Monday, September 5, 2011 - Labor Day (U.S.)

Living with Satellite Internet

Living with Satellite Internet relates our three year experience and evaluation of one satellite internet provider. The short version is a lot like a line from the original Crocodile Dundee film, "Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like shit."

We now have Frontier High Speed Internet service as part of a bundle that includes our landline phone and satellite television. It appears that we'll save quite a bit now that DSL has made it out in the boonies. Our service isn't the blindingly fast 7.1 Mbps available in the big city, but it's worlds better than what we had before.

Teaching About September 11^th

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., a number of sites are offering lesson plans and ideas for dealing with the subject. One of the best links pages I ran across yesterday comes from the Young Heroes of History site. They note, "Although studies of September 11th  are not directly related  to the Young Heroes of History,  we have found such a great need for this information that we are posting it on our web site." Another page posted in 2009 on the George Mason University History News Network, Classroom Lesson Plans: Teaching About 9-11 by Bruce Craig, is an excellent discussion of teaching about 9-11.

Other links, some old and some new, presented in no particular order, include:

• Library of Congress: Teaching About September 11 Using Primary Sources from Library of Congress by Stephen Wesson
• Teaching for Change: Resources for Teaching about September 11, 2001
• Joan Bauer: Teaching 9-11
• U.S.News & World Report: Teaching Students About 9/11 by Zach Miners
• The New York Times Learning Network: Teaching and Learning About 9/11 by Katherine Schulten, Shannon Doyle, and Holly Epstein Ojalvo

Note About Speech Recognizer

I wrote a couple of times last week about the Speech Recognizer which works with Google Chrome that translates spoken word into online text. The HP Pavilion Slimline s5213w that I'm currently rebuilding for our home use is new enough to run Chrome, so I took the speech tool out for a test drive. Sadly, using two different microphones, I never could get the tool to work. But the good news is that I'm gaining some experience in using Windows 7 and now have a computer new enough to test some of the apps and sites I've had to take a pass on up until now.

Odds 'n' Ends

I ran across a couple of interesting columns about technology in the classroom over the weekend. The first one by Matt Richtel talks about the lack of improvement in student test scores despite heavy investments by schools in technology. Science Girl Gail Martha is getting close to winding up her "tour" of the solar system. Walt Gardner has a brief, but excellent discussion about why seniority is important. I also had to throw in a Borowitz Report, just for the fun of it.

• The New York Times: In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores by Matt Richtel
• eSchool News: High-tech classrooms come at a high price
• Scientific Explorer: Our Solar System Part 9: Uranus by Gail Martha
• Reality Check blog on Education Week: LIFO Also Protects Good Teachers by Walt Gardner
• Los Angeles Times: Cheating on state tests found at two Los Angeles schools by Howard Blume
• The Borowitz Report: Labor Day Officially Moved to China: First U.S. Holiday to be Outsourced by Andy Borowitz

And I wish I'd seen Matt Di Carlo's posting, Attracting The "Best Candidates" To Teaching, so I could have included it in my posting last Monday, A Few Words About Dennis.

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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

FAST! (Fix Americas Schools Today)

While putting together the On the Blogs section below, I ran across a posting on Sherman Dorn, Fix America’s Schools Today (FAST) proposal would create jobs and economic demand. The FAST proposal (172K PDF document), was created by Mary Filardo of the 21st Century Schools Fund, Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute. Bernstein describes it in FAST!…and the Debt Ray from Outer Space as "a national infrastructure program to repair, retrofit, insulate and “green-up” the nation’s stock of public schools." The program is "structured to be labor-intensive" to "fix some schools and get a bunch of folks facing very high unemployment rates back to work." The "payfor" for the program could be "$46 billion (over 10 years) in new revenues from closing tax preferences that go to the fossil fuel industry." Alyson Klein also mentions the FAST proposal in yesterday's Congress Returns to Face ESEA, Education Funding Issues on Education Week.

Dorn sensibly comments, "The point is that we have thousands upon thousands of idle construction workers and thousands of schools needing repairs."

It's probably too sensible an idea for Congress or the President to even consider.

On the Blogs

Tom Woodward's eclectic Bionic Teaching blog is on my list to follow for this school year, as I appreciate his writing and viewpoint, but I hadn't as yet linked to any of his postings. That changed today, not with a posting about education, but an incredibly cool photograph of a spider on Tom's arm that appears in his Balance posting and on Flickr.

