Along Came a Spider: News on the Web [February 2006 Archive]
The Early Bird Gets...?
Recent studies show that early lunch periods may be bad for kids' health: students who have lunch starting at 10:30 AM or earlier are more likely to show unhealthy eating habits, like consuming mostly snack foods, simply because they aren't ready for lunch that early in the day. Of course, the solution for poor eating habits at any time of the day is to give kids healthier food options, but the problem is still greatest for early eaters:
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/16/early_lunch_periods_may_breed_bad_habits
Governing Education
The present administration's education policies are coming under attack from two angles. On the one hand, the current education budget is coming under fire for its lack of financial support for necessary programs. On the other, critics of NCLB point out that some of its provisions serve to benefit those who are already getting ahead: white, middle-class children. Optimists, however, can hope that the administration's apparent decision to focus on science and math might usher in a new Sputnik-era focus on talent development:
www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/3657102.html
On the flip side—and somewhat disturbingly for those of us who want to see our nation's children challenged intellectually—many parents are actually comfortable with the level of math and science education our schools currently provide:
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/15/parents_students_fine_with_math_science
www.publicagenda.org/specials/realitycheck06/realitycheck06_main.htm
Teaching the Iditarod
That's the idea behind the Wells Fargo Teacher On The Trail Program, overseen by the Iditarod Trial Education Committee: one "lucky" teacher with a yen for snow and skill with a dogsled will travel the famous trail—:and send stories and lesson plans of her exploits back to her students via the Internet. You don't have to travel the trail yourself to get the benefit of her experiences: her lesson plans and other resources are available here:
www.iditarod.com/4-1.html
A Great Course of Action
Take distance learning to the next level! MIT's OpenCourseWare is a freely available set of educational materials from MIT's own curriculum, allowing teachers, students, and independent learners anywhere to avail themselves of the school's knowledge base. While the program does not grant course credit, it's a great way to enrich and expand your students' education—and your own:
ocw.mit.edu/index.html
Coretta Scott King's Greatest Contribution?
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development wants your opinion: what is Coretta Scott King's greatest achievement as a civil rights activist? Take their online poll here:
www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.b3130849b563ef5ccb6a7210e3108a0c
Nipping Delinquency In the Bud
or 
?
New research suggests that a relationship between bad behavior in school and lack of reading skills may start even earlier than previously thought. Researchers the US and the UK who studied five-year-old found a link between poor reading-readiness skills and bad behavior over a two-year period—but only for boys:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4693712.stm
Discipline in Transit
In Britain, a new education proposal would put students' travel time to and from school under the thumbs of their teachers. That's right, no more spitballs (or worse) on the bus: teachers can now impose disciplinary action on students who step out of line on buses or trains en route to school, including confiscating students' cell phones.
education.guardian.co.uk/pupilbehaviour/story/0,,1705138,00.html
Learning on a Budget
The old saying, "Put your money where your mouth is" takes on new significance in light of proposed cuts to the federal education budget. Have a look for yourself at the government's proposed education spending for the next fiscal year—and let your representatives know what you think of it:
capwiz.com/ascd/issues/alert/?alertid=8453816&type=CU
Contents Under Pressure
A new study suggests that those people gifted with high levels of "working memory"—the brain's equivalent of RAM—may also be more likely to crack under pressure. The study explored the performance of college students with high and low working memory under high and low pressure conditions, and found that, while the high working memory group outscored the others in low-pressure conditions, their scores dropped under high pressure:
www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050209_under_pressure.html
Tech Tools That Rule
Those old standbys of the classroom are getting an overhaul, 21st-century style! Textbook Solutions, an education-technology corporation, has taken textbooks to the next level, with software that allows students not only to download textbooks to their computers for ready access, but also to annotate, highlight, and perform searches within the books themselves. For students, it's like having an entire desktop and bookshelf all in one neat package:
www.textbooksolutions.co.uk/products/index.asp
Read an article about the project here:
education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1701483,00.html
And, in other tech news, Educational Testing Services is getting into the technology game with a new exam designed to measure students' real technical proficiency—not just how well that can "rip a clip" from Napster, but how well they can make use of the resources available online:
www.ets.org/portal/site/ets
Read an article about the test here:
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/02/new_ets_exam_tries_to_measure_students_information_literacy
And yet another for the technology buffs in the audience: kids, their networks of online journals, and education—specifically, how we can teach our students to enjoy the net with a reasonable degree of care for their own safety. One of the chief difficulties faced by schools is the often fine and crooked line between protected free speech under the First Amendment and abusive or impermissible conduct. Other areas include online safety and privacy, and "Cyberbullying:"
www.csmonitor.com/2006/0202/p01s04-stct.html
seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/257323_paynter30.html
This group may be a useful resource for interested parents, teachers, and teens:
www.wiredsafety.org
Finally, it's not just students who are making the most of what the internet has to offer: some teachers are literally cashing in on the internet, through DonorsChoose.org, a site which allows teachers and students to submit their projects for funding—by anyone! Would-be donors browse the site, find a project they want to support, and make the deal—and students make the grades!
