Monday, September 23, 2002

Bless Her Heart

Abby Goodnough's Teachers Dig Deeper to Fill Gap in Supplies in the Sunday New York Times should warm the hearts of teachers everywhere. Ms. Goodnough tells about New York City teacher Leslie Fiske using over $4000 of her own money to properly equip her classroom. Ms. Fiske is quoted as saying, "The expectation is that out of the goodness of our hearts, teachers should want to provide this stuff for our students, and frankly, that is what many of us end up doing."

Another good column from the Sunday Times is James Schembari's You Bought a PC for His Dorm Room, but Did You Insure It? The column deals with campus crime and the need for insurance on valuable items your kids take to college.

San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Unified School District

In Los Angeles, the discussion continues as to whether San Fernando Valley can and should become a school district independent of the Los Angeles Unified School District when the valley becomes a entity separate from the city of Los Angeles. Valley Mayoral Hopefuls Differ on District Split by Los Angeles Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy gives some details on the unusual situation.

How's Edison Doing in Philadelphia?

Philadelphia Inquirer writers Dale Mezzacappa and Susan Snyder have an interesting report on how the 20 schools managed by Edison Schools, Inc. are doing so far this year. In Edison fighting to prove itself, they conclude the answer depends upon whom you ask. The authors provide some interesting and conflicting quotes from the principal and a teacher from one Edison-run school.

Charter School Classes Smaller?

St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Joe Nathan reports on a study that suggests that on the average (in seven states studied) charter schools had significantly lower pupil to teacher ratios than public schools. In Charters offer smaller classes for less money, Nathan tells of a study by Mike Podgursky of the University of Missouri and Dale Ballou of the University of Massachusetts that "found that about a quarter of the 132 charter schools they looked at had student-teacher ratios below 15...twice the frequency among comparable public schools."

Free Online Classes from MIT

A BBC Online posting, Learn for free online, put me onto the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's plans to put much of their educational content online beginning September 30. While other colleges have looked to the internet to increase revenues, MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) project "is not about online degree programs. It isn't even about online courses for which students can audit or enroll," according to the column OpenCourseWare: Simple Idea, Profound Implications in Syllabus by MIT Academic Computing Enterprise Senior Strategist Phillip D. Long. He defines the project:

OCW is a process&emdash;not a set of classes. This process is intended to make the MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available free online to any user in the world.

 

The goal of OCW is to provide the content that supports an MIT education. Ultimately, the OCW Web resource will host the materials for more than 2,000 classes taught at MIT, presented with a coherent interface that will include sophisticated search algorithms to explore additional concepts, pedagogies, and related attributes across the site as well as within a course.

Further information and a brief description of OCW are available on the MIT OpenCourseWare information page.

Devotion For September 22-28, 2002

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Serious Business. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please .

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Sugar, Sugar, and More Sugar

The New York Times has another very good column about the invasion and prevalence of junk food and soft drinks in our schools. Jane E. Brody writes in Schools Teach 3 C's: Candy, Cookies and Chips that "in more and more schools nationwide, children from kindergarten through high school are being taught that 'nutrition' comes in boxes of fast foods, candy wrappers and soft-drink cans and bottles." A previous Times column by Richard Rothstein, Schools' Chosen Cure for Money Ills: A Sugar Pill, also addresses the problems of junk food and fund raisers in schools.

New from SchwabLearning.org

This week the SchwabLearning.org presents a timely new column, The Birds and the Bees and Kids with LD. Sex education is always a delicate subject. Psychologist Kristin Stanberry "offers advice for teaching your child about the 'facts of life,' tailoring your approach to fit her particular learning difference."

Schwab also features a new question and answer feature this week with reading expert Dr. Kevin Feldman. The five week series focuses on "how to help older kids who struggle with reading." It's offered in an "audio-plus-text format."

• Question 1: What happens to kids with delayed reading skills when they enter middle and high school?
• Question 2: How can parents help their older kids who struggle with reading improve literacy skills?

As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 9-29-02).

NetDay Cyber Security Kit for Schools

The following email came in yesterday. Rather than try to paraphrase it, I'm just passing it along in its entirety.

