Monday, November 1, 2010

National Archives DocsTeach

The National Archives have opened a new web site, DocsTeach. According to New online tool helps teachers use primary source documents from eSchool News, the site helps "educators teach with primary-source documents...explore documents in a variety of media from the National Archives holdings," and has "online tools to help teachers combine these materials and create engaging history activities for students."

Examples of documents from the news story include George Washington’s annotated draft of the Constitution (shown in part at left), the canceled check for Alaska, Chuck Yeager’s notes on the first supersonic flight, and President Richard Nixon’s resignation letter.

I poked around the DocsTeach site a bit yesterday and found it fairly easy to navigate. Being a bit of a history buff (my college major was U.S. and World History), I got pleasantly sidetracked several times from writing this post while exploring some of the activities provided. While I was a bit put off that I had to register (free) to see the full list of activities for each subject, I had a good time exploring Assessing Richard Nixon’s Presidency and Comparing Civil War Recruitment Posters. I did have to follow a number of links before finally arriving at JPEG and PDF versions of the recruitment posters shown (and linked) below.

The next time I update or rewrite our Resource Sites for Teachers feature, I'll be adding DocsTeach to it. It's that good (...if you're a history teacher or buff)!

I should also mention here that the Library of Congress web site sent out a mailing last week announcing new Primary Source Sets on the New Deal and the Industrial Revolution.

Shuttle Launch Today

I wrote about this item last Thursday, but thought I'd add a quick reminder here that the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off on Mission STS-133 to the International Space Station this afternoon at 4:40 P.M. (EDT).

Election Day Tomorrow

Vote! What more can I say!

Happy Birthday, G5!

Educators' News is written and edited primarily on a Macintosh G5 computer that turns six years old this week. Occasionally, I update the site over our home network with my slightly newer (5 year old) 12" G4 PowerBook, also affectionately known as my Slab-O-Mac (thanks to Andy Ihnatko).

Since I spent most of my teaching career filling my classroom with computers other folks thought were junk, and even wrote for a time for the Low End Mac site, I should be quite content working on machines that are computing antiques by today's standards. We were able to do some amazing things for our kids' learning with a collection of cast-off computers from other classrooms plus the few I could afford to purchase.

Reading Dan Bashur's iLife 11: Another Nail in the PowerPC Coffin on Low End Mac last week reminded me that I'm fighting a losing battle with my old Macs. While I have a second, stripped down G5 that can serve as a parts donor for my main computer, I'm running into more and more programs that require a newer, Intel chip powered Mac. And by putting off buying a new computer, more and more software will have to be replaced or updated when I finally make the switch.

But other than running a bit hot on occasion (when my office catches the afternoon sun), the machine is still in perfect working order. It does what I ask, doesn't act up if I leave it on for days on end, and is still up to processing the graphics and images I throw at it. Video is another story, but I don't do much of it.

So the G5 remains in use as a complete rebuild of our garage, a new well pump, and new carpet for the living room take priority. For now, this aging writer will continue to use his aging Macs to publish this and another web site. I bet you couldn't even tell you were reading text written on an antique, could you?

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Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - Election Day

A Time to Say "Screw the Research"

Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don't Students Like School, is a frequent contributor on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog. I generally agree with Dr. Willingham's point of view and opinions on education and avidly read his guest posts on Valerie's excellent blog. But I'm afraid he's simply full of shit with his recent guest blog, How sugar really affects kids.

Dr. Willingham relates the results of a number of studies on the effects of sugar on kids' behavior (thankfully, in layman's terms) in his post-Halloween posting. It's the kind of stuff we've all seen, heard, and read before. It simply states that sugar does not contribute to hyperactivity or poor behavior by children and/or students.

And parents and teachers everywhere remark, "That's bullshit!" (If you're offended by the language, think of it as Kate Hudson playing the Bullshit game in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Or, just go somewhere else... )

Studies come and studies go. Dr. Willingham is conscientiously reporting what he believes to be true at this time according to the research available.

And parents and teachers continue to emphatically say, "Bullshit!"

While studies at this time may exonerate sugar from increasing negative or hyperactive behaviors in children, folks in the classroom (and parents) do, as Willingham acknowledges, frequently experience sharp increases in kids "bouncing off the walls" after consumption of sugary treats. Whether the cause is caffeine in the treats, room mothers circulating with goodies topped with an inch of sugary icing, or the more relaxed atmosphere of a room party, Willingham and others choose to give sugar an easy out.

