission Web Coverage
• Space.com: Shuttle Endeavour Cleared for Saturday Launch
• Space.com: Space Station Headed for Population Explosion

NASA Grant Opportunity

NASA also announced a Climate Change Education Funding Opportunity this week. Proposals will be accepted under three funding categories:

• Improving teacher competency for global climate change education
• Using NASA Earth system data and models to strengthen teaching and learning about global climate change
• Enabling global climate change science research experiences for undergraduate or community college students and pre- or in-service teachers, including those in nontraditional teacher licensure programs

Full proposals are due August 3. The anticipated total amount of funds available for new awards is approximately $8 million.

Odds 'n' Ends

Jonathan Alter has an interesting article in Newsweek about the political ins and outs facing President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as they attempt to improve America's schools. In Peanut-Butter Politics, Alter notes that "Congress likes to see money spread like peanut butter across the country. It makes members look like they're 'doing something for education.'" He writes that the Obama Administration must use its current "leverage over the education industry to impose teacher-effectiveness standards" and resist "the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo."

The Widget Effect is an effort by The New Teacher Project to push reform in teacher evaluations. Its site suggests, "If teachers are so important, why do we treat them like widgets?" And of course, reforming teacher evaluation is critical if ideas such as merit and performance pay are to work.

A new Carnegie report suggests a plan of action "to raise mathematics and science achievement for all American students."

Grrr...

After a 32 day visit to Nikon Warranty Service for a new lens assembly, it took just 13 days for my Nikon Coolpix P60 to fail again! It started vignetting photos again, the problem that necessitated the previous repair, along with a couple of new tricks. Now, the lens won't fully collapse at shutdown. The camera controls also lock up at random times requiring opening and closing the battery case to get the unit to shut down and then reboot.

The P60 appears to be out of production now and is being offered at bargain basement prices at some office supply outlets. From my experience with the P60's lack of durability, I'd have to recommend folks pass on such bargains. The Nikon Coolpix P60 is a dandy point-and-shoot camera when it works, but it appears to me that Nikon has really cut some corners on quality with this model and possibly the entire Coolpix series of cameras.

What Nikon and Nikon Service don't seem to "get" is that when you screw folks over with poor quality or service on an entry-level camera, they're going to go elsewhere when they move up to a better camera. I'm using my old Nikon Coolpix 4300 while the P60 is in for repair, but the 4300 required expensive out-of-warranty service for an apparent, but unacknowledged design flaw (System Error).

I grew up in photography at a time when the Nikon F was the standard for photojournalists and other professional photographers. It was rugged and worked well and created a name for Nikon in photography. I was doing wedding and portrait photos at the time, so I never owned an F, as my work required a large format camera (Mamiya RB-67). But when it came time for me to go digital, I looked almost exclusively at Nikons based on the reputation of quality and durability of the F series. My recent experiences with Nikon have changed all that. I'll look elsewhere when I move up to a digital SLR.

Have a great weekend!

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