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NASA Contest for High School Students NASA announced a contest last week for high school student teams to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be sent into a near space environment.
Healthier School Lunches Daniel Weintraub has an interesting article about Revolution Foods in Making a Healthy Lunch, and Making It a Cause. He tells how founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey saw an opportunity for a company providing better school lunches.
Makes me hungry! Good Question Becki Ruchti sent me a good question yesterday. She's a tenth grade English teacher and the Technology Coordinator at East Chicago Central High School. Becki was looking for a college level (for credit) course on Moodle, the open source content (course) management system. There are lots of training courses on using Moodle. Becki even took one I taught, but it was for license renewal credits. If you know of such a course, please send the info along , and I'll pass it along to Becki. Odds 'n' Ends The New York Times Learning Network had some interesting responses to their question, What’s Working Well in Your Classroom This Year? Republican legislators in Indiana should get a bad form award for their offer to allow schools to move funds from restricted accounts into their general funds, but only if teachers agree to "forgo pay raises in the 2010-11 school year." The Reflective Educator posted some of his reasons for getting out of a D.C. school in It's Over on his Filthy Teaching blog. It provides some revealing insights into the D.C. Schools and what can happen when a school is staffed with administrators with little teaching experience. Send Feedback to |
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Ronald Maggiano posted A Teacher's Letter to President Obama on his The Classroom Post blog. I think it embodies much of what many teachers have been feeling for some time. Sadly, I don't think either President Obama or Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are listening. Rhee Controversy Heats Up...in D.C. While most major news organizations hop on any mention of sexual misconduct by teachers, they've almost universally taken a pass on covering the recent Michelle Rhee gaff in her interview with Fast Company magazine. Only the Washington Post which first raised the issue is providing good coverage. Yesterday's coverage included Bill Turque's Gray: Rhee needs to name names and Rhee slow walks Fast Company response on his D.C. Schools Insider blog and Valerie Strauss's Rhee D.C.’s person of the year and Rhee in trouble; Gray not helping on her The Answer Sheet blog. Rhee apparently did talk to NBC Washington about her comments. Rhee Clarifies Comments About Firings doesn't clarify much and actually may further inflame the situation. The report says "one teacher had been on administrative leave for sexual misconduct and that the teacher had been fired as part of the budget purge." Update (2:00 pm) The national press continues to ignore the D.C. Schools controversy, but inside the beltway, the postings are coming fast and furious. Martin Austermuhle's Michelle Rhee's WTF? Moment gives a pretty good summary of the controversy. Bill Turque of the Washington Post reacted in So that was it? Along with Nick Anderson, Turque's Rhee's office explains comments about physical, sexual abuse concludes with a timely quote from Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker:
The Post's Jay Mathews chimes in with Ms. Rhee: apologize, don't leave. And while the Post's editorial is titled Michelle Rhee must open up about references to unfit teachers, the editors can't help taking a shot at the WTU in their conclusion:
On the (Education) Blogs Bipalychaetorsonectomy on the Science Teacher blog talks a bit about biology, Steinbeck, and the Race to the Top program. It's a quick, interesting read. His "Heh...it smells like butt," from last November which came up when I searched to see what Bipalychaetorsonectomy was, made me laugh until my eyes were wet. Pants On The Ground, Boxers & Anthems on Bellringers provides an interesting approach to dealing with low-riders. Who Would You Put on a Coin on Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It could be an interesting lesson. Keith Schoch is doing another picture book giveaway on Teach with Picture Books. Free Technology for Teachers has lots of cool stuff this week including MOOM, the Museum of Online Museums, Scribble Maps, and Recent Earthquake Teachable Moments. Odds 'n' Ends The Teachers' Domain Newsletter for January is out and contains information and links to their new biotechnology collection and lots of other new stuff. NBC and the National Science Foundation's Science Of The Olympic Winter Games is an original 16-part series that "unravels the physics, biology, chemistry, and materials engineering behind the Olympic Winter Games." Also see Free videos explore the science behind the Olympics on eSchool News. If you didn't catch the drift from my posting on January 18th, I've gotten a little burnt out on the current education "reform" scene that seems dedicated to discrediting teachers and what we've done well in the classroom for many years. So, I've begun to look in other directions for educational content for the site. I'm now linking to more and more excellent postings from education blogs around the country. And believe it or not, gardening season is underway once again. I spent a good bit of time today moving geranium seeds with root shoots from the paper towels on which they germinated to individual pots.
I wrote a feature story on the process last year on Senior Gardening, only Murphy's Law set in, and it became a total disaster! That story is still posted, but I've also started a new version of it, Growing Geraniums from Seed - 2010, that so far is going well.
