Education

DOWNEY, Calif. (AP) - With the end of another school year approaching, college sophomore Moshe Kai Cavalin is cramming for final exams in classes such as advanced mathematics, foreign languages and music.

The community college system will no longer admit illegal immigrants to degree programs based on an advisory letter from the Office of the Attorney General, the system announced today.

Four years ago, the Washington state teachers union tried to replace Terry Bergeson as superintendent of public instruction by enticing a well-liked and well-known former superintendent to come out of retirement and run again. Judith Billings didn't make it past the primary.

Following the abrupt dismissal of about 40 school psychologists last week for budget reasons, two Miami-Dade School Board members say they will propose rehiring them and looking elsewhere for cuts.

Tanya Moorehead's task is to keep the algebra lesson in her middle-school class moving along briskly while keeping a close eye on young Marcus in the back row.

Live blogged — please excuse typos and awkward wording. Kathleen Ferenz presenting about Calisphere I’m back at CTAP 3 for their Coordinating Council Meeting, with various presentation during the morning. Kathleen Ferenz, of California Region IV, is presenting about a media archive projected called HistoryCaliSphere.  She’s doing the presentation from an iPod Touch. Kathleen makes the point that this is not just a clip art archive.  What they seek to do is to use the images as part of a connecting narrative of the state’s history.  It provides some…

I’ve spent most of my waking hours this morning catching up on e-mail. I ran into several things worthy of a blog, but, alas, no time left — except to comment on something I was reminded of yesterday. I’m in Sacramento right now, presenting at a couple of staff development events by CTAP3. Yesterday’s was opened by Ben Anderson, and his very funny and insightful tour of the technologies we’ve seen arise in the past (un-disclosed number of) years since he graduated from high school. I loved his 1976 iPod. Picture to come, I hope. But during the afternoon, I did a…

Yesterday, a Los Angels court awarded MySpace $230 million dollars in its law suit against the so-called Spam King, Sanford Wallace and his partner Walter Rines. The suit involves the duo’s luring login ifnromation from MySpace users through various phishing sites, and then using their friends lists to to send gambling, pornography and ringtone span. They sent a total of 735,925 messages and racked in $500,000 dollars in the process. The judge fined the partners the maximum amount under the CAN-SPAM law — $100 per message plus other various fines.1 I wonder what MySpace is going…

I head back out to the airport this morning, after a couple of weeks at home. During my time here, I finished the biggest layer of a major writing project, re-wrote Hitchhikr, spent a little time in my favorite City, Asheville, with Brenda and my parents, and saw my daughter graduate from college — and move back home. I spent all of yesterday afternoon shopping for luggage, downsizing to comply with the airlines’ recent clampdown on carry-on bags. My 22 inch rollaboard, it seems, is actually 23 inches long, when you factor in the wheels. I understand the airlines frustrations as…

Jon Beasley-Murray is an Assistant Professor of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies in the University of British Columbia (a magnificent campus, by the way).  Each year, he assigns term papers to his students, but this year’s languages and literature learners demonstrated their research and learning in another way — by contributing to Wikipedia.  In an Agence France-Presse (AFP) interview (published May 11), Beasley-Murrary, said that his students were now required to submit their research as Wikipedia articles, saying that the free online encyclopedia “..seems…

The growing diversity of student bodies and the rising cost of a college education are among the issues that will affect private giving to institutions, says a new report.

Under certain circumstances, colleges will be permitted to list fewer than three loan companies and will be allowed to include some lenders with common ownership.

A new report from the NCAA breaks out revenue and expenses more clearly than before and shows what many had feared: Most athletics programs are heavily subsidized.

Faculty members voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to call on Michael S. Garrison to resign over his involvement in the awarding of an unearned degree to the state governor's daughter.

In our daily discussion group, a Teacher Leaders Network member wrote: I have been asked to represent the voice of the teacher leader on an international panel next week. We’ll be considering steps that might be taken to strengthen the...

During some serious discussion about the cursory nature of much teacher observation and evaluation, a TLN member lightened the mood with this story: I remember one particular experience where for some bewildering reason, the assistant principal decided to make it...

After crunching some numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, blogger Matt Johnston determined that roughly 2.2 percent of America’s workers are teachers. So he wonders, how come teachers keep complaining that they’re not respected as professionals? The teachers themselves...

A TLN member wrote: As the district coordinating teacher for social studies, I have been struggling to keep social studies in our elementary schools and to keep struggling kids in social studies at the middle school. To my dismay, we...

In the Teacher Leaders Network discussion group, Mary Tedrow wrote: A recent edition of NOW, the PBS news documentary show, reported on regressive tax systems, using Alabama as the example because it has the most regressive taxes in the nation....

During the past two weeks, I've been thinking, about this question, "What was the best advice I have received?:    I'll list three pieces of advice that I have found to be quite valuable and influencial to me in the post below.  However, believing in the power of the experience of others, I invite and ask you to submit a piece of advice that you found most valuable to you.  If you can, share what the advice was and why it was so powerful for you. Here are my three 1-From Gene Chasin, a former manager and mentor to me (he was Asst Supt for Elementary Programs) who told…

In my position as an administrator, sometimes I feel adrift in a sea of information and an ever changing landscape of responsibilities and possibilities. I am already a day late with my post and I have at least  three topics which I want to explore but for now I will stick with two related topics that stood out in my recent reading.   The Cell phone conundrum. There is an article in the latest Technology and Learning which does not offer any real opinion but which exposes the wide disparity of policies. The most extreme example of allowing/encouraging cell phone use is:  …

If there is one positive to come out of the fact that I missed my posting day yesterday, it's that I got to take a look at a couple of recent blog posts highlighting teachers who are moving on and moving out. (Not that I'm glad they're leaving, but it did help me distill some thoughts about this attrition.) Will they return to a classroom somewhere else? Are they heading out to make their millions with an Internet IPO or on Wall Street? I can't help but wonder after reading these posts how many other, less vocal, teachers will be closing their classroom doors for the last time in the next few…

