Learning in America: September 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Ignite Presentations

A part of the cure for powerpointlessness?

A presentation with 20 slides automatically advancing every 15 seconds

IGNiTe YouTube Channel

Slideshow Resources at LIM

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Monday, September 28, 2009

Featuring David Marshak

New Horizons for Learning: "Why Every Child in America Deserves a School Where She/He is Known and Valued"

Letter to the Editor: "Common-Standards Process: Rigged from the Beginning?"

Education Week: "Obama's School Choice - Shouldn't the education that Malia and Sasha receive be available to all?"

Seattle Times: "NCLB: Test-Obsessed Education Won't Move Us Ahead"

Nine Myths About Public Education

Click Here

by Olga LaPlante

Glad to be the first to get the wind of this news - although it's all over the web. And you thought Arne Duncan was just another pretty face...

Here is a brief account of the new conversation that the President and the Federal DOE is starting. I think that this thought is not particularly new. I also think that the biggest question is, how will all this play out if they follow through on the initiative?

Teacher salaries are relatively low - even though job security seems to be a huge advantage these days, and teacher jobs are generally less volatile than the private market, plus the benefits, of course. But the big attraction for teachers is the summer vacation. I wonder how that will be affected by the proposed change.

I also wonder how most parents will react. If they are like me, they might be simply elated - provided the programs offered aren't just more teaching to the test, and do include enrichment activities.

What about the largest affected population - the students? If you have a younger child, he or she will not know the difference, at that age they are the most excited and fun group in the whole K-12. Older kids may display more resistance - and if they hate it during the shorter day, they might hate it more or as much during the longer day, only they will feel more miserable. I am just trying to say that it's important that the additional time - if added, indeed, - needs to be meaningful, no doubt.

Finally, who will pay for this? If your child goes to an afterschool daycare, well, that lady will face lean times! If you don't have to pay for that daycare any more - well, aren't you going to be happy about it? I know I will be.

On a larger scale, it will be taxpayers anyhow. It's always the taxpayers, isn't it? So, given the budget deficit, what do the President and the Education Secretary get their way? How will that sit with the possible shutdown days as contemplated by the DOE of Maine? Tough times require extraordinary solutions.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

MSAD#60: iDoc-Cam: MacBook as Document Camera

LINK

MLTI

Welcome to Maine 121.org: MLTI Blog for Educators

MLTI @ LearnCentral

MLTI

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Why Ending Effective Educational Programs Makes Terrible Economic Sense

by Nicole Ouellette

Recently, a local school district has closed off a computer technology program open to high school students. Their reasons cited were low enrollment. My old boss Chris wrote an excellent letter about his experience with the program in the local paper. It got me thinking, beyond the impact of one individual student, how do these programs effect the world beyond the classroom?

Schools exist to make productive members of society. And when you look into the data, a lot of these technical programs end up being pretty effective. They increase graduation rates and beyond that, students who go through these programs earn more money, have lower unemployment, and lower rates of substance abuse.

So subjectively, these programs are fantastic. But what is their actual return on investment, beyond preventing bad things from happening to teenagers?

Let's take my old boss Chris, a former student in a technological program. Chris is the IT Manager of a company that employs 60 people. Let's say he makes $50,000 a year (I have no idea if this is the case but it's a nice round number to work with.)

Money Invested In Chris:
Computer, used over 4 years: $2000
Misc. tech equiptment in addition to computer: $2000
Additional supplies (books, etc.): $1000
Teacher, 4 years salary: $160,000 (assuming $40,000/year)
Computer Tech Support (additional instructor, part time, four years salary): $60,000 (assuming $15,000/year)
Administrative costs (part time, four years salary): $60,000
Total Cost: $285,000 , Cost per Year: $71,250 (After four years, investment is zero)

Money Returned From Chris:
Taxes to Chris' salary (assuming $50,000 salary): $12,500/year
Money spent by Chris of his salary (assuming 25% of his salary goes into savings, 25% to taxes): $25,000/year
Volunteer hours (including Rotary, assuming 2 hours/week at value of $25/hour): $2,600
Total Money Back Into Economy Each Year: $40,100
Years To Pay Off Education Costs (Breaking Even): 7.09 years

So the technical program has not only paid himself off but made a 'profit' in eight years. Also, I assumed that Chris was using resources (including his teacher) exclusively when in actuality, costs would be shared by several students. I also assumed in my calculations a relatively high salary for teachers and a relatively low salary for Chris. I am also not counting how much it costs to treat some of the problems that are created when people do not have access to educational opportunities.

To be fair, maybe not all of Chris' classmates are equally productive. That said, looking at the graph, after an additional 7 years, Chris has put enough resources back into the economy for two people.

The point is technical education programs, from a purely objective standpoint, contribute to our economy, in addition to improving the lives of individual students.

So if your school is considering cutting back programs to save costs, I encourage you to fight it, especially if you are out of the educational community. Because as you can see, the cost of putting a productive member into society is relatively little compared to what society will get back.

Nicole, formerly in education, runs her own technology-related business and writes her blog at www.breakingeveninc.com/blog.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Backchannel Communications at MLTI Regional Meeting

LINK

Wikipedia: Backchannel
Chatzy

Backchannel Chat in the Classroom

View more presentations from Sarah .

Backchannel Chat in the Classroom

Difference between a Community and a Network

"Blogs vs the. Real-Time Web"

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Common Core National Standards First Draft

English/Language Arts Draft

Math Draft

NYT: Room for Debate: National Academic Standards: The First Test

Marion Brady: National Standards and Education Reform

Thoughts?

Moving to Different Productivity Apps II

I spent the morning at Mountain Valley High School in the new RSU #10. MVHS has had a 1-to-1 program for several years now with both teachers and students having Microsoft Office as their main productivity suite. But looking at the cost of licensing for students, it was decided to go with only staff having MS Office. This, of course, leads to concerns about being able to read files with different programs.

My job was to offer some options and offer assistance in difficult cases. During a staff meeting I reviewed options on Moving to Different Productivity Apps.

OpenOffice is a great addition to MLTI machines and can be downloaded and added to the "MyApps" folder quite easily. Of course, NeoOffice, Pages, Numbers and Keynote will meet most needs.

Many were excited to find out that just about anything could be turned into a PDF on the Maine laptops. If all else fails, simply save as a PDF and annotate as needed in Preview.

I spent the morning answering additional questions from staff and students. I'm so fortunate to be able to work with yet another great Maine school.