- Everett School Board will discuss a possible censure of board member Jessica Olson on Tuesday, February 22nd. Olson's tenure has been marked by ongoing controversy with her interaction with the school district leadership and fellow board members. She won her seat on a platform of more openness.
Personal opinion here: After the past leadership of Everett schools, openness would be very welcome, but Olson has failed to move the objective forward. It's nice that she fights all these battles, but maybe she should consider winning a one or two. The real censure should come from voters who replace the ineffective Olson and the other secretive members of the board.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Advisory Bored Reading List 02/22/2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Advisory Bored Reading List
Michele Martin provides us with her thoughts of how school prepares students for more school, not "real" life. I couldn't agree more that we set an expectation of well-defined problems with single right answers. I wish I lived in that world.
The author draws an interesting analogy between testing driven education and fad diets. Even if we meet our goal, have we done so in a healthy manner that allows us to maintain that goal.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlighted the efforts of Granite High School's ShopGirls team at last years Shell Eco-marathon Americas competition. He used there performance as an example of strong career and technical education (CTE) programs.
In this post the author highlights the findings in Pathways to Prosperity report that questions the current "College for All" goal for education. Many jobs will require more than high school but less than a BA. Many students may not be well served by the current 4-year university system which does not prepare students for careers.Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Questions and concerns are raised as whether college should just be about getting a job. REALITY CHECK: the only reason most people are going to college is to get ahead in their professional careers. This hand-wringing over creating "better, well-rounded people" is nonsense (that's my opinion, not necessarily the authors).
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Advisory Bored Reading List
No more teaching for Josh, he's going to guide and encourage the students in his classroom.
tags: AB teaching
Riffing on Guy Kawasaki post, Stephen Downes comes up with his own list of things you really need to learn, more than just to be successful in business.Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
tags: education learning lessons AB
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Innovation is in the use
Andy Rathbun's article on innovative technology in Snohomish county classrooms gets the front page treatment in today's Everett Herald. Andy highlights a number of new gadgets in use including interactive white boards, document cameras, sound systems and clickers.
I had a chance to see the the white board in use last week at the kick-off meeting for the Mukilteo school district's professional advisory committee for business and technology. As if a teacher's job isn't difficult enough, the white board wasn't working right. But then, which of us hasn't been in that position before?
While I am really happy to see these tools making their way into the classroom, slowly breaking down barriers to technology adoption, I find it hard to consider this innovative. It feels like the early 90's adoption of information technology in business. Putting leading edge technology to use cutting paychecks was automation, not innovation.
Real innovation comes with changes to the system, to decision making, afforded by the technology. Take the use of the clicker described in the article. Automation of assessment has been going on for decades: multiple choice tests, mark sense forms, learning management systems. In a sense, the clicker is just one more step in that automation path. What's innovative about that scenario is that the teacher will adjust the instruction based upon that real-time feedback. Similarly, we saw the Everett school district's remarkable turn around in graduations rates as a result of the innovative, real-time use of student grade and attendance data. The collection and consolidation of data isn't innovative, but the personalized intervention based upon that data is.
I don't mean to discourage or disparage the adoption of technology as described in the article. Instead I hope we can lift up our vision of innovation in education. Let's use the Flat Classroom Project as an example of this bigger goal. Founded in 2006 by Vicki Davis (aka Cool Cat Teacher) and Julie Lindsay, it uses web 2.0 tools to break down the classroom walls. Students across the globe work together on learning projects. Realize, however, that the technology didn't change the learning environment, Vicki and Julie did.
The lesson education can draw from business is that information technology affords you the opportunity to change, but it does not compel you to change.
I had a chance to see the the white board in use last week at the kick-off meeting for the Mukilteo school district's professional advisory committee for business and technology. As if a teacher's job isn't difficult enough, the white board wasn't working right. But then, which of us hasn't been in that position before?
While I am really happy to see these tools making their way into the classroom, slowly breaking down barriers to technology adoption, I find it hard to consider this innovative. It feels like the early 90's adoption of information technology in business. Putting leading edge technology to use cutting paychecks was automation, not innovation.
Real innovation comes with changes to the system, to decision making, afforded by the technology. Take the use of the clicker described in the article. Automation of assessment has been going on for decades: multiple choice tests, mark sense forms, learning management systems. In a sense, the clicker is just one more step in that automation path. What's innovative about that scenario is that the teacher will adjust the instruction based upon that real-time feedback. Similarly, we saw the Everett school district's remarkable turn around in graduations rates as a result of the innovative, real-time use of student grade and attendance data. The collection and consolidation of data isn't innovative, but the personalized intervention based upon that data is.
I don't mean to discourage or disparage the adoption of technology as described in the article. Instead I hope we can lift up our vision of innovation in education. Let's use the Flat Classroom Project as an example of this bigger goal. Founded in 2006 by Vicki Davis (aka Cool Cat Teacher) and Julie Lindsay, it uses web 2.0 tools to break down the classroom walls. Students across the globe work together on learning projects. Realize, however, that the technology didn't change the learning environment, Vicki and Julie did.
The lesson education can draw from business is that information technology affords you the opportunity to change, but it does not compel you to change.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Sometimes a hyphen is just a hyphen
I had to smile as I read a recent post by Alfred Thompson on validating character input strings for name. In it, Alfred walks through a number of ways to test for valid alphabetic characters while not limiting it to only the 26 letters of our English alphabet. Most options did not return the results he had hoped for.
I seriously doubt these businesses had a policy that said we don't want women with hyphenated last names as customers, but that's what they implemented. It is important that programming students understand they aren't implementing code, they're implementing the business. The implementation can't (properly) occur without the business context.
And that's a lesson that is just as important as the return value from the isLetter function.
You see, overly aggressive character validation was one of the reasons my wife became a programmer. Early in our marriage, Mrs. Advisory Bored used a hyphenated maiden/married last name. Most computer systems would not accept "maiden-married" as a last name. At some point she figured she couldn't do any worse than those programmers and she changed careers.
I seriously doubt these businesses had a policy that said we don't want women with hyphenated last names as customers, but that's what they implemented. It is important that programming students understand they aren't implementing code, they're implementing the business. The implementation can't (properly) occur without the business context.
And that's a lesson that is just as important as the return value from the isLetter function.
