Tag: tech

Tech, UncategorizedBy Shawn McGirr, , , , , ,

Conference Notes: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Model Schools Conference (MSC), and the Michigan Joint Education Conference (MiJEC)

For those interested (and some do ask!) here’s a link to my notes from some of the sessions I attended this summer. Topics include: 10 Essential Tech Leadership Components, Virtual Schools, Interactive Digital Curricula, Remix: Blending Creative Content to Demonstrate Mastery of Classroom Content, Shakespeare Set Free – Digital Technology and the Teaching of the Bard, Information Literacy, Classroom 2.0 “Birds of a Feather Session, Distance Learning, Crap Detection, Using Google Apps in Education, Using Social Networking in World History, and Developing a World Class Assessment Piece.

Cover page with following table of contents can be found here: http://web.me.com/mcgirr/Summer_PD_Notes__ISTE__MiJEC____MSC_/index.html

MSM, Podcast, TechBy Troy Patterson, ,

Podcast #65: “Somewhere, A Place For Us . . . “: What Grade Are You?

Items, Events, and Other:

  1. Book sale!  Clearance prices!
  2. NMSA’s Middle Level Essentials Conference April 23-24, 2009.
  3. NMSA ‘09 Invitation Video:  Indianapolis,  IN Conference.
  4. NMSA ’08 Technology Focus Video.
  5. The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission calendar:
    1. “March 4, 2009 Coolidge Auditorium, Jefferson Building
      Library of Congress
      Join the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington, and Lincoln scholars Harold Holzer, James McPherson and Douglas Wilson as we commemorate Lincoln’s 200th birthday.

      Full details of the symposium can be found here.
      _______________
    2. ALBC Commemorative Coin:
      The ALBC Commemorative Coin is on sale now. Available for order on the U.S. Mint Web site, the pure silver coin is available as a proof coin (which has a mirror-like background) and as an uncirculated coin (featuring a more satiny background).
      For the first 30 days after the coin goes on sale (beginning Feb. 12, 2009), they can be purchased for $37.95 (proof) and $31.95 (uncirculated) each. A $10.00 surcharge on each coin, which is included in the cost quoted, benefits the ALBC.  After the first 30 days, the coin’s regular price of $41.95 will take effect.
      For details and to purchase the coin, visit the Mint’s website here.

      _______________

    3. Visit the ALBC Calendar detailing all Lincoln events throughout 2009 —
      http://www.abrahamlincoln200.org/calendar/default.aspxisit the ALBC Calendar detailing all Lincoln events throughout 2009″

  6. Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Annual Conference March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School in Saginaw Township.  Mr. Ron Clark will be keynoting.
  7. North Carolina Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be March 16-17 in Pinehurst, NC.  Keynote speakers include Bill McBride and Rick Wormeli.  Ron Williamson from Eastern Michigan University will also be speaking at the conference this year.    
  8. The National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform will be holding their annual conference in June.  See the flyer at their website for details.
  9. Free Professional Development through Webinars! NMSA is offering previously recorded webinars for free from their website.
  10. Classroom 2.0’s Live Calendar.
  11. NECC is coming this summer!  Here’s an excuse to travel to Washington D.C.
  12. Classroom 2.0’s Ning Blog:  This week’s discussion is on the uses of Ning in the classroom.  Archived content is available.
  13. Second Life:
    • No Events specified.  Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled.  See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.
    • Video:  Educational Uses of Second Life
  14. From the Twitterverse:

Websites:

  1. Twiddla :  Its like Elluminate, just without all the expense. (Thanks to Jenny for the heads up on this one!)
  2. Forward Thinking Museum : A  virtual museum worth checking out.

“Letters from our Listeners”:

Shawn and Troy

I’ve spent some time in 5-8, 6-8 and K-8 school environments. Sometimes 5th graders were self-contained while older students moved from teacher to teacher. In other circumstances, 5th grade was used as a transition with single-teacher classrooms and locker access during passing time. I’m currently in a New Jersey K-8 school with no passing time, no lockers and 6-8th graders changing classes.

