MSMBy Shawn McGirr

A Fish Tank for Your Classroom!

They say that watching fish can lower your blood pressure and reduce stress.  Both of those are coming with the beginning of school and so in the interest of keeping our audience healthy and entertained, I’d like to direct you to the Lake Superior State University’s Fish Cam.  Use this on your computer at work to reduce your blood pressure and stress.  This way you won’t have to clean an actual fish tank, feed actual fish, or worry about which kid is going to take them home for the summer!  Now where did I put my fishing pole and WonderBread Silver Streaks . . .

I’ll be on Lake Michigan this week going after the salmon.  Wave and I’ll wave back.

NMSA08, Podcast, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson

Podcast #41 – Free Kindle!, (please Jack and/or Jeff!), Free iTunes (U), and Free Second Life!

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 19-20, 2009 in Sandusky, OH. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 (Video sample) 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7.  Canadian National Middle Years Conference, November 5, 6, & 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
8.  Rick Stiggins has a new Balanced Assessment Manifesto posted at NMSA‘s website.
9.  NMSA is looking for a new journal editor.  Applications due August 1, 2008. 
10.  Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Elections are posted:
PRESIDENT-ELECT:    Alice Seppanen
TREASURER:    Charlene Pike
Suzanne Lappin, Member-At-Large
Nic Cooper, Region 2
 David Feldman, Region 4
Mary Ann Schmedlen, Region 8
 Sherry Lambertson, Region 11
David Baldus, Region 12
 Joe Somerville, Region 13
11.  Looking for news from Ontario Middle Level Educators Association.  If you have any, drop us a line. 
12.  Wisconsin Association of Middle Level Educators annual conference is coming up October 9-10, 2008. 
13.  The New England League of Middle Schools has a whole bevy of professional development planned for the 2008-2009 school year and you can access it here. 
14.  ADVISORY IDEAS NEEDED:  NELMS is putting together an Advisory Resource page with lessons for you to use.  They are asking for submissions here by January 1, 2009.  If your entry is used, you will be entered in a raffle for a 3 day NELMS conference ticket. 
15.  Second Life Education Community Conference (SLEDcc) Announcement:  (From the webpage…) “The Second Life Education Community Conference 2008 will take place in conjunction with the Official Second Life Community Convention 2008 in Tampa, Florida (US) and in the virtual world of Second Life on September 5 – 7th, 2008. All members of the Second Life educational community and anyone with an interest in the use of virtual worlds technology in education is invited to attend! Please note: Registration fees cover both the SLEDcc and SLCC events! Conference registration and fees only apply to those going to SLEDcc/SLCC in Tampa, in-world only participants do not need to register or pay any fees.”  Here’s your chance to attend a free conference during the first week of school.  The conference schedule can be found here. 

If your state or regional middle level association is organizing an event, please let us know at middleschooleducators@gmail.com. 

Shout outs:
1.  Jeff Bezos, we’d love to put a free Kindle through its paces at NMSA ’08 … 
2.  Ron in New Jersey, thanks for the email.
3.  The lake trout at 140 feet down who saw my lure at 100 feet down and took it last week, you were delicious … 
4.  Our international friends – even the Spammers!

Copyright Fight looms over College Textbooks
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54684;_hbguid=1a943a6a-3bb8-4f98-9bd7-ab945e14b76c
The high cost of college textbooks has spawned a new battleground in the fight to keep students from downloading copyright-protected materials over the internet: textbook file sharing.

Court upholds Teacher firing for looking at porn
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54693;_hbguid=80f259df-0ff1-423f-8e9c-c0b047174269


Visually very polished. Most of the subject area categories have between 1-10 episodes. Many of the episodes are around 1 minute in length. There are some gems. (A video on Formative Assessment includes









Podcast, Tech, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson,

Podcast #40 – Google, Wisdom in Group Learning, and More Technology in Education!

Book Update: 
Troy:
Getting to Got It! – Done

Shawn:
Alan November – Done
Wisdom of Crowds – In progress

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 19-20, 2009 in Sandusky, OH. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 13-16 & 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 (Video sample) 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7.  Canadian National Middle Years Conference, November 5, 6, & 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Interesting tidbit:  “It is crucial that all presenters send a copy of their session handouts to NMSA no later than September 21, 2008. It is our plan to offer ALL session handouts to participants electronically. For this reason, we prefer to receive the handouts electronically, but can accept paper copies as well. Please plan to prepare your handouts accordingly.” – from the NMSA Annual Conference website.  It appears that all presentation notes and handouts will be available in electronic form to all conference attendees.  One third of my handouts from one of my presentations this year walked out the door without the person taking it hearing the presentation.  Its good for more exposure to a wider audience, but at the same time the handout doesn’t contain the visuals and the examples that a presentation gives either.  Is this a good balance?  I admit, it was nice having Rick DuFour’s presentation on my iPhone so I could look at it whenever I wanted to.

Shout outs:

  1. Pamela in Farmington, thanks for the email.
  2. Ron in New Jersey, thanks for the email.
  3. Van Drinkard of Bishopville, South Carolina


Reader & Listener questions:

  1. How can Core Content Curriculum Standards keep up with the speed of technology advancement when entire technologies evolve or become irrelevant within the span of a child’s elementary to middle school years? (i.e. floppies to flash memory to network storage)
  2. With an emerging group of older adults moving out of the business world and choosing education as their new career path, what are your thoughts about the value they bring to the middle school classroom environment where real-world connections to content are more critical then ever?


