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OOo4Kids (Pronounced "OpenOffice For Kids") reached version 1.1 last week. Designed for children 7-12 years old, the free children's office suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, draw, and presentation functions. I've tested and reviewed this suite previously here and in our feature story, Free Stuff for Teachers, Homeschoolers, & Students and found it to be a very useable alternative to Microsoft Office products. Larger document display sizes along with options for easy or beginner toolbars (and more advanced options) are a plus. The default save in word processing is to the open office format (.odt), but it can also save in the older Word format (.doc), although not to the newer .docx. It will, however, open documents saved in the newer format.
OpenOffice Note While it's not quite there yet, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite will probably be updated to version 3.3 sometime this week. It has moved out of beta into release candidate releases over the last few weeks, currently at version rc3. OOo4Kids is based on OpenOffice source code. Revolving Door If you've taught in a school with a high student turnover rate, you'll appreciate Robert King's latest article in his series, A kindergarten's revolving door at Indianapolis Public School 61. King has been following and writing about the kindergarten of School 61 this fall and somewhat generalizing what he's seen to other urban situations. It's an excellent series. Previous articles include:
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I asked the app to open my current garden seed inventory (a rather long spreadsheet) and an old PowerPoint presentation (an absolute monster) as a test. It opened both without incident, although the PowerPoint took several minutes to open. The spreadsheet module now handles documents longer than 128 lines, a limitation in previous versions. 
OOo4Kids is available for download for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. If you're looking for a free office suite for elementary students, this one should do the job.
Kids in Micro-G Challenge NASA's Kids In Micro-G program is now accepting submissions for "an experiment or simple demonstration that could be performed both in the classroom and by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS)." In its second year, the Kids in Micro-g challenge is looking for "experiments will have observably different results when the experiments are performed by astronauts in the 'Micro-g' environment of the ISS." The contest is open to student groups in grades 5-8 with experiment proposals "submitted by adult teachers or educators on the behalf of their student groups" due by Wednesday, December 8, 2010. What Would it Take to Change Your Mind? David B. Cohen's stimulating title, What Would it Take to Change Your Mind, could go a lot of places, but Cohen zeroes in on education "reformers" in his InterACT posting.
Trip Gabriel's Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected tells of a new report issued today by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools. The report, A Call for Change (3.6 MB PDF document), is based on data from the National Assessment for Educational Progress. Gabriel writes of the report:
While the report "urges convening a White House conference" on the issue, Gabriel notes "what it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers." He quotes the council's executive director, Michael Casserly, as saying:
Hmmm, what will it take to change their minds? Odds 'n' Ends Michael Birnbaum reports in Committee vote may endanger Maryland Race to Top grant:
Diane Ravitch on election results in What I Learned in New Orleans:
Having quoted almost all of Diane's first paragraph, let me say that I haven't given away her most telling comments that come in her conclusion. You'll have to go to Bridging Differences to read them.
A posting yesterday on the HECC (Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators) listserv led me to the image at right. It's not school related, but hopefully will lighten the day. You can see more Monday Through Friday postings on the Work Fails & Job LOLs blog. Klein Out: Black In New York City teachers are probably just shaking their heads in dismay today, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg replaced outgoing schools chancellor Joel Klein with another business executive with no experience in public education, Cathleen P. Black. Valerie Strauss should probably get a Quote of the Day award for her summary in Bloomberg errs again with NYC public schools:
Other news coverage of the change includes:
If major media coverage of the change doesn't do it for you, try Norm Scott's take on the change in several of his Education Notes Online postings:
In a piece linked above, John Elfrank-Dana writes, "I have always said Klein was just the symptom; that the problem is the concentration of power in the executive (Mayor) along with a thinly veiled agenda to privatize schools via union busting and parent disenfranchisement." In the same blog posting, Norm Scott notes that what New York City kids need are "small class sizes and social work supports adequate to meet their needs." In the same line of thought, calls for Arne Duncan's resignation or an end to the Department of Education are about symptoms. Don't get me wrong: Arne should definitely go. He has become the administration's poster boy for privatization of public schools, merit pay, high stakes testing, and a host of divisive, competitive initiatives that won't improve kids' learning all that much, if at all. But removing Arne, or wasting time trying to dismantle the DOE, as George Wood suggests today in a guest blog, Why the Education Department should be eliminated, won't change much if the central focus of the President's "reform" plan stays on punishing schools and teachers (and kids), rather than addressing the underlying social ills that prevent true school reform. We have to change the President's mind on what is needed in school reform. Or, we need to change presidents! Odds 'n' Ends I read Christina Samuels's piece, Disability-Rights Groups Spar Over Special Ed. Restraints, in the doctor's office waiting room yesterday on my iPhone. It's a subject that definitely deserves clarification, as teachers are forced to restrain special needs students at times when they are dangerous