Chris Lehmann's Taking the Time on his Practical Theory blog discusses the need for regularly scheduled time for school staff to evaluate and collaborate on their teaching. He writes in part:

One of my core beliefs about school these days is that we need to get teachers off of the hamster wheel of the current school-day model. Teachers need time to collaborate, to plan, to innovate. And schools need to find ways to build frequent - I believe weekly - time for everyone to sit in a room and work together to make schools better.

One Sunflower's Review of Something New covers some of the same ground, but in reference to early childhood start-up routines of getting required forms and other paperwork competed by often non-English speaking parents. The advisory, "When we try something new, it is important to review — or maybe the correct word is reflect," reinforces Chris Lehmann's recommendation for collaborative time.

One of the more visually attractive blogs I've selected to follow this school year is What It's Like on the Inside, "A personal blog containing the totally true adventures of a schoolmarm/bureaucrat in the Land of Education." Her blogroll was one of the main ones I used in getting this year's list of blogs to follow started. The current subject there is a "Roll Your Own Gradebook" using Excel.

On the eve of her fifth year teaching, Miss Brave writes in Dear Me about all those things "no one teaches you...when you're learning about Piaget:" 

Teaching is not a movie, and being a teacher means so much more than teaching.  On any given day, you may have to carry forty notebooks up six flights of stairs (manual laborer), mediate an argument between two seven-year-olds (marriage counselor), decide on a just punishment for misbehavior (judge), console a distraught parent who can't control her child (social worker), copy two stacks of handouts (secretary), bag a lost tooth (dentist), fix a broken zipper (MacGyver),...and the list goes on. 

I've often thought college education blocks should include a section called The Realities of Teaching to prepare folks for...all the stuff in teaching they don't tell you about.

Mrs. Bluebird's You Mean We Had to Do the Work is predictable, but should also make you grin a bit.

Larry Ferlazzo's Even More 9/11 Resources adds to the list I posted on Monday.

While I'm certainly on the other end of the timeline, I really liked Zachary Chase's descriptions on Autodizactic of course shopping at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "Each professor teaching a course in the fall hosts a 40-minute introductory session of the course in which syllabi are handed out and general questions are answered."

• Things I Know 215 of 365: I did some (course) shopping
• Things I Know 219 of 365: A good start is asking what we’re orchestrating class to do (the introductory session)

And while the lead story today comes from the Sherman Dorn blog, I really want to include his brief Happy Labor Day posting:

Thanks to efforts of hundreds of thousands of folks preceding me as union members, I have enjoyed the day by reading my spouse’s novel manuscript, eating semi-indulgent stuff, relaxing, and generally not thinking about work. If you live in the U.S., I hope you’ve done similar things.

And now, I’ve got to toast those predecessors…

To add just a bit to Sherman's posting, every day at our house should be a celebration of Labor Day. "Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of folks preceding me as union members," I live on Social Security and a teachers' pension that probably would not have been there without the efforts of organized labor.

We enjoyed watching one of our daughters' family having a game of family frisbee on Labor Day. (The frisbee was a leftover BookIt! frisbee from my classroom days!) The lower photo is from a fall visit by another of our daughters (and grandchildren). One of our dogs, Mac, accompanied Penny, Annie, and I to the barn to feed one of our cats that is too shy to live with the rest of them near the house. I also had a load of kale and broccoli stalks to throw in a hole. Such stalks don't compost well, as it takes them forever to break down, so we just use them to fill holes around the property.

And I was really pleased to see that Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier have returned from their "summer break" to begin another school year blogging on Bridging Differences. Diane's first posting is Reflections on the March on Washington, July 30, 2011. She writes:

My hope is that the events of July 29 (workshops) and July 30 (the rally and march) will get the attention of our nation's policymakers and will give heart to teachers and parents who long for a far, far better vision of what education should be.

An Excellent Commentary

Inspirational speaker, author, and former businessman Jamie Vollmer has a good commentary on Education Week, Student Success Depends on Public Accountability, that deserves more than just a link in the Odds 'n' Ends section below. He writes in part:

Educators must have the understanding, trust, permission, and support of the American public if they are to accomplish this unprecedented goal. But rather than rally public support, shortsighted politicians, business leaders, talk-show hosts, and neo-reformers have chosen the opposite tack. They cite statistics out of context, make false comparisons between public, private, and charter schools, and present test scores in the worst possible light. The failure of some schools is attributed to all schools. Teachers and administrators are often vilified but rarely praised. These critics claim that greater student achievement is their goal. But if this is true, then everything I have learned in 22 years of working toward that end tells me that their negative campaign is misguided and wrong. Rather than expedite reform, their speech and actions retard the process by destroying the intellectual and emotional ties that bind the American people to their schools.

