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An Incredible Story about a Young Man with Autism Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Amy Harmon follows the progress of a student towards independence in Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World. She tells of Justin Canha, a young man with autism who barely spoke until he was ten, but loves cartoons and has a gift for drawing. Canha "falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum of social impairments that characterize autism, which affects nearly one in 100 American children. He talks to himself in public, has had occasional angry outbursts, avoids eye contact and rarely deviates from his favorite subject, animation. His unabashed expression of emotion and quirky sense of humor endear him to teachers, therapists and relatives." Harmon traces Canha's progress and setbacks from childhood through young adulthood, also telling of the "transition to adulthood' program for special education students at Montclair High School in New Jersey that helped him go so far. She opens the intriguing story with a description of how Justin started a job interview experience at an animation studio near his home:
Harmon also shares some of the hard realities of what may await students with autism upon leaving school:
Digital Promise to Schools Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Friday announced the launch of Digital Promise, a public-private partnership intended "to advance technologies that can transform teaching and learning." In the White House blog posting, Making a Digital Promise to our Students, and the Digital Promise Factsheet, Duncan writes that "Digital Promise will work with leading educators, researchers, technology firms, and entrepreneurs on three key challenges:"
The factsheet bears closer examination, as it also includes notice of the creation of "A League of Innovative Schools" for:
Also in the factsheet is word of some $15 million in new awards to be announced by the National Science Foundation "to support research that is developing next-generation learning environments." Some of the stuff in this section of the factsheet sounded pretty cool:
The fine print also included word of:
White House makes "Digital Promise" to schools on eSchool News also tells of the initiative and its negative reception by some conservatives despite the fact that the initiative was approved by Congress in 2008 with bipartisan support. I'm obviously not a conservative, but... I worry with each new breath out of Arne Duncan's mouth, this time suggesting the initiative "will help spur breakthrough learning technologies that transform teaching and learning," and of course, "while creating a business environment that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship." I'm tired of Arne's "transforming," and the business part scares me. The Obama Administration still doesn't get it that treating schools as one would a business won't work. I hope this initiative won't evolve into The Education Software Directorate, dictating what software schools must purchase and use. Drought Breaker?
Of course, the rain Sunday evening blows my excuse for not mowing our grass. I'd vowed not to mow again until we got a good rain, so as not to brown out the lawn more than it is already. The areas mowed in the photo (above left) were only done because I was transplanting fall lettuce into a raised garden bed and couldn't stand the tall grass going to seed leaning into the raised bed. So I fired up the weedeater and mower and did a couple of laps around our main garden area.
Odds 'n' Ends While hunting through some new education blogs, I ran across one of those funny "You Might Be in Education If..." lists. In the course of searching for the original source of such lists (which I never found), I kept finding similar but longer and funnier lists. The granddaddy of them turned out to come from Adprima's Teacher and Teaching Wit and Wisdom page that contained several such lists. The "You Might Be in Education If..." list began with:
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Minnesota Online Learning Report A new audit released Monday from the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor is causing a bit of a stir. The report found students taking online classes full-time "often fell short of their peers in traditional schools." In addition, online "students are less likely to complete courses they've started, and more likely to drop out of school altogether than students in traditional classroom settings."
More Bad News for Detroit Teachers Jennifer Chambers relates in DPS plans to cut 1,500 teachers that the Detroit Public Schools plan to lay off 40 percent of their teachers in the next four years. Working to close a $327 million deficit, "the district would cut more than 1,500 teachers by fall 2015, according to a deficit-elimination plan obtained by The Detroit News." The system projects a decrease of 6,000 students in the same time frame. WTU Problems Bill Turque reports in The Washington Post, Teachers’ union vice president ousted in dispute with president Saunders. The short version is that Washington Teachers' Union President Nathan Saunders has suspended Vice President Candi Peterson from her post for "erratic and unprofessional" behavior. Peterson said the problem began "when Saunders spoke abusively to her at a July staff meeting" and has filed suit to regain her position and pay. Previous WTU President George Parker tried the same thing when Saunders was vice president, only to be reversed by the American Federation of Teachers. Peterson sheds only a little light on the controversy in her Washington Teacher blog posting, NO WTU Vice President For You AGAIN. It appears that Peterson may be getting ready to run against Saunders, if he runs for re-election, for the union presidency in 2013. The whole situation reminds me a bit of George Orwell's Animal Farm, as the pigs that become new leaders start in time to stand on just two legs and resemble their predecessors. On the Blogs
Personal note: I have to love a blog with a Quoteworthy posted from the late Molly Ivins, "Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit." Both my wife, Annie, and I miss Molly's writing, but if she were here today, I'd bet she'd be having a field day with Rick Perry! (Molly gave him the nickname, Governor Goodhair.) That's Annie pictured with Molly at right at a book signing in Terre Haute in 2003. McClatchy has reposted some great Molly Ivins excerpts that appeared in Sacramento Bee in August, Did Molly Ivins say that about Rick Perry? Michaele Sommerville shares in Another Thing Your Ed. Prep Courses Don't Tell You on her Kindergarten's 3 R's: Respect, Resources, and Rants blog how to make hats - lots of hats. She tells and links to instructions for pirate hats and moose hats and ... While we're doing kindergarten, Kiri McFarland writes in her Elbows, Knees, and Dreams blog that Breakfast Can Be Terrifying. Ms. Understood's tender posting, The Help, on Teacher, I Don't Get It reflects some of the immense challenges teachers must face. She writes, "I find myself trying to help this child who had a parent commit suicide and wants nothing more than to be in school as much as possible because that is where she is happiest." Nancy Flanagan's Feeling Down? Think Public Ed has Failed? Read This! on her Teacher in a Strange Land blog on Education Week tells of the incredible efforts of Moretown, Vermont teachers in "keeping things as 'normal' as possible when a child's world turns upside down." Another teacher blog posting led me to the Education Sector's new page on Facebook, Teacher Sector, "a new Facebook community page designed to find out what you think about education and share your ideas." On their Welcome page, Education Sector asks for help reaching 500 teachers and offers a prize of "one year of school supplies [$450])." They were at 350 "likes" at this writing. A drawing for the prize (teachers only) will be held when they reach 500. I was going through folders of photos in Photoshop's browse mode yesterday, going back a labeling some folders that were only identified by the date the picture were taken. I came upon a folder containing some really so-so shots I'd taken of the moon and what was probably a planet just over the treeline. Wondering what the other body was, I fired up Stellarium, the free, open source planetarium and did a trip back through time to the evening of November 3, 2008. Not only did Stellarium show the Moon and Jupiter, it also alerted me to Venus, off to the right in the photo, which I'd previously not noticed.
