mathdittos2.com
...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out... |
|
Shuttle Discovery to Launch Tonight
Here are some pertinent links for the flight:
DC Schools Open Today With the opening of school today in Washington, D.C., there are a flurry of articles about it from the Washington Post. Enrollment is down 17% for DCPS. Michelle Rhee is in the news again with her Teaching and Learning Framework, a "detailed set of guidelines and strategies presented to District teachers last week." And columnist Jay Mathews tells a certification horror story that many licensed teachers will appreciate.
Gallup Poll: Parents Positive About Quality of U.S. Education System A recent Gallup Poll found that "While less than half (45%) of all Americans are satisfied with the quality of the U.S. education system in general, 76% of parents of school-aged youth say they are either somewhat or completely satisfied with the education their child is receiving." Odds 'n' Ends Boston Globe correspondent Kate Augusto reports in Outlook bleak for teachers that new teaching jobs are hard to find in Massachusetts. We may have to call in Non Sequitur's Obviousman on that one. Associated Press education writer Justin Pope has an interesting article about the New York Harbor School in NYC school makes harbor its classroom. I'd linked to a similar article a year ago, but now, after six years of waiting, the school is moving to Governors Island and will truly be a harbor school. I like the idea of themed schools. An old friend who also caught Farm Fever A mailing last week from WGBH's Teachers' Domain told of some improvements to their library of free digital resources. I'd led the Educators' News feature Resource Sites for Teachers last April with a glowing description of the site. What really caught my interest in the email came in the "Coming Soon" section, NOVA ScienceNOW! The excellent series is already available for free download from PBS, but having the series in the Teachers' Domain database will make lesson planning a lot easier (one less site to remember, visit, search...). Send Feedback to |
and moved to a farm a few years before I did said he always wanted to start a farm themed school. |
Shuttle Discovery to Launch "Tonight"
NASA's photo caption reads:
Several years ago, I did the Educators' News feature Out of this World Desktop Photos that gave a lot of links to various NASA and general astronomy sites. I updated the links last year, so hopefully folks searching for cool astronomy shots won't hit too many bad links. If your tastes in wallpapers for your computer run more to the nature side, try my Desktop Photos page. There are some nice shots there and a list of links to other desktop photo sites.
New Game on Our Courts
Our Courts is an effort inspired by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She announced that she was developing a free interactive web program for middle schoolers on the U.S. court system in June, 2008. Since the online games were to be the centerpiece of the site, it's good to see that a couple of games are now available. I took Supreme Decision out for a spin this morning and found it an interesting experience that could be a good motivator for middle school social studies classes. I tested the game using the Firefox browser on my aging Mac. Possibly more important is that the Flash-based game loaded fairly quickly on my somewhat slow internet connection and had no glitches from start to finish. Online Physical Education Class In the educational "Huh?" department today, we have More students taking physical education online from Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Weber. He tells of Minneapolis educator Jan Braaten introducing what even she calls "an oxymoron." But the program that includes"a few in-person sessions throughout the semester," heart monitors, and reading and writing assignments and tests, appears to be catching on. It allows students to avoid scheduling conflicts and even take the class during the summer. Shuttle Discovery to Launch... I really thought it was sorta cute that I could use the same headline on both Monday and Tuesday's postings to Educators' News. But with another postponement of the launch of the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-128, it's now getting a bit old. At least yesterday, we got a fantastic photo of the first launch being scrubbed! A fuel valve problem has now pushed the launch back to no earlier than Friday morning, August 28, 2009, at 12:22 A.M. (EDT) according to a NASA press release. Odds 'n' Ends
We usually have lots of blue and white heron (great egret) in our area. This year, I'd not seen as many as in the past and wondered if something was driving them off or even killing them. Yesterday, I spotted a cluster of six white heron and about a dozen others elsewhere on Turtle Creek Reservoir. I guess they have been more shy than usual this year.