Last week in his post, Dr. McLeod shared information about less-than-stellar candidates who enter the colleges of education and eventually the ranks of teachers.  If Entrance Exams are to be held credible, and if the statistics are to be believed, then we have a situation of weaker candidates entering teacher preparation programs and the most capable teachers leaving the classroom after only a couple of years.  These trends will clearly have an impact on student outcomes.  If this trend continues, Dr. McLeod poses the question, “Now what?” I would begin my answer with a…

This was cross-posted at edtechjourneys: In a recent post I laid out a host of strategies that have been put forth by educators in an attempt to 'fix' whatever is ailing our schools. I asked, "What would you do?". I understand that we need to do more than one thing at a time; but one key area I'd change is our orientation to the three "E's" of public education The first E is "Entertainment". In this scenario the teacher is entertaining and fun and therefore the kids enjoy the class. The teacher is labeled 'cool". Everyone's happy. We've all had "cool" teachers like this. The second E is…

Real-time Twitter Search - Tweet Scan Education for Well-Being gets my vote as one of the most important educational sites on the web, period. Bill Farren makes the videos he posts there, writes lucid and relevant discussions of them, and links to supplementary resources for possible classroom use. His written posts are as well-crafted as his videos, drawing on a wide body of literature about environmental and social well-being. I’m a hack in comparison. Unsubscribe to me, if that’s what it takes to get you to subscribe to him. I really think he’s that vital to education and…

I received this comment recently on my podcast post, “My Suicidal High School Years: A Happy Ending Bullying Story.” The comment is from a teen named Jack, who is experiencing now what I experienced 30 years ago. I’m sharing it because it’s evidence that the meme I’m about to propose - voluntary, as usual - could have more social value than the bevy of “Stop Bullying!” messages we most often see in response to this ugly subject. Here’s Jack: Clay, I googled bullying stories because I wanted something to help me through troubles that I am…

From my Quotiki sidebar widget: Conservatives say teaching sex education in the public schools will promote promiscuity. With our education system? If we promote promiscuity the same way we promote math or science, they’ve got nothing to worry about. - Beverly Mickins I’m telling you, there’s magic in these random quote widgets - especially when, as in Quotiki, you get to select and add the ones your widget displays. 8 Comments At May 8, 2008, Penelope wrote:Heh. On a more serious note, how about all the data that shows that abstinence-only programs have NO effect (positive…

Another limitation of RSS readers I’ve often griped about before: with a few exceptions (Bloglines for one), they exclude comment threads from the feed. This sends entirely the wrong message: that the posts are the main thing, and the writer of the blog is the expert. I operate on the opposite assumption: I post my thoughts or questions, and expect the comments to lead to better and new understandings - and that’s what often happens. RSS readers miss all of that. So just for the record, though I haven’t written a new post in four days, I’ve been busy reading and…

[Before I launch into the statistics, I want to urge you to watch the YouTube video at the bottom of this post. It’s a beautiful testament to the scientific method. In it, a scientist proves Darwin right on a hypothesis that, when Darwin was alive, earned him ridicule. The proof took 150 years to come to light - and it does so in that video.] Damned Statistics The crisis in scientific illiteracy should be a well-known fact to educated Americans, but just in case, a few statistics from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center’s 1991-93 International Social…

An article in The Wall Street Journal remarked that NCLB hasn’t shown much bite. Board Buzz thinks the article has missed the point. It noted that most schools that are restructuring after missing AYP for several consecutive years have not used the more radical measures described in the law (including state takeover or replacing the entire staff, etc.) and how few of these schools did emerge from restructuring. One reason why so few schools get out of the restructuring label is because state AYP bars increase over time, which means it gets more difficult for a school to make AYP (a school…

BoardBuzz came across this update to our previous post about Google's White Spaces plan. Popular Science reports: Google has an unexpected opponent in the battle for protected white spaces—athletic leagues. The NFL, MLB, NASCAR, NBA, NHL, NCAA, PGA Tour and even ESPN are all ganging up in a fight to get their hands on the airwaves in between your television channels that are currently being used for wireless microphones (including sporting events) but not much else. Google, a member of the Wireless Innovation Alliance which includes Microsoft, HP, Dell, Intel and others, wants to use this…

Remember the feeling of the adult in your life letting go of the bike seat and sailing off into the empty space with speed, grace, and perhaps an abrupt stop into some bushes? Can you hear the flicking of the baseball card in the spokes, or the dinging of that shiny metal bell on the handlebars? Bicycling launches childhood into a new realm and expands the possibilities to beyond one's yard or street, and into the whole neighborhood. Even as we type this, BoardBuzz yearns for those days . . . but we digress. As we hear more about childhood obesity and staggering statistics about American's…

Dennis Hwang is undeniably one of the most famous, yet unknown artists in the world. No, his work doesn't hang in any galleries or museums, but it has been viewed millions—possibly even billions—of times. We're talking about his Google doodles, the drawings that are designed on, around, and through the Google homepage logo. The 29-year-old Google Webmaster began celebrating events and holidays with his doodles in 2000. According to Wikipedia, the first logo for Google was in honor of Bastille Day on July 14, 2000. Since then he has created logos to commemorate Thanksgiving,…

Perhaps such a headline would send more young students running to sign up for math classes (although it might also have teachers fleeing)? Despite our oft professed condescension towards Paris Hilton, BoardBuzz was intrigued by this story on MSNBC about a recent study that ties the lack of students entering the math profession to the "geeky" social stigma associated with being a mathmetician. Nearly all participants, both math-friendly students and those who steer clear of equations, think of a mathematician as a white male with white hair, who is obsessed with the number-laden subject to the…

As the school year draws closer, we are in a position to reflect on what has been accomplished and what still is yet to do. I found this piece to be a wonderful discussion and reflection tool. Enjoy the conversations it may bring! Two Words anyone?

