Monday, June 7, 2010

Kentucky Buys Into Cloud

eSchool News reports that Kentucky has chosen Microsoft’s Live@edu service to provide email and applications via the Internet.Kentucky offers cloud-based software to 700,000 school users relates that "more than 700,000 students, faculty, and staff statewide" will be using cloud-based software " hosted on Microsoft’s servers and delivered to users via the internet." The article also notes that Kentucky is the second state to move to a statewide cloud-based model for school communication and collaboration after Oregon announced in April that its 540,000 public school students would be using Google Apps. Both states expect significant savings from the change.

Viewpoint: The future of education lies in the cloud by Boris Berenfeld and Harvey Yazijian gives some insight on cloud-based computing in schools, although I wonder if all the schools in the two states have the bandwidth to support this move.

Odds 'n' Ends

Bill Turque's D.C. teachers' contract has a familiar ring to it is well worth reading. George Will predictably asks Why should education be exempt from recession budgeting? Valerie Strauss reminds us that Common state standards are no more than part of the answer. And Nicholas Kristof's A Scare, a Scar, a Silver Lining makes us remember to live each day to its fullest, lumps and all.

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Friday, June 11, 2010

It’s Not Okay to Hate Teachers

A link in Deborah Meier's From Castles to Factories led me to It's Not OK to Hate Teachers by the Reverend John H. Thomas of the Chicago Theological Seminary. The interesting essay covers the bases on why teachers are being targeted and who benefits from that current assault on our profession. He writes, "The fascination with testing, ushered in by the 'No Child Left Behind' law, has made it easy to point fingers at failing schools and their teachers, as if the only solution to our education crisis was to throw the bums out and start over again." Thomas also has an interesting view of how community building resources used to be poured into "churches, schools, libraries, and court houses, public institutions that provided for the general welfare of their communities," while today we build...sports stadiums. He concludes:

When Jesus took a child in his lap, he demonstrated a central vocation of the church.  Today that vocation means many things, but at the center ought to be our shared commitment to public schools and to those who teach in them.

The Making of the DC Contract

Reader Ed Harris sent along a link this week to Bill Turque's excellent On the road to a deal: Potholes and gridlock. Turque looks back over the history of the making of the new DCPS contract from the view of mediator Kurt Schmoke. It's an insider's view of the nasty but necessary process of school contract negotiations.

Ed also sent along a link to an interesting story, Co-principals hired for Central Falls High School, that the now famous school corporation "approved the appointment of two co-principals at troubled Central Falls High School in a 5-to-0 vote Tuesday night, even after it came to light that one of them had misrepresented some information on his resumé."

Pearson to Sell "Canned" Montgomery County Curriculum

Several stories this week relate that Pearson Education has made a deal with Maryland's Montgomery County Schools "to develop an elementary school curriculum that an education company will augment and sell around the world." The schools will receive an advance payment of $2.25 million in a deal that CNN says may eventually produce $4.5 million for the corporation. The Post's Michael Birnbaum reports that Montgomery County "had independently embarked on developing the curriculum" which gives more time to social studies, art and other subjects by integrating them into math, reading and writing instruction. The program is a continuation of Montgomery County's North Star kindergarten curriculum.

• CNN: Amid budget cuts, Maryland school system sells curriculum by Sally Holland
• The Washington Post: Global firm to pay Montgomery, Md., schools millions for elementary curriculum by Michael Birnbaum
• The Washington Post: Montgomery County slashes budget for schools by Michael Birnbaum

Full disclosure: Peachpit Press, a subsidiary of Pearson Education, is an Educators' News affiliate advertiser.

Odds 'n' Ends

A number of good articles and blog postings have caught my eye, mainly while on the road using my iPhone, this week. Valerie Strauss's Study: N.Y. teacher performance pay program flops adds a little balance to the current rush to performance pay. Dennis Carter's Not everyone ready for the digital textbook revolution talks about higher education, but relates that online textbooks might not be a good fit for everyone. W. Norton Grubb and Lynda Tredway's Teacher layoffs undermine school reforms relates that "Schools are complex places, with many interconnected parts. Leaders, especially in needy neighborhoods, require strong teachers, a community of motivated adults, continuity and many other conditions now gone." And Andy Gammill's Teachers say federal funds are crucial tells the story from Indiana and most other states about the need for an education bailout.

