school cams

In a high school in Philadelphia, all the students received laptops to use to improve their education. Students are even able to take these computers home to work on homework. So what's wrong with that? Nothing. Except school officals could/did remotely activate the web camera in the laptop to see what students are doing. This feature was put in place as a security feature to help locate missing or stolen laptops.
In November, the vice principal activated the webcame and took a photo of the kid doing something that she thought was illegal. Major flaw in her plan - parents and students had not been told about the schools' ability to do this. FBI and the Philly police are looking into this....

What do you guys think?

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/pennsylvania-school-webcam-students-spying/story?id=9905488

customized textbooks

Macmillan (textbook company) is coming out with something called DynamicBooks. This is an online program where college professors can edit textbook information without consulting the textbook writer.
My understanding is that professors require their students' to purchase the book online for a much cheaper price. The professor goes in, and adds/deleates/rewrite paragrpahs, chapters or questions. So the book becomes personalized to their class. So it's not really a professional collaborative wiki. It's just individualized for each class (ex: Dr. Merril and Dr. Zhang each teach EDU 290. They could both get a book with DynamicBooks and personalize it to their teaching personalities.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22textbook.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

SNOW DAY anyone???

Did anyone get a snow day yesterday? I think that my school was literally the only school open. By recess, we had 7 inches of snow!!! The kids loved it though. We spent a lot of time making snowmen. It's so easy to impress 6 year olds :)

IPods for 3 year olds

In Weston County, they have placed Ipods into preschool classrooms. These IPods were preloaded with learning applications before they were placed into the classroom. The applications were suppose to help with numbers, colors, animals....etc. The students were given no information on how to use them.
I have mixed feelings. I think this is pretty cool. However, I don't know that students need "tethered" to technology at that early age. What do you guys think?

Technology Advances for Toddlers
(Not sure why the article is titled toddlers when a 3 year old is not a toddler....but whatever)

Johnny's Budget

Johnny wants to go the Olympics in Vancouver. He has a firm (can NOT go over) budget of $1200. He does some research online and finds out that it would cost him $300.75 for a round trip (there and back) airline ticket. He does a little more research and finds that he can get a nice hotel room for $125.25 a night. He also budgeted $50 a day for food. Since his family won’t be able to go, he budgeted $80 for souvenirs for them. He is planning on staying for 5 days. Can Johnny afford to go to the Olympics on his budget?

community college at the end of 10th grade

So now that I've posted, I've found another article on the whole get kids out of high school in 10th grade debacle. This one offers more information and I guess I can see their logic. The idea is to get kids who are ready out of high school and into college level courses. The high schoolers who don't pass the test at the end of 10th, 11th, or 12th graders will know ahead of time that they might have a hard time in college. This gives them a fair warning rather then having them be "surprised" when they are placed in a remedial class.
It would also allow high school teachers to focus more on the students who need some extra help.
Apparently, countries such as France, Denmark, England, Finland and Singapore use systems like this (or they use this?). They are all considered "high performance nations."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are providing a $1.5 million grant to get this going. And schools are hoping to apply for some of the $350 million of fed stimulus money.

Sounds interesting. I still like the idea of keeping high school the way it is though. If you graduate after 10th grade how are you suspose to pay for community college? Not many 10th graders don't have a "real" job. (Babysitting is not a stable form of income) But maybe this would essentially "force" them to get a job. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/education/18educ.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Get rid of 12th grade?

Utah senator Chris Buttars has proposed getting rid of senior year of high school. He believes that this would save $60 million which would help to make a dent in the $700 million that they are in the red for.
According to the article, several other states are considering having students take a proficient test at the end of 10th grade which would then allow them to enter community college. (I think this would be similar to an AP exam in that it says the student is proficient at/for a college level.) This option is not suspose to be a money saver, but it is suspose to reduce the number of remedical classes at the college level.

Anyone who teaches high school care to comment?
Personally, I think that the senator should leave the 12th grade alone. MATURITY is a huge issue - high school students need that extra year or two to mature a little before they leave the nest. While this might not be true for some students, I think that as a whole, it is.

http://education.change.org/blog/view/no_more_pencils_no_more_books_eliminating_senior_year

Autism

There was a new study that confirms that moms who are older have a higher risk of having a child born who is autistic. This confirms one study and contradicts another. One of the recent studies that this one contradicted suggested that the age of the father was the most important risk factor. However, this study found that while the age of the father was important, the age of the mother was more important. It is also believed that 1 in 100 children in the US are Autistic. WOW. 1 in 100 children. To me, that number is shocking. I have run into a few children that have autism, but I didn't think the rate was that high. What do you guys think?