I taught a special education "pull out" class the last ten years of my career. We rarely had room parties, as our kids returned to their homerooms for most such events. Edible treats earned in our classroom were most commonly for 100% spelling papers at the end of the week. (We had an incredibly successful, roll-your-own spelling program for our kids.) We rarely had parents in the room at such times, and our system was simply one of when your spelling paper was graded and returned, you got to choose a reward (some edible, some tangible items such as toys from a fast food joint contributed by a parent). Since our students were tested in small, leveled groups, not everyone got their reward at the same time.

Every time we deviated from our no sugary treats policy, we paid dearly in student unrest. Pushy parents with boxes of birthday cupcakes were only accommodated late in the day. (Let the bus drivers and parents suffer. Of course, Dr. Willingham would disagree based on research.)

And yeah, we made mistakes. Two stand out in my memory.

Once, when the IGA was inexplicably out of white milk, I got chocolate flavored milk for a classroom event. Oh my god, what a disaster.

Another time I brought in Dole Golden Pineapple(s) for spelling treats. We peeled, cored, and cut the pineapples as a classroom activity with each child getting a taste. We talked about and read about how and where pineapples grow. Then paper plates of golden pineapple chunks were available as treats after our spelling tests. We've offered oranges, apples, plums, bananas (the kids' absolute favorite), grapes, and probably other fruit I can't remember (oh yeah, we even did kiwi once), but I've never seen kids bounce off the walls as they did with the golden pineapple. While I'm sure the "research" doesn't support it, my everyday experience tells me the sugar in pineapple (specifically the golden pineapple) is different from the natural sugars in other fruits and not to offer it to sugar-reactive kids (which the research apparently says don't exist).

Dr. Willingham's guest blog illustrates something to which most career teachers can relate. "Things," initiatives, reforms, all supposedly based on research, best practices, or some other recommendation, come around in education regularly. There are some we may tentatively embrace until we feel confident in adopting or rejecting them, or just hold them at an arm's length until reason in the education community returns. There are others that our individual and collective experience tells us are just plain wrong...or full of shit.

Giving kids sugary treats is one of those things that while research says is not a factor in student unrest and misbehavior, teachers (and parents) collective knowledge and experience says is a bad idea.

We're currently in a time of education "reform" where new practices such as teacher ratings based on student test scores, promotion of often for-profit charter schools, and the nasty mantra of ed "deformers" (Thanks to Norm Scott for that one.) of "bad teachers" permeates the discussion of how to improve education. We're told we should give up our hard won "permanent teacher" or tenure status when we've seen it protect us when we were working in our kids' and parents' best interests. (My personal favorite was when a superintendent suggested I become a "team player" in denying our students' educational rights. As Tom Cruise said in the movie, A Few Good Men, "F*ck you, Harold." Harold was later let go because of multiple charges of sexual harassment. I stayed only because tenure/due process protected me, not because I was an excellent teacher doing the right thing.)

To Dr. Willingham:

I'm just an ex-dockworker who got lucky, dusted off, cleaned up and spent an extremely rewarding and successful career teaching elementary students. I'm not much into reading research articles, although I do when I think I've found something I must read to help teachers and kids. And yes, I still talk (and occasionally write) like a dockworker, but then I also ask God's forgiveness later for my profanities. I'm also almost, no, acutely anti-academic, possibly from the abuse I suffered when trying to work with other K-12 teachers at a prestigious institution of higher education for engineering.

I don't want to sound like a tea bagger (tea party advocate), which I'm not, but sometimes the common sense of "the people" tells us to wait a bit before rendering a judgment that might hurt our kids. Our President and Secretary of Education certainly don't subscribe to my unsolicited advice on education, as they continue to promote their unproven, divisive, and fallacious education "reforms" to the country. I've tried to counsel them (as if they would listen to an ex-dockworker). But I would hope you might hold off recommending sugaring down the kids in America's classrooms, or even publishing a guest blog that might lead teachers to do so at the possible peril of their students.

The research certainly doesn't support my position, but common sense and experience does. We can all smell bullshit when we come upon it.

Shuttle Launch Delayed Until Wednesday

Minor gas leaks have forced NASA to push back the launch of the space shuttle Discovery to Wednesday afternoon. Space.com's Denise Chow gives a good account of what all is involved in scheduling (and moving) a launch in NASA's Tricky Art of Choosing Space Shuttle Launch Times.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

After the Election

Education Week has good post-election education coverage this morning with several informative articles:

• Voters Grapple with Ballot Measures on Education by Dakarai I. Aarons
• Republicans Gain Clout in State-Level Offices by Sean Cavanagh
• Reid Beats Back Tea-Party Opponent by Alyson Klein

And Liz Goodwin looks at several states with education related items on the ballot in Voters make tough decisions on education spending on The Upshot.

