Morning Announcements: May 3, 2012

Happy Thursday. Here are the top stories in education news!

Congratulations to NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal, who will earn his Ph.D in organizational learning and leadership this weekend. A professional athletic career can only last so long, but an education lasts forever.

The push for a technology-enriched classroom continues as a survey of K-8 teachers shows nearly half of them are incorporating digital games in lessons to engage students and personalize learning. Education Week analyzes the rising popularity of digital learning.

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Morning Announcements: May 2, 2012

Technology is the topic of the day with so much of the day’s education reporting focusing on the impact of digital innovation in the classroom. Happy Wednesday, as you engage in digital learning by reading this from your smart phone, tablet, or computer, embrace some of the latest headlines.

From the Washington Post, Montgomery County middle school teacher Amy Soldavini recently borrowed an online lesson comparing hip-hop artists to the Bard. Math teachers at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County sometimes assign students to watch free instructional Web videos at home so they can solve more challenging problems in class. Free online digital textbooks are providing a new competition for traditional textbook retailers.

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Morning Announcements: May 1, 2012

Good Morning, here are your latest headlines in educational news. Enjoy!

According to the New York Times, a report by charter school advocates found that teacher and principal attrition is a significant hurdle for the sector, which is young but growing quickly. There currently exists a rate turnover rate for principals in American charter schools.

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Vanessa Jones: Integrating Digital Learning Through Professional Learning Communities

The following blog post comes from Vanessa Jones, an Instructional Support Technology Specialist for the Austin Independent School district in Austin, Texas.

As an educator, I have made it my priority to collaborate, communicate and share ideas with other educators, both within and outside my district. To help facilitate this continuous learning process, I belong to several professional learning communities (PLC) where I, along with other educators, share ideas, resources, and experiences and learn from one another. This has been especially beneficial as I work to integrate digital learning into my practice and to support other teachers as they explore and implement digital learning.  Being a part of a PLC has helped me reach beyond my district and has given me insight into various implementations and learning processes that allow me to promote twenty-first century skills and implement twenty-first century skills in an educational setting in several areas of my work.

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Morning Announcements: March 29, 2012

Greetings,

Here are the latest headlines in education news to breeze you through your Thursday. Enjoy.

Folks all across the country have been getting spoiled with a mild winter filled with unseasonably warm days. Thanks to the early seasonal change, many students will receive an extra gift of an early summer break. According to USA Today,  at least nine of the snowiest U.S. cities had less than 60% of their average snowfall this year, so many schools will cut the year short.

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Lori Mathys: Technology—Providing “Revolutionary” Ways to Learn

It’s an exciting time to be a 5th grader, when the whole world is literally at your fingertips.  It’s no wonder that my students love to learn; when what they learn is created by their voice and technology connects my classroom to people and places that are more “live” than what we read in books.

Recently, my students were learning about the American Revolutionary War, a typical topic of study for upper elementary students.  As we were reading about the fascinating people who once met in the taverns, we learned that a popular activity of the time period was to hold ballroom dances, which were magnificent affairs!  One of my students asked, “What if we had our own Revolutionary Era ballroom dance?”  And from that moment, our study of the Revolutionary War times took on a life of its own.

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Putting It All Together: Digital Learning in Klein ISD, Houston, Texas

If you watched any of the morning webcast or National Town Hall from Digital Learning Day, you saw Klein Independent School District in action. Klein is located just outside Houston and has been working to incorporate technology into learning for over a decade. I had the chance to see Klein for myself as part of the National School Board Association’s (NSBA) Technology Leadership Network site visit.

I had the chance to see five schools as well as their digital athletic field and the network operations center. The athletic field includes state-of-the-art technology, such as systems for measuring results in track and field, mechanisms to provide athletes with feedback, high-tech security camera systems, and a state-of-the-art conference center. It even includes systems for taking video that allow coaches to directly download and store video on central drives rather than lugging disks and tapes around. The most impressive thing about Klein ISD is how they have made the goals of education reform a reality. Standards with a thorough scope and sequence, performance rubrics, and objectives are clearly articulated both in their online curriculum and on the walls in every classroom I visited

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Arthur Levine on 21st Century Schools

Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College, Columbia University offered his thoughts to “The Answer Sheet” of the Washington Post. In his editorial, he addresses the aging model of schools coupled with their decreased effectiveness.

Levine emphasizes that the current school model is a product of the industrial era, resembling the assembly lines in that nearly every school consistently binds students to classes of 25 to 30 people. Students attend school for 13 years, each lasting 180 days per year, while taking five major subjects for predetermined lengths of time. Levine critiques that this model is obsolete, placing priority on the length of the process rather than the outcome.

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Morning Announcements: March 5, 2012

Greetings and Happy (or not-so-much) Monday! Get back into the grind of the 9-5 by being up-to-date on the latest in education news.

According to Stateline, after making sever cuts in the state budget, Florida Governor Rick Scott urged legislators to put back $1 billion toward K-12 education. Educators appreciate the help, but say they will still be struggling in 2013 because the restored education funds will not make up for the damage already done through cutbacks.

Budget cuts are also a key focus in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s cuts to education and childcare may threaten city programs for children as reported by the New York Times. Advocates are concerned that cuts to the city’s child care and after-school programs could result in 47,000 children losing access to those services.

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Afternoon Announcements: March 1, 2012

Good Afternoon, we hope you are enjoying the first day of March. Take in some of the latest in education news to kick off the month right.

Further analyzing the benefits of technologically integrated classrooms, Gotham Schools introduces you to Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School where 23 students are copying tables and number trees representing a mathematical problem-solving technique used in graphic design computer software.

According to NPR, Los Angeles is easing its stance on truancy. After strong protests from the community including parents and students, a tough city ordinance that imposed large fines on students for even one instance of skipping school or being late has ended. The Los Angeles City Council is now changing the law and instead focusing on helping students get to class because, as they point out, those harsh fines backfired.

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