My wife and I had Luke “opt out” of No Child Left Behind standardized testing (here in Pennsylvania known as the Pennsylvania System of School Achievement, or PSSAs).
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How To Prevent Suicide, want to help people - 0 views
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Whether you want to help or desperately need help, this is the place to begin a life-changing experience. Meet new people and tell your story.
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shared by Suzie Nestico on 27 Mar 11
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Father: Why I didn't let my son take standardized tests - The Answer Sheet - The Washin... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...ABkgICTB_blog.html
edu_news administrator all_teachers curriculum education reform education standardized tests standardized testing
shared by Suzie Nestico on 27 Mar 11
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Last week I did just that. I looked at the test and determined that it violated my religion. How, you might ask? That’s an entirely different blog, but I can quickly say that my religion does not allow for or tolerate the act of torture and I determined that making Luke sit for over 10 hours filling in bubble sheets would have been a form of mental and physical torture, given that we could give him no good reason as to why he needs to take this test.
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ch a reason for opting out of the PSSA testing will negatively affect the school’s participation rate and could POTENTIALLY have a negative impact on the school’s Adequate Yearly Progress under the rules of No Child Left Behind.
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I asked Luke what he thought about it all. He just smiled. I also asked him what some of his friends were saying. According to Luke, they did not believe that NCLB and PSSAs were going to be used to evaluate the school. They didn’t know about AYP and the sanctions that came with it. Luke’s friends just thought the tests, “were used to make sure our teachers are teaching us the right stuff.” My guess is that is what most parents believe. Why wouldn’t they believe it? They’ve been told for nine years that we are raising standards, holding teachers accountable, and leaving no children behind. Who wouldn’t support that?
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This time, instead of having Luke sit through another meeting, he researched the Japanese earthquake and tsunami as a current events project.
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The point was to give Luke some experience in how to conduct planned civil disobedience in a lawful manner.
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That, of course, is the real problem. NCLB and the standards movement is a political bait and switch. Sold as one thing (positive) to the public and then in practice, something radically different (punitive). This is probably one of the biggest reasons I decided to do the boycott—to make my community aware and to try and enlighten them of the real issues.
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My answer is that the government is not listening. Teachers, principals, teacher educators, child development specialists, and educational researchers have been trying to get this message out for years. No one will listen.
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Civil disobedience is the only option left. It’s my scream in a dark cave for light. I want teachers to teach again. I want principals to lead again. I want my school to be a place of deep learning and a deeper love of teaching. I want children exposed to history, science, art, music, physical education, and current events—the same experience President Obama is providing his own children.
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Maybe civil disobedience will be contagious. Maybe parents will join us in reclaiming our schools and demand that teachers and administrators hands be untied and allow them to do their jobs—engage students in a rich curriculum designed to promote deep learning and critical thinking.
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Another PA parent opts his child out of PSSA standardized testing as a measure of civil disobedience. Word of caution: This can very much hurt a school's Adequate Yearly Progress and ultimately the school may suffer. But, what if this movement spread amongst parents? What then? Would the government take over the school?
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For parents who want fun things for their students to do over the summer that will help students learn more and move forward in math and literacy skills - this is a website to check out. "Students enter the tournament by going to www.DimensionU.com/SummerChallenge. Once registered (parental permission is required) they will compete in math- and literacy-based games for a chance to win gift cards and summer-related prizes like inline skates, inflatable pools, beach volleyball sets, or tents. Five lucky players will be randomly selected to win an iPod Nano each. New this year is a social networking component that encourages students to build online "learning communities" of friends, family, community members, or even teachers - basically anyone who wants to help support the child's academic efforts during the summer. Participants who earn the highest number of social network points in each tournament round will win prizes separate from those awarded for game play performance." -
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This incredible website lets you pick all of the software you want and automatically says NO to toolbars and "junk" you don't want on the computer. I'm using it to make sure I have everything on the new computers I'm putting in at school. It is missing a few virtual world programs but overall it saves TONS of time! It even does updates! Works for Linux and PC.
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What teachers really want to tell parents - CNN.com - 12 views
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if I get an offer to lead a school system of orphans, I will be all over it, but I just can't deal with parents anymore; they are killing us
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if you really want to help your children be successful, stop making excuses for them
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it's OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are vexed by those parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they want to swoop in and save their child every time something goes wrong. If we give a child a 79 on a project, then that is what the child deserves. Don't set up a time to meet with me to negotiate extra credit for an 80. It's a 79, regardless of whether you think it should be a B+
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Before you challenge those low grades you feel the teacher has "given" your child, you might need to realize your child "earned" those grades and that the teacher you are complaining about is actually the one that is providing the best education
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more and more lawyers are accompanying parents for school meetings dealing with their children
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never talk negatively about a teacher in front of your child. If he knows you don't respect her, he won't either
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So here's what I want to tell parents: 1. I promise I will care about your child. 2. I promise I will listen to your concerns about your child. 3. You are your child's first teacher. You have a lot of influence in your child's learning… more influence than I will have....
