Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Telstar 3 Group: Classroom Management & WebQuests
Monday, November 30 - 3:30, Crescent Park School, SAD#44
Agenda
Agenda
Is it good writing?
by Olga LaPlante
At some point in my life, I subscribed to the Current Events by Izzit. The site offers other classroom ideas as well, and they often have a somewhat controversial content, which is great - whether you actually agree with the writings and clippings from press being of high quality - for generating discussions, because they often contradict the mainstream news and accounts, and I wouldn't bet my money to say that they are unbiased. Again, the value is in generating a discussion, plus the lessons have questions, and vocabulary to learn.
Anyway, this lesson was published just recently - the lessons are free and they stay online for a couple of weeks. This will make you chuckle at least, but also make you think. I would love to see comments on this one.
PS. Mind the beautiful English language, with words like "mark" (Br) and "sit" for "grade" and "take" (Am) or references to A Level English Exams.
At some point in my life, I subscribed to the Current Events by Izzit. The site offers other classroom ideas as well, and they often have a somewhat controversial content, which is great - whether you actually agree with the writings and clippings from press being of high quality - for generating discussions, because they often contradict the mainstream news and accounts, and I wouldn't bet my money to say that they are unbiased. Again, the value is in generating a discussion, plus the lessons have questions, and vocabulary to learn.
Anyway, this lesson was published just recently - the lessons are free and they stay online for a couple of weeks. This will make you chuckle at least, but also make you think. I would love to see comments on this one.
PS. Mind the beautiful English language, with words like "mark" (Br) and "sit" for "grade" and "take" (Am) or references to A Level English Exams.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Featuring the Work of Jerry Bracey
I just discovered that Jerry Bracey recently passed away. In his work he had battled the misuse of statistics and testing. If you haven't had a chance to see his work, I encourage you to do so.
The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education, 2009
32 Principles of Data Interpretation
32 Principles of Data Interpretation Grouped
Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality
Summary of His Work: Gerald Bracey
Jason Ohler: In Tribute to Gerald Bracey and His Campaign to Keep Education Pundits Honest
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” ~Disraeli (popularized by Mark Twain)
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
"Please Be Proud of Me"
By Pam Kenney
“Please be proud of me even if I don’t get all the answers right…”
The publication in 1981 of David Elkind’s The Hurried Child focused national attention on a growing trend by educators and parents to push our children to grow up too soon. Schools taught kids to read, write, and add at earlier ages than ever before; parents prodded them to excel. The hours after school, on weekends, and even during summer breaks were filled by music lessons, sports practices, academic enrichment classes, and specialty camps. Elkind worried that our increasing tendency to push children to achieve success early would have a disastrous effect unless we changed our collective expectation.
Almost 30 years later we not only haven’t mitigated the pressure we place on our children, we are hurrying them more than ever. When I was an elementary school principal, I worked with children who were under so much stress from unrealistic parental expectations that their fingernails were bitten to the quick, they lied to their parents about assigned homework, they cried in school when they couldn’t grasp a new concept immediately, and they hid or threw away papers with even average grades on them long before they could reach a parent’s hand. Every teacher recognizes the panicked look on a child’s face when she realizes she didn’t do well on a test. “Mom’s/Dad’s going to kill me!” is a too common refrain.
Something’s got to give because:
-Although the overall suicide rate decreased slightly from the early 1990s through the early 2000s, the rate of teen suicide increased 6%. For children 10-14, the suicide rate increase during the same period was 100%. According to the CDC, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for young people from 10 to 14.
-Child psychologists report a staggering number of youngsters with chronic stress-related headaches, stomachaches, phobias, and free-floating anxiety.
-Girls as young as seven or eight are dieting to achieve an impossible standard of thinness.
-Serious sports-related injuries have increased several-hundred fold for elementary age children.
Experts offer a variety of suggestions for parents to begin to come to grips with the hurried-child syndrome. I’m certainly no expert, but my plea today is for parents to relax the expectations they have for their children. School is a place to learn, and learning is a process. No child understands everything the first time, and some children need weeks of patient instruction before they can grasp a concept. For some children, learning to read is a slow, painstaking process, but eventually they will read. Learning math facts is torture for other kids, but they’ll remember them at some point.