Note: the icon just below the Location Window is for date and time, which you can use to look back or ahead in Stellarium. And if you're really into astronomy, you can be really specific with your location by entering your geographic coordinates and creating a custom default location. My installation of Stellarium defaults to "Our house," a setting I put in using coordinates obtained in Google Earth for the exact location in our back yard where I usually set my telescope. Just for the fun of it, I pushed ahead in Stellarium's date and time and took a look at the night sky for tonight. I found that if we have clear skies and I'm awake at the time, Jupiter will be high in the sky at around 3 tomorrow morning.
Stellarium seems to run far better for me on our newly refurbished PC than my old Macintosh. The Mac version gets really clunky when trying to dismiss configuration windows, but is definitely useable. Also, support for PowerPC Macs running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.11) dried up with Stellarium version 10.6. The new 11.0 version of Stellarium does still run on my installation of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.8), so I really can't complain. BTW: The identification system I use for my photos and a lot of other stuff isn't something original. I picked it up in a wedding photography seminar in the early 70s. Photos are identified by date first (two digit year - month - day), roll number (a carryover from the days of film photography still useful in differentiating between specific batches of photos downloaded on the same day), and finally by image number. I have gone to using four digit image numbers, as iPhoto keeps a running track of images from each camera instead of numbering each batch of photos from one. The image above (081103-01-0322) was taken on November 3, 2008, and was the 322nd image I'd taken with my old Nikon 4300. Since I'm now at image 9,408 with my Canon Digital Rebel XSi Odds 'n' Ends
And yes, we did get lots of rain, over 2" of it in one day! So I'm back to mowing grass, as my excuse for not mowing disappeared with the rain. An All Odds 'n' Ends Friday Other than the continuing saga of the Obama Administration extorting concessions from states for relief from the provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, it's all pretty much odds 'n' ends today. The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton reports in Obama to issue No Child Left Behind waivers to states that states seeking waivers will need to submit to a variety of measures much like those included in the Administration's Race to the Top grant programs. Valerie Strauss adds some commentary in the Post, The problem with Obama's plan to issue NCLB waivers. And NPR's Larry Abramson gives a quick overview of the situation in Obama To Waive Parts Of Bush-Era Education Act on Morning Edition that includes a good quote from Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, " The restraint I'm asking for is that the Secretary not use this occasion to become a national school board, and begin to impose on the states requirements that congress would not do and that states ought to be deciding for themselves." Tikatok, a division of Barnes & Noble, has launched a new, free, monthly writing curriculum series, Across the Curriculum, for K-8 educators. It will include "activities, project ideas and student worksheets" to integrate "writing across a variety of subjects." The first downloadable installment looks pretty good, but also isn't anything terribly new. Other Odds 'n' Ends include:
I was really a little tempted to call today's posting "Hard Hat Friday," as the UARS satellite will be making an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere sometime this afternoon or early this evening. Kenneth Chang tells about the science and the chatter of the event in Dead Satellite’s Fall Becomes a Phenomenon on The New York Times. Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies has a map with possible impact areas graphed. Denise Chow adds in Where will this space junk crash an interesting tidbit. She notes that NASA originally "anticipated that the UARS satellite would fall to Earth sometime between late September and early October, but heightened solar activity last week increased the spacecraft's drag, pulling it down to Earth sooner than expected." No one at NASA is publicly giving any specifics on where the rather large chunks of the spacecraft might land, other than saying that North America had been ruled out as a crash pad. In what has become a bit of a media and pop culture phenomenon, one can make and view others' predictions of where the satellite will drop at Where will UARS, NASA's defunct bus-size spacecraft, drop to earth? Android users can track the UARS satellite fall using the Satellite AR Android app created by Analytical Graphics. NASA also is providing a much tamer UARS update page. Have a great weekend!
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, I guess I'll have to either drop a digit soon or go to five digit image numbers. While the date and the image number might appear to be a redundancy, it really helps when working with older shots. 
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©2011 Steven L. Wood