Dear Education Leader,

 

In response to the recommendation in the draft release of President Bush's National Plan to Secure Cyberspace for private organizations to develop programs for students and schools around cyber security issues, NetDay is pleased to release a "Cyber Security Kit for Schools," featuring tools and resources to raise awareness among K-12 educators, students and families about online safety and computer security. NetDay's kit focuses attention on computer and network security issues in both the school and the home.

 

Please share this cyber security and online safety information with your constituents: the kit is designed to be used by school administrators as well as classroom teachers, students and families. Thank you for helping us pass along this critical information!

 

NetDay's Cyber Security Kit for Schools is available online at http://www.netday.org/cyber_security_kit.htm.

 

Contents include:

 

a.. What Every District Administrator Needs to Know about Cyber Security - This guide for school administrators features practical suggestions and resources for ensuring that school computer networks are secure from cyber attacks.

 

b.. Computer-Savvy Families: A Story about Cyber Security for Children - This short, entertaining narrative focuses on the importance of computer security and online safety for children. This story is age appropriate for 3rd to 5th graders, and has been written by a 4th grade educator. Teachers are encouraged to read the story aloud with their class and send this story, along with the companion "Action Items for Families" home with the children to encourage families to learn together about safe computing practices. The NetDay AmeriCorps Bridge team in the Texas Rio Grande Valley will be translating the children's story and family action items into Spanish, and will be available on the NetDay web site on September 25, 2002.

 

c.. Two Articles from NetDayVoice, the editorial section of NetDay.org - The first article profiles ISAFE, an organization that works with schools across the country to promote cyber safety and security. The second article profiles how Sequoia Union High School District, Redwood City, CA, approaches the issue of network security in order to balance safety needs with online access for over 7300 high school students.

 

d.. NetDay Cyber Security Resource Guide - This list of reviewed and recommended cyber security and online safety web sites is drawn from NetDay's award-winning education technology web site, www.NetDayCompass.org.

 

About NetDay: NetDay's mission is to connect every child to a brighter future by helping educators meet educational goals through the effective use of technology. NetDay, a national non-profit organization known for its successful school wiring programs, today manages community and web-based programs that promote enhanced student achievement through the effective use of technology.

 

About National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace: The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace is the Bush Administration's strategy to protect the nation's IT infrastructure. This strategy, currently released in a draft format, will call on everyone from the largest businesses to consumers to help the federal government track cyber threats and prevent attacks, particularly those aimed at financial, government, utility, and other networks.

Friday, September 27, 2002

It's been a long week. The low point for me was a tooth extraction gone bad that cost me a couple of days of work. On the brighter side, I'm now legally stoned out of my head on Vicodin, but flying way too high to post any editorial comment:-). Here are a few relevant links I pulled down during a lucid moment:

The New York Times reports that Teacher Shortages Vanish When the Price Is Right. Times writer Richard Rothstein says that while New York City has suffered chronic teacher shortages, the problem seems to have gone away with increased teacher salaries.

AP writer Jessica Brice writes about the success of scripted teaching in High-poverty schools that succeed share common teaching programs.

A Los Angeles Times column notes a potential weakness of No Child Left Behind in Education Standards Threatened. Times writer Duke Hefland alleges that states may lower standards to prevent loss of federal funds.

A bright note for the week occurred yesterday when my school's "Evil NT Techie," who is now rumored to be spending an inordinate amount of time on his new dual G4 Mac, dropped a site license copy of Macromedia Studio MX for Macintosh on my desk. While it looks pretty complex to my bleary eyes right now, I'm really looking forward to trying an OS X web page editor.

This site is still primarily constructed with Claris Home Page with an occasional assist from BBEdit and the BBEdit Table Builder. I really think there is still a market out there for a cross-platform low-end WYSIWYG web page editor. If Apple or FileMaker had updated Home Page, I would gladly stay with it. It's limited, but it's also pretty simple and easy to use. But it's dog slow under the Classic box of Mac OS X. It also still runs under Windows XP Professional!
 

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