MSM-105 The Revolution in the Classroom
Jokes:
The pharmacist says, “Here’s a pill for English literature.” The student takes the pill and swallows it and has new knowledge about English literature!
“What else do you have?” asks the student. “Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world history,” replies the pharmacist.
The student asks for these, and swallows them and has new knowledge about those subjects. Then the student asks, “Do you have a pill for math?”
The pharmacist says, “Wait just a moment,” and goes back into the storeroom and brings back a whopper of a pill and plunks it on the counter.
“I have to take that huge pill for math?” inquires the student. The pharmacist replied, “Well, you know… math always was a little hard to swallow.”
In his day, Michael Jordan made over $300,000 a game. That equals $10,000 a minute, at an average of 30 minutes per game.
With $40 million in endorsements, he made $178,100 a day, working or not.
If he slept 7 hours a night, he made $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums danced in his head.
If he went to see a movie, it cost him $9.50, but he made $18,550 while he was there.
If he decided to have a 5 minute egg, he would have made $618 while boiling it.
He made $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.
He’d made $3,710 while watching each episode of Friends.
If he wanted to save up for a new Acura SLX (about $90,000) it would have taken him a whole 12 hours.
If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have had to do it at the rate of $2.00 every second.
He’d probably payed around $200 for a nice round of golf, but was reimbursed around $30,000 during that round.
Assuming he put the federal maximum of 15% of his income into a tax deferred account (401k), he would have hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30 a.m. on January 1st.
If you were given a penny for every 10 dollars he made, you’d be living comfortably at $65,000 a year.
He would have made about $19.60 while watching the 100 meter dash in the Olympics.
He would have made about $15,600 during the Boston Marathon.
While the common person was spending about $20 for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant, he would have pulled in about $5600.
In his last year, he made more than twice as much as all U.S. past presidents for all of their terms combined.
… However…
… If Jordan had saved 100% of his income for the next 250 years, he’ll still have less than Bill Gates had right then.
On Our Mind:
Head on over to iTunes. We’re looking for some feedback.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=261383649
From the Twitterverse:
- willrich45 Reading: “Quality of Questions on Common Tests at Issue” http://j.mp/77l7Hi We’ll get the assessments we can pay for. Sigh.
- tom_peters “Do one thing every day that scares you”-Eleanor Roosevelt. May be best business [and personal] advice ever.
- readtoday Excellent discussion on merit pay and Race to Nowhere http://bit.ly/5oIhdQ #edchat
- mcleod The bumpy road to student-centered instruction http://post.ly/Jt3J #education #learning #teaching
- novemberMonster If you haven’t seen Khan Academy (http://bit.ly/tumDj) for #math make sure to check it out. Awesome. Video: http://bit.ly/4XHb2i #edchat
- jdthomas7 “2¢ Worth » Applying PLN — A Continuing Question for Me” ( http://bit.ly/5Zo3NH ) #edchat #edtech
- Russsauntry Why didn’t anyone tell me about this genius? http://bit.ly/64SUsn google tips for teachers. Any more for Twitter? #edchat #edreform
- educatoral RT @msmithpds: make an online game more relevant for your students by using classtools.net #edchat
- UT_CoE 25 Ways to Motivate Teachers. http://bit.ly/8CPPkE #edchat #teachers #education (via @morsmal)
- NMSAnews NMSA is seeking 12-15 members with an interest in reviewing session proposals for its upcoming Annual Conference http://bit.ly/8K3Dof
- NMSAnews It’s not too late to submit to present at NMSA2010. Deadline for concurrent sessions: January 31, 2010 http://bit.ly/8mBslV
- web20classroom Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Places to Find Free eBooks http://bit.ly/64b6AM
- netbook_news VIDEO: Sharper Image LCD Projector only $149 http://tmogul.com/tweet/m_XbV
- chickensaltash All we need is Radio Saltash – Doing a radio show in your lessons: http://bit.ly/4CXIxC #edchat #teaching
Advisory:
Exciting individuals telling their personal stories from the front lines of social and environmental change.
changents.com
MultiTask
Think you or your students can multitask well? MultiTask challenges you to play multiple games to test your multitasking ability. It introduces one game at a time and one error will cause you to lose.
