Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Race to the Top Criticized

Debra Viadero writes is this week's Education Week that critics of the recently published draft guidelines for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid say "they have no credible basis in research." In Race to Top Said to Lack Key Science, Viadero looks at whether the Obama/Duncan proposed school reforms are "just...the programs and approaches favored by the people in power,” or something more.

LCROSS Lunar Impact on NASA TV

If you teach in the eastern time zone, you might want to tune your classroom TV to the NASA channel Friday morning to watch the LCROSS Lunar Impact. The LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission seeks to "confirm the presence or absence of water ice" on the moon. LCROSS's Centaur booster rocket will be crashed into the moon, throwing up a plume of debris that the LCROSS mothership will photograph and analyze for traces of water.

The LCROSS Viewer's Guide on Science@NASA gives viewing details. While the broadcast begins around 7:30 A.M. (EDT), the impact will probably occur at around 8:30.

• LCROSS Mission Overview
• LCROSS Home Page
• Space.com: How to Watch NASA's Probe Smack the Moon Friday

Time to Order Garden Catalogs

Fall is upon us and it's time to get on seed houses' mailing lists for garden catalogs for next year's garden. Senior Gardening today lists lots of good sources for seed and plants for the garden.

If you're looking for a different plant project for the classroom, let me suggest growing sensitive plants (mimosa pudica) or gloxinias. Sensitive plants fold their leaves and stems up when touched. Gloxinias produce beautiful flowering plants in seven months from seed.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

An Interview with Joel Klein

The CEO educator is an interesting interview on Fortune with New York City school chancellor Joel Klein. Some interesting quotes from the interview are:

My kids are going to get an education. Your kids are going to get an education. But poor kids -- kids who grow up in challenged environments -- they've gotten the short end of the stick as far back as anyone can remember.

Competition is a good idea that has helped us some.

It's like the old song about "that's the glory of love." You know, "You've got to give a little, take a little, let your poor heart break a little. That's the story of, that's the glory of love." It's also the story of and glory of union management negotiations in public education.

Social Studies from Science@NASA

You wouldn't normally look for social studies material on Science@NASA, but The Fall of the Maya: "They Did it to Themselves" is certainly appropriate for middle and high school social studies classes. Dr. Tony Phillips tells of NASA-funded researchers who have used computer simulations to reconstruct how slash and burn deforestation and drought may have played a role in bringing down ancient Mayan civilization. Phillips writes:

The results are telling, but more research is needed to completely explain the mechanisms of Mayan decline...No single factor brings a civilization to its knees, but the deforestation that helped bring on drought could easily have exacerbated other problems such as civil unrest, war, starvation and disease.

Odds 'n' Ends

Maisie on Edwize adds some perspective to the recently updated study by Caroline Hoxby on New York charter schools in Closing the Harlem-Scarsdale Score Gap. We reported on this study on September 22. Maisie dishes out a pretty strong accusation:

What Hoxby did was take this point difference, this “charter effect,” and present it as a persistent, undiminishing causal effect that can work educational miracles over eight years on the same student. And it’s unlikely she has test scores for very many students who’ve been continuously enrolled in a charter for eight years.

Astronomy Picture of the Day Courtesy NASA

Monday's Astronomy Picture of the Day was this breathtaking shot of the International Space Station overlooking the earth. The image was taken from the space shuttle Discovery shortly after it had separated from the space station. Full resolution images of shuttle and space station shots are available at:

• Human Space Flight Gallery
• Space Shuttle Gallery
• Space Station Gallery

Teachers may easily add an Astronomy Picture of the Day RSS feed to their class or school web page/site. Oak Hill High School (IN) science teacher Tom Rademaker shared a snippet of HTML code he constructed a few years ago that will neatly place the feed on a web page as shown at right.

Friday, October 9, 2009

One More Site to Keep in Mind

Earlier this week, I read a promotional email, read the eSchool News article Homework Day to promote the use of Wolfram Alpha for education, and even checked out the site. Then with other responsibilities looming, I totally forgot about the Wolfram Alpha site until tonight! I'd guess that the name Wolfram made me think of their advanced software application, Mathematica, which is way, way above my ability level. I did once help a Rose-Hulman grad student get the Mac version of Mathematica running on his iBook.

But Wolfram Alpha looks to be a site that many educators might want to try out. While the site is basically a math homework help site, they also suggest users try several searches to acquaint themselves with the site's possibilities. Their suggestions include trying entering a date, town, two stocks, a calculation, or a math formula. Since I'm not a math wizard, I entered our town, Sullivan, Indiana. The results were pleasantly surprising.

Encouraged by my initial success, I tried typing in several important dates in history, important names and such, almost everything but anything to do with math. Wolfram Alpha spit out data and results on each of my searches that could have proved useful if I was doing anything but just messing around.

I did finally enter E=MC² (actually e=mc^2) and was again pleasantly surprised that the site/software obediently retrieved the information requested (without mocking me). Of course, there was far more information than I'm showing at left, but I also liked that it had a pop-up preview about the subject that linked to Wikipedia.

Wolfram Alpha also has a page of simple code to add the site search box to ones web page. Cool!

The Other Shoe

The other shoe has dropped from the abrupt dismissal of over 200 teachers in Washington, D.C. a week ago. Bill Turque's Union Contests Layoffs of Teachers in Court in the Washington Post briefly describes a lawsuit brought against the school corporation by the teachers' union. Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker said that outspoken teachers, strong union advocates, and older teachers were unfairly targeted in the cutbacks allegedly caused by recent budget cuts made by the D.C. Council. Some council members, students, and the teachers' union question "the timing and underlying math of the layoffs."

Feels Like My Heart Has Been Broken gives the human side of the story, telling about special educator Eve McCarey's reaction to being terminated despite her good evaluations. McCarey reflects on her feelings about the crude manner of the dismissals and her worries about her former students.

Common Core Standards on Track

The Fordham Institute issued a report yesterday grading the "Common Core State Standards" and "the reading/writing and math frameworks of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)." The report gave the Common Core September 21 draft release of proposed standards good marks so far. The effort by forty-eight states to create standards that would replace the current "wildly uneven benchmarks from state to state" was described by Amber M. Winkler, the research director for the Fordham Institute, as being "on the right track.”

• Proposed National Academic Standards Sidestep Debate
• Common Core Standards Earn a B From Think Tank

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