Knowing all too well the challenges of adolescent behavior and academic performance, I wonder what thoughts you had on the appropriate breakdown of grade levels for elementary vs. middle school. At what grade level should middle school begin (beside the legal requirements for teacher certifications)? Can a single administrator effectively manage a staff who work with students from kindergarten age to their teens, or should different principals handle different grade ranges? What impact does the proximity of 7th and 8th graders to elementary aged students have on academics and/or behavior? How about 5th and 6th graders? In my search for answers on this topic, I found a study done by Duke University in 2007 entitled “Should Sixth Grade be in Elementary or Middle School? An Analysis of Grade Configuration and  Student Behavior.”

Is there such a thing as either an elementary or middle school mentality? Can a teacher have both? Can a principal?
What are your thoughts on this topic?

NMSA Teacher Preparation Standards.

News:

Public Schools Outperform Private Schools in Math Instruction

In another “Freakonomics”-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.“According to our results, schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests,” Lubienski said. “And public schools had more of both.”

Of the five factors, school size and parental involvement “didn’t seem to matter all that much,” Lubienski said, citing a weak correlation between the two factors as “mixed or marginally significant predictors” of student achievement.

They also discovered that smaller class sizes, which are more prevalent in private schools than in public schools, significantly correlate with achievement.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090226093423.htm

Bridging the Character Education Achievement Gap

Throughout his now-famous “Last Lecture,” the late Carnegie Mellon University professor of computer science Randy Pausch talked about what he called the “head fake.” It is the idea that learning and education work best when they work on the personal and general levels simultaneously.
We miss one of the most important aspects of character education, the cognitive head fake, when our obsession with advanced coursework becomes myopic and overshadows the strength both areas could have if working to complement each other in high schools.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/02/26/23sutton-com.h28.html?tmp=804479676

Bridging the Character Education Achievement Gap

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/02/26/23sutton-com.h28.html?tmp=804479676

As James Traub, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, has noted: “[T]he issue is not whether we will have character education, but instead, what kind we will have and what relationship it will bear to the ongoing campaign to improve children’s academic skills.” Indeed, character education’s very survival depends on its quantifiably improving students’ academic skills.

A new character education model should be developed around principles that encourage college-level critical thinking and service to community. It should include the following elements:

1. We should teach dialogue and deliberation through Socratic seminars and consensus-building, so that students learn how to communicate with each other in a democratic setting and the ability to judge ideas on the strength of evidentiary support, not misinformed opinion.

2. We should teach core values and beliefs, so that students identify universal truths they are willing to speak for and work from that will guide the decisions they make as leaders and citizens of their communities.

3. We should teach historical models of leadership, so that students will understand that all great leaders are merely standing on the shoulders of others, and that the values of integrity and compassion don’t come easily. Figures taught could range from Gandhi and Lincoln, to the Bible’s King David, to the explorer Ernest Shackleton.

4. We should provide thoughtful teaching of inequity and inequality as they relate to race, gender, and class, so that students can learn how to speak to one another about diversity in a way that creates progress and does not reinforce stereotypes or systems of power and privilege. Students should be introduced to the writings of authors such as Peggy McIntosh, Cornel West, and James A. Banks.

5. We should teach democratic citizenship and leadership, so that students can learn how to use democratic systems to empower and give voice to all participants in a society to make communities more equal and just. Students should be introduced to scholars such as Walter Parker and historical documents such as the Federalist Papers and Washington’s Newburgh Address.

6. Since moral reasoning is integral to these pursuits, students should be taught to think their way through ethical and moral dilemmas and how to make choices that benefit all and that foster the strength of character to persevere through failures. Lawrence Kohlberg’s “stages of moral development” is a great place to start.

7. We should teach ethical and collaborative decision making and problem-solving, to empower students to change dysfunctional systems and communities. This should teach them that problem-solving is not the sole responsibility of one leader or group, but of a whole community working together.

