8 Jan 2006
10:10 PM
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NCLB vs. ESL
Michael Winerip of the NY Times reports on the problems Somali children are having learning English in Massachusetts schools, which have only English immersion classes. The children sit in class lost without translators, and no help seems to be forthcoming. Because there are only two translators, and they spend much of their time traveling from school to school by bus, one proposed solution was to cluster Somali children to ease the translation problem; however
Springfield officials have given a variety of reasons for not doing so. Last spring, according to Mrs. Caldwell, school officials said that clustering too many Somalis at one school would bring down its scores on state tests and the school could be labeled failing under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Mrs. Caldwell, a retiree who does volunteer work for several Somalian families, has filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights.
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7 Jan 2006
8:22 AM
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Principles of learning
Bob Reynolds (via Stephen's Web) writes about "Parables on learning -- the basic principles." Reynolds writes,
There are ten basic Principles of Learning that, when practiced, help us grow in understanding and make us successful in whatever we attempt to do. These ten basic Principles of Learning are really a series of actions that successful people people can take in their daily lives. In fact, since learning is such an integral part of living, these rules might more appropriately be called the basic principles of a good life.
What makes it interesting is how he contrasts the examples he gives for the principles with what happens in education.
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6 Jan 2006
9:10 AM
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Successful High Tech Charter School
Dale MezzaCappa (The Philadelphia Inquirer) writes about High Tech Hi, a charter school in San Diego that successfully integrates education and technology.
It is "high tech" not because it trains students to fix computers and write software, although some do, but because technology is infused throughout the curriculum. Students work on networked laptops and maintain digital portfolios.
Some travel; this year, 12 seniors went to Baja California for eight weeks to study marine life, including plankton, whale sharks and sea turtles, as well as the area's history and culture. They not only collected specimens but also created poetry, a documentary, a mural, and a novel.
In the last two years, Jay Vavra's junior biotechnology classes designed, wrote and photographed a field guide to wildlife in San Diego Bay, with a foreword by anthropologist Jane Goodall.
It's encouraging to see a school that engages the students in real "work" as opposed to "learning" alone.
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3 Jan 2006
12:10 PM
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Homeportals: a new extensible homepage
HomePortals (via TechCrunch) is a new personalized extensible homepage. TechCrunch has this to say:
HomePortals is really unique in that every module is customizable, and can interface with other web services. So you can create a new module (and allows others to copy it), and/or modify attributes of an existing one.
For instance, there is a pre-created module to show recent del.icio.us bookmarks for a given user, recent flickr pictures for a given user, etc. I have not seen this type of functionality in the other services I’ve reviewed.
HomePortals also has a very nice blogging tool module (see it in action on the HomePortals blog). Now this is getting interesting: I can see using the blogging tool, and adding in my flickr pictures and del.icio.us bookmarks to give visitors a really in depth overview of who I am and what’s going on in my life. It’s like SuprGlu, but the blogging tool is built in, not pulled in.
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3 Jan 2006
10:10 AM
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Tech Tools for Learning
Will Richardson has an article, Tech Tools for Learning, published in Access Learning, which you can download from his recent posting here. His opening paragraph reads:
Over the last few years, our relationship with the Web has been changing dramatically. Simple new technologies like weblogs and podcasts are allowing us to not only create content like text, audio, and video more easily, they are also allowing us to publish and share that content on the Web with very little effort. Instead of a “read only” Web, we’re entering the age of the Read/Write Web, where contributing knowledge is as easy as consuming it. Being able to publish worldwide this easily does raise legal and ethical issues for educators to be aware of, but it also facilitates a whole range of new learning potentials for students and teachers in the classroom. Here is a quick look at some of the technologies that are changing the way educators think about and deliver instruction.
He has quite a bit of information on technology tools for education (RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasting, and streaming video with links) packed into 4 pages. Recommended.
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25 Dec 2005
10:10 PM
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Blogging and audience
Bill Schachner of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a nice article on blogging, "Freedom of speech redefined by blogs: Words travel faster, stay around longer in the blogosphere" It begins:
Jessica Prokop thought the textbook for her class at Seton Hill University was biased and that its author "seems like a bitter man." In the annals of student rants, nothing extraordinary there.
Except she didn't just blurt out those words in her journalism class. She blogged them. Soon, the author himself was responding all the way from England, pledging to re-examine an upcoming edition given her critique.
The article gives quite a few stories leading to real-world interaction, and although most postings do not lead to such interaction, the potential creates a forum of real writing for real audiences: another reason for incorporating blogs into writing classes.
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