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Take your data and transform it into visual information that can be shared with anyone, anywhere. Your wish is our command! Widgenie empowers everyone, from bloggers to business people, to quickly visualize data and share it in many different ways. Now you can publish data in the places you already know and love, places like iGoogle, Facebook, Blogger, and even your own website. We combine all the power of an enterprise-level business intelligence platform and provide it in a convenient Web 2.0 widget. It's simple to get started, all you need is the Internet, a browser and an understanding of your needs. Are you: * A blogger who wants to make their latest poll data pop right off the page? * A marketing rep who needs to share sales figures without waiting for IT? * A Sales manager who wants his team to update their own client data? * A soccer coach who needs an easier way to display the most recent stats? If so, then widgenie is the service for you. With just a quick rub of the lamp, all your data can easily be visualized and shared with everyone who needs it. Best of all, you can do it all by yourself! And it's free!
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Access students around the entire world that want to learn your language. You can teach class no matter where you are, at any time you want, without having to go anywhere!
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So what is it that we want students to gain from a k-12 science education? What are the goals we should constantly work to promote in students? Considering that rote memorization of scientific ideas leads to little understanding, I have identified ten goals for students that focus on life learning skills, and other traits that will be valuable to them in the future, no matter their career choice. Each goal below is accompanied by more specific explanations of what I might see students doing who meet that goal. I hope whatever your goals are for your students, you have thought about them extensively. We all want great things for our students, but if we do not have well articulated goals, our efforts will not be focused.
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For those who still print things, this website of teacher printables have a ton of them. Field Trip permission forms, emergency contact forms. Just about every form a teacher could want. You can download and prit whatever you want for free.
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Photo cards are a powerful new way to tweet. Photos scroll by -- have you wondered how some are photo cards and some are Tweets with links? Here's how you get your photo card on Twitter -- it needs to be the right dimensions (funny dimensions don't get it.) I've also found that you should add them directly on Twitter and not through an app. Read this information on how you have Photocards - some of these are for developers but if you want your pics to be cards and not links, you'll want to note the dimensions and that file sizes should be less than 1 MB as well.
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Student happiness and motivation are so vitally important that without them, kids simply don't want to learn. If kids don't want to learn, then they won't learn. It's that simple.
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"Where's the fun in that? I have a confession to make. A few years ago I banned fun in my school. Let me give you a little context. I was speaking to all of our teachers, teaching assistants and support staff at the very start of the first INSET session of the new school year. My reasoning was straightforward: I wanted I wanted fun to be superseded by joy."
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"The new code of practice has got rid of behaviour as a category and has replaced it with Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties. This may be the cause of the child's difficulties but the manifestation is often in their challenging behaviour. Within school there are some families where their behaviour could almost be considered to have a genetic component. We appreciate that every child, even identical twins, are individuals and we always treat them as such. Today I wanted to refer a child who appears to have some Social, Emotional or Mental Health Difficulties to our Educational Psychologist. He wanted to have a chat about the child before accepting the referral, fair enough, I was happy to chat."
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This is how you link to a specific starting point in a YouTube video. Basically, just add #t=XmYs to the end of the video URL. X is the number of minutes and Y is the seconds you want skipped when the video is viewed. -
Right after posting this, I realized there is now a Share option on the YouTube site that you can use to make this even easier. While viewing the YouTube video: 1) pause the video at the point where you want others to start watching, 2) click the Share button, 3) click options (directly under the link), 4) put a check in the Start at box, and finally 5) copy the link provided by YouTube. Note that you can also type in the start at time as minutes:seconds. The #t part of the link that makes the video start at the spot you specified is included in the link.
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Idaho Teachers Fight a Reliance on Computers - NYTimes.com - 8 views
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The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.
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I'm not sure what this means, "High-tech Vangard," though I guess I understand why a state would want to make up a term like this and use it to label what they are trying to do.
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To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators.
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To me, the salient question is, "Are teachers and administrators less important than technology?" If they're not, then you find some other way to pay for the tech.
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And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
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OK, several comments here. 1. I have no problem with "less a lecturer." However, I do not advocate the elimination of lecture. It is one of many methods for teacher and learning. 2. The implication of the last part of the sentence is that the computer is becoming the/a teacher, delivering instruction. I do not agree with this characterization of technology. It is a tool for helping students learn, not for teaching them (with some exceptions). It extends the learners access to knowledge and skills...
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And some say they are opposed to shifting money to online classes and other teaching methods whose benefits remain unproved.
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My question here is, "Why are the requiring online classes?" If it is part of the "high-tech vangard" thing, then I don't really understand. If it is because they believe that it is more effective for learning, well, that's a complex issue that depends on so many things that have NOTHING to do with the state's legislature. If it is because students will be taking online courses in their future, and then need to learn to take online courses while in high school, then I can support that. I do not believe that it is appropriate to compare online courses to face-to-face courses. Fact is, sometime online is the only way you can access the knowledge/skills that you need. We need to be comfortable with that. But it has little to do with technology. It's learning!
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improve student learning.
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This is a phrase that irks me. I think that we should be using contemporary information and communication technologies for teaching and learning, because our prevailing information environment is networked, digital, and info-abundant. We should be using tech to make learning more relevant to our time...