8. We should give students opportunities for practical application of these precepts and practices, so they can test their new knowledge within the community and attempt to make positive improvements. These opportunities could be through schoolwide community-service projects, school philanthropy projects, and various other school improvement projects that encourage all students to participate.

advisory, MSM, Podcast, TechBy Troy Patterson, , ,

MSM Podcast #63 This discussion is anything but Academic

Items, Events, Calendar, Eclectic Stuff (truc et chose)

  1. Book sale!  Clearance prices!
  2. NMSA’s Middle Level Essentials Conference April 23-24, 2009. Robert Balfanz will be keynoting.  He has done a bunch of research on 6th grade transition factors that has been cited by NMSA.

    • “Robert Balfanz is a research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University and associate director of the Talent Development Middle and High School Project, which is currently working with more than fifty high-poverty secondary schools to develop, implement, and evaluate comprehensive whole-school reforms. His work focuses on translating research findings into effective reforms for high-poverty secondary schools.

      Balfanz has published widely on secondary school reform, high school dropouts, and instructional interventions in high-poverty schools. Recent work includes Locating the Dropout Crisis, with co-author Nettie Legters, in which the numbers and locations of high schools with high dropout rates are identified.  He is currently the lead investigator on a middle school-dropout-prevention project in collaboration with the Philadelphia Education Fund, which is supported by the William Penn Foundation.

      Balfanz received his PhD in education from the University of Chicago.”

  3. NMSA ‘09 Invitation Video
  4. Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Annual Conference March 12 & 13 at White Pine Middle School in Saginaw Township.  Mr. Ron Clark will be keynoting. Approximately 20 days left for the early registration discount.
  5. Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be February 19-20 in Sandusky, OH.  Keynote speakers this year include Mr. Mark McLeod and Mr. Ty Sells.
  6. North Carolina Middle School Association‘s Annual Conference will be March 16-17 in Pinehurst, NC.  Keynote speakers include Bill McBride and Rick Wormeli.  Ron Williamson from Eastern Michigan University will also be speaking at the conference this year.    
  7. The National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform will be holding their annual conference in June.  See the flyer at their website for details.
  8. Teacher Preparation Symposium information at NMSA.
  9. Free Professional Development through Webinars! NMSA is offering previously recorded webinars for free from their website.
  10. Classroom 2.0’s Live Calendar.
  11. NECC is coming this summer!  Here’s an excuse to travel to Washington D.C.
  12. If Mr. Berckemeyer dawdles on getting us the Kindles, soon we’ll want these from Plastic Logic.  “Did you bring pencil, eraser, and epaper with you to class today?”
  13. Classroom 2.0’s Ning Blog:  “The topic this Saturday (February 7th) is “Using Tags” with special guest Jennifer Dorman, author of the blog “Cliotech”, will join us to talk about using tags to save links and resources in Diigo and why it is so important to do so. More information and log-on details at http://live.classroom20.com.”  Archived content is available.
  14. From the Twitterverse:
  15. Second Life:
    • 1/31 Basic Skills Workshop:  Appearance (ISTE Island 3)
    • 2/10   ISTE Speaker Series (TBA) (Watch the board on the island for the Thursday Socials)
    • Video:  Educational Uses of Second Life

Shout outs:

  1. Paul Nichols, a great for twitterverse links.
  2. Gardenglen
  3. Scott Merrick
  4. The Library of Congress

10 Bad Signs for Good Teachers…

Teachers are trained to watch for signs: signs that the students are learning something, that the students aren’t learning anything, that the students are onto something, that the students are up to something. There are some signs that teachers have not been taught to watch for: signs that could spell disaster. Here is a list of 10 such bad signs – if you happen to see one of them, beware!

