...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out...
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Montgomery County (MD) Shootings Produce School Lockdowns The series of shootings that began last Thursday morning in Montgomery County, Maryland, necessitated increased security measures in area schools as described in Schools React to Shooting Rampage. Schools canceled extracurricular activities after school and were kept inside the schools during gym and recess periods. L.A. To Keep Some Separate Special Education Facilities In a national educational climate of mandatory testing and special education inclusion, a ray of light may have emerged this week in a ruling by a federal judge in Los Angeles. L.A. Unified to Keep 16 Schools Segregated for Special Education by Los Angeles Times staff writers Erika Hayasaki and Solomon Moore tells of U.S. District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew's decision to allow the "Los Angeles Unified School District to preserve 16 special education schools...after mediation between the school district and advocates of mainstreaming." While separate classes and/or schools for disabled students are regularly disparaged by educational experts, the Los Angeles decision may encourage schools there and elsewhere to seek solutions that truly fit their specific situation, rather than responding to national trends often triggered by "educational experts" and "researchers" who haven't been in a real teaching situation in over 20 years, if ever! More on Maine Laptop Initiative A column by Waterville Morning Sentinel staff writer Colin Hickey, Local schools draft rules for Apple iBooks, tells a bit about setting up for laptops at Waterville Junior High, but really doesn't tell much about the new rules the system will use for their student iBooks. The real thrust of the column is that the school has endeavored to bring parents in to help them understand the program, and that schools that already have experience with internet filtering such as Waterville Junior High have an easier time with laptop programs and handling potential student abuse of internet privileges. What Gets Left Out? I sometimes think I should include a daily or weekly section in Educators' News for columns and news items I've seen and rejected for inclusion on this site. This week has been no better or worse than others with columns from the New York Times (Sex and the College Newspaper, Tolerance Plea Is Stirring Contention), the Washington Post (National Merit Scale Hurts Area, Schools To Start Phonics Initiative), CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press (Parents fight to ban perfume, aerosols in schools, Programs: Hardware Hampers Preschool PC Users), and almost any educational column or editorial from the Washington Times getting left "on the cutting room floor," so to speak. Well, I really guess they made it here as links without comment. Two similar items I read, committed to the fantasy Mac realm, and omitted recently, were pieces by Garry Barker in the Sydney Morning Herald, Go figure, and a September SpyMac posting by Jack Campbell, Shattering the five percent myth. In both columns, first Campbell and then Barker quoting Campbell, spin some numbers to find, "of the 275 million personal computers in the world, 32 million are running a Macintosh operating system - which is not 5 per cent of the market, but 11.6 per cent." Then the grand conclusion is drawn "that Macintosh, in fact, is the number one computer brand in the world..." Hmm... If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please .
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Montgomery County Shootings Continue The series of sniper shootings in Montgomery County, Maryland and surrounding areas continued Monday with a 13 year-old boy being shot when he was dropped off at school by his aunt. Sniper Wounds Boy Outside Md. School tells the details of the attack that left the child critically wounded. Bowie Shooting Tied to Others tells of the connection of this shooting to the ones that began Friday and lists precautions taken by area schools. More Reading Specialists in Chicago Chicago Sun-Times staff reporter Kate Grossman tells how Chicago has increased the number of reading specialists in low performing schools in City schools hire dozens more reading specialists. New from SchwabLearning.org This SchwabLearning.org question and answer series with Dr. Kevin Feldman continues this week answering questions on "how to help older kids who struggle with reading."
As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 10-13-02). I hate learning curves! This update is the first time I've used Dreamweaver MX to completely do a daily update. I've been messing around with it daily since a legal copy was dropped on me at school last week without warning. Right now, I'm ready to head right back to Claris Home Page, as Dreamweaver is dog slow on my 266 MHz G3. I think I'll have to play with it at school (after hours) on the 800 MHz G4 there
I'm not sure if you can tell from the reduced size picture at right, but the display of both HTML and page view is a cool feature. I often switch back and forth between HTML and WYSIWYG, tweaking the code a bit here and there, so that feature will be a time saver. 
Hold it! Time out! Erase what I said about "dog slow." I just opened up the palette pictured above that appears at the bottom of my screen. I think I'm falling in love...(only a geek can love a web page editor). Just this palette can save me hours of work. Wow! Now if I can just talk Annie into letting me buy a modern Mac to run my new "free" web page editor on... No New Shootings Tuesday produced a day of relative calm in Montgomery County, Maryland, as no new shootings occurred. The Washington Post's coverage of the tragedies continues to be excellent:
A New (mini-) Planet?
