Statement of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Georgia Federation of Teachers President Verdaillia Turner on Atlanta cheating scandal and what needs to change:

“We do not condone cheating under any circumstances. Academic achievement can never be separated from academic integrity, which is why the Georgia Federation of Teachers was the first whistle-blower to expose Atlanta testing irregularities.

“Tragically, the Atlanta cheating scandal harmed our children and it crystallizes the unintended consequences of our test-crazed policies. Standardized tests have a role in accountability, but today they dominate everything else and too often don’t even correlate to what students need to know to succeed.

“No amount of testing will replace what works to improve teaching and learning: giving teachers the resources and tools they need to be great teachers and providing students with a rich and well-rounded curriculum. Covering up kids’ academic deficiencies cheats students out of the targeted help they deserve.

“It is outrageous that schools in some states are spending up to 100 days a year doing test-prep or actual testing. We have to re-order our priorities and move our schools from a test-based culture to one that is deeply rooted in instruction and learning, so that our kids can become engaged participants in the knowledge economy and our democracy.

“School districts in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere placed enormous pressure on teachers to show improved scores, but the hard truth is that cheating on high-stakes testing doesn’t fix public schools or help kids. And even with this intense pressure, the vast majority of teachers do everything they can to help kids and never succumb to cheating. They know there are no shortcuts to success. Moving the needle requires a balanced approach that focuses on high-quality instruction; a rich curriculum; appropriate and useful assessments; and additional help and other resources like tutoring, after-school activities and social services to enable teachers and students to be successful.”

 

Franklin will be speaking on KKOB’s Eye on New Mexico, Sunday April 7th @ 10AM.  Those of you in the New Mexico and Texas area that receives KKOB tune in.  He will be discussing a variety of topics including school violence and bullying.

Public school students in New York City were suspended 73,441 times during the 2010-2012 school year, a 2.4 percent increase over the year before.  Fifty-two percent of the students suspended were black, 37 percent were Hispanic, and 7 percent were white, compared with a district enrollment that is 29 percent black, 40 percent Hispanic and 15 percent white.

There needs to be a better way to deal with students who disrupt or stop other students from learning.  The data are clear that poor, minority students are suspended at a higher rate than their enrollment in a district.  Obviously there is a need for research about why this is true. 
In addition, a student who is suspended is deprived of an education and research indicates that these students are more likely to drop out. Are alternative settings the only answer?

I am indebted to Ian Jukes and his 21st Century Fluency Project for posting  this.

Posted by Ross Crockett on March 26, 2013

“You want some great ed tech tools to use in your classroom? You got em'””50, to be exact! This article from Edudemic features an extensive list of some of the most awesome technological tools you can find for teaching and learning. There’s lots to explore here, so have fun!”

via Edudemic

Technology and education are pretty intertwined these days and nearly every teacher has a few favorite tech tools that make doing his or her job and connecting with students a little bit easier and more fun for all involved.

Yet as with anything related to technology, new tools are hitting the market constantly and older ones rising to prominence, broadening their scope, or just adding new features that make them better matches for education, which can make it hard to keep up with the newest and most useful tools even for the most tech-savvy teachers.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used, that should be part of any teacher’s tech tool arsenal this year, whether for their own personal use or as educational aids in the classroom.

Social Learning

These tools use the power of social media to help students learn and teachers connect.

1. Edmodo: Teachers and students can take advantage of this great tech tool, as it offers a Facebook-like environment where classes can connect online.
2. Grockit: Get your students connected with each other in study sessions that take place on this great social site.
3. EduBlogs: EduBlogs offers a safe and secure place to set up blogs for yourself or your classroom.
4. Skype: Skype can be a great tool for keeping in touch with other educators or even attending meetings online. Even cooler, it can help teachers to connect with other classrooms, even those in other countries.
5. Wikispaces: Share lessons, media, and other materials online with your students, or let them collaborate to build their own educational wiki on Wikispaces.
6. Pinterest: You can pin just about any image you find interesting on this site, but many teachers are using it as a place to collect great lesson plans, projects, and inspirational materials.
7. Schoology: Through this social site, teachers can manage lessons, engage students, share content, and connect with other educators.
8. Quora: While Quora is used for a wide range of purposes, it can be a great tool for educators. It can be used to connect with other professionals or to engage students in discussion after class.
9. Ning: Ning allows anyone to create a personalized social network, which can be great for both teachers and students alike.
10. OpenStudy:Encourage your students to work together to learn class material by using a social study site like OpenStudy.
11. ePals: One of the coolest benefits of the Web is being able to connect with anyone, anywhere. ePals does just that, but focuses on students, helping them to learn languages and understand cultures different from their own.