1. The principal smiles at you. This is a very bad sign. It means the principal is up to something, and that something somehow involves you. It could mean the principal is about to ask you to volunteer to be the new coach for the girls’ soccer team, or to write his two-hour speech for the Mothers’ Club, or to accept three new students from the local home for delinquent children. If the principal not only smiles but asks, “How are you doing?” that’s even worse. And if he or she then adds, “Could I please see you in my office for a minute at your convenience?” – run for your life!
2. Things are going well for you in the classroom. Many inexperienced teachers take this for a good sign, but more seasoned educators know it means things are going to go bad for you-very bad and very soon. Maybe you are about to change to another class, or smitten by a rare tropical disease, or your classroom is about to be invaded by a herd of wild plastic-eating termites. I know several teachers who believe in this bad omen so firmly that they have peace only when things are going horribly in the classroom.
3. Your classroom is completely equipped with audio-visual aids. If you walk into your room and see a record player, an overhead projector, a tape recorder, and a movie projector-that’s bad. It’s a sure sign that none work-because if they did, they would have been “borrowed” long before this. Just in case you test the equipment and discover that everything does work (you realize, of course, that the chances of this happening are one in a million), that’s still a bad sign. It means that you have just been put in charge of maintaining all the audio-visual equipment for the entire school.
4. Your students tell you that you’re their favorite teacher. If this happens, brace yourself. It means the kids want something. That something could be something relatively small: “Let’s not talk about colons and semicolons today. Let’s talk about football.” Or your students could be bargaining for something bigger: “Let’s not have any homework this year, okay?”
5. You are prepared for all your classes for the coming week. Any teacher who does this is only asking for trouble. You cannot tempt Fate so blatantly without expecting dire consequences. And what could some of those consequences be? Maybe you will be struck with the five-day flu on Sunday evening, or there will be a battery of psychological tests this entire week.
6. You have all your report cards finished a day ahead of schedule. This sign, closely related to #5, simply means that the administration has just introduced a new kind of report card, and the old kind (127 of which you have just finished filling out) is now obsolete.
7. Your students do poorly on your test. This is a bad sign- or at least the administration interprets it as a bad sign-which makes it so for you. It means you are an incompetent teacher who ought to be booted out of the classroom as soon as possible. If your students do poorly on a test sh-h-h!-don’t tell anyone, not even your students. Destroy the tests, give a retest, and hope and pray that the kids do better-but not too much better. (See the next sign.)
8. Your students do very well on your test. This too is a bad sign. in fact, it’s a worse sign than #7. It can only mean one of three things: 1) the test was too easy; 2) you are a stupid teacher; or 3) the kids cheated.
9. You have a few free minutes to yourself after school. If this happens, one of the following events is bound to occur: 1) another teacher will report you to the principal for not having enough to do; 2) some kid will come in and ask if he or she could talk to you for a minute and stay 2 hours; or 3) the principal will ask if you could give the janitor a hand with cleaning the bathrooms after school.
10. You receive positive feedback from a parent. Although this sign rarely occurs, it portends trouble. You can be sure that if one parent is praising you, another one is already initiating legal proceedings to have you removed from the classroom. When all is said and done, it’s a better sign to receive no parental feedback than any kind at all.

WebSpotlight:

http://www.nmsa.org/Advocacy/AdvocacyToolstoUse/FundamentalsPresentation/tabid/793/Default.aspx

News:

Powerhouse School District Reaches Beyond the Elite

After decades of grooming a handful of high school students in an exclusive research class to succeed in the elite national Intel Science Talent Search, school administrators this year, for the first time, required every seventh grader to do original research. With similar goals in mind, the district has added honor societies in English, art and music — for a total of seven — to recognize students whose overall grades may keep them out of the National Honor Society. Since 2003, it has expanded its menu of Advanced Placement courses to 25 subjects and opened them to students who previously would not have qualified. And it instituted a policy prohibiting students from being cut from the orchestra, band and most sports, adding “junior varsity 2” teams to accommodate extra players. The district’s unusual focus on these average students in recent years has pleased many but has also drawn criticism that A.P. classes have become less rigorous, students have been coddled, and music groups and sports teams saddled with marginal players.

Students in A.P. classes say that some teachers, now required to accept students who did not pass a qualifying exam or get a teacher’s recommendation, have been known to weed out the weak with heavy reading loads, daily pop quizzes, and zeros on biology labs.

Joe Barrett, 17, a senior, said his United States history teacher went to the opposite extreme in the 2007-8 school year, presenting “elaborate PowerPoints with music videos to keep people interested.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06middle.html?_r=1

Palo Alto superintendent: Achievement gap can’t be eliminated

When it comes to closing the achievement gap, Palo Alto schools Superintendent Kevin Skelly says educators are deluding themselves. And he dares to say what’s become almost unspeakable publicly:

“It’s just not possible for the average kid who comes to this country in seventh or eighth grade, or even third grade, without a word of English and parents with little formal education, to match the achievement levels of kids whose mom has a Ph.D. in English from Stanford and can afford to stay home and spend time supplementing the education of her kids.”