David Zinger, employee engagement and leadership expert, a few weeks back posted his A to Z of employee engagement and challenged others to do the same. Although the call out was intended for business, I could not resist the chance to bring this conversation into the world of teaching and learning. So, from the perspective of an educator, I shared 26 Keys to Student Engagement. It is exciting to share that the conversation has now been included in a  larger effort at the Employee Engagement Network in his newly published e-book (pdf) that offers readers access to  over 300 Free…

We have a dream.                            A BIG Dream. And this week, we're going to join others at the Big Dream Gathering to share, inspire, brainstorm, and support Big Dreams.       Who are We:  Angela Maiers and Mike Sansone -- and Mitch Matthews in a Big (Dreamy) Way.What's What: Support a Local Teacher - an organization being designed to bridge gaps between business, education, and workforce and professional development.Where & When: Big Dream Gathering, Tuesday, May 13th.

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.  ~Chinese Proverb I awoke this morning with a beautiful bouquet of flowers picked from our garden, and two sets of bright shining eyes. Never before had egg beaters and burnt peanut butter toast tasted so delicious. This day is beautiful; a reminder of how blessed we are to love and be loved. Whether mother,father, sister, aunt, uncle, coach, or friend, today is celebration of love.  Have a great Sunday, friends!

Chalk Talk Friday represents conversations and brilliance I've discovered traversing my way through the Blogosphere.  From professional to personal development, these  are the posts and links have in some way touched my head or my heart. The International Reading Association Conference was a treasure trove of resources and tools to help us make teaching and learning more powerful. This special edition of chalk talk highlights my favorite finds of the conference! Thinkfinity is the cornerstone of Verizon Foundation's literacy, education and technology initiatives. This free,…

Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue because my school is having a cultural dress clash (we're kinda laid back and we merged with a medical school who's "professional dress" 24/7 about 2 years ago).I was at a CASE Webinar today (which was awesome) about "Ut...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about uses for Twitter in Higher Ed. I’ve said before (here): [...] having the kids sign up for Twitter is just another barrier to communication. While I am typically an advocate for universities using services ...

Editor’s note: the globalization of higher education can be conceived of as a complex of processes shaped and mediated by a myriad of people, institutions, networks, technologies, events, and structural forces. In GlobalHigherEd we have been welcom...

The Missouri S&T communications team just created our very own Utterz account to use for on-the-fly reporting about certain events that involve our university. I’m getting ready to try it out this weekend, as I and Missouri S&T video guy Tom...

Here at Case Western Reserve University, we're about to upgrade our primary Web server. Part of this upgrade involves changing the way we upload content to the server. Where in the past we've been using FTP, beginning Monday, May 19, 2008, we'll be using ...

Story: Nude student photos shock local middle schoolYoung teens trade nude photos of each other as if it was candy. No more digging through the back of dad's closet if you want to see a naked chick...you can just have a friend send you a text image of the cute girl in school during geometry class. The sad thing- it's only a matter of time until this epidemic strikes elementary schools.

Story: Mother Takes Loaded Guns to Elementary School ConferenceSometimes it's just hard to get noticed and have your opinion heard at these school meetings. Luckily, she didn't have to fire a few rounds into the ceiling to make her point. She was, however, planning to shoot at the ground and make the principal "dance!" until she got her way.

Story: Middle School Teacher Drunk in ClassThe students couldn't figure out why one minute he was aggressively yelling at them, and then the next he was confessing that he loved them all. They also couldn't put their finger on why he crashed and took a 2 hour nap during school. What tipped them off, was when he started peeing in the corner of the room.

Story: School Student Banned After Setting Teen's Turban on FireWe were able to tap into is train of thought right before he did this: "It's perfectly ok to set people's clothes on fire during school. There should be no reason I get into trouble for this. In fact, I'll most likely be a hit! Even the innocent boy whose safety, religion, and beliefs that I am defacing, will probably get a good laugh out of this."

Story: Elementary school principal arrested for alleged coke possessionIs coffee just not working anymore? When the district began developing plans to make curriculum and classroom adjustments based on the new "wired" culture, this isn't what they had in mind.

Today was the fourth "class" in our digiteen project. In this project, students researched the nine aspects of digital citizenship and had to create an offline action project.Some students chose to work with middle school students and others chose elementary age. Each group is responsible for 20 minutes of "training" and discussion with the age group they have selected.Today was the second day of the fourth grade student training. Yesterday we talked about the ways they can access the Internet including the new smaller laptops for kids AND cell phones. They discussed how to report problems in…

AFI ScreenNation - Video ContestIf you've made great video this year in class, it would be exciting to take your award winners and submit it for this contest. Students can win a sony handy cam. This would be a great reward for your best video projects this year. Just make sure you have permission.tags: education, techintegrator, edu_news, all_teachers, contestConnecting People Via The Network - Horizon Project 2008I enjoyed this video a lot from Ren at Goodland High School. I particularly liked the contrast of the computers at the beginning of the video. I think he did a nice job.tags: hz08,…

This week a student from the Horizon Project had a very heartfelt blog post. Every time we do these projects we have one or two teams who don't "engage" and a few students who just "goof off" and wander aimlessly. (This is where a good teacher comes in.)The student says:"If you are reading this right now, I thank you, because no one seems to understand the concept of communication. We have all these problems regarding completion, because people are wondering what they are supposed to be doing. Well, if you don't check the discussion on the wiki pages, or if you don't check your group, well,…

This story is so moving and amazing and was forwarded to me by my new friend Amanda Stone from the Hoover City School District. Tucker Beam is an eight year old in Amanda's Alabama town.This is the story in Amanda's words:"We declared May 9, 2008 Tucker Beam Day in Hoover, Alabama (South Shades Crest Elementary). We have been planning this event for some time....mom can not work during this time and we do not want her to worry about money. We have raised over 28,000 dollars. ***I don't even know you and I am just sharing my heart with you...sorry. When we found out that he could not be at the…