Learning

These educational tools can help you to make lessons fun, interesting, and more effective.

1. Khan Academy: Many teachers use this excellent collection of math, science, and finance lectures and quizzes to supplement their classroom materials.
2. MangaHigh: MangaHigh offers teachers a wealth of resources for game-based learning in mathematics.
3. FunBrain: If you’re looking for a great collection of educational games, look no further than FunBrain. On it, teachers can take advantage of fun tools for math and reading.
4. Educreations: Educreations is an amazing online tool for the iPad that lets teachers (or students) create videos that teach a given topic. Perfect for studying or getting students to show off their knowledge.
5. Animoto: Animoto makes it simple to create video-based lessons or presentations for the classroom and to share them with students or anyone else.
6. Socrative: Available for computers, mobile devices, and tablets, this student response system engages students through games and exercises on any device they have on hand. Even better, teachers can easily assess student progress and track grades.
7. Knewton: Adaptive learning has been a hot topic in recent months, and with Knewton it’s something that any teacher can access and use. The site personalizes online learning content for each student according to his or her needs.
8. Kerpoof: On Kerpoof, students can get creative with their learning with games, interactive activities, drawing tools, and more that are both fun and educational.
9. StudySync: With a digital library, weekly writing practice, online writing and peer reviews, Common Core assignments, and multimedia lessons available, this site is a fully-featured tool for teaching and learning that can be a big help in the classroom.
10. CarrotSticks: On this site, teachers can take advantage of a wide range of math learning games, giving students practice while they have fun.

Lesson Planning and Tools

Use these tech tools to pull together great lessons and design amazing and memorable student projects.

1. Teachers Pay Teachers: Have great lessons to share? Looking for something to add to your classes? On this site you can do both, selling your own class materials and buying high-quality resources from other teachers.
2. Planboard: Make sure your lessons are organized and that your day runs smoothly with the help of this amazing online tool designed just for teachers.
3. Timetoast: Timetoast is a pretty cool for student projects, allowing them to build sleek, interactive timelines in minutes.
4. Capzles: There are so many different ways that Capzles can be used in the classroom, there’s bound to be an application that fits your needs. What does it do? Capzles makes it simple to gather media like photos, videos, documents, and even blog posts into one place, making it perfect for teaching, learning, or online projects.
5. Prezi: Want to build presentations that will wow your students? Make use of this online tool that makes it simple to do all kinds of cool things with your lessons, even allowing collaboration between teachers.
6. Wordle: Create stunning word clouds using Wordle, a great complement to language lessons of any kind.
7. QR Codes: QR codes (or quick response codes) are showing up with greater frequency in education. If you’d like to get in on the trend, you’ll need a tool to create and manage the codes like Delivr and one to read codes, like any of those listed on this site.
8. Quizlet: Quizlet makes it easy for teachers to create study tools for students, especially flashcards that can make memorizing important information a snap.
9. MasteryConnect: How are your students performing with regard to state and common core standards? MasterConnect makes it simple to track and analyze both, as well as other elements of student performance.
10. Google Docs: Through Google Docs, teachers can create and share documents, presentations, or spreadsheets with students and colleagues as well as give feedback on student-created projects.
11. YouTube: Not all schools allow YouTube, but they are missing out as the site contains a wealth of great learning materials for the classroom. There’s even a special education-focused channel just for teachers and students.
12. TED-Ed: TED isn’t just a great place to find inspiration anymore, the site also contains numerous videos that are organized by subject and can help you to teach everything from how pain relievers work to Shakespearean insults.
13. Glogster:Glogster is a social site that lets users mash up music, photos, videos, and pretty much anything else you’d like. It’s a great way to create learning materials and a handy tool for creative student projects.
14. Creaza: Want to bring your student projects into the 21st century? Creaza can make that possible, offering tools to brainstorm, create cartoons, and edit audio and video.
15. Mentor Mob: On Mentor Mob, you or your students can create a learning playlist, which is essentially a collection of high-quality materials that can be used to study a specific concept.

Useful Tools

These tools can help you to stay connected, organized, and increase the ease of building multimedia lessons and learning tools.