www.donorschoose.org
Read an article about the site here:
home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=98687&ran=148758
A New Sputnik?
Well, not exactly, but many leading business experts and legislators, including President George W. Bush, are gearing up for a new global technology race, and planning strategies to help the US get ahead. Their focus is on funding for math and science programs to help make today's students more competitive in tomorrow's economy. (For those who are up on gifted education history, the Sputnik era was something of a "boom" time for us—so get ready for some new opportunities for your students as a result of this push!)
news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060131/NEWS0102/601310340/1077/NEWS01
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/02/01/bush_says_math_science_economic_tools
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 . . .
New findings suggest that NCLB's efforts to raise the level of student achievement may be backfiring—for a wonderfully (stats-)wonky reason: lack of measurement validity and reliability. In the push to develop assessments for use in demonstrating compliance with NCLB's guidelines, many states and districts have resorted to using poorly-designed assessments with their students—with the result that we don't know anything more about their performance than we did before NCLB. One possible solution to the problem is a larger budget for test development:
www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20060131/bl_bottomstrip31.art.htm
Laying Down the Law
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development wants to do just that—and they need your help! Check out the ASCD's legislative agenda here:
www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.6f662ce249e8980edeb3ffdb62108a0c/template.article?articleMgmtId=58f6dd1b269f8010VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD
Schooling Virtually?
In Chicago, the first virtual charter school (called, appropriately enough, the Chicago Virtual Charter School) has just been approved by the city's Board of Education. Critics, especially teachers, contend that educating K-8 students online is an experiment with potentially dire consequences for struggling students:
www.suntimes.com/output/education/virtual25.html
Further Down the Spiral?
In Britain, recent research has shown evidence of a disturbing trend: a definite downswing in cognitive abilities among 11- and 12-year-olds. The research, which measures students in terms of Piagetian stages of mental development, found a significant drop in conceptual reasoning skills over the last decade:
education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1692952,00.html
Playing to Learnbr>
The recent interest in learning through video games is showing no signs of stopping. The latest entries in this category include Learning through Sports, which connects academic concepts with popular sports, and SimSchool, a "Sim" or simulation designed to prepare new teachers for their first classroom experience. And for those concerned about the "couch potato" effects of all this gaming, there's the popular Dance Dance Revolution, which some schools are using as part of phys ed requirements:
www.learningthroughsports.com
www.simschool.org
Read articles about the topic here:
www.thejournal.com/articles/17788
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/25/BUGA6GSFCG1.DTL&hw=schools&sn=004&sc=566
Boys Will Be . . .
Recent research suggests that it's boys, not girls, who are now struggling in academic settings, possibly because boys are on average more likely to be kinetic learners who don't fit a traditional classroom setting. Some advocates suggest that single-sex classrooms and schools, once touted as a solution to the problem of female underachievement, might also benefit boys as well:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965522/site/newsweek
The Language of Dollars—and Sense
This provocatively worded editorial highlights a recent decision by some schools to focus on the teaching of foreign languages such as Chinese as a means of making the next generation of Americans more competitive in the global economy. While being multilingual is an asset, the writer points out that a more crucial problem is the development of math and science reasoning—or lack thereof—in our students:
www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/23/bloomberg/sxmuk.php