I haven't had a Funday Monday in a while, so its time again. I asked on twitter last week for some funny posts and these just made me roll.#1 Social Networking ParodySent in by: jalam from the Random Thoughts BlogMy Rating: PGMy Laugh Rating: 9 stars out of 10It is so funny because it is so true.#2 - Rowan Atkinson Live parodies Shakespearean TragedySent in by: adrianbruce from Australia (has a cool games website)Rating: G up until 3/4 of way throughThe first half of this is hilarious to me.#3 The Overzealous Principal by Rowan AtkinsonSent in by: adrianbruceRating: PG (for one word at the…

A new semester begins...I am teaching three courses over the next twelve weeks in educational technology. The first course is a (hybrid) sophomore level intro to ed tech that meets once a week for 75 minutes. The second course is an online graduate course titled Supervised Research that is designed as a culminating experience for students completing their educational specialist degree (Ed.S.). The final course is a hybrid course in instructional technology designed for Spanish language educators traveling through South America over the summer. [Ack!]The good news is I have tremendous…

I have not taken the time to reflect on blogging in quite a while. Writing for the Web has been on my mind lately, as has the act of writing with purpose and the latent networks and communities contained in each Web page. Here's a video that sets the stage nicely--a set of fresh eyes, ears, and minds, sharing their reflections on blogging and their "business:" Recently, Chris Brogan triggered a desire to rethink my blogging stance by posing an innocent enough question: "How does your blog relate to your business?" As a young educator-surveyor, I started my weblog as…

In mid-May I will be teaching a general education course, an introduction to educational technology. The audience is a mix of undergraduate students from across campus. While I am quite thrilled at this endeavor, I wanted to take a moment and tap into my learning community network. If you are, or consider yourself, an educational technologist, I need your help.Can you provide a brief description of what an educational technologist is? I thought it would make sense to get a definition from people engaged in the practice on a daily basis.So I put it to you:1) What is an educational…

Occasionally, the associations of a particular word become more powerful than its meaning. For me and many others studying social media, the word community is just such an example. In general, the word community is a sociological term; it is used in reference to the study and classification of human socities. The term dates back to the 14th century from the Old French communité, from the Latin communitatem/communitas meaning "fellowship" and a "community of relations or feelings," which is also directly connected to the term communis, meaning "common, public,…

In Dragons of Eden, Dr. Carl Sagan postulates actual mutations in the brain itself and sees evidence of positive mutations all around us. Sagan says that the the incredible intellectual and social conflicts of our era arise from a basic evolution or mutation in our brains, that we are leaving what he regards as the childhood of our species and entering adulthood.Think of this particular period in which we currently reside as our techno-social 'tween years or our period of adolescence. This era is marked by physical, psychological, and social/moral/ethical transitions associated with the…

The cost of attending a California State University is going up again after a decision by the system’s governing board to authorize a 10 percent increase in student fees.

The West Virginia University faculty demanded that the president of the university quit over awarding a degree to the governor’s daughter, which she had not earned.

The loss of life in schools collapsed by the earthquake around China could have been reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones, experts said.

The program that recruits top college graduates to teach for two years in public schools that are difficult to staff will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, up from 2,900 last year.

Everyone wants girls to have as many opportunities in sports as boys. But can we live with the greater rate of injuries they suffer?

So thanks to Andy Drish, I have been a member of the Twitter community since March 30th, and ever since I joined, I've been trying to figure out how I can use it. In case you're not familiar with Twitter.com, it's a social networking website whose users try to answer the question "What are you doing" in 140 words or less. You then get to follow other users' updates and share your own. My mom would have LOVED it if I used this back in junior high school. I've already reaped some of Twitter's expected benefits like finding out that a friend of mine would be in New Jersey just as I was going…

I have very few pet peeves, but perhaps the deepest and darkest is my hatred of the phrase "keep up the good work." Until yesterday, I had a hard time explaining to people why it drove me bonkers to hear this from a boss or teacher. I had a perfectly reasonable explanation all along, but only now do I have some proof of my theory in print. According to psychologist Teresa Amabile, certain extrinsic motivators (such as praise or rewards) can "undermine a person's sense of self-determination." So using the "keep up the good work" example: If I'm your boss, and I say this to you after you've…

In the spirit of finals around the corner and student leaders usually struggling with balance in life, here's an article on staying healthy while in college. While 101 is a lot to digest at one time, here are my favorites with personal commentary at the end in italics:3. Eat breakfast. Start your day off right with a good meal when you get up. Whether you're rolling out of bed at noon or up at the crack of dawn for class, make sure you start your day with a balanced, healthy meal. (I'm amazed at how many students skip this meal.)22. Walk to class. While taking public transportation might be…

I've been a long time devotee of such dance party classics as the Electric Slide, Cotton Eye Joe, and yes, even the Macarena, but I'm ashamed to admit that only recently have I discovered the proper way to do the conga. In case you're aren't familiar with the general idea, here's a video (you may not want to watch the whole thing, and that's OKAY): Now what's so interesting and unique about the conga (aside from having a bunch of strangers touch you) is that the leader is in BACK of the line. Each conga line member is actually responsible for moving the person in the front. This makes me…

I just got an email from Hunter College saying that I will be able to teach up to 6 classes of Freshman Orientation in the Fall, and I am very excited (see photo of me and my cat Loki, who is also very  excited).  When I applied for the position, it was a bit of a pie-in-the-sky effort since a Master's degree is generally needed, and my teaching experience is limited, but here I am now, preparing my curriculum. The best part of this is that there are very few standards for this class, so I will really have the opportunity to get creative and take advantage of my own experiences…

Electronic monitoring ankle bracelets are used across the country to keep track of repeat criminal offenders. Now, a Texas high school is employing the technology to keep tabs on students who have a history of truancy. Guests and callers weigh in on using the same methods for tracking kids and criminals.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, New York provoked controversy before it even opened. Debbie Almontaser, the principal and founder, was forced to resign before the school year began.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Morehouse College in Atlanta is a historically black college for men, famous for graduating prominent African American leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. But this year, for the first time ever, the valedictorian of Morehouse is white. Joshua Packwood explains why he chose Morehouse and what it has been like to be a minority on campus.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

Dalian, China, a coastal city not far from North Korea, has created an unlikely alliance with the State University of New York. In the city's quest to be world-class and high-tech, SUNY is helping to train autoworkers at Dalian's University of Technology.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The economy shed 326,000 factory jobs in the past 12 months. Steve Miller, executive chairman of giant auto parts maker Delphi Corp., says improving worker skills is key to turning around the embattled U.S. manufacturing sector.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

The Faculty Room has been nominated for the Ed in ‘08 Education Blog of the Year! Please show your support by casting your vote.