1. Evernote: Capture great ideas, photos, recordings, or just about anything else on your Evernote account, access it anywhere, and keep it organized. A must-have tool for lesson planning.
2. Twitter: There are so many ways Twitter can be used in education. Teachers can connect with other educators, take part in chats, share their ideas, or even use it in the classroom to reach out to students.
3. Google Education: Google offers a number of great edtech resources for teachers, including email and collaborative apps, videos, lesson plan search, professional development, and even educational grants.
4. Dropbox: Easily store, share, and access any kind of data from anywhere with the easy-to-use and free Dropbox service.
5. Diigo: Diigo lets you treat the web like paper-based reading material, making it simple to highlight, bookmark, take notes, or even add sticky notes.
6. Apple iPad: One of the most widely used, though expensive, tech tools being used in today’s classroom is the Apple iPad. With a host of educational apps being developed for the device, it’s become a favorite of teachers and students alike across the nation.
7. Aviary: Aviary is was a suite of tools that make it easy to edit images, effects, swatches, music, and audio or to create and modify screen captures.
8. Jing: If you’re teaching kids about tech or just about anything else, a great screenshot program is essential. Jing is one great option that allows teachers to take screenshots as images, record up to five minutes or videos then edit and share the results.
9. Popplet: You and your students can use Popplet to brainstorm ideas, create mindmaps, share, and collaborate.
10. Google Earth: From geography projects to learning about geological processes, Google Earth can be an amazing and fast way to show students anywhere in the world.
11. DonorsChoose: Need funding for a classroom project? You can get it through this site that hooks up needy teachers with willing donors.
12. SlideShare: With SlideShare, you can upload your presentations, documents, and videos and share them with students and colleagues. Even better, you can take advantage of materials that other have uploaded as well.
13. LiveBinders: Like a real-life three ring binder, this tech tool allows you to collect and organize resources. Much better than a binder, however, the site also comes with tools to connect and collaborate and a virtual whiteboard.
14. AudioBoo: Through this tool, you can record and share audio for your students or anyone else.

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21st Century Fluency Project
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Vancouver, BC V5L 2Y8
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Add us to your address book

 Interactive games have a role in learning in schools.  Here are a list of 15 games from the Online University article.

Catalysts for Change: On April 3, 2012, Catalysts for Change went live online for 48 hours. The goal of the game is to inspire people from all over the globe to come together and share ideas about easing the poverty that over 1 billion people live in. The game involves playing cards with words like “momentum” or “adaptation” on them to spark possible poverty solution ideas. When players build on your card (idea), you earn points.

Spent: Designed by Urban Ministries of Durham, a faith-based provider of food and shelter for North Carolinians in need, Spent asks players to consider what life would be like as a homeless person. The game puts you in the shoes of someone who has lost their life savings, and has you choose one of three low-paying jobs to see for yourself how quickly your money runs out.

World Without Oil: If you’ve ever wondered what life would look like without crude oil, this game was for you. With the tagline “play it before you live it,” WWO simulated the first eight months of a world oil crisis. The game ended on June 1, 2007, after 1,500 players had sent in fictional “personal accounts” of their life during the crisis, which were viewed by 110,000 people. Players also worked together to develop solutions that still provide insight into potential real-life answers for the future.

3rd World Farmer: This game was originally created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen in 2005. The player is put in control of an African farm and must struggle to keep family, crops, and livestock alive while conflict and a lack of resources work against them. The designers’ hope is that people will play and realize how precarious survival is for many in Africa, and then do what they can to improve the lives of poor people there.

Free Rice: The United Nations World Food Program operates this game, which seeks to educate the public while addressing the problem of world hunger by offering rice to hungry people free of charge. Players simply go to the website, pick a subject like world capitals or English grammar, and then start answering questions. For each correct answer, the program donates 10 grains of rice to someone in need.

September 12th: A Toy World: The rules are simple: you can choose to shoot rockets at terrorists, or not. But be warned, missing civilians is virtually impossible. The purpose of this newsgame is to visually prove that the U.S. War on Terror is destined to failure, as every civilian killed results in dozens of terrorists created. It has been shown all over the world as a teaching tool against violence.

Citizen Science: Back to the Future meets the EPA in this game, where players travel back in time to investigate what led to the local lake’s pollution and what they can do to prevent it in the future. Developed by the National Science Foundation in partnership with the University of Wisconsin, the game is meant to illustrate the social factors that contribute to environmental harm.

