mathdittos2.com
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Updates to this site may be a bit meager for a week or so, as I'm spending most of my available hours on updates to the MATH DITTOS 2 series. I'd tried to print answer sheets for one of the workbooks last Wednesday and found that the setup I was using at school wouldn't print the outline lettered answers. While I'd received no complaints from customers and hadn't experienced this problem before, it was enough to put me into "update mode." Curiously, the problem was not reproducible on my home setup.
The solution, the slow way, was to select all and underline everything and then un-underline everything. Then I went back and underlined just the numbers that needed it. While that doesn't sound like much, it had (has) to be done to all three shareware workbooks which means hundreds of pages to be converted and edited. Since the older books in the series were long overdue for a sprucing up, I began revising Fact Controlled SUBTRACTION last week. The story of the proposed state takeover of Philadelphia's schools continues in Pols give Edison a rough greeting: Council, school board members quiz execs. Our 15 year old came home with her school pictures last week. She wasn't terribly pleased with them, but who ever likes a picture of themselves? She also met with her high school counselor and was amazed to see school pictures dating all the way back to second grade in her permanent record folder. Those two items, along with Avis Thomas-Lester's Washington Post column, School Pictures Taking On a Smarter Look: Parents Insist On Better Photos got me to thinking about what an American institution school pictures have become. Besides being a monster business for school photo studios, school pictures are a very big thing for primary grade students and their parents. The events at home and the column may make me a more concerned teacher where school pictures are involved. Send Feedback to |
Along the way I also found that a small bug in ClarisWorks 4 became a major problem in AppleWorks 5 and 6. The underline text command doesn't turn off as it should in ClarisWorks/AppleWorks when going to a blank line. Since the underlined line is wider than regular type, it threw all the problems on a page out of register! While the problem was barely noticeable on some pages, others, such as the one at left, were rendered unusable. The current versions of the MATH DITTOS 2 series don't really show the defect, as they were written in ClarisWorks 4 and converted to PDF with Acrobat 3. But...any updates that required changes in the original pages needed a fix since I have finally removed ClarisWorks 4 from my machines. I now use AppleWorks 5 and 6 for composing the pages (mostly 5...).|
Sandy Banks discusses the impact of substitute teachers in Implausible Thesis: Teachers Who Show Up Every Day. This column isn't a rip of teachers calling in sick, but a pretty balanced discussion of the value of regular teachers being present with obvious deference to the special conditions under which teachers work. New items this week from the SchwabLearning.org include:
As a special educator, one of the saddest things I regularly witness is the failure of marriages of parents of disabled children. Raising a disabled child can put tremendous pressure on a marriage, due to the special demands of the disabled child. The SchwabLearning.org has updated their excellent column, Marriage under Pressure, which lists some of the warning signals for marriages on the edge due to a special needs child. It also offers some good suggestions for parents of disabled children for protecting their marriage. It's a tough balance for parents of the disabled, between adequately meeting the disabled child's needs and still having time for a loving relationship with ones spouse. And finally, the first of the current round of shareware updates is available for download. See the Monday posting for all the gory details on what precipitated the updates. MATH DITTOS 2: Fact Controlled SUBTRACTION for Special Learners is a group of computer worksheets designed to allow students to compute while learning their facts. The worksheets are designed to be as uncluttered as possible, with large numbers and very few problems on each page. Fact bars (gotta think of a better name -- always makes me think of a candy bar) and fact strips included on each page include all and only the facts used on the page. Fact support is included on all pages.
In the process of completing this update (and working with a student at school who is using the material), I saw the need for some changes in the task analysis, some pages to be added to the basic set, and for a new group of supplementary pages. So as I release the 1.7 version of MATH DITTOS 2: Fact Controlled SUBTRACTION for Special Learners, version 2.0 is already underway. Anyway, it's up there for download in both Mac (1.4 MB) and Windows (1.4 MB) versions. It does require the Adobe Acrobat Reader for use.
This week's Mac Lab Report on Low End Mac deals with the setup of iBook carts for the classroom. In Hands On: iBook Carts in the Classroom, Jeff Adkins writes about how he's going about getting a couple of iBook carts ready for use in classrooms. If you're getting ready to deal with a group of wireless units, it's an excellent read. Elsewhere on Low End Mac, Publisher Dan Knight is running his second Best of the Mac Web Survey. Readers can rate their favorite Mac sites from the list of 60 that Dan provides. (Educators' News isn't in that select group, but then, it's also not a Mac specific site...at least some of the time:-) A widely carried Reuters report this week proclaimed that Ritalin May Cause Brain Change in Children. CNN Education yesterday carried the AP posting, High court declines disabled students case. By this time next week, the turkey will have been reduced to cold turkey sandwiches and the malls will be filled with eager Christmas shoppers. For the forward looking teacher, now might be the time to visit the Kids Domain Winter Fun page. It contains links to all of KD'S winter holiday pages, which include holiday clip art, coloring pages, and great activities. Obviously, there's not a whole lot going on right now in education news. Maybe that's a good thing for me, as I'm still in full "update mode."
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©2001 Steven L. Wood