I cannot for the life of me understand educator rationalization of denying choice to parents and students. We all want options - in our doctors, our diets, our fitness routines, our internet carriers. School is no different. Hobson’s Choice is no choice at all. That said, I have far less interest in school choice than in teacher choice. Choosing another school where you still get stuck with whatever typical teacher they give you isn’t much of a choice either. (Who really wants to choose only their hospital?) Want schools to reform more quickly? Let parents and students choose…

Giving parents a choice is not only the right thing to do, it is inevitable. And yes, giving parents a choice will certainly lead to further separation of students based on every consideration from economic and ethnic, to gender and language spoken at home. When full parent choice becomes a wide spread reality, we must prepare for the eventual separation of students in demographic trends that are not always going to appear socially or politically correct. Given the inevitability of the situation, perhaps the best thing educational leaders can do is prepare for the creation and proper…

Like a lot of educators, I have mixed feelings about the issue of choice. I know all the reasons choice is promoted. For instance, parents are generally more satisfied if they can choose their child’s school. Also a little healthy competition may lead to greater performance in public schools. I know that wealthy and middle class parents already have educational options; they can send their children to private schools or move to neighborhoods with better public schools. I also know that the poor have no such option. Their only choice is to attend a neighborhood public school. The problem…

“I don’t wanna eat my vegetables!” screams my five year old self. I push away the plate in front of me. There are a few grains of rice and small bits of meatloaf on the areas of the plate where their portions previously resided. The vegetables, however, remain untouched, steadfast, and bright green. “They’re nasty!” I argue. “Eat your vegetables. They’re good for you.” The hard tone in my mother’s voice informs me that no nonsense will be tolerated. I eat them, begrudgingly. It turns out, my mother wasn’t lying. Vegetables are good for you. I just needed a little…

In this episode of Student Voices three Advanced Placement Calculus students, Chris, Craig, and Graeme, talk about a wiki assignment they did to prepare for the exam. Then the conversation transitions to a discussion of the many things they learned while doing their Developing Expert Voices project. It ends with a challenge, the result of which will be featured in a future podcast. You can find their project on this year'sDeveloping Expert Voices blog or scattered across YouTube; it's called DEV: Watch and Learn; soon to be aggregated on the project blog. Let Chris, Craig, and Graeme know…

... it's really important how we speak to kids. Give them a consistent message; and keep it positive. Good advice for everyone really. Photo Source: The First Indication That Life Makes No Sense

Today I swung a meter stick around the classroom like a samurai sword. I called it: "My great and mighty swuhord!" It's become my standard opening for the unit on conic sections which we'll be studying in grade 12 pre-cal for the next week or so. This is followed by playing with paper; folding it to create a parabola according to the locus definition — but I don't tell them that's what we're doing right away. Here are the slides from the class: | View | Upload your own As I swung the swuor ... meter stick, I spoke Japanese with a feigned accent: "Kawasaki, Susuki, Honda! Sony…

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the third annual "K12 Online Conference" for educators around the world interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year's conference is scheduled for October 20-24 and October 27-31 of 2008, and will include a pre-conference keynote during the week of October 13. The conference theme for 2008 is "Amplifying Possibilities." Participation in the conference (as in the past) is entirely free. Conference materials are published in English and available for worldwide distribution and use under a Creative…

David Truss has a great post called Assessment & Rote Learning: Math Conundrums. I tried to leave a comment. I discovered I'm passionate about what Dave had to say. The blog, or my cocomment plugin, borked (yes, that's a technical term) and wouldn't let me leave the comment so I decided to share it here. You may like to read Dave's post before continuing with this. Breathtaking post, or was it three? ;-) Assessment I did the same exercise with my dept. We also had the same vastly differing results you did. At a provincial in-service about 9 or 10 years back I participated in the same exercise…

Thank you to everyone who expressed interest in serving on the CASTLE Advisory Board. We had many, many more applicants than we possibly could take. Although having too many people who are willing to serve is a wonderful problem to have as an organization, it also meant that we had to make some extremely difficult decisions. We will do our best to try and tap into everyone’s expertise in other ways… Below is our new advisory board. As you can see, we strove for diversity of thought, professional role, and geography. Many of the individuals below also are bloggers (which probably isn’t…

Advertiser Hello, We have a client in the e-learning sector who is interested in advertising on your blog. We find it relevant to our client and your blog to be of high quality. We are interested in buying links site-wide, homepage links, link within articles, or having you write about our client and linking to them. If you are open to doing so, we can also provide the content Please write back to me with your advertising rates and how much it will cost to sponsor a blog post on your site. Also, if you run other blogs, please send those to me too. We will be able to Paypal you immediately for…

I think I may have just found the opening video for my Monday presentation to the Ames Noon Rotary. Kudos to the Pearson Foundation Digital Arts Alliance and the Consortium for School Networking (and a hat tip to David Warlick) for a great resource!

As promised, here is my interview of Mike Vitelli, CEO of The Gaming Krib: Conversation 29: Interview with Mike Vitelli Happy listening!

Kudos to Dan Meyer for being named as a 2008 Leader in Learning by the cable industry! A complete list of the winners is at the Leaders in Learning web site.