Garbage Dreams: Cairo’s Zaballeen people may have the answer to the world’s trash problem. They recycle 80% of their trash (Zaballeen means “garbage people” in Arabic). Now you can test your mettle and see if you too can be as enterprising as they are. You have one goat, one factory, and 8 months to build a recycling system for the city. Can you make it happen?

WeTopia: Such big names as Mattel, Clorox, and DeGeneres have lent their support to this game that’s like Farmville for a cause. Players build communities and accumulate “Joy” as a form of currency, which they can then donate in-game to real-life causes. When those causes reach 100% joy, the game’s developer donates real cash to the organization that was earned through player purchases and advertising revenue.

Sweatshop: Sweatshop takes things one step further by incorporating humor, albeit black, into its message. The game begins by showing you a factory floor filled with crying or injured children who make high-end sneakers. Then it guides you through a series of choices you must make as the factory manager. As you decide whether to give your workers a safe working environment or focus on your bottom line, hopefully you will begin to wonder what kind of conditions the clothes you’re wearing came from.

A Closed World: Game designers in Singapore created this game because of the shortage of content concerning LGBT issues. Here you lead a gay character through a forest filled with “demons” who try to stop you and force their beliefs on you. You must use your words and logic to navigate your way to find your beloved.

On the Ground Reporter: Darfur: The first in the “On the Ground Reporter” series, this game brings players face to face with the shocking footage of hostilities in Darfur. The in-game objective is to find the truth and the story, but the overall goal is to expose people to the harsh realities of conflicts like that that just ended in Darfur.

Fate of the World: The whole world is in your hands. This award-winning game forces you to deal with crises like natural disasters and a growing global population. By playing through the different scenarios, players get a sense of the real challenges the world could face in the next few generations. It is based on the research of an Oxford professor and was made with the help of a veteran game producer.

Elude: The team behind “A Closed World” also produced this game that wants to change some of the public’s views about depression. The highs and lows of the illness are illustrated as your “mood” rises to the sky and falls to the depths of the earth. The game is only won when the player uses passion to reach happiness at the tree tops.

Karma Tycoon: JPMorgan Chase Foundation was the unlikely backer of this game, where players try to move their “karmameter” to 100%. They do this by helping people through homeless shelters, youth centers, and other community help centers. A grant from Chase Bank starts the game off, but players must budget their money and earn more grants to help more people and solve more problems as the game progresses. So kids learn social and fiscal responsibility while playing.

From Ian Jukes’ 21st Century Fluency Project “https://www.fluency21.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=2757&utm_source=Committed+Sardine+Blog+Update&utm_campaign=649cbaadd0-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

 

I am indebted to Diane Dimond for granting me permission to republish this article.  As she so ably describes the situation, any community that remains silent about a situation like she describes is, in reality, condoning it.

Diane Dimond: Steubenville Rape Case Provides Teachable Moment

By Diane Dimond | @DiDimond

“There are crimes very similar to this that occur every Friday night and every Saturday night in communities across this country …” “” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine

Many of us watched with interest the rape case that recently played out in Steubenville, Ohio. The two defendants “” Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’Lik Richmond, 16 “” were star members of the local high school’s football team, and many in the community felt they had been maliciously targeted for prosecution because of their popularity.

The evidence was overwhelming, however, and both teens were convicted of sexually assaulting a female classmate. There was a video, still pictures and dozens of contemporaneous text and Twitter messages flying back and forth discussing details of the assault. The victim, a 16-year-old girl, was so drunk (or perhaps drugged) that she was unconscious during much of the prolonged assault. Included in the torrent of more than 3,000 tawdry messages read aloud to the court were those from eyewitnesses and classmates joking about the “dead-looking” victim and saying, “Some people deserve” to be urinated upon.

One text sent the day after the attack from defendant Mays begged a friend to delete the video of the incident that had been posted on YouTube and added: “Coach Sac knows about it. Seriously, delete it!” During the trial, it was learned that football coach Reno Saccoccia knew about the sexual assault and refused to suspend the defendants or other players who had knowledge of the incident until the season was nearly over.

As I watched the case unfold “” and read the unvarnished blog by former Steubenville resident Alexandra Goddard, who had immediately captured the offending texts, video and pictures before they were deleted “” I couldn’t stop thinking: Where was everyone else as this crime was happening?

As this young girl was being humiliated and brutalized, stripped of her clothing and carried around like a rag doll, what were her classmates doing? Why didn’t anyone step in to say, “Stop!” Didn’t other girls at the event feel her shame and move to help cover up her nakedness? Where was the owner of the house where the party was being held? What had the parents of these teenagers taught their children about coming to the aid of a fellow human being in trouble?