to themselves and/or others. I don't have answers to the issue, but know that special needs personnel need to be trained in safe restraints, as they'll probably have to use them if they work with students with moderate and severe impairments. And my trip to the doctor, caused by an exercise in personal clumsiness, made writing this posting a bit more difficult. I created what a nurse called a "gaping wound" on a finger Monday on the latch to our chest type freezer, but delayed getting it stitched shut until yesterday. So I now have a large bandage on my index finger that makes typing a challenge. The excellent nurse practitioner who was doing the stitching remarked, "I should really splint that finger for a few days...but you'll probably just take it off tonight." He was right, but I can live with the bandage. And since I'm on my soapbox today and have already mentioned the HECC listserv, let me editorialize a bit more. I've noticed over the last few weeks that postings to the listserv have been overwhelmingly about issues related to the administration of Indiana's ISTEP+, our version of high stakes testing. The computer coordinators are doing their jobs, trying to work out the bugs in the required testing system. But...when I was teaching special ed, and didn't have to participate in the ISTEP, our computer coordinator was focused on helping me use technology to more effectively teach my kids. We're squandering an incredible amount of time, talent, and money on testing in this country that could be much better spent on addressing the educational needs of the students we teach. Thursday, November 11, 2010 - Veterans Day (U.S.) Not So Fast, Mayor Bloomberg Elissa Gootman and Jennifer Medina tell in No Education Experience Needed to Run Schools? An Idea Is Taken to a New Level that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's appointment of Cathleen P. Black to replace Joel I. Klein as schools chancellor may not be automatic. They write:
While New York Education Commissioner David Steiner, who makes the final decision on granting waivers, is expected to grant the waiver, parents, school and community groups, and some politicians are weighing in against granting the waiver. New York Archdiocese to Consolidate Schools I linked in September to a story about a plan by the New York Archdiocese to consolidate schools as a cost cutting measure. Thirty-one elementary schools and one high school "described by the Archdiocese as 'at risk,'" are slated to be closed next year. Vitello reports that "All have struggled for years with declining enrollment and increasing dependence on the Archdiocese for financial support," and quotes schools superintendent, Dr. Timothy J. McNiff as saying, "We need to allocate our resources where they can do the most good, and support schools that can sustain themselves over time." The full list of schools proposed to be closed is available in the archdiocese press release, Reconfiguration Committee of the Archdiocese of New York Announces Preliminary Determinations of “At-Risk” Schools. Odds 'n' Ends eSchool News has a couple of articles that may be of interest. ED releases final version of National Ed-Tech Plan relates that "the final version of the new National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) includes a focus on individualized instruction and connectivity." A key part of the plan is the creation of "a new generation of assessments" which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described as "an absolute game changer for public education." I'll repeat my comment from yesterday: We're squandering an incredible amount of time, talent, and money on testing in this country that could be much better spent on addressing the educational needs of the students we teach. Universities add open eBooks to iTunes U tells of Rice University, Oxford University, and The Open University contributing free, open eBooks to the iTunes U web site. And as a follow-up to my comment Monday about OpenOffice going to version 3.3 this week, it didn't. Instead, another release candidate version (rc4) was released yesterday, so the final updated version may become available next week. Yes, you can teach kids to eat broccoli As I took a first pass last night at writing today's update, I became acutely aware that there really wasn't anything online I was remotely interested in linking to today. Maybe I'm just getting a little burnt out, or maybe there is a dearth of education news right now. I even thought of just posting a picture of the two heads of broccoli I cut in our garden this week and letting it go at that.
All this happened before I checked Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet blog on the Washington Post and found her Yes, you can teach kids to eat broccoli posting. She writes about the food program at Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School "that has young students relishing broccoli, tilapia encrusted with panko, boureks with beef or vegetables, and other foods not commonly embraced by kids." She also writes about the Child Nutrition Act that Congress didn't reauthorize before adjourning and that the current proposals lack "enough funding to truly transform school food," but are better than nothing. She also got a plug in for the work Jeff Bridges does with the End Hunger Network and Share Our Strength, "a national nonprofit organization focused on ending childhood hunger in the United States." She even mentions that the kids at Stokes School grow some of their food in a school garden.
By morning, Valerie had another related post, Palin: Parents should decide what kids eat in school, where she effectively refuted Sarah Palin's comments about sweets made in an evening speech at Plumstead Christian School. Palin, "apparently believing that the education board was trying to ban sweets altogether in schools," had argued that what kids eat at school should be the parents' choice, saying "how dare they ban sweets from school here." I made my views about sweets in the classroom pretty clear here last week. And getting back to the Child Nutrition Act, the NEA has a page in support of its immediate passage, Urge the House to Pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. "Black in for Klein" The "Black in for Klein" substitution for chancellor of the New York City schools continues to create a lot of press.
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