Today, new and emerging Web technologies are connecting our children in ways never before possible. Through blogs, social networking sites, multimedia and other 'Web 2.0' tools, their worlds are becoming more and more networked and engaging, creating environments for learning and collaborating that look little like our traditional classroom spaces. And they are not alone in these changes. Businesses, journalists, politicians and others are struggling to find new models that take full advantage of the opportunities these technologies and shifts afford (Richardson, 2006).  Conversely,…

John Norton on TLN threw out an interesting challenge around a six-word memoir. Someone on the list called this game a limited-word writing   activity "American haiku". I found the activity so interesting I tossed it to my Twitter community. The results were delightful! I Tweeted: On TLN we are playing a game- Six-Word Memoirs- if you were writing a mini-memoir of your teaching life, what would your six words be? snbeach- Mine is- "A Networked learner: learning never stops" What's yours?" Stephieand - mind often moved faster than time.   robletcher -…

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the third annual “K12 Online Conference” for educators around the world interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year’s conference is scheduled for October 20-24 and October 27-31 of 2008, and will include a pre-conference keynote during the week of October 13. The conference theme for 2008 is “Amplifying Possibilities.” Participation in the conference (as in the past) is entirely free. Conference materials are published in English and available for worldwide distribution and use under…

Hot off Net-Gold list via Sue Fraser Citing the growing demand from the public and the scientific community for access to research data, The Rockefeller University Press has revised its copyright policy to allow authors to retain the rights to work published in its three journals. The policy, which became effective May 1, applies to all three Rockefeller University Press journals: The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine and The Journal of General Physiology. The new policy allows authors to reuse their published work in any way and provides for third-party reuse…

A primary school has been accused of being alarmist for covering up the faces of pupils on its website – apparently to protect them from pedophiles.Bizarrely, the images have been altered with the type of smiley faces popular during the Acid House dance craze of the 1980s. The decision was taken at Cann Hall Primary School in Clacton, Essex. Read the article here.  (thanks John Norton for the article via email) Here is the part I am having a hard time understanding in all this. Traditionally, (think back to your school years) newspapers have published student's pictures and names…

Bill MacKenty - Criteria for evaluating games in education Keeping in mind it’s the teaching that counts, this is a list of factors I use to evaluate educational potential in games: Bill Mackenty - Is Eve Online educational? A player in Eve chooses a race, and then travels through a richly realized space - trading, fighting, and interacting with players from all over the world. I have 2 areas I’d like to explore about Eve: the educational potential, and if Eve can be played My Eighth Grade Book Club Wiki and Resources « Digerati Boombati Making a wiki community happen is hard work:…

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU on Vimeo How did they do that? OllieBray.com: How can computer games help you read? Assuming the script is accurate (I didn’t read all 1312 pages of it!) the total amount of words that you have to read if you play Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney from beginning to end is 204, 107. That’s a lot of words and to put it into context Harry Pot Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Cellphones used for medical imaging? This potentially could bring medical imaging to the ‘three-quarters of the world’s population which has no access to ultrasounds, X-rays,…

It had to be done. Now it has been. No more poor jokes about my trip next week to Thurles and the Tipperary Institute's Internet Experience in Education Conference. The inimitable Bernie Goldbach (I'm sure he used to be a spy, you know) invited me over to keynote to about 200-odd of Irish education's technologically empassioned. I'll attempt to show why schools need to start shaking things up from the grassroots, and let participation culture leak into their learning spaces, in my talk: Unleashing the tribe. Certainly, that's the impression you get from the young people you meet at the…

This June 26, in Glasgow, classical music lovers and gamers will unite for a musical gaming experience that must be fairly unique in the world. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra will play the classics in perfect harmony to the movement of the gaming classics of Pong and Pacman. And using YouTube to market the conference... genius, Jon.

Animation Backgrounds: THE CAT CONCERTO (MGM, 1947) Animation Backgrounds: TREES: The Sword In The Stone Animation Backgrounds: RHAPSODY RABBIT (Warner Brothers, 1946) Animation Backgrounds: POPPINS Reprise OUseful Info: Leaky Students and Semi-Permeable Course Boundaries - The Social Life of OU Course Codes Although many insitutional learnig environments are built on the assumption that we need a private place for students in the same cohort to work together out of the gaze of the public eye, the rise of social sharing sites means that course activity is sta Twitter is first on the scene for…

This time of year I get many phone calls from parents and students who are panicking because the student didn’t get accepted to any colleges or can’t afford any college to which they were accepted. Usually this results from having applied only to colleges that were a reach or without fully understood college financial aid. Either way, the question is, what do we do now? One resource that I refer families to is the NACAC space availability survey that each year lists the colleges that are still accepting applications at this time of year. The student can search by state to find…

The craziness surrounding wait lists is continuing with the New York Times reporting on some of the most selective colleges going to the wait list this year. We reported earlier on some of the issues surrounding wait lists and now that May 1 has passed it turns out that many of the most selective colleges will indeed be taking students off the wait list. Harvard will offer admission to 150-175 people from the wait list, Princeton and Penn will each offer take about 90 more students, Yale offered 45 students admission this week and maybe more next month, Amherst will take 25 students and…

The Project on Student Debt has put together an analysis of what a typical family with different income levels would have to pay at many of the colleges that have revised their financial aid packages in the past year.  This analysis reviews the colleges that have pledged to improve their aid and then examines what a family at different income levels would pay at each college. For example, a family making $60,000 a year with typical assets would pay $13,800 at a University of California school, $11,306 at Amherst, and only $4,000 at Harvard. This document makes it very easy to compare many of…

For most students the question of how a college spends the money you send each term is never considered. But it should be a consideration because the quality of education you receive may depend on the answer. A new report from the Lumina Foundation examines the question of college spending in detail and the findings of the report, at least in general, is an issue that families should be aware of before choosing a particular type of college. For people who are interested in all of the numbers the report makes fascinating reading. For those of you less inclined to look at charts, InsideHigherEd…

As many of you know, the College Board changed the SAT in 2005 to add a writing section to the required test. There have been many criticisms of the new writing test since that time and many colleges either don’t consider it or give it limited consideration. Several new studies, however, indicate that the writing test is actually a better predictor of college grades than the critical reading and math tests from the SAT. The studies come from the College Board and the University of California. The writing test was originally added to the full SAT at the insistence of the University of…

Sometimes life demands of us to make a decision.Would we prefer to sleep with a snake or a rat is one of them.Yeah, I hear ya. You've slept with both of them. And sometimes, your sleeping partner was both of them at the same time.That's not what I mean.I mean a rat rat and a snake snake.A woman in China woke up in the middle of the night to find a 4.5 foot snake getting ready for a midnight snack of a rat.She fled the house and called the police. Which is why I am not a policeman.

