Monday, August 3, 2009

Walt Gardner on Race to the Top

Former teacher and respected educational writer Walt Gardner weighed in yesterday in The Sacramento Bee on the Obama Administration's Race to the Top program. In Education is on a race to the bottom, Gardner writes what I think a lot of teachers are probably thinking:

The Race to the Top, despite its billing as the nation's "moon shot," is largely a repackaged version of attempts under No Child Left Behind to reform K-12 education by those who have never taught a day in a public school.

If they had, they would realize the futility of trying to run schools like businesses. Yet that's precisely what the Race to the Top is attempting to do once the overblown rhetoric is peeled back.

If you're unfamiliar with Walt Gardner, a Jay Mathews piece from 2006, What Are the Best Education Blogs really, tells you a good bit about him and his writing. I can't find a compilation of his works online, but a Google Search does produce a pretty good listing of his many insightful columns and letters.

Endeavour Returns

The space shuttle Endeavour landed safely on Friday after a sixteen day mission to the International Space Station. Space Shuttle Endeavour Glides Home After Successful Mission relates the news, and the NASA Image of the Day shown at right depicts the touchdown.

And while we've mentioned it here before, you may want to check out Space.com's A Guide to NASA's Last Space Shuttle Missions to see what's left in shuttle missions.

The Perseids Meteor Shower

If your school is a really early starter, you might want to direct your students to Dr. Tony Phillips's The Perseids are Coming on Science@NASA. The annual meteor shower will peak August 11-12, but we have already begun passing through the debris trail from Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the Perseids.

Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) Available for Pre-order

Apple's next operating system upgrade became available for pre-order over the weekend from Amazon.com. Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard is scheduled to ship "sometime in September." The upgrade will require a Mac computer with an Intel processor and a previous installation of the current Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) operating system. Snow Leopard focuses on improving performance, efficiency, and reducing its overall memory footprint, rather than adding new features. The new release will retail for $29 in its single-user version and for $49 for the five-user family pack.

Chris Seibold has a good article on Apple Matters, No G5 Owners, Snow Leopard is not a Screw Job, about Apple dropping support for PowerPC Macs with the Snow Leopard upgrade.

Here on Educators' News, the Snow Leopard upgrade is a non-starter, as EdNews and Senior Gardening are still published primarily on PowerPC equipped Macs. While I'd love to have an Intel powered Mac, I pretty well spent my disposable income upgrading to a new camera system last month. And, our G4 and G5 towers and my G4 PowerBook that I wrote about last year in An Ode to my "Slab-O-Mac" still do most everything I need, other than testing occasional Intel-only applications I run across.

And in a bit of vanity here, I'll post the top ten items on mathdittos2.com and senior-gardening.com for July. The Nikon P60 articles still lead the pack, as lots of vendors have the P60 on sale. Do note that I no longer recommend that camera, as mine failed after just five months of use. Nikon took two unsuccessful tries at repairing it under warranty. When I wrote asking for a replacement, Nikon chose to stonewall it.

I was also a bit blown away by the old SE Saga column getting so many hits. It's one of the earliest of my columns. I still have a functioning Mac SE and another SE/30 that I play with occasionally.

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Colorado School for Children with Autism

Jeremy P. Meyer has an interesting story in the Denver Post about the Joshua School in Englewood, Colorado in Colorado school districts turn to Joshua. The 4-year-old school is building an impressive track record working with autistic students that have extreme behavioral and learning disabilities. Meyer writes, "Although tuition is expensive, school districts are increasingly turning to specialized private schools for help teaching students who have autism." The $48,000 annual tuition bill for 15 of its 20 students is covered by 11 Colorado school districts.

College for Autistics

Michael Bernick's College for Autistics in the San Francisco Chronicle tells of an "unusual experiment in higher education for people with autism...The experiment will test the possibilities for autistics in a university setting, and more generally the possibilities for a range of students with disabilities." Bernick concludes:

Imagine Raymond Babbitt of "Rain Man" in college. Might it not be a better alternative for him, and much less expensive for society, than institutionalization or the SSI/SSDI government system? Might he even bring unusual skills that can enrich university life for others?.

Hmm...

I thought I'd found an interesting link from a CEC SmartBrief, Education Secretary Asks School Chiefs For Seclusion, Restraint Policies on Disability Scoop. As I'm prone to do, I sought out the Secretary's letter to the "Chief State School Officers" on the Ed.gov site. After reading the letter, I found that while Secretary Duncan encouraged "each state to review their current policies and guidelines regarding the use of restraints and seclusion techniques in schools," I could find no request for states to submit their policies on seclusion and restraint policies. Hmm...

Friday, August 7, 2009

Swine Flu Vaccinations at Schools

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said this morning on the CBS Early Show that he wants "our schools to be sites for the distribution of the [H1N1] vaccine." Duncan stated in an interview that schools should take a leading role in getting children vaccinated this fall. Both Feds: Distribute H1N1 Vaccine at Schools and Schools key to combating H1N1 have the full story.

Stars at the Galactic Center

Since there's not much education news today, let me leave you with this gorgeous shot of the Milky Way that appeared on the NASA Image of the Day.

Here's their caption:

The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But, in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras penetrate much of the dust, revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, this detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Reddish glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The galactic center lies some 26,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light-years.

Possibly a bit more relevant to the classroom, Dr. Tony Phillips had three new posts on his Science@NASA site this week:

• What Hit Jupiter?
• Kepler Detects an Exoplanet Atmosphere
• Space Porch Open for Business

Science@NASA carries timely space/astronomy news written at a level appropriate for middle and high school students. The articles are available in both English and Spanish with audio versions available as well.

Have a great weekend!

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