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35296409/ns/health-mental_health/

AP tests

I've seen a few articles about the fact that more students are taking AP tests. And more students are failing (getting a 1 or 2) on the AP exams. I'm going to be honest - I really don't care so much about the exact numbers or stats. I just think that it's great that more students are willing to try to take the AP exams. I feel that they have nothing to loose - it is cheaper to take the test then it is to pay for the credits to take it at a college.
When I was in high school, I took 3 AP classes. One my sophomore year (US history), 1 my junior year (European history), and 1 my senior year (psychology). The only one that I got credit for was psychology. That being said, I am still glad that I took the other 2 classes. I know (even then I knew) that I was not devoting enough time to my studies. I knew that I probably wouldn't pass the history exams before I took them. But I liked how they were set up. I liked how they gave me greater responsibility for my learning. It showed me what college was going to be like - the skills I was going to need to work on.
I ended up doing great in college - I graduated with honors. So I say, keep pushing the AP classes!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/education/11college.html?ref=education

WiFi bus

I was reading this article about how a school district installed WiFi into a bus. Students on the bus are able to get WiFi during their rides to and from school. When the bus is used to haul athletes around, they are able to do homework. Many students do homework, and some play video games.
I have mixed feelings on this. As somone who graduated from high school about 5 years ago, I think that it's very cool. My bus ride was about 50 minutes. I would have loved to sit there and do homework. Especially since I worked and played sports - I was always trying to budget my time. I think that the WiFi would have been great for the 2 boys who rode my bus and use to get into fist fights and shove each other around on the bus (they had a love-hate friendship). It would have stopped the girls from sitting in the back and giggling obnoxiously and flirting with the boys. No one would have been screaming everytime the driver hit a pothole in the hole. (Switzer! You're killing me! Oww! Watch were you're going! How'd you hit that pothole!?!)
On the other hand, I feel like we are going way overboard with the use of technology now-a-days. Minivans have satalite TVs in them. "Everyone" (except me) has Internet on their phones. Do we always need to be "connected" to others? I don't think so. One of the positives of the bus, is that it allows students to develop their inter-personal skills. Students learned how to get along, carry on a conversation, make friends... Are we still teaching students these skills? Or are they being forgotten with all this new technology?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/education/12bus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Olympics

What event in the Olympics are you looking forward to the most? Why?
Who will you watch it with?
What do you know about the Olympics?

Make sure to use proper spelling, capitalization and punctuation when responding.

secritary fired for speaking Spanish to "hysterical parent"

A secritary at a school in North Carolina was fired for speaking Spanish to a "hysterical parent" who was beside herself because her young son had been sodomized. Since she was hired as a bilingual secritary, she was acting as a translator for the Spanish speaking parent. The principal then fired her for breaching their school districts' policy of only speaking in English.

I'm sorry, how is helping the kids? Who came up with this policy? If you were the principal wouldn't you be more concerned with the fact that one of your students was abused? What happened to teaching kids to be tolerant of other people's differences (such as languages) and teaching them to proud of these differences?

http://education.change.org/blog/view/school_secretary_fired_for_translating_for_concerned_parents

SNow!!! :)

So on Wednesday, at school, we were going to have our Dad's Day celebration. It starts at 7:30 and ends around 8:30 so that dads can attend and still get to work on time. Then we just begin our school at the usual time. With all this snow that we are suspose to be getting, the admin decided to push Dad's Day back 2 weeks.... (2 weeks!) All I can say is we better be getting some snow!

Math Olympics

One school in New Jersey had their 4th grade student body compete in the math olympics. They began by marching with a "torch" into the gym. Then they played 20 different math games which includeded, "Guesstimation Station," "KerPlunk," "Number Line Hopscotch," "Continent Hopping," and "Name that Numbers."
What a fun way to teach the kids a little about the olympics and math sense. This is a way to make math fun and accessable to all students which will hopefully reduce the math anxiety that some students have.

http://www.northjersey.com/community/events/83517037_The__name_of_the_game__is_math_.html

Qualities of a Good Teacher

Bill and Melinda Gates have donated $45 million into a 2 year research project that will study what effective teachers do/ what best practices are. The study will research 3,700 teachers across the US using "videotapes, surveys, and student assessments" to compile a list of qualities of good teachers.



At the end of the article, the author included a list of, "10 qualities of a great teacher: (1) has a sense of humor; (2) is intuitive; (3) knows the subject matter; (4) listens well; (5) is articulate; (6) has an obsessive/compulsive side; (7) can be subversive; (8) is arrogant enough to be fearless; (9) has a performer’s instincts; (10) is a real taskmaster."



What qualities do you think make a good teacher?



http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/02/03/20starkey_ep.h29.html?tkn=NOMC%2FftpboQaBg6bw4JxVeqJ4G%2FG7L4b8YFE

Abstinence Only Education - Does it work?

In 2 of my feeds, there was an article on abstinence - so it must be ground breaking. According to the version of the article that I read, they used 662 African American middle school students and sent some to a weekend-long abstience only program. They were also paid $20 for their time.
The results: "...only about a third of the students who participated in a weekend abstinence-only class started having sex within the next 24 months, compared with about half who were randomly assigned instead to general health information classes, or classes teaching only safer sex. Among those assigned to comprehensive sex-education classes, covering both abstinence and safer sex, about 42 percent began having sex." This is the first abstience-only study that has seen these positive results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/education/03abstinence.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

I think that this is great. I 'm glad that these kids decided to wait a while before having sex. However, I feel that part of their decision to pay attention during the workshop was the influence of the $20 that they were given to participate. And once they started becoming "sexually active" did they use birth control?
I understand that some religions (such as mine) are proponents of abstience-only. However, what happens once they do start having sex? Aren't they at higher risk for pregnancy and STDs?

Brain Rules

On Edutopia, there has been a lot of talk about brain research and it affects teachers and their teaching styles. This has prompted me to go grab my mom's copy of Brain Rules by John Medina. She had encouraged me to read it this summer, but I didn't have enough time between all my activities. So, no time like the present! Has anyone seen the article that started this all?