A posting on Vollmer's site, The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson is also an excellent read.

Odds 'n' Ends

• Education Week: Rules Finally Issued on Infants, Toddlers With Disabilities by Nirvi Shah
• The Chicago Tribune: Teachers union accuses CPS of emotional blackmail over longer school day by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
• The New York Times: In Poll, New Yorkers Say Mayor Has Not Improved Schools by Sharon Otterman and Allison Kopicki
• eSchool News: New teacher evaluation framework promises to serve students, and educators, fairly by Dan Domenech
• The Washington Post: DCPS eases IMPACT for highly effective teachers by Bill Turque
• Library of Congress: Practicing Close Observation: Spying on the Past by Stephen Wessen
• Internet Archive: Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive
• The Los Angeles Times: For love of the games: Examples of why sports matters by Matt Stevens
• AP: Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee Marry by Meta Pettus

Friday, September 9, 2011

President Includes Education in Jobs Program Proposal

As part of his $447 billion jobs proposal, "President Barack Obama called for $30 billion in new money to stave off teacher layoffs - and $30 billion more to revamp facilities at the nation's K-12 schools and community colleges." In an early Thursday evening commentary, Education Week's Alyson Klein notes in Obama Calls for $60 Billion to Save Teacher Jobs, Fix Schools that the education part of the jobs stimulus package "seems more like a re-election campaign promise than a serious legislative proposal." She wrote that the plan probably would not pass. Economist and New York Times' columnist Paul Krugman went a bit further. After noting that the plan "calls for about $200 billion in new spending - much of it on things we need in any case, like school repair, transportation networks, and avoiding teacher layoffs - and $240 billion in tax cuts," Krugman gives the obvious reason why the plan probably won't fly, "So, at this point, leading Republicans are basically against anything that might help the unemployed," and thereby help the President's chances of re-election in 2012. There obviously will be many other opinions and analyses posted today about the jobs plan.

Related postings:

• The White House Blog: The American Jobs Act posted by Colleen Curtis
• CNNMoney: Can Obama save teacher jobs? by Tami Luhby
• The New York Times: Obama Exhorts Congress on Jobs Plan by Mark Landler
• CNN: Obama calls on Congress to quickly pass his "American Jobs Act"

Oops!

I was doing something dumb, caught it, and finally did get the Speech Recognizer I wrote about last week to work on Google Chrome. I was clicking on the wrong microphone in the image, or possibly, the proper icon (circled in red at left) wasn't present until I installed the author's Voice In chrome extension (another cool tool that allows dictation into text fields in Google Chrome). Either way, I got it wrong last week, but am certainly glad to find a free voice-to-text tool that appears to be useable by students.

Do note that Speech Recognizer is not blindingly fast. I also had all kinds of trouble the first time I got it to translate speech to text. It recognized "one, two, three" perfectly on my first try, but was flummoxed with "Hickory, dickory, dock" and several other phrases. As you can see at left, it later got the same things right, which suggests enunciation, microphone placement, and/or background noise might understandably make a real difference in how it works.

Since our "new" 2009 HP Slimline got a brain transplant of an Athlon X2 chip yesterday, I tried the recognizer again today to see if it was any faster with the swifter chip. Staying with nursery rhymes for my tests, I found the tool was indeed a bit faster with a quicker machine, but also got a good belly laugh at its lack of accuracy at times. Using the old English nursery rhyme, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, the recognizer did fine (Well, "stix," sticks, maybe Styx?) until I got to the line, "Seven, eight, Lay them straight." Even though I tried the line several times, I kept getting "78 lathem street," until I slowed down, leaving a good bit of time between each word. The recognizer then produced, "78 ladies damn straight." I never got to the "A big fat hen."

Odds 'n' Ends

• eSchool News: Textbook-free schools share experiences, insights by Jenna Zwang
• St. Petersburg Times: Crews Lake Middle's initiatives in special education working by Jeffrey S. Solochek
• Library of Congress: Constitution Day: Exploring the Creation of the Constitution Online by Stephen Wessen
• The Detroit News: Michigan Department of Education to raise bar on test scores by Mike Wilkinson, Jennifer Chambers and Francis X. Donnelly
• The Notebook: District coughs up entire Ackerman payout by Dale Mezzacappa

The banner below made me exclaim, "Already!" Oh, well, have a great weekend anyway!

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