"Education Technology" via DaBigLeap
- Gude to The Digital Learning Farm
- Guide to 21st Century Skills, Literacies & Fluency
- Guide to Blogging
- Guide to Globally Connected Learning
- Guide to Twitter in the K-8 Classroom
- iPad: Activities
- iPad: Collaborative Classroom eBook
- iPad: Guide to Creating your own eBook for the iPad
In another part of a series of Info-flyers, I have added the “Getting Started with Skype” flyer.
The guide encompasses step-by-step help from Skype projects, preparing your students for a Skype call, transforming a Skype call into a Learning call to student job responsibilities before, during and after the actual call.
Here’s a pretty amazing interactive animation of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”:
I’m adding it to The Best Collections Of “The Best” Pieces Of Art Ever Created.
Giving Parents the Runaround on School Turnarounds is the title of the press release from the respected Great Lakes Center announcing a review of a recent report on marketing unwise “school turnaround strategies.”
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
Federal school “turnaround” strategies that call for firing teachers, replacing managers, or closing or converting public schools into charters are often met with resistance and anger among the parents whose children attend those schools. A recent study released by Public Agenda which focuses on how to market the concept of turnaround strategies fails to address the substantive concerns of resistant parents nor questions the soundness of these strategies as a way to improve schools, according to a new Think Twice review.
The report, What’s Trust Got to Do With It? A Communications and Engagement Guide for School Leaders Tackling the Problem of Persistently Failing Schools, was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by William J. Mathis, an education researcher and former school superintendent who has studied school turnaround strategies.
You can read the full review here.
I highly recommend checking out Bag the Web by clicking here!!
Applications for Education
If you're thinking about publishing your own iBooks or having your students publish iBooks, Hot Apps 4 HOTS: From Inception to ISBN could be very instructive for you.
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| It's a personality-rich group! ;-) In New Canaan, from left to right, our group includes Michael, Charlie, Molly, Alex, and Isabelle - Franci and David are missing from the picture, but we'll catch them soon. |
We started collecting video clips for the project - recordings of people responding to the prompt, "Tell us about a story that changed your world." The following video is a compilation of four Van Meter students' responses.
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| Michael is developing a schedule of WRAD activity |
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| My assistant tells me to write faster. |
Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Three Browser Extensions Every Teacher Should Try
2. Stocks, Dividends, and Inflation Explained in Under Two Minutes
3. 30 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
4. 15 Resources for Safer Internet Day
5. 7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects
6. ThinkB4U - Web Safety Tutorials from Google
7. Gooru - Great Collections of Math and Science Resources
Would you like to contribute to the Fifth Anniversary Classroom 2.0 Book? If so, we're still accepting contributions. Contributing to the Classroom 2.0 Fifth Anniversary Book could be an excellent way to have your ideas read by a large audience.
Please visit the official advertisers and marketing partners that help keep this blog going.
LearnBoost provides a free online gradebook service for teachers.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
The Worth Ave Group offers insurance plans for school technology.
Fifty Sneakers offers a great service for creating multimedia online quizzes.
ABCya.com is a provider of free educational games for K-5.
Lesley University offers quality online graduate programs for teachers.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers. In February I will be holding a free public webinar through UMBC.
Ed Tech Teacher offers professional development services for schools. I will be speaking at their winter conference on March 3.
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It was announced this week that Minnesota was one of ten states that have received a waiver from No Child Left Behind. Oh, happy day.
Schools here will still be accountable but on a broader, somewhat more sensible set of measurements. At least according to our Commissioner of Education in a memo sent on Thursday:
At the core of the new system is the use of multiple measurements for accountability. Unlike AYP, which is mostly centered around proficiency, Minnesota’s proposed Multiple Measurements Rating (MMR) uses four measurements, weighted equally, to measure school performance:
- Proficiency- Schools earn points in the MMR by meeting AYP proficiency goals in individual student subgroups. The percentage of subgroups that make AYP determines the percentage of points a school receives. Please note that for the purposes of the MMR, subgroups cannot make AYP through Safe Harbor or Growth.