Please try hard to emphasize the positive when talking to your child about grades. If a mark is lower than you had hoped, find out what the trouble is. Look for progress during a school year and help her set realistic goals for improvement. Expecting your child to make straight A’s is almost always unrealistic and unreasonable. Above all, please don’t yell, spank, or restrict privileges when your son or daughter brings home a grade lower than an A or B. A raised voice and punishment not only don’t motivate your child to work to improve his grades, they dangerously undermine his self-confidence and sap his incentive to learn.
Children want desperately to please their parents, and they should be doing just that. They work hard and try their best day after day in school. I firmly believe that our children are gifts to us. As parents, one of our gifts to them must be to expect a lot less perfection, to remind ourselves every day that they are works in progress, and to let them know by word and deed that they are loved.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Critical Thinking Memories
Question: Can you remember when you became aware that you could think critically?
Was it in school or out of school?
Did someone model it for you?
LearnCentral & vRoom
Learning in Maine now has an annex space at LearnCentral. Join LearnCentral and get a free (3 participant) Elluminate vRoom for synchronous learning.
LearnCentral Webinars
Today, Monday, November 16th, 8pm Eastern(US): Cool Video Projects and How To Do Them with Rushton Hurley. This month one of the Next Vista Digital Dream Team group will introduce a school where multimedia is infused in the entire curriculum, as well as tell about a project he is doing. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/33456
Tuesday, November 17th, 8pm Eastern(US): The monthly PBS / Classroom 2.0 webinar on teaching. "Helping Kids Understand Viruses and Vaccinations with Sid the Science Kid." LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/37480
Wednesday, November 18th, 8pm Eastern(US): The new Learning Game Series. This week: Drawing Lesson Plans from Gaming, a Case Study of Caduceus, an online learning game built as part of Children's Hospital Boston's "Generation Cures" initiative. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/
Thursday, November 19th, 8pm Eastern(US): Howard Rheingold Presents "Howard's Brainstorms!" Part 2. The topic will be "Thinking about Thinking Tools." Howard will briefly summarize some of the foundational documents in this area, recap via screensharing and TheBrain, and then facilitate a discussion inviting questions from the community online. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/37483
Saturday, November 21st, 8pm Eastern(US): "Succeeding with Web 2.0 Projects" with special guest Terry Freedman. Last year, Terry Freedman worked with 6 primary (elementary) schools and one secondary (high) school to secure around 800,000 dollars'-worth of government money and run a project involving podcasting and making videos. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/27720
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Failure
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~ Thomas Edison
Perseverance Resources
Courage Resources
Character Resources
Persistence Quotes
Friday, November 13, 2009
What's in your school's way to a brighter future?
by Olga LaPlante
This survey from Dangerously Irrelevant may be helpful when you are trying to identify areas for change in the future to ensure that your school/district is making more progress than it is currently. Check it out and offer your responses. Even though it is called "3 minute survey" it doesn't take nearly that long.
3 Minute Survey
This survey from Dangerously Irrelevant may be helpful when you are trying to identify areas for change in the future to ensure that your school/district is making more progress than it is currently. Check it out and offer your responses. Even though it is called "3 minute survey" it doesn't take nearly that long.
3 Minute Survey
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Everyday Math: Yea or Nay?
By Pam Kenney
Over the last few years, many school districts across Maine have adopted Everyday Mathematics as the math curriculum for their kindergarten through sixth grade students. The program's development by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project began more than 20 years ago, and the first textbooks were published in 1998. Since then it has been implemented, then rejected, in school systems across the country, often because children taught using Everyday Mathematics consistently fail to meet state math standards. Frequently called "fuzzy math", it eschews rote learning and relies on spiraling, a method that introduces children to a concept but quickly moves on to another concept before mastery is achieved. Concepts are re-introduced throughout the school year with the hope that, through repetition, the kids will learn them. Unfortunately, spiraling doesn't work very well. Top math students are bored, average learners are frustrated because, just when they are starting to "get it", another topic is introduced, and children who are struggling in math are overwhelmed and give up in despair.