Memorial Day is coming up. For me, it's not just about those who died. What about those who are still living?Veteran's Day maybe?Everyday is a day to remember those who lost their lives, those who lost arms and legs, those who lost years of their lives to preserving or helping create the only way of life we know."Before You Go" is a beautiful song with a fascinating story behind it.A professional musician was greeted bitterly late one night by a WWII Vet giving him change "I took two bullets for this country and look what it got me."The song is a result of that…

Rambo died. Killed. Not in the jungle or with a missile or even starved to death in a prison.Rambo died on a bus.Rambo died after publishing more than 2,500 songs, gospel songs.Rambo was even inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.Of course, it's not THAT Rambo.Dottie Rambo, 74 years old, was killed in a bus accident on a Sunday morning on her way to a Mother's Day performance.This Rambo was also inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame last year and the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

I love my students. They teach me so much.Just today I learned about Murderous Mary.Seems Mary the elephant, yeah, she was an elephant, trampled a guy during a parade. The city decided that Mary had to pay for the crime.Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life.Problem was, they couldn't figure out how to kill Mary.Bullets bounced off her tough hide and 44,000 volts of electricity only made her

I have a good friend. He's a top rate scientist, astronomer (worked on the Hubble), works for a huge space firm, and is also a Christian.He sent an email to some friends, and I was fortunate to get it too. I didn't like how it started out. I love how it ended.It's a bit lengthy and I want to place only the beginning of it here with a link to where the whole thing can be read.Great thoughts. 

I’ve had some time now to reflect on my blog’s discussion about differentiation that brought about some pretty exciting comments, particularly on this post about classroom management which now has 40 comments, most of them about differentiation even though that wasn’t what the post was about. Tracking vs. Differentiation is the Wrong Argument I think the discussion was framed incorrectly by people who viewed the conversation as one about tracking vs. differentiation. I understand that the argument was framed as such if you followed certain links in but I reject the idea that…

Sign up for Workshops Here The summer technology workshop schedule at the Los Angeles County Office of Education has been announced and I’m on it. I’ll be offering the Integrating Technology in the Open Court Reading Program that I’ve been doing for the past year in various forms. However, I’m also offering two new courses, iMovie ‘08 Bootcamp and Final Cut Express bootcamp. These classes are a a mixture of the technical and the artistic. You’ll come away able to use the software programs but also with a sense of shot composition, pacing, and the cinema…

True to form, my grandmother wanted the last word. I have been cleaning up her apartment and found this note right inside her dresser addressed to me and dated from 1997. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before but I just found it and it warmed my heart. Dear Mathew, I want to leave you with my wish for you. I can’t express myself as I would like to. My thoughts are that you will fill your life with wonderful words, beautiful music, warm, kind, helpful ways to help others. This I know you are cpable of. Embrace all that life has to offer. Be good to yourself and to others.

Freda Needleman 1911-2008 Please forgive me as I’m taking a week off from educational blogging this week to remember one of my greatest teachers, my grandmother, who I called Mimi. She died this week, just thirteen days shy of her ninety-seventh birthday in her own apartment which she had lived in for over thirty years. We had an unusually close relationship. We spoke every day and visited once or twice a week. My father, her only child, died when I was a year old and so whereas other people had a mother and father, I had a mother and grandmother. This has meant that I’ve always…

Learning A-Z is offering free resources this week. I’m not a big fan of worksheets but they’re not all worksheets. Today they have free downloadable books. You will need to log-in and create an account. May 05 http://www.readinga-z.com Thousands of printable books, including leveled readers and supporting materials May 06 http://www.raz-kids.com Interactive leveled reading library and online progress management system May 07 http://www.writinga-z.com The most complete collection of elementary writing resources anywhere May 08 http://www.vocabularya-z.com Custom vocabulary lessons…

Editor’s note: the globalization of higher education can be conceived of as a complex of processes shaped and mediated by a myriad of people, institutions, networks, technologies, events, and structural forces. In GlobalHigherEd we have been welcoming guest entries from key actors associated with the globalization process, including representatives of universities, stakeholder associations, and the like. The logic behind guest entries is to let key actors speak for themselves versus us speaking on their behalf. Guest entries in an open access blog like this also enable actors to reach…

The University World News is carrying a report this week on a conference to be held (14-16th May, 2008) in Washington DC, hosted by a less well known outfit in the World Bank Group - the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Better known to most is the IFC’s cousin, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, generally referred to as the World Bank. The conference, titled ‘Investing in the Future: Innovation in Private Education’ will invite participants to discuss what the IFC regards as the significant benefits for developing countries of engaging the…

The globalization of higher education and research is starting to become represented in some insightful graphic formats, as we hinted in our November entry ‘Global geographies of R&D‘. This said the creators of graphic representations are stymied by what Peter Taylor at Loughborough University deems state-istics; the fact that many of the statistics analysts use are created by national governments (for even multilateral agencies like the OECD or the World Bank need to draw out their data from member nations). As Taylor notes, though in relation to the challenges of acquiring…

National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States played three shows on the 11 May Sunday Weekend Edition about global higher ed issues. All three are available below. ‘U.S. Universities No Longer Only Game in Town’ Listen Now [4 min 58 sec] Weekend Edition Sunday, May 11, 2008 - In the past few years there has been an increase in applications to American graduate schools but the rate of growth is slowing. Beth McMurtrie, international editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education talks with Liane Hansen about why there has been a decline in the number of foreign students attending…

Further to the debates about institutional mobility we have been profiling in GlobalHigherEd, malaysiankini recently posted this story: Foreign universities giving it to us real good The general public is not aware that a certain Australian university which has a campus here has little interest in developing the nation’s intellectual capital. Over the last year, it’s hidden agenda is to steal Malaysia’s wealth and brain power, contributing very little to the nation while delegating distinguished locals to insignificant supporting roles while harvesting their intellectual…

Download Collaborating in the Bering Sea - TTT101 - 04.23.08 On this podcast Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison are joined by John Concilus, Director of Educational Technology, and a student from one of the schools in the Bering Strait School District. John introduced himself a few weeks ago by responding to an earlier podcast with [...]