Fortunately, most of my photo subjects don't fly away if you move too quickly or require a telephoto lens. Most of my photography is of garden shots for my other website, Senior Gardening. The 37.25# Moon & Stars watermelon shown halved at right never even tried to get away before I shot it (and ate a good bit of it while cutting it up). And I guess the big computing news of the week this week is that Apple will have its update to the Mac OS X operating system, Snow Leopard, out this Friday. Linux for Education Chris wrote last evening of the Linux for Education (Li-f-e) site, which contains collections of Moodle courses teachers may take, copy and reinstall on their school Moodle server, and forums, chatrooms, courses, and help materials to help folks "better use the applications found on the Linux distributions." Chris writes:
If your school uses a Moodle server or you have access to one, Linux for Education has lots of courses you may want to look at, copy (Creative Commons License), and use. If you're a bit more geeky and want to play with the courses on your own machine as I did, visit the Moodle Downloads page. For this exercise, I downloaded the newer XAMPP version of Moodle for Mac. It's pretty much a drag and drop installation! How the Stimulus (for Education) Got Used Stacy Teicher Khadaroo had a good article yesterday in For schools, use of stimulus money falls short of big hopes. She tells of how the stimulus package helped make up budget shortfalls, but may not have stimulated a lot of new reforms. Title I Grants Announced A press release from the Department of Education today announced "$3.5 billion in Title I School Improvement grants to turn around the nation's lowest performing schools." While it will take a while for the grant process to filter down to local corporation, it could be something worth investigating. My old school nailed one such grant way back in 2002 that enabled us to establish a 1:1 laptop program for all of my special ed students. Reforming Schools of Education Guestblogger Mike Goldstein currently has an interesting series going on Eduwonk about reforming teacher training. Odds 'n' Ends Since we were sorta talking about school and class web sites with the Moodle stuff, I'll add the Earth Shots Photo of the Day RSS feed here. It's showing an Atlantic Puffin today, taken by Juan Iglesias, but of course, will change tomorrow. The EarthShots.org provides easy to use code that can be inserted into a school or class web page (or Moodle, Joomla server) to add a little color and interest to any site. I've done several postings previously on Educators' News that may give you a few ideas about using Spring Widgets and Earthshots, EPOD and APOD, and other Pictures of the Day (POD) on school web pages.
Updates, Upgrades... When I looked at my favorite software update site this morning, I noticed a whole bunch of print driver updates for Mac OS X. Then I remembered that today is the day Apple's Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) operating system upgrade becomes available. So, if you work on a Mac and are upgrading to the new operating system, you might want to check out your favorite software update site...and a compatibility report or two. Windows users, of course, get to wait until October for the fun of upgrading to Windows 7 and all that involves. I've seen very few school districts that upgraded from Windows XP to Vista, so it may be interesting to watch what happens with Windows 7 and schools. Arne Watch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten began an eight-city tour yesterday focused on innovative education practices. Education head praises new approaches in St. Louis tells of the city school district launching thirteen "full-service" community schools that provide students and their families support on issues like child rearing, employment and housing. "In some cases, medical and mental health services are being provided by outside agencies and universities and businesses are helping with tutoring and job training." Teacher Bill of Rights Top Ten Eduwonk guestblogger Mike Goldstein put up a provocative post yesterday, the Good Teacher Bill of Rights. I especially liked his his sixth right from his Top Ten:
Odds 'n' Ends Well, we almost had a postponement every day this week of the upcoming launch of the space shuttle Discovery (missed yesterday). NASA pushed the launch back again to this evening at 11:59 P.M. (EDT) at the earliest to give "engineers more time to develop plans for resolving an issue with a valve in the shuttle's main propulsion system." With the release of Snow Leopard, a couple of security articles caught my eye. Apple's Mac OS 'lagging behind Vista on security' and Snow Leopard To Confront Mac Malware both address the belief that the Mac OS is more secure than Windows. While OS X's UNIX core may or may not be more secure, the reality is that "malware writers prefer to target the platform with the biggest install base." That could change at any time, so it behooves Mac (and Windows) users to keep up with their antivirus software. Even with the security advantage Mac's currently enjoy, Norton AntiVirus for Mac Have a great weekend!
Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News. |
Since we don't have a cool NASA photo as we did yesterday, I'll share one I caught yesterday afternoon on my way back home from town. I won't link to a larger view of the image, as I botched the focus by using Canon's somewhat difficult autofocus for the shot.
, but so far am pretty pleased with it. The autofocus can be quirky, but I really should have known to manually focus the shots yesterday. I probably won't get another such opportunity this year.
I didn't get very far down the list of available courses before I found Paul Nelson's 
©2009 Steven L. Wood