A related column appears on CNN, Biggest object since Pluto found in solar system. Software ScienceMan Joe Martha reviews "Alchemist's Challenge, a Mac OS 8.1 and above chemistry tutorial program, from Synergy Creations, today on Scienceman.com. Joe writes of the $15 Mac shareware, "...no educational corners cut anywhere - this is a powerful chemistry tool for high school students, especially those just starting their chemistry studies." Report Refutes Rod's Ramblings Sacramento Bee staff writer Bill Lindelof tells of a report that pretty well refutes Secretary of Education Rod Paige's recent inflammatory comments on the current teacher shortage and state certification requirements. In Teacher rookies: No quick fix, Lindelof reports on a study by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. He quotes Center co-director Margaret Gaston as saying of Paige's suggestion that removing teacher certification barriers would improve education, "We hear that alternative routes to solve the teacher shortage are a silver bullet." Statistics from California are provided that draw into question whether people with advanced degrees would fill vacant teaching slots if traditional teacher certification requirements were waved. Other statistics in the report draw a parallel between teacher certification and experience and student success on standardized tests. Educators' News reported Paige's comments on October 2. More Edison Problems in Philadelphia An Associated Press posting notes difficulties between Philadelphia schools chief Paul Vallas and Edison Schools, Inc., in Edison, Philly schools chief off to rocky start. Vallas recently blocked Edison's attempt to move some of their Philadelphia corporate offices into a middle school they run. Last week Vallas "withheld a $3 million payment to Edison Schools Inc.,...to protect school supplies from creditors if the financially strapped company...goes bankrupt." State vs. City School Takeovers Vanderbilt University professor Kenneth Wong told New Orleans and Louisiana leaders Monday that what evidence exists suggests that Mayoral takeovers of schools show promise. Wong presented pros and cons of takeovers and compared state versus mayoral takeovers in a presentation to Louisiana's Local Education Governance and Administration Task Force. Testing or Nutrition in Schools? Cox News Service's Andrew Mollison points out one of the fallacies of No Child Left Behind in Principals' report: Focus is on tests, not health. He writes, "The No Child Left Behind Act signed in January by President Bush rewards and punishes schools for scores on reading and math tests but not for students acquiring good habits for eating and exercising." Schools and Food A San Francisco Chronicle column, Soy products bump beef off school lunch menus: Cattle raisers angry over new meat rule, talks about school nutrition rules and the political processes involved on a federal level. It's an interesting look at how USDA rule changes in the school lunch program can have big ramifications. Michael Barr reports on ABC News, The Paperless Classroom, that St. Bartholomew School in Louisville (KY) is experimenting with going paperless in three junior high classrooms this year. Students in the experiment have been issued laptop computers and the expectation is that work on the laptops will replace most paper and pencil tasks. Humorous Site for Teachers I received an email yesterday from TotallyOffTheRecord.com asking for a plug on Educators' News. The site carries humorous anonymous stories about various professions. The lead story on their education page yesterday was:
Classroom Discipline Christian Science Monitor staff writer Marjorie Coeyman writes classroom discipline in It's 8 a.m., and everything is not under control. This Week's Devotion from Zach Wood Zach's weekly devotional for this week, Unconditional Love Upon Return, got delayed a bit. All Zach is telling his dad is that he met a delightful young lady at a wedding reception this weekend. Oh, yeah, Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.
Shootings Ballistics tests have linked a Wednesday night shooting at a Virginia gas station to eight prior sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland area.
Anxiety and Relief Overcome Parents a first person account by Tracey Reeves, editor of Anne Arundel Extra, a Washington Post staffer, and a parent who lives in the area of the Benjamin Tasker Middle School, site of a random shooting. Home-schooling Challenged by California Department of Education In California the controversy continues over the legality of home-schooling. In State Warns Parents of Home-School Edict, David Pierson of the Los Angeles Times tells of a California Department of Education warning "that parents should not home-school their children without teachers' credentials or affiliation with a public school." A New Lessons Column Richard Rothstein's latest Lessons column, Dropout Rate Is Climbing and Likely to Go Higher, notes that dropout rates are seemingly going unnoticed in this time of testing emphasis. Jeff's Telling It Like It Is! Jeff Adkins Mac Lab Report this week on Low-End Mac is a real dandy. Jeff writes, "Apple doesn't go after the real education market; it goes after the glitz education market." Jeff is up in arms about Apple's plans for its 2003 Macs not to boot into System 9. He accurately points out that most of us don't teach in the glitz market and have to get by with what we've got. Apple's plans are surely going to throw a monkey wrench into software and networking for folks who can't go exclusively to OS X.
Apple's incredibly greedy upgrade pricing of the Jaguar (OS 10.2) update for schools and the lack of the software we need written to run under OS X (in either X or Classic) pretty well decided that our new Macs purchased just last spring would run OS 9 for the foreseeable future. Apple Education came out pretty good in our last round of computer purchases, with 24 iBooks and 6 G4 towers sold. (Twenty-nine PC towers and 24 IBM ThinkPads were purchased at the same time.) If Apple's offerings last spring had been limited to machines that would only boot to the new OS X operating system, I suspect Apple would have been shut out at my school -- with my blessings! Jeff Adkins is absolutely correct when in his conclusion he writes that "somebody from Apple education needs to go visit a school that isn't already thoroughly imbued with newer Macs. I also wish I remembered who last summer suggested Apple needed someone sitting on their board who has all their credit cards maxed out. The folks in Cupertino just don't get it...and that doesn't bode well for those of us who would prefer our students be able to use Macs.
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Actually, I'm pretty excited about getting to try a modern, professional-grade web page editor. It's just the learning curve that's a bummer. I also want to try it out on my Toshiba 1.1 GHz laptop and the brand-x 1.4 GHz Athlon at school. I suspect once I begin to run it on a modern computer, the speed thing will go away.
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