Along Came a Spider: News on the Web [October 2005 Archive]

Transcending Transcripts?
Indiana high school students will soon be getting a leg up on their college application process with e-Transcripts, a service that enables them to send their high school transcripts to any state college or university electronically. If the program is a success, other states may consider adopting something similar:
www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051018/NEWS01/510180491


Testing Our Patience
This editorial calls into question the merits of expanding NCLB's testing requirements to apply to high school students--- most of whom, especially those on high-level college-prep tracks are already "up to their earlobes" in tests already. A better solution, suggests this writer, would be to cross-reference existing data on testing with academic progress in high school and college, giving an indication of which high school courses prove the most useful for college-bound students:
www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051020/edit20.art.htm

And another article takes a wider look at the concept of a "paperless classroom"—made possible with wireless technology and tablet PCs, among other advances:
www.egovmonitor.com/node/3218


Defining "Left Behind"
In Texas, one school's story showcases the difficulties with NCLB's system of high-stakes testing. The Herbert Marcus Elementary School, with a culturally-diverse, low-SES population, nonetheless manages to inspire students and parents to stay involved—and, by the Dallas school system's rating, placed 19th out of 206 schools in the district. But according to NCLB's use of tests, they're only 76th—just short of being placed on a watch-list. The difference lies in the way that the tests are interpreted—NCLB measures students against an arbitrary standard of performance, rather than looking at progress:
www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0510.toch.html


A New Kind of Class Participation
At universities around the country, teachers are taking advantage of new technological tools to encourage student learning. From interactive classroom wireless networks that allow all students to answer and receive feedback on class discussion questions—encouraging quieter students and those who process more slowly to participate as much as their fast-and-furious peers—to "bookless libraries", many universities are looking for ways to make the most of the new resources available to them. Some critics, however, contend that the process is outshining the content—that the new technology is more toy than tool, and distracts students from real learning.
www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/articles/051017/17elearn.htm

And in England, teachers and scholars are pointing to the opposite problem—the need to adapt existing curriculum to reflect the changes technology makes in how and how much we access information. It's no longer enough to teach students about reference books, for example; they need to learn how to glean information from websites as well—sources that require more critical thinking and evaluation for credibility than traditional references:
education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1590545,00.html


All Progress Is Relative...?
In Ohio and a handful of other states, educators are gearing up for a new and controversial method of evaluating schools' effectiveness: "value-added" evaluation, which uses the amount that students have learned over a period of time as the primary measure of the school's effectiveness. Critics say that this approach potentially penalizes historically high-performing schools:
www.cleveland.com/education/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/isedu/112920450117920.xml&coll=2


Troops to Teachers
For years, retired military men and women have been choosing to begin second careers in education. Now, with the Troops to Teachers program, those who want to go from being drill instructors to being classroom instructors are getting a boost—and they're not the only ones being helped. Studies have shown that ex-military teachers are more likely to teach in high-poverty and urban districts—and, due to the composition of the military as a whole, are also more likely to be male, which puts strong, successful male role models into schools that need them most:
www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051014/edit14.art.htm


This Circus We're In

       

Read an article about the service here:
www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2005-10-17-google-print_x.htm


Audible Books Bring Reading Alive
Audible.com is using the latest technology to bring books to life for kids! Their audio re-"prints" of classic novels and other educational material for use with their software on computers and select MP3 players combine aspects of books-on-tape (or CD) with bound books: students can flip through the stories as they can with a book, but they also have the opportunity to hear unfamiliar words and phrases read aloud as they're meant to be used, aiding in comprehension as they read the print versions with the audio track. In one school in California, which has a school set of iPod shuffles and an Audible library to download onto them, the Audible books have become popular enough that students are discussing literature with friends with the same enthusiasm they bring to video games and TV.

