...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out...
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Best Wishes from Educators' News for the Holiday Season Just like most of you, I'm busy with getting things ready for our holiday celebration. We're looking forward to all four of our daughters being home for Christmas and also seeing our two sons over the holidays. All of that makes for a busy time, but a wonderful celebration. I hope yours will be as joyous. Have a blessed holiday. Devotion for December 22-28, 2002 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Be Aware Of Deception: Look-A-Likes. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Please note that Zach has moved to his own domain, ZWdevotions.com, and links in the Educators' News archive to the previous devotions site may soon become broken. If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please . |
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Science/Adaptive Technology Software Joe Martha's Scienceman.com currently carries a report of what appears to be a very cool piece of software from Digital Frog. The Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest AT is a "fully accessible virtual adventure" for students of all ages. Joe writes:
Downloadable demo versions of the Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest are available for both Macintosh and PC. The CD runs $25 for the single user version with steep educational discounts for multiple copies or a site license.
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA is Spring Dust Storms at the North Pole of Mars. I'm a sucker for high resolution (959K) planet photos and just had to include this one in today's posting. A Boston Globe column by Ryan Slattery, Stones and stars, tells of Judith Young's sunwheel at the University of Massachusetts. Young uses the UMass Sunwheel, a circle of fourteen 8-10 foot granite stones carefully placed as markers to show the distance the sun travels over a course of a year, as a calendar and teaching tool. Pertinent Columns John Welsh writes in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Locked timeouts allowed in schools, "The Minnesota education department has reversed itself and will allow schools to use locked timeout rooms for misbehaving students." New rules are on the way that "require schools to register their locked timeout rooms with the state. The rooms must meet state fire codes and be locked with an electronic device that works only while a staff person is present and physically engaging the device." Two postings today remind teachers of the difficulties of teaching sex education.
Laura Pappano writes of the effects of computers on handwriting in Have computers left penmanship for the history books? Pappano tells that most students surveyed preferred writing assignments on a computer over handwritten work. She also writes of the concern of educators about the decline in fine motor skills in incoming kindergartners. Tanya Mitchell writes in The Republican Journal (Belfast, ME) about student responses to the Maine Laptop Initiative in The Laptop Initiative: Bridging the Education Gap. Two separate incidences of financial irregularities came out of Washington, D.C., yesterday. The Washington Post's Justin Blum tells of problems in the Washington school system in District Schools Misspent $5 Million. A CNN/AP posting tells of charges of misuse of union funds in Massive fraud alleged in teachers' union funds. A Chicago Tribune posting by Stephanie Banchero tells of a plan in Illinois to possibly dilute or even circumvent the requirements of No Child Left Behind. In Schools may get OK to lag, Banchero relates a proposal written by the Illinois State Board of Education with heavy input from teachers union officials that would "freeze the pass rate at 40 percent for three years. After that schools would have to show only small gains through 2010. During the last four years, schools would have to post explosive improvement." Anthony Lonetree and James Walsh write in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the struggles small school systems in Minnesota face in Survival of the smallest? Schools hang on despite woes. Problems mentioned include "fighting combinations of deep enrollment declines, dwindling budget reserves and/or student flight." Test results up, but some call method stifling. By Cathy Kightlinger writes of a controversial program to improve student test scores in the Indianapolis Star, Move to raise scores getting mixed grades. Warren Township Schools in suburban Indy have implemented the Brazosport approach, "a regimented process of teaching, testing and reteaching and testing when necessary, works." The new program has shown some positive results, but critics suggest the program amounts to "teaching the test" and leaves out important areas of curriculum. Mac Year End Reviews As we approach the end of the calendar year, the usual year end review and forecast columns have begun to appear. Matthew Rothenberg offers his insights on eWeek's Mac OS' New Year's Prospects. ZDNet Anchor Desk editor David Coursey comments in In What's ahead in 2003? Here's what I think, "the real issues are erosion of the education market...and increasingly soft sales of Power Macs to business customers." Mad Libs - Adkins' Style Jeff Adkins strikes again in his Lite Side series with another Mad Libs type of page. This one is his Universal Customizable Mac Configuration Order Form. Try it. It's lots of fun. Notes: I'd really planned not to do an update today. When I saw Joe Martha's posting about the digital field trip and thought "I've gotta get that for my class," I decided I'd better put something up. Two disturbing columns (for teachers and union members) appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. The first continues the story of former Washington Teachers' Union President Barbara A. Bullock's alleged spending improprieties. in Union Tardy Paying Bills, Premiums, Sources Say, Valerie Strauss tells of "artwork and Tiffany silverware" being purchased with union funds while "the union repeatedly was late paying its rent, telephone and electric bills." The column also states that union services to teachers and retirees were impaired. An FBI investigation continues. A second Post column tells of apparent violations of the district's no corporal punishment policy in District Fires 13 Who Hit Students. Another column by T. R. Reid about four-day school weeks, Seven States Adopt Four-Day School Week, adds that Gary Sibigtroth, the state's assistant commissioner of education, said, "...we are seeing the same improvement on standardized tests in the four-day schools that we have had in the traditional schools." A report card on each of the state's public schools issued last week by Colorado Governor Bill Owens "showed no difference in student achievement between four-day and five-day systems." Nick dePlume reported last week (oops!) in Major layoffs, management shakeup hit Apple's PowerSchool division that PowerSchool is dropping its enterprise version of its school management software. This will result in a cut of " 40% or 50%+ of the company" employees. Also, dePlume notes that PowerSchool founder Greg Porter is leaving the company to be replaced "by a former NeXT employee known by [Apple] CEO Steve Jobs." One of my enjoyable vacation tasks is creating a desktop calendar/nametag for my students' desks for next month. While we employ a number of commercial alphabet strips and desktop nametags, we began with these simple desktop calendars. Over the last three of four years, we've found that our kids like this type of calendar. They often help in picking the style, colors, and/or graphics included. Besides functioning as an attractive nametag, we found that the kids quickly seized upon the calendars as extended numberlines for math.
We print the calendars on thin cardstock (67 lb.), squeezing as many to a page as we can. I find that most printers that employ a straight path feed will handle the cardstock, while those that have a 180o bend in the paper path won't do the heavier material. I put several of the minicalendars into a two page AppleWorks 5 document and added it to the Freebies page for download (44K) if it can be of any use to you. An Associated Press column by Heather Hollingsworth, Fund-Raisers Help Pay Teacher Salaries, tells of how fund raisers have been used in some school districts to save jobs or provide extra personnel. The Miami Herald column, Students rely on donations more than school vouchers, reports that less than 500 students attend private schools in Florida via public funds in the state's school voucher plan, while "another 14,520 students statewide are attending private and religious schools on money donated by corporations that get multimillion dollar tax breaks in return for their benevolence." Proponents of the tax credit plan want the Florida legislature to increase the current cap on the tax credit, while "opponents say the tax credit program is just another way to rob public schools of money and whittle away resources as even more requirements are made of public education." The Christian Science Monitor column, Big teacher gap now filling in, tells that some large school systems have made major progress in hiring certified teachers, while a USA Today posting, A substitute for an education, relates just the opposite and tells of aides and substitute teachers filling positions for entire school years. Software Note If you're already a registered user of Orbis Software's Easy Grade Pro, a beta version for Mac OS X is available for download (1.1 MB).
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Astronomy Picture of the Day
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