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“I fought for my country,” she said. “Now I’m fighting for my kids.” Gov. C. L. Otter, known as Butch, and Tom Luna, the schools superintendent, who have championed the plan, said teachers had been misled by their union into believing the changes were a step toward replacing them with computers. Mr. Luna said the teachers’ anger was intensified by other legislation, also passed last spring, that eliminated protections for teachers with seniority and replaced it with a pay-for-performance system. Some teachers have also expressed concern that teaching positions could be eliminated and their raises reduced to help offset the cost of the technology. Mr. Luna acknowledged that many teachers in the state were conservative Republicans like him — making Idaho’s politics less black and white than in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, where union-backed teachers have been at odds with politicians.
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The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace.
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This is so far off the mark that I do not know where to begin. OK, here's what I would say. "Our children live in a time of rapid change. Therefore, they must become resourceful and relentless learners. Being a teacher in such classrooms requires an expanding array of skills and activities, among them, being resourceful and relentless learners in front of their students -- adapting to today's prevailing information environment and the information and communication technologies that work it." Probably need to find a simpler way to express this.
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The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits
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Mr. Luna said this would allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something he said was increasingly common in college
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I agree with this. It's a good reason to require Online courses, to learn to take them, and to be expected to take some course that is so esoteric that it's not offered locally.
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becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.
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I am not in disagreement with this statement. I'd be no less disagreeable with omission to textbook.
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Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.
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We get so hung up on "technology." It's the information that's changed. There should be a check box that says, in what ways is the lesson including networked, digital, and abundant information?
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That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions — the Socratic method — as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through “The Book Thief,” a novel about a family in Germany that hides a Jewish girl during World War II.
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This is a wonderful method for teaching and timeless. However, if the students are also backchanneling the conversation, then more of them are participating, sharing, agreeing and disagreeing, and the conversation has to potential to extend beyond the sounding of the bell. I'm not saying, this is a way of integrating technology, I'm saying that networked collaboration is a relevant way for students to be learning and will continue to learn after school is over.
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Her room mostly lacks high-tech amenities. Homework assignments are handwritten on whiteboards. Students write journal entries in spiral notebooks. On the walls are two American flags and posters paying tribute to the Marines, and on the ceiling a panel painted by a student thanks Ms. Rosenbaum for her service
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When I read this, I see a relic of classrooms of the past, that is ignoring today's prevailing information landscape.
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Ms. Rosenbaum did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. “I’m teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can’t do that.”
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Yes, she's helping them to think deeply, but how much more deeply would the be thinking if she asked her students to work in teams and find videos on YouTube that portray some aspect of the book, critique and defend their selections.
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She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master’s degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes.
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Again, it is not useful to compare online course to f2f. They're different, and people need to learn to work within them.
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The group will also organize training for teachers. Ms. Cook said she did worry about how teachers would be trained when some already work long hours and take second jobs to make ends meet
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For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.
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It disturbs me that policies may be coming out of an environment where the conversation probably has to be factored down to such simplistic statements. Education is complex, it's personal, and it is critical -- and it's not just about what employers want!
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“There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.”
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If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she’s missing the boat.
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Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.” Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.”
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This is a beautifully made 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?' maths game with 5 levels of difficulty to choose from. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
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Online Education - Introducing the Microlecture Format - Open Education - 0 views
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in online education “tiny bursts can teach just as well as traditional lectures when paired with assignments and discussions.” The microlecture format begins with a podcast that introduces a few key terms or a critical concept, then immediately turns the learning environment over to the students.
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“It’s a framework for knowledge excavation,” Penrose tells Shieh. “We’re going to show you where to dig, we’re going to tell you what you need to be looking for, and we’re going to oversee that process.”
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It clearly will not work for a course that is designed to feature sustained classroom discussions. And while the concept will work well when an instructor wants to introduce smaller chunks of information, it will likely not work very well when the information is more complex.
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1. List the key concepts you are trying to convey in the 60-minute lecture. That series of phrases will form the core of your microlecture. 2. Write a 15 to 30-second introduction and conclusion. They will provide context for your key concepts. 3. Record these three elements using a microphone and Web camera. (The college information-technology department can provide advice and facilities.) If you want to produce an audio-only lecture, no Webcam is necessary. The finished product should be 60 seconds to three minutes long. 4. Design an assignment to follow the lecture that will direct students to readings or activities that allow them to explore the key concepts. Combined with a written assignment, that should allow students to learn the material. 5. Upload the video and assignment to your course-management software.
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This really isn't lecture - it's more like an introduction to guide them toward reading and discussion.
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the microlecture format similarly requires teachers to get the key elements across in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, it forces educators to think in a new way.
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Given that it is tough to justify the traditional lecture timeframes
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Whither censorship? « What Counts! - 0 views
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EXcellent reading on digital citizenship and why some parents want to block use at school.
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Very interesting ponderings from an elementary teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada about the balance and issues that have caused some parents to want to block all "social" tools in school. I think she has very balanced ponderings on this and it is excellent reading.