From the net:

  1. Advice needed, everyone!  I have a math teacher friend who wants to set up a website that will allow:
    Kids to keep it up-to-date at school.
    Kids to access it at home.
    Kids to access a blog section.
    Also, of course, she would like to be able to enter in the regular
    stuff, like problem of the day and homework.
    She also wants to be able to keep a long term record of what has been
    on the site during the year.
    And – of course – she wants to be able to do this within the confines
    of a teacher’s salary.

    Any great ideas, anyone?


SAT Scores:  Better indicator with or without a writing section? 
Several years ago schools jumped into action because the SAT was adding a writing section to the test.  So what has been the impact of the change? 

TED Talk – Visual Perspectives – Chris Jordan – Picturing Excess
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/279


Will We Let Google Make Us Smarter?
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/06/will_we_let_goo.php



NMSA08, Podcast, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson,

Middle School Matters #39 – Book Talk, Hacking, & Transformation

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 19-20, 2009 in Sandusky, OH. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 13-16 & 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 (Video sample) 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7.  Canadian National Middle Years Conference, November 5, 6, & 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. 


Shout outs:

  1. Folks in Rock Hill, SC and Black Diamond, WA:  Thanks for listening! 
  2. Ron for the email.


News:

Text Message ruling could affect school policies. Seems as though work issued cell phones could be exempt from search unless a warrant or employee permission is given.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54232;_hbguid=11811143-391a-4171-a124-ad9529840329&d=top-news

Teens face felony charges of computer break-ins
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-cheaters18-2008jun18,0,1317744.story

How do we transform our schools? Use technologies that compete against nothing … Education Next journal
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18575969.html
In order to create change, do we have to blow everything up and start from new? Highlights here. 

From Literacy to Digiracy
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11392128
“So, no surprise that when we incarcerate teenagers of today in traditional classroom settings, they react with predictable disinterest and flunk their literacy tests. They are skilled in making sense not of a body of known content, but of contexts that are continually changing.”

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google


Mailbag Followup:

Hey guys,

Just to follow-up on some of your questions from the podcast…our schedule is six 50-minute classes.  We are a team of four with 115-120 kids with an “advanced” class for each core subject (makes scheduling tricky).  As far as the flex class, all the details have yet to be flushed out.  Here is what we have been told.  We will have a three week focus (the first being LA/Math) made up of our unintentional non-learners.  We talked about offering “other activities” for those are do not need to extra time.  Some ideas we came up with include club activities (chess, gaming, etc.) as well as simple SSR time, open gym, etc.  Our building uses the Honor Level Discipline System and the move to this flex schedule nullifies a daily reward (a 10-minute break between second & third periods).  I suggested (I also teach leadership) a bi-weekly assembly that is fun for kids (mock-olympic style games, game shows, skits, etc.) to replace this daily reward since our honor level system required students to be compliant for 7-10 days before they get their privileges back.  Anyway, students would have a choice of activities to participate in (including some on different halls with their friends they don’t typically get to spend much time with during the day) if they are….???….caught up on homework, not failing any classes, ???  We really haven’t figured that part out yet.


Did I miss anything?

Ron

Ideas: 

  1. The Kid’s Guide to Service Projects: Over 500 Service Ideas for Young People Who Want to Make a Difference 500 service learning projects that you could implement with kids.

  2. There’s one school in Ohio (and if I can remember their name I’ll post it) that had their teachers take their personal interests create a class centered around it and then they tied it in with their state standards and went to the board with it as a curriculum.  The kids thought it was just fun time when they were learning skills.  I thought it was a creative way to tie in standards and student interests.  Students could sign up for the classes and then take them for the 3-4 weeks the class ran and then they would let kids sign up for another round of classes.  The teachers wouldn’t have to redo the class every time since there are probably a number of kids who want the class, but can’t get in every class they want in each rotation. 

  3. Academic assemblies:  Hold Olympic style events for academic subjects:  use Keynote/Powerpoint to create content questions team classrooms can answer as a challenge, do a “Password” style game where pairs of students sit opposite of each other and the teacher flashes a term from the unit on the screen where only one of the pair can see it (Dave Wilkie’s idea), create multiple choice style questions and give the students A-B-C-D-E answer cards they hold up.  Kids can create a drama series based on current content. 

  4. Mass Study Hall: Actually this becomes a “self-select”. Teachers are available for additional support. Kids who are not in need of “catch-up” report to a large common area. See DuFour’s Research.

Add your ideas to the Comments!
Summer Reading lists

Shawn’s:

  1. Education Next (Summer ’08)
  2. Regina Silsby’s Phantom Militia by Thomas J. Brodeur
  3. “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning!” by Marc Prensky
  4. Not Quite Burned Out but Crispy Around the Edges by Sharon M. Draper
  5. Web Literacy for Educators by Alan November (Opening lines:  “Long, long ago, there was a magical invention called paper . . . “)
  6. Lighting Fires by Joseph Tsujimoto
  7. Embattled Courage by Linderman (a re-read)
  8. Middle Grades Education: A Reference Handbook by Dr. Pat Williams-Boyd (re-reading sections)
  9. Service Learning in the Middle School: Building a Culture of Service by Fertman, White and White
  10. Energizers – Calisthenics for the Mind by Carl Olson
  11. Promoting a Successful Transition to Middle School by Akos, Queen, and Lineberry
  12. Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing and Improving Student Performance by Arter and McTighe
  13. History Makers by Myra Zarnowski 


Troy’s List:

  1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
  2. Getting Things  Done by David Allen( a re-read)
  3. Getting to Got It! by Betty K. Garner
  4. “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning!“by Marc Prensky
  5. Transformative Assessment by W. James Popham
  6. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nick Carr
  7. Fair is not always equal by Rick Wormeli
  8. What Works in the Classroom by Marzano
  9. Classroom Assessment & Grading That Works by Marzano
  10. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink