STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics

Maine Payways to STEM
Maine K-12 STEM Ed Report Card
The Maine STEM Collaborative Conference - January 29th, 2010 - Agenda & Register
Maine DOE Science and Technology Page




Obama Unveils Projects to Bolster STEM Teaching

Verbs for Learning Series: Debriefing, Reviewing, Reflecting

Debriefing, Reviewing, Reflection @ LIM Resources

One to One Schools

The Maine Thing About 1-to-1 Computing

1 to 1 Schools Blog

One to One Institute (Ning)

District Administration: Are One-to-One Laptop Programs Worth the Investment?

Steve Hargadon: The Truth about 1:1 Laptop Progams

The End of Techno-Critique: The Naked Truth about 1:1 Laptop Initiatives and Educational Change by Mark E. Weston and Alain Bain

Personal Information in 2010

Digital Natives
Steve Hargadon: Facebook's Data About Us: Mind-boggling and Scary

Thoughts?

Should Education Be a Race?

"The economic motive has always figured in the spread of mass education in the United States, but recently it has predominated, edging out all the other reasons we send kids to school: civic, social, ethical, developmental." ~ Mike Rose

There is big money involved in the federal education grant program, Race to the Top (RttT). States across the land, including Maine, are scrambling to pass legislation that will put them in contention for an infusion of funding. The requirements are:

--Turn around the lowest-achieving schools.

--Create competitive academic standards and tests that prepare students for college and the work force.

--Build data systems to track students from grade to grade.

--Connect teacher and principal salaries to student performance.

--Loosen caps on charter schools.

Question: Are we selling our souls for money?


President Dwight Eisenhower had the following to say about local control of education:

"A distinguishing characteristic of our nation — and a great strength — is the development of our institutions within the concept of individual worth and dignity. Our schools are among the guardians of that principle. Consequently . . . and deliberately their control and support throughout our history have been — and are — a state and local responsibility. . . . Thus was established a fundamental element of the American public school system — local direction by boards of education responsible immediately to the parents of children. Diffusion of authority among tens of thousands of school districts is a safeguard against centralized control and abuse of the educational system that must be maintained. We believe that to take away the responsibility of communities and states in educating our children is to undermine not only a basic element of our freedoms but a basic right of our citizens."

In the end, does more data ever improve our lives? See Neil Postman's "Informing Ourselves to Death."

" . . . It is all the same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory." ~ Postman

Do we want corporations and technocrats to determine how and what our children learn? See the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Check out who is - and who isn't - on the boards.

When it comes to turning around lowest-achieving schools and connecting teacher and principal pay to student performance, have we forgotten about this side of the equation:
















What are your thoughts?

Related Links:

How to Create Workers, Not Citizens - the Frustrated Teacher
Bridging Differences: The New Era of Greed
NEA: Race to the Top = The Demise of Teaching
Schools Matter: Calling Out Harvard's Graduate School of Education

Reforms of Least Resistance
All Innovation Short of Charter Schools
Starting to Race to the Top

Verbs for Learning Series: Scaffolding

Scaffolding at LIM Resources

Featuring Madeline Hunter

"Tell them what you're going to say, say it, and then tell them what you said."

Madeline Hunter Biography
Wikipedia: Madeline Cheek Hunter


The Madeline Hunter Direct Instruction Model
Madeline Hunter's Lesson Plan
EduTech Wiki: Madeline Hunter Method
Adprima: Direct Teaching - Information and Links
Madeline Hunter's ITIP Model for Direct Instruction

Verbs for Learning Series: Anticipating

Anticipating at LIM Resources

Comparing State Math Standards

By Pam Kenney

Beginning this month I will be part of a group that will review the K-12 Common Core Math Standards. The standards come from the Common Core State Standards Initiative, “a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief School State Officers.” Their purpose is to delineate the knowledge and skills students should acquire to succeed in both college and workforce training programs. Rigorous content and the application of knowledge through high-order skills, international benchmarks, and an insistence on evidence- and/or research-based criteria are their hallmarks.

To prepare for my role in the review process, I have spent many hours the past three weeks reading and thinking about the K-8 math standards from several states. To date, I’ve pored over standards from Massachusetts, California, Indiana, Washington, and Maine. I chose Massachusetts because it has had the highest NAEP fourth and eighth grade math scores in the nation for the last several years, Maine because it’s my home state, and the others because they were recommended to me as examples of states with particularly strong standards. As I read the state documents, I compared the broad strands that organize their mathematical content, the concepts under each strand, and the more specific skills that guide day-to-day classroom instruction.

All the states have basically the same strands through the eighth grade, although they may be grouped in different ways. The five strands in the Massachusetts document are representative: Number Sense and Operations; Patterns, Relations, and Algebra; Geometry; Measurement; and Data Analysis, Statistics, and Probability. The concepts related to the strands are similar, too. For example, the first concept listed under the strand “Number Sense” in California’s Grade Two standards is “Students understand the relationship between numbers, quantities, and place value in whole numbers up to 1,000.” All the state standards I read had a similar concept.

The final and most detailed level of the states’ K-8 standards encompasses the specific skills that students must acquire over a one- or two-year period. And it is here that significant differences among the states appear. Some states write their standards using verbs such as “count’, “identify”, “know”, and “compare”, which allow the standards to be measured objectively. Others employ “understand” and “use.” How states teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts under the “Number Sense and Operations” strand is particularly noteworthy. In Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and Washington students are required to memorize facts through 10 or 12. In Maine, fact mastery is not required by its Maine Learning Results’ standards. In Maine, students learn a variety of methods to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems, and the use of standard algorithms is not mandated. In the other state standards I read, children must learn standard algorithms, although several methods for solving problems are taught, too.

The use of technology differs among the states, also. In Maine, for example, calculators are an integral part of elementary school math instruction, and students can use them daily to solve problems as well as on standardized tests. In other states, such as Massachusetts, students “learn how to perform thoroughly the basic arithmetic operations independent of the use of a calculator.” In addition, the fourth and sixth grade state assessments in Massachusetts do not allow the use of calculators.

Overall, I found significant differences among the state standards I read. Maine is intensely focused on its students acquiring a thorough understanding of concepts and procedures, so focused that it allows technology to compensate for the absence of basic fact mastery. Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and Washington have math standards that offer an excellent balance between understanding concepts and fluent computation. Massachusetts has the highest test scores in the nation. Maine’s math scores, though, are higher than California’s, Indiana’s, and Washington’s.

I’d love to be able to write that I’ve drawn some far-reaching conclusions from my reading of the five different state standards. I can’t do that, but I have decided that balanced standards will help our nation produce better math students in the future than we are producing today. Standards that are clear, detailed, rigorous, and measurable and that require fluency in basic computational skills, an understanding of mathematical concepts, and the acquisition of problem-solving skills that focus on reasoning, communicating, and connecting are what we should strive for. As I review the K-12 Common Core Math Standards, that’s what I’ll be looking for.

Verbs for Learning Series: Predicting

Making Predictions at LIM Resources

Post #365

Happy New Year from Everyone at Learning in Maine

Getting Organized

"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" ~ Dr. Laurence J Peters





15 Tools to Help Students Get Organized at Free Tech for Teachers
Helping Students Get Organized at LEARN NC
Ten Ways to Help Your Child Get Organized by FamilyEducation
20 Ideas to Help Students Get Organized
Action Steps for the Disorganized at You Can Handle Them All
The Disorganized Student at Education World
The Disorganized Students by Kenneth Shore, Psy.D.

Have anything to add?

Cursive Handwriting Is Obsolete

It is time that we finally stop teaching cursive handwriting in schools. It deserves no place in the curriculum. What is the point of taking up so much valuable time in teaching a skill that will not be used. Instead, why not get serious about making sure children develop effective touch typing skills?

How many schools in Maine still require that cursive writing be taught?

What are your thoughts? Disagree? Agree?

Wikipedia: Cursive, Penmanship
Touch Typing - Cursive - Why?

Edublog 2009

Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog wins again! He is a social studies teacher at Oxford Hills High School. Congratulations, Richard!

The Edublog Awards 2009

Using Wordle

Guess the Christmas Wordles

Wordle Ideas

View more presentations from Jenuinetech.com.

Wordle Book Ads
Guess the Wordle
Angela Maiers on Wordle
Freedman: Five Reasons to Use Wordle in the Classroom
Chris Longe: Using Wordle in the Classroom
Higher Ed: Using Wordle


23 Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom
10 Top Ways

Create Your Own Wordle . . .

The Nation's Report Card - Math

By Pam Kenney

The results of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in math were released December 8, 2009. 18 school districts across the country participated in the study, and the scores allow the public to follow over time the progress of our students' math achievement.

At Nation's Report Card, you can view national, state, and district results for grades 4 and 8. The graphs and tables are excellent and allow you to compare scores from 1990 through 2009. You can look at the information adjusted according to gender, race/ethnicity, type of school, family income level, student disability status, and English language learners. Also, there are links to a press conference about the TUDA Mathematics report card and a narrated presentation on the major findings.

Everyday Mathematics is credited by Washington, D.C. public school teachers and Chancellor Michelle Rhee as one reason why students there have made significant gains in math achievement at both the 4th and 8th grade levels since 2003: "... an increased focus on the use of games, calculators and written responses -- to help students demonstrate their reasoning in solving a problem -- helped drive the gains in scores in the national assessment, known as NAEP." While I agree that deepening children's concept grasp and understanding of problem-solving is vital to success in math, I continue to be unsettled by the relative unimportance of practice and mastery in "reform math" curricula like Everyday Mathematics. My questions, then, are these: Are schools, such as those in D.C., using supplemental materials to fill in the gaps in EDM, thus contributing to the rise in scores? Or - are tests like the NAEP also so focused on the "whys" of math that even studying their results won't tell me whether my fourth grader knows 6*7=42? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm going to find out.

MLTI Webinar: "Getting to Know VoiceOver"

Announcement from MLTI Team:

There is still time to register for Thursday's (December 10th) webcast:
Getting to Know VoiceOver, facilitated by Cynthia Curry. VoiceOver is known as Apple’s built-in screen reader, but can be better described as an accessible interface for everyone. Not to be confused with text to speech, VoiceOver provides voice description of all onscreen elements, features a caption panel, and allows users to control their computer using only the keyboard. Our guest, Steve Sawczyn of AT Maine, will demonstrate why VoiceOver is a tool that all educators should get to know. Most importantly, we’ll discuss how we can improve our UDL practices by understanding the unique learning needs of students who are blind and have low vision. You can find a link to registration athttp://maine121.org/webcasts/

Registrants will receive a link to the WebCast as well as login information.

WebCasts will be held each Thursday at both 3:15 pm and 7:15 pm. To learn more about these webcasts, please visit: http://maine121.org

Additional Resources on VoiceOver

Google Chrome Browser for Mac

Download Beta Chrome Browser

Maine Woods National Park

Essential Question: Should a Maine Woods National Park be created?




Pros:

RESTORE: Maine Woods National Park
Maine Woods National Park & Preserve: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Cons:

Maine Woods Coalition

More Information:

Wikipedia: Maine North Woods
National Parks Conservation Association
Greenpeace USA
Forest Ecology Network
The Maine Woods ~ Thoreau (Online)

Everyday Math Revisited: Parents Stand Up

By Pam Kenney

About three weeks ago I posted a commentary on this blog critical of the math curriculum Everyday Math. I was prompted to write it because I was receiving an increasing number of calls for help from parents whose elementary-age children were struggling in math classrooms using Everyday Math, and parental attempts to assist them at home were frequently not successful. The post generated more than 20 comments from both parents and educators. From the strong feelings expressed in those comments and from subsequent independent reading and research, I have become aware of a grassroots movement among parents anxious to become an integral part of the debate about how math is taught in our schools. For the first time in many years, parents are so frustrated by and angry about the trend by our nation’s school systems to adopt “reform” math curricula, they have banded together to stand up and fight for the kind of elementary math instruction for their children that will provide the concept grasp and computation skills necessary for success in math at high school and college levels.

One group, the United States Coalition for World Class Math, is made up of “an ever-growing group of state coalitions comprised of mathematically literate parents, many of whom are scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and educators who want nothing but excellence in Mathematics Education for the students of our country, the United States of America.” The focus of its mission is to urge each state’s department of education to develop core curriculum content standards in math, using as guides the curriculum standards from countries with the highest scores on international math tests as well as those from the U.S. states with the highest math rankings. Calling for standards that will prepare children for success in college and beyond, it recognizes the importance of input from research mathematicians and university math professors as well as from K-12 educators and professors of math education.

There is now an active state chapter of the national group, the Maine Coalition for World Class Math. Maine parents who are concerned about their children’s progress in math and the suitability of the math textbooks chosen by their school districts will find not only a sympathetic ear at this site, but a wealth of information, too. One particularly interesting and thought-provoking link provides visitors with the coalition’s “Design Principles for K-12 Mathematics Standards” that “address the major deficiencies and defects that currently plague far too many of our state mathematics standards.” One pertinent complaint of the Maine Coalition for World Class Math is that today’s math reform movement has led to the widespread adoption of curricula like Everyday Math. Many critics of Everyday Math argue that it attempts to teach children the conceptual “hows” and “whys” of math in such depth and in so many different ways that it fails to do a good job teaching the computation skills necessary to ensure the mastery of basic arithmetic. Its spiral approach (a method that moves from concept to concept and back again without clear mastery goals built in), a scope that is too broad and a sequence that is not logical, an over-reliance on calculators, too many confusing ways to solve simple problems, and little requirement for practice are common criticisms. Parents are concerned, too, that many of the Everyday Math methods have not been explained well to them, and they feel removed from the vital school-parent partnership.

The Coalition for World Class Math has had its share of criticism. Many educators feel it, and other groups like it, are advocating a return to the teaching methods of the 50s and 60s that emphasized rote drill at the expense of conceptual understanding. I don’t believe that perception is accurate, however. What thoughtful parents are desperate for today is a balanced approach to teaching math. They understand well that their children need to internalize the whys behind long division, for example. But they want their youngsters to know instantaneously that 6*8=48, too, and that takes practice. I believe their plea to schools is this: If it helps kids understand the process of long division better, teach them initially using a partial quotients method. But, also, teach them the long division algorithm that they will be required to use throughout their school careers. Don’t do away with drill; require enough basic facts practice to guarantee mastery. Parents know it takes diligence for children to become excellent math students, and they want their kids to work hard.

Please give parents more credit. They, just like teachers, want the best possible math instruction for their children. They are not uninformed or hopelessly out of date. In fact, the parents I work with would love to help schools improve their math instruction. The current reform vs. back-to-basics math debate shouldn’t be seen as an “us vs. them” movement. Parents have a lot to offer, they know their children better than anyone else, and their views deserve to be heard and thoughtfully addressed.