Valerie Strauss has a good posting today about the possible effects of a Republican controlled House in Education policy: What will happen now. She concludes:

It may seem hard to believe, but rather than more of the same, the change in House leadership could serve to make things even worse than they already are with education reform today.

But GOP victories could affect education funding, ed tech on eSchool News notes that Minnesota Representative John Kline, in line to succeed Democrat George Miller as chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, has expressed views that special educators should appreciate.

Kline has supported an increase in federal education funding to help teach students with special needs. In a 2009 op-ed piece, he noted that the government pledged to spend up to 40 percent of the cost of special-education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—but federal IDEA spending has fallen far short of this target amount.

"Since 1975, we have never met that promise. In fact, we have never even come close," he wrote. "Even with this year's one-time boost in stimulus funding, which will disappear in a little more than a year, we still fall far short of our guarantee."

Yet Kline favors fully funding IDEA before spending on any new education programs, such as initiatives that would support early childhood education, job training, and school construction that House Democrats passed last year.

"While these new programs may be beneficial, we have not seen evidence of their success," he wrote. "Challenging economic times are not the time for new and expensive experiments that siphon funds from existing programs and impose massive, unfunded mandates on state and local school officials. Instead, we should devote our limited resources … to those programs with which schools are already required by law to comply."

Shuttle Launch Delayed Again

Several images have been added to the STS-133 Image Gallery this week, including the commemorative Discovery art shown at left and the first launch of Discovery on August 30, 1984, at right.

From a notice on the space shuttle home page:

The Prelaunch Mission Management Team wants to give engineers more time to look deeply into two electrical issues from a main engine computer controller that cropped up this morning. Therefore, the launch of space shuttle Discovery on STS-133 has been delayed until at least Thursday.

The launch target is now listed for 3:29 P.M. (EDT) on Thursday, November 4, 2010. Space.com relates in Electrical Glitch and Weather May Threaten Shuttle Discovery's Thursday Launch that NASA shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters had stated an 80 percent chance that foul weather on Thursday will cause yet another launch delay for the space shuttle. If NASA cannot launch Discovery by Sunday, November 7, it will miss the current window and have to stand down until December 1 to try again.

Free Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac

Sophos unveils free antivirus software for the Mac by Elinor Mills relates that Sophos yesterday released a free anti-virus application for Macintosh operating system computers. I was a bit surprised to see that Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition supports both Intel and PowerPC processor Macs, as most new apps coming out omit the older PowerPC computers. Mills notes that the new release that protects Macintosh computers from viruses, Trojans and worms will compete with other free products, ClamXav, Avast, and PC Tools iAntiVirus.

While most readers of Educators' News may work on a PC, I decided to highlight the Sophos release today, as Mac users have been pretty limited in their choices of anti-virus products available over the years. Windows users will find quite a few comparable, free products for Windows from CNET's Download.com.

Odds 'n' Ends

Former D.C. teacher, writer, and stay-at-home mom Rachel Levy dissects Michelle Rhee's tenure and accomplishments in What's the Matter with Rhee-form on her All Things Education blog. As a native of D.C., Levy writes:

Her ideas about education reform were misinformed and ineffective. She was incompetent and ignorant of the history of the city and community she was supposed to serve. In short, she was charging hard in the wrong direction, or as N.Y.U. education historian Diane Ravitch has said, "It's difficult to win a war when you’re firing on your own troops."

Levy's excellent posting got a minor rewrite and appears today as a guest blog on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet under the title, What Michelle Rhee did in D.C.: Point by point. A comment to the article posted by "Linda/RetiredTeacher" goes a bit further in addressing the issue of privatization of public schools. I'll reproduce it here:

Before I make my point I'd like to describe a commercial I saw on TV today. The commercial was touting the success of a "technical institute" that I knew was actually a diploma mill. As the narrator beckoned young men and women to come to his "institute" in order to learn technical skills that would enable them to obtain a lucrative job, the camera focused on students who were mainly young men and women of color. Anyone who reads the daily paper knows that these students will incur huge debts while learning little or nothing from these diploma mills. The federal and state governments are fighting these for-profit "colleges" but powerful interests are fighting back.