The Big Speech Big things are expected from The Speech today. The changes to education could be tremendous. When Steve Jobs takes the stage at 1 P.M. (EST) this afternoon at the Apple Event in San Francisco... Oh, yeah. Educators' News is an education site, not a tech site. President Obama is expected to announce big things for education tonight in his State of the Union speech. The Washington Post's Nick Anderson and Michael Shear write in Obama to promote more education spending in State of the Union speech that the President will propose to "raise federal education spending by as much as $4 billion in the next fiscal year." He is expected to "call for broad reforms of the way school performance is measured and rewarded," the consolidation of 38 federal K-12 programs into 11, and the elimination of six other education programs. In higher ed, "the government would become the direct lender for all federal student loans," with the expected savings used "to expand higher-education grants and community college funding." And of course, there's the previously leaked $1.35 billion increase in Race to the Top funding for next year. All things considered, I rather prefer Sam Chaltain's ideas, presented on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog in Mr. Obama: Say this on education. And getting back to the Apple Event, eSchool News assistant editor Dennis Carter asks, Can Apple’s tablet spark a textbook revolution? New Competency Exam for Tennessee SpEd Students Tennessee will begin using a new, modified TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Achievement Program) test "this spring for children in grades 3-8 who have disabilities, according to the Tennessee Department of Education." New modified TCAP evaluates students with disabilities relates that the Modified Academic Achievement Standard (TCAP-MAAS) will include "more pictures and fewer questions" for students with disabilities such as autism, dyslexia or other cognitive delays. TCAP-MAAS was developed by Tennessee state educators and piloted last spring. Close Encounter with Mars
Postings on Science@NASA are written in vocabulary appropriate for middle through high school students. They also have audio files and other language versions available as well as being available as podcasts on iTunes Having seen the article yesterday, I looked for Mars last night, but we had cloudy skies here in west central Indiana. Our forecast for the week isn't much better, but I may still dig out our telescope and my woollies for a peek if the skies should clear. Phillips writes that Mars will rise "in the east at sunset, pumpkin-orange and brighter than a first magnitude star." If you want a bit better locator for viewing, the free, open source planetarium software, Stellarium, is excellent for such tasks. Below is the Stellarium projection of the night sky looking due south from my house at 11 P.M. (EST) this evening. It makes it pretty easy to locate celestial objects!
Educators' News Brought to You Today by...
So today's posting of Educators' News is brought to you with the haunting strains of Heart's Greatest Hits 1985-1995 Oops, time to go. Heart's over and iTunes has slipped into Herman's Hermits There's A Kind Of Hush
Update (3:45 pm)
If you're looking for objective journalism about the iPad, check out Dan Miller's Apple Announces iPad on Macworld.
The day I quit and cleaned out my office at Rose-Hulman, I had the Eagle's Already Gone blasting away on my own computer (which was necessary because of the POS laptop they provided). For variety in such situations, Johnny Paycheck's Take This Job And Shove It See, I told you in yesterday's posting. I'm trying to have a little more fun with this site these days. Now, if the President just won't start telling America tonight how much harder and more effectively we'll all work with merit pay and more testing... Is the Post Playing Dirty? I've admired the Washington Post for being one of the few major newspapers that still maintains an active, articulate array of education writers. In just the last few weeks, I've noticed the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, previously excellent sources of local and national education articles and columns, drastically cut back their education coverage. Other major outlets did the same long ago. Yesterday, the Post's Bill Turque published a rather open and courageous posting on his D.C. Schools Insider blog, One newspaper, two stories. By evening, the link to the posting went dead! It appeared that either the Post pulled the posting or forced Turque to do so. The article explains the difference in the reporting of the recent Michelle Rhee interview controversy and editorial stance of the Post in support of Chancellor Rhee. By midnight, an edited version of the article miraculously had returned to the web. (Thanks to Phillip Marlowe, Bing, and Eduwonk for preserving the original, unedited version.) In the meantime, I suspect that lots of other folks had done just what I did. They wrote Bill and the other education writers at the Post and then complained loudly to the Post's General Manager. The strange events of the disappearance of One newspaper, two stories may be explained away as an HTML glitch. I don't believe that for a second, though. Turque spoke his mind, evidently too openly for a thin-skinned Post editorial writer and/or board. But he also allowed readers to see some valuable, behind the scenes nitty-gritty of news reporting and the relationships between reporters, management, and those they report about. Sadly, if the Post actually pulled the article or forced Turque to edit it, such censorship seriously questions the credibility not only of the Post's education coverage, but all of its reporting. The disappearing act of Turque's blunt assessment of the two viewpoints of Michelle Rhee's actions also takes attention away from a revealing instance of Chancellor Rhee's lack of good judgment. Blogs are supposed to be where folks can share their thoughts, hopefully within the bounds of honesty and good taste. Turque's posting seemed to meet those qualifications, although it was refreshingly direct about the coziness of the Post's editorial board to D.C. Schools Chancellor Rhee. Teachers long ago have gone to anonymous blogs to avoid retaliation by vengeful school administrators. Will courageous reporters for the Post now have to do the same? The incident obviously tarnishes the Post. "Clarification," But No Apology from Rhee Nick Anderson writes that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee "said Tuesday that she should have moved faster to quell controversy over comments about laid-off teachers. But in Rhee hedges remarks on laid-off teachers, Anderson notes that "Rhee declined to apologize for her statement to the national business magazine Fast Company that some of the teachers laid off in October's budget cuts 'had sex with children,' hit them or were chronically absent without authorization." State of the Union President Obama wisely declared job creation as his "first focus" in his State of the Union address last night. He's got a lot on his plate, but he did get around to education. He stated, "We need to invest in the skills and education of our people." That's one of those mom, apple pie, and the flag statements. But his plan for investing still seems to revolve around testing and merit pay. Here's the education clip from the White House blog:
The full text of the speech is also available.
iPad for Education I watched live blog feeds of the Apple Event yesterday looking to see if Apple's new iPad might prove to be a possible replacement for my aging laptop, but even more to see if it might be a viable, new tool for students and teachers. After watching the reports, reading some more reports, and looking at Apple's iPad promo page, my answers were "No" and "I'm not sure." Big help, huh? I picked out four of the best reviews I read to share here. Since the iPad won't be available until late March, we have time to do our research. Macworld's Dan Frakes (love his Mac Gems pieces) shared his The iPad's five best surprises and Rob Griffiths The iPad's five worst surprises. John Gruber was one of the lucky ones who got to play with a demo unit at the Apple Event, and he shared his views in The iPad Big Picture on Daring Fireball. He uses the word "fast" ten times in his review! David Pogue talks as much about "bashing by the bloggers" as he does about the new device in The Apple iPad: First Impressions. He concludes that "it’s too early to draw any conclusions," and he's probably right. ESEA (NCLB) Reauthorization Sam Dillon writes in the New York Times that despite President Obama's brief mention in his State of the Union address of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it will be difficult to complete this year. In Experts Say a Rewrite of Nation’s Main Education Law Will Be Hard This Year, Dillon writes that experts say that "because the law has produced so much discord, there is so little time and there are so many competing priorities...the odds of getting a full-dress reauthorization done between now and August are very, very slender." He also noted that "Mr. Obama communicated a lower sense of urgency on Wednesday, perhaps because the administration’s legislative agenda for the year is already packed."
Transparent Language has made their iPhone app, Byki Haitian Creole
From the posted comments, it would appear the iPhone (iPod Touch) application has been pretty helpful for those going to Haiti to help with relief efforts. Transparent Language made the release on January 15. I just missed it until today. There's also a free online version (free registration required) for Haitian Creole on the company's site. Ed Harris sent along a couple of great links that really illuminate the story about the Washington Post censoring a Bill Turque blog posting. The Post's ombudsman, Andy Alexander, reveals all the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that went on in An "inappropriate" blog item causes a stir. It's good to see that the Post finally came clean about their censorship of the article. Erik Wemple adds more details in Washington Post Editorial Board Livid Over Turque Blog Post in the Washington City Paper. He concludes:
Odds 'n' Ends Potential teacher layoffs in New York City and in Virginia are discussed in Possible Teacher Layoffs Would Have Big Impact and Virginia education groups warn of big school job cuts. Time Magazine's Joe Klein rips teachers' unions in Why We're Failing Our Schools. Bless Deborah Meier for saying hearing the term "'best practices' in education" makes her "wince" in Educating the Young: Who Knows "Best"? Michael Doyle concludes his informative, heartwrenching, and simultaneously uplifting blog post, PBDE's and the Mary Beth Doyle Act:
Paul L. Martin wrote in Hope is a Thing with Feathers on his The Teacher's View blog:
And to close out what had been until today a pretty dreary week on Educators' News, I received the heartening message below from Tom Rademaker:
Having seen some other, pretty cumbersome adaptive technology for helping non-verbal students, I really thought Proloquo2Go (web site, app store Comments like Tom's and reader tips like Ed's help keep me going on Educators' News. Have a great weekend!
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Dr. Tony Phillips relates in 
. The credit was due to expire at the end of the month, so I quickly found a $5 "album" on the store that I knew my wife would like (and I wouldn't mind too much as well). 
playing in the background.
. (Oh, I feel old today!)
my usual speaker death test: The Black Crows 
flat out. While the speakers distorted a bit, they actually performed pretty well for $12 speakers once I cut the volume back to a level that might only cause moderate ear damage. I found myself pounding the keyboard, my desk, and anything else handy as I kept time to 
, 
, 
for the first time (Right up there with 
by the Eagles for the best End-of-Relationship song), 
, and 
. BTW: While the Amazon album download runs $9.99, the 
runs just $6.99 with free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
does nicely, as well. 
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