Yet totally eliminating the gap would be “the triumph of hope over experience,” said Skelly, who came from San Diego 19 months ago to take the helm of Palo Alto’s 17 schools. When educators set that lofty goal, “we’re not being honest, and it’s to our detriment,” he said.
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_11613034?source=rss

‘Capturing Kids Hearts’ is goal of more West Michigan school districts

by Beth Loechler | The Grand Rapids Press

Bobbie Fletcher, a science teacher at Chandler Woods Charter Academy in Belmont, is part of a growing trend at area districts where teachers and other school staff put an emphasis on “Capturing Kids’ Hearts.”

Fletcher believes that even the greatest teachers won’t get through to students unless they establish a personal connection with each and every one.

“It’s not just what we teach, it’s how we teach,” she said.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/02/bobbie_fletcher_a_science_teac.html

Academic debates fall short on Twitter

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3601/on-twitter-academic-debates-fall-short
Remember how we were always told that the three things to remember in Real Estate were location, location, location?  Well evidently in the Twitterverse its more about timing than anything when it comes to having an academic discussion on a topic.

NMSA08, TechBy Shawn McGirr,

Will Richardson’s Session

I think one of the statements that made me think the most came out of
Will Richardson’s session the first day.  He talked about how he had
his kids take classes via Skype from “teachers” across the globe on
subjects they self-selected.  I had to chuckle when he described how
one lesson couldn’t finish because the teacher was a 12 year old in
Sweden and it was past his bedtime, so the teaching had to come to a
close for the afternoon.  The opportunity to choose one’s teachers
from a pool of teachers across the globe and move outside the brick-
and-mortar school is a powerful notion in an age of electronic
portfolios.  There were a great many things to take away from the
conference, but the potential of that idea has weighed heavy in my
reflection on the conference, especially when considering the places
we could go with curriculum in the future and the variety of subjects
that could be offered if a collaborative community of middle schools
harnessed it.  Yes, potentially years away . . .

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, Tech, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson,

Podcast 36 Plagarize This!

Podcast #36

News & Events

1. Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2. Innovative Practices Across the Curriculum, June 24 in Minnesota.
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
6. Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7. Transition Practices Research (RMLE Online)
Interesting quotes: “The fact that discipline problems increase upon school transitions suggest that this new school environment poses a challenge to students during early adolescence.”
“The ideal middle school environment engages young adolescents by helping them feel capable of meeting academic challenges, offers them choice and control over their learning, and makes them feel safe and secure in their learning environment (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000). Interventions such as the Coping Power Program—a prevention/intervention program implemented the year prior to and immediately following the middle school transition—can help adolescents meet the new demands associated with transition (Lochman & Wells, 2002).”

Alan November’s Books


YouTube lawsuit test copyright law:

“This would have a profound impact on education, where the benefits of Web 2.0 [technologies] are only just beginning to be realized. These sites offer myriad educational opportunities to reinforce key 21st-century skills, and their diversity offers educators a wide range of choices to include in their lessons and/or practice.”

From eschoolnews.com


Plagarism allegations jolt school
School District 203’s superintendent moved to reassign Naperville Central High School Principal Jim Caudill next school year, while student Steve Su is being asked to return his valedictorian’s medal, after each plagiarized portions of speeches they gave during commencement events last week, the district announced Thursday.


Student Demo uses for Google Phone OS
What do you want your cell phone to be able to do? Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Hal Abelson put that question to about 20 computer-science students this semester when he gave them one assignment: Design a software program for cell phones that use Google Inc.’s upcoming Android mobile operating system.


The 23 Things Wrap up.

Social Bookmarking
18. Learn about tagging and social bookmarking.
19. Set up your account and experience del.icio.us.
20. Revisit RSS and subscribe to new feeds.

Online Video
21. Explore online video sharing sites.
22. Embed and download video from video sharing sites.

Click the link below to listen.

Download: (Note: Please use this link and not the one below)