Until very recently these education scams were restricted to higher education and the adult population. However, in the last few years, with the advent of charter schools, K-12 schools have become available, for the first time, to scam artists who are now able to get their hands in the public education tax money till.

The only obstacle that stands in the way of these opportunists are the teachers and their unions as well as knowledgeable citizens. If teachers continue to make decent salaries and to make a career of teaching, there is much less money for the "entrepreneurs." The only way they can make a huge profit is to employ inexperienced people right out of college and to encourage these people to move on after a few years.

This is all about privatizing public education for personal gain and in that sense Rhee was almost successful. She replaced senior teachers with youngsters right out of college who were not planning to stay very long. She devised an evaluation system that would allow her to get rid of many veterans, whether they were ineffective or not, and she got teachers to vote for a contract that effectively enabled her to get rid of expensive veterans for any reason whatsoever. (This was the most puzzling for me. The only thing that makes sense is that many newly-hired teachers voted for the contract while discouraged veterans stayed home.)

Fortunately the citizens of DC saw Michelle Rhee for what she is: a leader who represents citizens who want to privatize the public schools for personal gain. Just as the higher ed con men targeted poor people of color for their "technical institutes," these people figured that the poor folk of DC would make easy targets. But they were wrong.

My guess is that the rest of American is waking up and we'll soon see an end to Rheeform.

I hope Linda is right.

Late Sunday afternoon, I took this shot of a spider sitting on its web outside a window. I haven't yet identified the type of spider, but was pleasantly surprised at the shot I got, considering it was taken through the window.

I uploaded the image to Pics4Learning.com, a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Short Posting

A posting on the HECC listserv led me to GCFLearnFree.org yesterday, which offers free computer training, including reading and math online tutorials for adults.

There is lots of commentary online now about how the political shift in Washington, D.C. will effect reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The most interesting, although a bit difficult to read, posting I've come across in the last 24 hours is Anne Geiger's More thoughts on midterms--Reinforcement of a two-tiered public school system on Public Policy Blogger. Geiger goes beyond the personalities involved to look at how the current education "reform" may not be a good fit for all urban and especially rural school districts.

The Perfect Co-Teaching Scenario by Cossondra George gives some valuable tips for both sides of inclusionary teaching.

The launch of the space shuttle Discovery has been delayed again due to poor weather conditions. The new launch target is for tomorrow, Friday, November 5, 2010 at 3:04 P.M. (EDT).

Friday, November 5, 2010

Scienceman

I was delighted this week to discover that Scienceman Joe Martha is once again regularly posting online. His long-running Scienceman.com site now serves as a jumping off point to his Scienceman's Blog, Scienceman Video Channel (on YouTube), Reviews and Articles, and tweets.

I think the first time I linked to Joe's site was in 2001. He had done a review of some then, cutting-edge technology: a microscope that could display its view on one's computer and even project it in the classroom. I'd commented at that time on Educators' News:

This is the kind of classroom technology that gives "throwing money at the problem" a good name! I can remember trying to get a class of 25 sixth-graders to each take a quick peek at a euglena through a microscope before it swam out of view. Joe says, "The best part of this camera is the tremendous images it creates, and it's slick ability to get those images onto your computer screen via an integrated USB port."

We've obviously come a long way since those early, exciting days of computer technology in the classroom.

From Joe's Twitter page, I quickly found myself jumping to a page about burning water in homes in the Rosebud River Valley, east of Calgary. After that, I got lost in the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear: A Comprehensive List of Signs. From the extensive list, I'll share just five of my favorites.

1. Fight illegal migration: demand Canadian geese show us their papers
2. Abalish the Dapartmint of Edukashun
3. Everything on this sign is spelled correctly
4. Facts have a well known Liberal Bias
5. I already regret choosing to carry this sign all day

Launch on Monday?

After a weather postponement yesterday, today's launch of the space shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-133 was scrubbed when a hydrogen leak "was detected at the GUCP, an attachment point between the external tank and a 17-inch pipe that carries gaseous hydrogen safely away from Discovery to the flare stack, where it is burned off." The next launch attempt will be no earlier than Monday.

   • Shuttle Home Page
   • STS-133 Image Gallery

Fall Back, Spring Forward

While editing the original NASA launch posting for today, I noticed a switch from "EDT" for the launch times to "EST" for docking and other times and was reminded that this is the weekend to reset our clocks from daylight saving time to standard time.

