A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Rich Curriculum
Blog Entries
When Krista Parent arrived in rural Cottage Grove, Oregon in the mid 'eighties, it was a timber town whose students regularly dropped out of high school to work in the lumber mills. Academic achievement was not among the community's top priorities. Now, over 20 years later, students in Cottage Grove's South Lane School District perform well above state averages in assessments of reading and mathematics, and the district's high school graduates more than 95% of its students.
We were recently lucky enough to interview Parent about how she and her colleagues at South Lane worked with the community to transform the district's schools. Parent describes how South Lane's educators reached out to their community to transform the academic culture. They attended meetings of civic organizations, parent groups, church groups and other groups that had a stake in the schools' success as the lumber mills fell on hard times. Parent and her colleagues won community members' trust by listening to--and honoring--their aspirations and expectations for their children and their schools. ...
In case you hadn't noticed at first glance, the soberly-dressed person at right is Richard Simmons. (The hair is admittedly a giveaway.) He donned the suit and the earnest expression yesterday to testify before the House Education and Labor Committee about the need to increase time for physical education in public schools.
According to the Washington Post, the affair was less formal than the photograph suggests: The irrepressible Simmons reportedly kissed onlookers, photographers and even Congressmen as he entered the hearing room, and he lent the hearing the atmosphere of "a support group" where lawmakers traded stories of weight loss. ...
Today, the New York Times published Jennifer Medina's story about the success of the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, a small school that sends almost all of its students--the large majority of them poor--to college. The school's inspiring success is a testament to the passion and unrelenting hard work of its staff and students.
Still, an aspect of the Times story left me distinctly uneasy. "To hear the tales of the new graduates is to understand the enormous effort and amount of resources it takes to make a school succeed," Medina writes. "Teachers and other staff members routinely work 60 hours a week.... [School Principal Elana] Karopkin said it would be unfair to say she was burned out, but admitted she was nothing less than 'exhausted,' both physically and emotionally." Asked about her staff's workload, she replied that "nobody should be forced to choose between educating other people's children and having their own." ...
On Wednesday and Thursday, teacher/bloggers extraordinaire Nancy Flanagan and Bill Ferriter debated the benefits of technology in the classroom, and a host of other top-flight educators added their insights in
the comments section. Their postings were so thoughtful and engaging that I just had to add my two cents.
I had to think about the debate and resulting comments as my wife and I watched the new Pixar film Wall-e yesterday. The film presents a technological dystopia. Humans have escaped to outer space after filling the planet with so much consumerist junk that it can no longer sustain life. The film reminds me of Beckett's play Endgame, whose characters inhabit trash cans, overwhelmed by the refuse of an increasingly degenerate culture. ...
Yesterday, we posted the beginnings of a civil--though keen--debate on the value of technology in the classroom between Bill Ferriter and Nancy Flanagan, two distinguished teachers and bloggers in the Center for Teaching Quality's Teacher Leaders Network. Today, Nancy and Bill rebut each others' statements and sharpen their own positions.
Where do you stand on technology and teaching? Weigh in by posting a comment, below.
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Nancy's Reply: Tools don't have a conscience
Speaking of cultural realities, Bill says "digital tools are playing an increasingly important role in the work of successful individuals primarily because they make evaluating, inventing, creating and collaborating more efficient. Without a fluency in using technology to facilitate productive endeavors, students truly are unprepared for the future." ...
Our friends at the Teacher Leaders Network, which connects accomplished teacher leaders from across the country, hooked us up with two of their dazzling teacher/bloggers: Nancy Flanagan and Bill Ferriter, two award-winning teachers who have built national reputations as both thought leaders and practitioners.
What resulted was a pointed but always respectful debate on the promise and perils of teaching with technology. In guest postings today and tomorrow, Nancy and Bill will sketch out the contours of this debate.
Nancy Flanagan: Brave New Curriculum - or More of the Same? ...
In the first installment of our interview with innovative teacher Luajean Bryan, Bryan described the hands-on projects that have driven up enrollments in her advanced math and science classes. In this second installment, she tells us about her strategies for overcoming the challenges teachers face when attempting do these types of projects, including how she corrals the resources she needs and her thoughts about the "time" dilemma.
Be sure to listen to our highlights from the interview (5 minutes):
Or check out our transcript: ...
Luajean Bryan is a star.
Just ask her principal at Walker Valley High School in Tennessee, the students who flock to her advanced math and science classes, or the people at USA Today who named her to their 2006 all-star teaching team.
Bryan recently spoke with us about the innovative teaching practices that have won her local admiration and national attention. Her emphasis on hands-on learning is exciting students and swelling enrollments in higher-level science and math classes. With support from the NEA Foundation, for example, she accompanies students into caves and on untethered hot-air balloon trips to help them learn first-hand about mathematic and scientific principles that govern the world around them. ...
Stories about what's working in public schools and districts keep rolling in to Public School Insights. Here's a list of five inspiring new stories we've posted in the past two weeks:
- Great Neck Public Schools, New York: Bending Bureaucracy to Meet Kids Needs, June 10
- George Middle School, Oregon: Promoting Academic Success through Community Partnerships, June 6
- Cameron Elementary School, California: Using Incentives to Motivate Students, June 2
- Interlake High School, Washington: Helping All Students Reach their Highest Potential in Math, May 30
- Clarke County School District, Georgia: Bringing Dropouts Back to School, May 28
A little-noticed item in Science Magazine points out a whopper of a quantitative error in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a respected National Academy of Sciences report on the nation's declining standing in mathematics and science. According to Science, one important claim in the report--that "there were almost twice as many U.S. physics bachelor's degrees awarded in 1956 [pre-Sputnik] than in 2004"--is "dead wrong." ...
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