Have a great weekend!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Charter Woes

Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert's Charter Schools Often Worse Than Public Schools in Newsweek relates that "it came as a bit of a shock to the community of educational reformers last year when a study by Stanford University's Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) found that 37 percent of charter schools produce academic results that are worse than public schools, while only 17 percent perform significantly better." When the writers get past their hyped banner, the conclusion is pretty predictable. Some charters perform well, others not-so-well, with the majority somewhere in the middle.

Charter school leaders charged with stealing over $200,000 in public funds is another tale of charter abuse about the leaders of Ivy Academia, "a charter school with test scores that place it in the state's top 30% of schools," being charged "with stealing more than $200,000 in public funds through embezzlement, money laundering and filing false tax returns, among other alleged crimes." Ivy Academia has approximately 1,100 students enrolled.

OOo4Kids Updated

I was glad to see that OOo4Kids (OpenOffice for Kids) was updated again last week. I wrote about the office suite designed specifically for 7-12 year olds in February. It's good to see development continuing, as many schools have moved to the OpenOffice suite to cut software costs. A version for the younger set is a real plus for those schools. The current version (0.9.5) for Macs weighs in at a 111 MB download. All versions (Windows, Linux, Mac) include a word processor, spreadsheet, draw, and presentation functions. And I somehow wrote this whole paragraph without using the essential descriptor of OOo4Kids, "FREE!"

On Science@NASA

Even though it's summer vacation for most students and teachers, Dr. Tony Phillips's Science@NASA continues putting out some great postings. My favorite so far this month is Journey to the Stars which tells of a free planetarium show about "the mind-boggling variety of stars that dot the cosmos—exploding stars, giant stars, dwarf stars, neutron stars, even our own star!" Teachers may order, well, sort of, the free DVD from NASA and the American Museum of Natural History. The site currently carries the message:

Due to overwhelming demand, we are temporarily closing our online request form for the Journey to the Stars DVD. Don't worry though, we do plan to resume taking orders in the future, after we have filled existing requests and burned some more disks. If you would like to be notified when the request form is active again, please enter your name and email address below.

When I was working my way through college doing the night shift at a retail dairy, a friend, Jack, used to remark about new products, "If we started selling pickled turds, we'd run out the first night!" I'd guess Journey to the Stars is probably a bit better than a pickled turd and well worth the wait, but NASA really should have had their act together on supply of the free DVD. Teachers love free!

Other June postings on Science@NASA include:

• Jupiter Impact: Mystery of the Missing Debris
• As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather
• Old Moon Rover Beams Surprising Laser Flashes to Earth

Do We Really Need All Those Gadgets?

Stephanie McCrummen's Some educators question if whiteboards, other high-tech tools raise achievement on The Washington Post discusses whether all the whiteboards, clickers, iPods, and such are "making things better," or "just different." She writes, "Many academics question industry-backed studies linking improved test scores to their products." She quotes the highly regarded (at least by me) education professor emeritus at Stanford University, Larry Cuban, as saying:

There is hardly any research that will show clearly that any of these machines will improve academic achievement. But the value of novelty, that's highly prized in American society, period. And one way schools can say they are 'innovative' is to pick up the latest device.

Like most of you, I've seen technology in the classroom make a real difference. I was fortunate when teaching to get to help spend a hundred grand of federal IDEA money on technology for my classroom and our school. It was a godsend for us, but actually, money for more staff and training might have served my students better!

Whistling in the Dark

I was sorta whistling in the dark when I tucked in a link to Nicholas Kristof's A Scare, a Scar, a Silver Lining at the very end of last Monday's posting. I've got a lump in my neck that needs to come out. Postings over the last week or so have been brief, as I've spent a lot of time in doctor's and hospital's waiting rooms. I've seen my family doctor, the surgeon, had blood tests and a CAT scan. So far it appears to be a benign type of tumor. Monday I'll have a needle biopsy, with the immediacy of surgery to be determined by the results.

It's all a bit unsettling, but as I've aged, I've become a veteran of the medical drill. Until they start shouting "stat," I don't get too worried. (Well, they did put "stat" on the CAT scan, but calmed down when the results came back in just a few hours.) And I really appreciated Kristof's final line, "And, believe me, it’s never too early — cancer or no cancer — to start appreciating our wondrous world, instead of disparaging its imperfections."

So there probably won't be an Educators' News update on Monday. I may just play hooky and take the whole week off.

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