Download Making Space on Youth Twitter - TTT100 - 04.16.08 Just before the second issue of Space was published, Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison, from the New York City Writing Project, were joined by: Kevin Hodgson, a sixth grade teacher from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project George Mayo, an 8th grade teacher from Maryland, and one of [...]

Download From elgg to Drupal? TTT99 - 04.09.08 For this webcast, we invited Bill Fitzgerald, Dave Cormier and Gail Desler to talk about social networking and what platforms make sense right now. Of course behind all of this talk about Drupal and Edublogs were questions that we are asking about about how we in [...]

Download Learning to be Unschooly - TTT98 - 04.02.08Earlier this month, on Youth Twitter, a student in South Korea, Soojin wrote, “just my opinion about youthtwitter: schooly. concrete.” A bit later, Hannah, a student in Philadelphia, answered on Youth Twitter, “I think Alan’s survey is a good example of how not to be ’schooly’. Students should [...]

Download Foxfire for the Firefox Generation - TTT97 - 03.26.08 This podcast begins with a focus on the work of two technology teachers and two students from The Baccalaureate School for Global Education (BSGE) in Astoria, NY. Madeline Brownstone and Shantanu Saha describe their two-year technology curriculum that has students doing global, multimedia projects. Madeline [...]

For reasons beyond my control, my blogging time will be extraordinarily limited this week (lots of concerts and exhaustion has begun to catch up on me). For these reasons, I will be putting the Blog Revolution Project on hold for this week. It will presumably resume again on Monday the 19th. Thanks for bearing with me. While you are waiting, I invite you to check out these outstanding blogs that have linked to my articles recently: Betty’s Blog : Friends Resource for Bloggers Carnival - 12th Edition | My lucky number 13 Tag: I’m It! Guitar Building, The Daily Grind and a Lottery Wish…

Scott Walker over at The English Teacher has been building up a little collection of comics he has drawn during staff development sessions (and a few others). I like his work, and enjoy reading his blog even when it has words and no pictures. I am featuring one of his comics a week here on So You Want To Teach? once a week (every Sunday sounds like a good plan) until I run out of them, or until he complains and asks me to stop sending people to his blog. I highly encourage you to go spend some time exploring his blog in the mean time! Leave him some encouraging comments also! Subscribe to…

**This is a guest post contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of university reviews. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com. For those of you who are not on summer school duty this year, you are probably bursting at the seams in anticipation of your three-month break. Yes, you need to get through final exams first, but the end is nigh and you couldn’t be happier. There were many altruistic reasons that you became a teacher. However, there is no shame in counting three more amongst that list: June, July and August. In order to get the…

Have you signed up to join the Blog Revolution Project? As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to the final day of our focus on writing. Today’s article will focus on keeping your blog focused. One of the main reasons I unsubscribe from a blog is that the content changes from day to day, and things aren’t what I expected they would be. This comes when the blogger doesn’t have a specified topic of concentration. Another advantage to focusing your blog is that you will convert more of the search engine referrals into regular readers. One of the coolest features of…

Have you signed up to join the Blog Revolution Project? As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day four of our focus on writing. Today’s article will focus on crafting your own personal style, develop your writing voice. Newer bloggers may have a struggle with figuring out exactly what approach they want to take with their blog. Think of your writing voice as your brand name. Lea Schizas has written some on this topic at Writing with Passion and Developing Your Voice and Brand Some common questions may include: How do I want to attack each post? What kind of a tone…

I'm in St. Louis, post presentation, and I'm pretty pleased with how it went. It's not easy for me to figure out how to talk to audiences that aren't made up of educators, because the question is always what is the balance between the universal ideas and the deep entry into pedagogy. Judging from the reaction, folks seemed to think that I struck a good balance today. I had a lot of people come up and tell me that I really challenged them to re-think their ideas about school design, and that's thrilling to me. A few folks asked me about strategies to get educators and facilities folks talking…

Tomorrow, I'm speaking at a school design conference to a bunch of people who build schools. My job is to talk to them for 40 minutes about what we need the learning to be before they go into groups to actually design the spaces. What would you make sure to tell them?

The last few days brought two blog very important blog entries for those of us who really think about the sustainability of a teaching career. Kilian Betlach (TMAO) of Teaching in the 408 has announced that he's not coming back to his school in September and Pete Reilly over at the District Administrator blog writes about ex-teachers' attitudes about the profession. Suffice to say, when those ex-teachers compare their new jobs with teaching, teaching comes up short. We all know the stats that say 40-50% of new teachers leave teaching within the first five years. Now, TMAO hasn't announced…

[Thanks to Gary Stager for reminding us all to blog about this... also check out this month's Rethinking Schools for its analysis of NCLB and its programs.] In case folks missed this, the Department of Education has determined that the $6 billion spent on Reading First -- the "scientifically proven" reading program pushed by President Bush and Sec't Spellings -- has done nothing to improve reading scores. In its article on the Reading First study, the Washington Post quoted Secretary Spellings as saying, ""If ever a program was rooted in research and science and fact, this is it." Tim…

Wondering if there's something wrong with the last post...