The Audible.com site is here:
www.audible.com/adbl/store/sitemap.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes

with a link to their education section:
www.audible.com/adbl/entry/landing/edu.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes

and an article about one school's use of it is here:
www2.sbsun.com/news/ci_3123197


Drawing Kids Into Reading
In the quest to get kids into reading, some teachers are turning to an ever-more-popular art form: graphic novels. (By graphic, we're talking medium here, not content—think comic books on a grander scale.) Once thought of as a literarily substandard genre, graphic novels are more and more displaying just the kind of complexity and depth—along with engaging artwork and design—that can lure kids into the printed word for its own sake. And it's not just younger readers who are taking notice: the graphic novel Maus, an illustrated vision of WWII, won a Pulitzer. The increase in the literary merit of the medium, however, has brought children's publishers to view "comic books" as serious business.
seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/242949_graphic03.html


The Muscles of the Mind
We all know that our physical state can influence our thinking, but the Brain Gym program takes this a step farther, with exercises adapted from such diverse sources as yoga and acupuncture to create a quick and simple exercise regimen that actually improves mental performance. The program is nothing new, either: Brain Gym has been around for 30 years.
desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050929/NEWS02/509290317/1004


Home-Schooling Away From Home
As Louisiana families try to rebuild their lives after the devastation of Katrina, many are choosing to homeschool their children while they wait for their kids' old schools to reopen. Although the state has encouraged them to remain in public schools in the areas to which they've relocated, many are not happy with the options made available there:
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/10/06/parents_in_la_home_schooling_their_kids


Beating the Odds
In Massachusetts, the University Park Campus School is setting expectations on its ear: despite a culturally and linguistically diverse, low-SES population, the school boasts one of the lowest dropout rates in the country, and one of the highest college-entrance rates. The reason? Teachers say it's because they refuse to expect less than the best of their students:
teachingandlearningconference.blogspot.com/2005/09/avoiding-pobrecillos-trap.html


"Gut-Wrenching" Research Wins Nobel
You have to have a strong stomach to do research—at least if you're going to go about it the way Barry Marshall and Robin Warren did. In an effort to prove the then-controversial theory that ulcers are caused not by stress and diet but by bacteria, Marshall swallowed a beaker's-worth of their "usual suspect" bacteria, earning himself a monster of a stomachache, the ire of his wife—and, twenty years later, a Nobel Prize for himself and his research partner (though Dr. Warren apparently escaped the, ah, gut-wrenching part!)
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16816505%255E28737,00.html


With a Debate in Mind
In this article, one professor of English explains how opening up the debate on evolution versus "intelligent design" may actually serve a useful pedagogical purpose despite the scientific flaws in intelligent-design theory. Specifically, encouraging students to engage in debate for its own sake and to reason through the flaws in an argument is a useful tool for encouraging them to become critical thinkers when confronted with ideological conflicts outside the classroom:
www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/09/28/graff

This article (which might be a great place to start that debate with your students) systematically points out the problems with "intelligent design" as a theory in the scientific sense:
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002522889_evolution27.html


Nap Time . . . In High School?
That's exactly what one researcher proposes! A study in Japan found that secondary-school students who took 15-minute naps after lunch were more alert and focused in their afternoon classes, showing better academic performance and mood. So maybe instead of spending all our time trying to get hyperactive pre-schoolers down for unwanted naps, we should be rolling out the sleeping bags for grateful teens!
www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050924f1.htm


Measure for Measure
Ever wonder just how long a "parsec" is when one of your students is talking about Star Trek? Or maybe you'd like to know just how big a "bite" of your data a gigabyte is? Online Conversion can tell you all of that and more! This free website is a must for math teachers or anyone with a curious student on their hands (read: all teachers of the gifted!). It's a one-stop-"unshop" for conversions of everything from dollars to distances, and includes a few "just for fun calculations, such as number of days till your next birthday:
www.onlineconversion.com


Asked and Answered
Move over, Dear Abby! One of gifted education's prominent thinkers, Sylvia Rimm, now has her own advice column! Appearing online at Creators.com, she proffers advice on raising and teaching kids (gifted and otherwise). You can read her column here:
www.creators.com/lifestyle_show.cfm?columnsName=sri


Cutting Up Online
No, we're not talking about playing computer pranks! Quite the opposite, in fact--- a new software package, the colorfully named "Froguts", offers a great alternative to animal dissection for the squeamish—or ethically-minded—biology student. The software is essentially a virtual dissection kit with benefits, allowing students an "insider's" view of the anatomy of a frog or squid. Try the demo and see for yourself!
www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html

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