- Growth- Using the same methodology as the Minnesota Growth Model, students are measured by their performance on the MCAs relative to their performance in the most recent year they took the test. Schools get a growth score based on the average growth of all students in the school.
- Achievement gap reduction- Schools are measured based on how the growth of their students from the seven lower-performing subgroups (Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, English Learners, students in poverty, and special education students) compares to the statewide average growth of higher-performing subgroups. Schools earn MMR points based on their ability to reduce the achievement gap.
- Graduation rate- Schools earn points through the same methodology as proficiency: by the percentage of their subgroups that reach their AYP target for graduation rates. Starting next year, we will use the new, federally-mandated, cohort-adjusted graduation rate calculation methodology.
I am still fond of the "stars" system I proposed in 2003. Points earned for:
Star One: School climate. Funny how a person can sense the safety, friendliness, and sense of caring within minutes of walking into a school. Little things like cleanliness, displays of student work, open doors to classrooms, laughter, respectful talk, presence of volunteers, and genuine smiles from both adults and kids are the barometers of school climate. If a school doesn’t earn this star, a parent doesn’t need to bother looking at the other criteria. Get your kids out quickly.
Star Two: Individual teacher quality. This is why total school rating systems aren’t very helpful. Five-star teachers are found in one-star schools and one-star teachers are found in five-star schools. Listen to what other parents have said about the teachers your children will have. Insist that your kids get the teachers that get good reviews.
Star Three: Libraries and technology. The quality of the library is the clearest sign of how much a school values reading, teaching for independent thinking, and life-long learning. A trained librarian and a welcoming, well-used collection of current books, magazines and computers with Internet access tells a parent that the teachers and principal value more than the memorization of facts from a text book, that a diversity of ideas and opinions is important, and that reading is not just necessary, but pleasurable and important.
Star Four: Elective and extracurricular offerings. What happens in class is important. But so is what happens during the other 18 hours of the day. I want elementary schools for my kids that offer after-school clubs and activities that develop social skills and interests. I want secondary schools that are rich with art, sports, tech ed., music and community service choices that develop individual talents, leadership, and pride in accomplishment.
Star Five: Commitment to staff development. The amount of exciting scientifically-based research on effective teaching practices and schools is overwhelming. Brain-based research, reflective practice, systematic examination of student work, strategies for working with disadvantaged students are some of the latest findings that can have a positive impact on how to best teach children. But none of it does a lick of good if it stays in the universities or journals. Good schools give financial priority to teaching teachers how to improve their practice. Would you send your child to a doctor who doesn’t know the latest practice in his field?
Too wishy-washy for today's pseudo-research driven politicos, I am sure. But as Mike Petrill (via Larry Cuban's blog) writes:
...Every high-end school boasts about its commitment to the “whole child,” to kids’ intellectual, emotional, social, and physical development. These schools would never consider their graduates to be well-educated without an appreciation for the arts, participation in sports, a commitment to community service, and the development of strong character…. Are these non-academic attributes just “extras” — luxuries that schools serving poor or working class kids just can’t afford? Or are they as essential as academics, for everyone?
I have never understood the norm-referenced "proficiency" requirements. Requiring that all students read at an 5th grade "reading level" is like mandating that all students reach a 5th grade weight of, say, 100 pounds. 
The sad thing about such arbitrary measurements is that only those kids close to "proficiency" get much attention. If I want to get as many kids in my class to 100 pounds this year as possible, I'm not going to pay much attention to those kids already at 110 pounds since they are already over weight "proficiency" or those weighing less than 80 pounds since they aren't going to make it anyway.
The growth model (item two in the new MN categories makes a good deal more sense. Now every child needs to add, say, 5% body weight each year. The challenge - and possibility - is that all children will move ahead and everyone's growth becomes important again. Kids that are far behind and way ahead will now contribute to the overall success rate of the school by making progress.
Minnesota's new plan still relies far too much on test scores, but it is step in the right direction. Hopefully parents will continue to judge schools on more factors than the politicians do. Education is too important to be another pawn in partisan gamesmanship.