Odds 'n' Ends

With all that's been written of late on education, I think Sabrina Stevens Shupe should get our award (Do we have an award?) for the quote of the week. She wrote in Reinventing the Wheel, Again on the Failing Schools blog, "I'm really hoping that someday, in the not-so-distant future, I'll stop reading serious education stories that sound like something out of The Onion." She also has some good thoughts about fair evaluation of teachers. (I had to capture and post the image of Professor Cornel West. He's one of Annie and my talk show favorites.)

If you're not already on overload from post-election analysis, Alyson Klein's NEA Reacts to GOP, Tea Party Congressional Victories is a good read, as is Nick Anderson's Obama could push education reform in effort to work with a divided Congress.

And Michael Doyle departs from his usual inspirational and science related postings on his Science Teacher blog to take a well deserved shot at New Jersey's acting Education Commissioner, Rochelle Hendricks. Hendricks chose to break a longstanding tradition of the commissioner speaking at the state teachers' convention and instead spouted some nasty stuff about the New Jersey Education Association. Mike captures much of what is wrong in the education "reform" movement with his statement:

It's been a long while since you taught, comfortably ensconced in one of our wealthiest districts. Put away your Christie's scepter for a day and come mingle with us.

Stoop a day for the kids you so righteously defend. Get to know us.

That's how functioning government works.

Christopher Dawson gives his reactions to Apple's announcement that they will stop selling XServe rack mount servers in January in Apple XServe is gone - Is OS X Server next?

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Apple XServe Cancelled

There was a lot of traffic on school tech listservs yesterday about Apple's abrupt decision to cancel the XServe rack mount server. Typical of the messages was Brian's from a central Indiana school district:

Unbelievably, Apple has decided to end of life their xserve line. I can't believe that I will have to revert to towers in my server rack.

I didn't see the news until late yesterday and just added a quick link to Christopher Dawson's comments on ZDNet last evening. This morning, John C. Welch ripped Apple for its decision in Xserve is dead... so now what on Macworld.

For those of you wondering what I'm talking about, rack mount servers are thin, deep computers with easily interchangeable parts that are housed in racks to conserve space in a protected environment (such as a locked, air-conditioned server room). These essential computers are the ones that usually provide your gateway for school internet access, house tons of files (your school SIS software and records), handle email, and lots of other functions.

For folks like Brian, Apple's decision is a disaster. While Apple offers towers and Mac Minis that can function as a server, neither is an adequate replacement for the XServe as John Welch documented in his column. But Apple's cancellation of the XServe also sends a message to the relatively few school techs who adopted Apple server hardware and software that they're really not serious about the school computer market. If you want to sell computers to schools, you need to provide adequate administrative hardware and software to easily support those computers.

Apple didn't have much of a hold in the school server market. They did have some followers like Brian, who had to sell their school board on the advantages of using Apple's more expensive equipment and their excellent OS X Server software. But most school techs, actually most techs school or otherwise, don't have much confidence in Apple. They've seen Apple float in and out of the server market before.

Apple has been doing a lot of things right over the last few years, but this time they really got it wrong with the cancellation of the XServe.

Discovery Launch Pushed Back Again

After a week of postponements, the launch of the space shuttle Discovery has now been pushed back until November 30, at the earliest. A NASA press release states:

The delay will allow engineers and technicians time to diagnose and repair a hydrogen gas leak detected while filling the external tank Friday morning. They also will assess a foam crack on the external fuel tank's liquid oxygen intertank flange. The crack was discovered during de-tanking operations.

Space.com's NASA Postpones Shuttle Discovery Launch to Nov. 30 for Repairs adds a bit more detail. They note that "November 30 is the first time the [launch] window opens," something that has to do with unfavorable sun angles at the International Space Station that prevent a good launch and docking in the next few weeks.

Odds 'n' Ends

Shari Rudavsky's Garden at Emma Donnan Middle part of plan to fight childhood obesity, diabetes tells about another school garden program starting. She tells of a new joint project of Clarian Health, Indianapolis Public Schools and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful to "give students a close-up look at the joys of growing and then eating one's own produce," with "an overarching strategy...to confront the diabesity epidemic and certainly childhood obesity."

School gardens appear to be becoming an "in thing" once again around the country. I'm not sure how many of the new gardening initiatives will survive, but there is an opportunity to extend learning outside the classroom with such programs. They also take some serious planning and support to be successful. See our School Gardens posting from August for some good links on the subject.

While perusing the Indy Star, I also came upon one of those sad stories that gives our profession a black eye, Speedway teacher tested at 0.21 at school, police say. Wow!

Have a great weekend!