The seeds of Everyday Mathematics and other programs like it started to sprout more than 50 years ago with the launch of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union and the subsequent realization by U.S. educators that our students needed more difficult math and science courses to help the country excel globally. One result of that decision was that the rote-learning focus of math instruction at the time was replaced by one that emphasized the "whys" of math. "Carrying" and "borrowing", for example, were replaced by lessons on re-grouping and learning about ones, tens, and hundreds. That shift was needed and changed how math was taught for years. The problem now is that we've made the "hows" and "whys" of math so important that we've relegated concept mastery and computing skills to secondary, undervalued positions in some math curricula. Everyday Mathematics is a prime example of the new philosophy, and its inherent spiraling and neglect of mastery have had a negative effect on learning. I think many Maine schools jumped on the Everyday Mathematics band wagon without researching its many drawbacks thoroughly enough; and math programs are so expensive, it will be a long time before these schools can afford to replace it.
Over the last few years, many school districts across Maine have adopted Everyday Mathematics as the math curriculum for their kindergarten through sixth grade students. The program's development by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project began more than 20 years ago, and the first textbooks were published in 1998. Since then it has been implemented, then rejected, in school systems across the country, often because children taught using Everyday Mathematics consistently fail to meet state math standards. Frequently called "fuzzy math", it eschews rote learning and relies on spiraling, a method that introduces children to a concept but quickly moves on to another concept before mastery is achieved. Concepts are re-introduced throughout the school year with the hope that, through repetition, the kids will learn them. Unfortunately, spiraling doesn't work very well. Top math students are bored, average learners are frustrated because, just when they are starting to "get it", another topic is introduced, and children who are struggling in math are overwhelmed and give up in despair.
The seeds of Everyday Mathematics and other programs like it started to sprout more than 50 years ago with the launch of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union and the subsequent realization by U.S. educators that our students needed more difficult math and science courses to help the country excel globally. One result of that decision was that the rote-learning focus of math instruction at the time was replaced by one that emphasized the "whys" of math. "Carrying" and "borrowing", for example, were replaced by lessons on re-grouping and learning about ones, tens, and hundreds. That shift was needed and changed how math was taught for years. The problem now is that we've made the "hows" and "whys" of math so important that we've relegated concept mastery and computing skills to secondary, undervalued positions in some math curricula. Everyday Mathematics is a prime example of the new philosophy, and its inherent spiraling and neglect of mastery have had a negative effect on learning. I think many Maine schools jumped on the Everyday Mathematics band wagon without researching its many drawbacks thoroughly enough; and math programs are so expensive, it will be a long time before these schools can afford to replace it.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Future of Education Interview Series
- November 11th, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Richard Halverson and Allan Collins on Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology.
- November 12th, Thursday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Larry Cuban on on School Reform and Classroom Practice.
- November 19th, Thursday (5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern) "Howard's Brainstorms!" Part 2, with Howard Rheingold; (at Conversations.net).
- December 1st, Tuesday (1:00pm Pacific / 4:00pm Eastern): Dan Willingham on Why Students Don't Like School
- December 2nd, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Tentative: Julie Young.
- December 3rd, Thursday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Curtis Bonk on The World Is Open.
- December 8th, Tuesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Angela Maiers on Classroom Habitudes
- December 9th, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Cheri Toledo Reports on Her Web 2.0 in Education Survey
- January 14th, Thursday (5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern, 12am GMT): "Howard's Brainstorms!" with Howard Rheingold (at Conversations.net).
- February 3rd, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): James Paul Gee
- POSTPONED: Dennis Littky on Big Picture Schools
Monday, November 9, 2009
ePals Webinars for Maine
Maine Connects at ePals
Come to a one-hour free webinar to learn how to join the ePals Global Community and find partners for your classroom or students. Also, learn how to sign up your students to use free, safe and protected ePals SchoolMail, featuring TRUSTe certification of child privacy.
Join the largest global community of K12 learners, with 600,000 classrooms in 200 countries, in true global collaboration and learning! Also learn about the newest web 2.0 projects in ePals, Team Earth (conservation and climate change) and Digital Storytelling.
All Maine schools share a subdomain: @maine.epals.com. This makes it easy for your students to collaborate with other students in Maine on state-specific activities.
Webinar times:
• 10-11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13If you are interested in one of these webinars, please email Rita Oates, VP of education markets, at roates@corp.epals.com. She will provide the URL, password and toll-free number to anyone who is interested.
• 4-5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23
• 4:15-5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2
• 3:15-4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9
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