Webspotlight:
Sweet Search
Every Web site in SweetSearch has been evaluated by our research experts.
Visit our Web Links for teachers and students, organized by subject and academic level.
http://www.sweetsearch.com/index.html
http://www.sweetsearch.com/weblinks/categories/middle-school/students.html
Dabble Board-
Dabbleboard is an online whiteboard that will help you visualize, explore and communicate ideas. The best way to learn more about it is to view the video below. See the Top 10 Reasons to use Dabbleboard.
http://www.dabbleboard.com/
Cosketch-
What is CoSketch.com?
Do you have an idea, a problem or just a cool picture that you quickly want to show a friend?
CoSketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.
Simple sharing
• Anything you paint will show up for all other users in the room in real time.
• One click to save a sketch as an image for embedding on forums, blogs, etc.
Zero hassle
• Runs in all common browsers without plugins or installation.
• No registration
Now with Google Maps support!
• Use google maps as the background for your sketches to show directions or share trips.
Read more or just create a sketch and try for yourself.
Google Resources for Education
Revolution in the Classroom
by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn
President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s flagship idea for reforming education—a competition among states over a total pot of $4.35 billion known as the “Race to the Top Fund”—is a bold move to use scarce resources to coerce states into adopting big, potentially controversial strategies for education reform. It aims to achieve four stated goals:
– Develop common, internationally-benchmarked standards and assessments
– Improve the effectiveness of teachers and principals
– Use data to inform decisions
– Turn around the lowest-performing schools.
As details of the competition emerge, states vying for funds could simply opt to check off the boxes, suggest some novel-sounding strategies, and implement a few tweaks to the way things are already being done. But doing so would miss a genuine opportunity. In order to transform our factory-era schools into a truly student-centric system fit for the 21st-century, the funds should be used to innovate disruptively. And the best way to do that is by implementing online learning – an approach that’s constantly improving in its ability to deliver personalized, high-quality learning experiences to students from all walks of life, regardless of geography, special needs, or socioeconomic background.
Putting New Standards Into Practice a Tough Job
Challenges Loom on Curricular and Teaching Fronts
Todd Clark remembers his “aha” moment when Florida began rolling out the next generation of state academic-content standards to its teachers in 2007.
“I had a 5th grade teacher come up to me and say, ‘Mr. Clark, I can cover all of these objectives by December,’ ” he recalls. “The way she saw it was that there was only enough material for her to cover half a year.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/14/17practical.h29.html?tkn=QLUFv6tltIiniJxnW3ZjCGFnpX0FvCKmEj6T
Events & Happenings:
Calendar of Events:
NMSA News:
- NMSA is looking for both an Executive Director and an Assistant Executive Director.
Other News:
- ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
- The Ohio Middle Level Association will hold their annual conference February 18 & 19, 2010. Jack Berckemeyer will be keynoting.
- The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Annual Conference is coming up March 4-5, 2010 in Dexter, MI. MAMSE will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary!
- Classroom 2.0’s Live Calendar.
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- Classroom 2.0’s Ning Blog: Archived content is available.
- Second Life:
- Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.
- Video: Educational Uses of Second Life
- Google Teacher Academy for Administrators: “We’re very excited to announce our first ever Google Teacher Academy for Administrators. Since many of you have been asking for a GTA for Admins for a while, we’ve decided to host the first one immediately preceding the ASCD conference, on Friday, March 5th in San Antonio, Texas. As you might know, the Google Teacher Academy for Administrators is a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educational leaders get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and learn how to apply examples from our innovative corporate environment. Potential applicants include educational leaders or decision makers including (but not limited to) school principals, assistant principals, state, county or district superintendents, technology directors or coordinators, and CTOs who actively serve K-12 teachers and students. For more information, please check out: http://www.google.com/educators/gtaforadmins.html
OR
Apply before midnight, January 25th here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dE1lYmFfTU4zN1RQWDBpX20wb3BsWXc6MA