None of my questions was part of the court proceedings, of course, but as DeWine said upon the conviction, “I’ll guarantee that there are crimes very similar to this that occur every Friday night and every Saturday night in communities across this country, where you have people, particularly young people, who are drinking too much and a girl is taken advantage of, and a girl is raped.” DeWine is right. It is surely happening in your community and mine, too.

Yet DeWine believes that justice may not have been completely served in the Steubenville case. His investigators interviewed 56 witnesses “” from teenagers who attended the party to assistant football coaches and the high school principal “” yet there were still 16 people with knowledge of the crime who have refused to talk. So, DeWine will convene a grand jury next month to determine whether other people should be charged in this case.

Leave it alone, you say? The conviction of Mays and Richmond is enough? I don’t think so.

Consider that even after the guilty verdicts, some in that football-crazed town were still not convinced the pair had done anything wrong, and they turned their wrath on the victim. After the guilty verdicts were announced, two teenage girls were taken into custody for allegedly using Twitter and Facebook posts to threaten her with a “beating” and “homicide.” They now face felony counts of witness tampering, among other charges. After the girls’ arrest, DeWine announced: “Let me be clear. Threatening a teenage rape victim will not be tolerated. If anyone makes a threat … we will take it seriously, we will find you, and we will arrest you.”

Goddard reports she and her family continued to be harassed and maligned. She also had to fight back a defamation lawsuit filed against her and two dozen people who left comments on the case at her website. “Perhaps most ridiculously,” she wrote, “I was accused of “˜complicating’ the case because I posted the screen captures of content that these kids willingly posted themselves.” Clearly, not all of Steubenville has learned the obvious lesson of this case.

In the meantime, the victim’s mother told CNN, “We hope that from this something good can arise … (to) possibly change the mentality of a youth or help a parent to have more of an awareness (as) to where their children are and what they are doing. The adults need to take responsibility and guide these children.”

Yep. This is one of those teachable moments, the perfect time for folks to sit down with their kids and have a serious talk about the issues this case raised. Drinking and drugs, athlete adoration, teenage sex and doing unto others as we would need them to do for us if we were in trouble. It is also a good time for parents to re-examine where the circle of accountability begins and ends when one of our children is so publicly victimized.

“” Diane Dimond is the author of Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust. Contact her at [email protected], follow her on Twitter: @DiDimond, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.

Zero-tolerance policies, which require out-of-school suspension or expulsion for certain inappropriate behaviors, have become the go-to disciplinary approach in many schools. But research suggests such punishments may not change students’ behavior and are often meted out unfairly.

The idea of out of school suspension for being truant or late makes no sense at all.  Schools and parents don’t have control over the kids when they’re at home. Some children see this kind of suspension as a reward and look forward to missing school so that they can engage in other activities like watching television. In addition, data indicate that suspension has been shown to disproportionately affect black, Latino, and male students and those with disabilities.  How do students who have been suspended make up the work they have missed?  Data also indicate that these punishments force students out of school – “push outs.”

What are the alternatives?  Why not in-school suspension during lunch where these students can be isolated from friends?  Or how about mandatory in-school suspension on Saturdays? 

 

LLE, Ky. ““ Two Catholic school athletes who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old told police they did it because they thought it would be “funny,” according to court records released under a Jefferson County judge’s order.

Savannah Dietrich had been frustrated by what she felt was a lenient plea bargain for the two teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her in August 2011, so she tweeted their names and criticized the justice system.

Both teens, who were 16 at the time of the assault, said in interviews with a Louisville Metro Police detective before their guilty pleas that they also took explicit pictures of Savannah Dietrich with their cellphones while she was intoxicated.

After Dietrich initially complained about the plea deal the two teens received, Paul Richwalsky, chief prosecutor in the juvenile court division of the county attorney’s office, told her “get over it and see a therapist. “¦ The jail was for ‘real’ rapists, murderers and robbers,” according to an affidavit released Thursday.

Dietrich’s lawyer, Thomas Clay, told the court that Richwalsky gave the teens favored treatment because they were athletes at Trinity High School, where Richwalsky is an alumnus, serves on the reunion committee and supports the sports teams.

The teen boys pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree sexual abuse, a felony, and misdemeanor voyeurism as part of the plea agreement. They are required to do 50 hours of volunteer work and the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice will determine the level of supervision and treatment needed. The conviction could be set aside and erased when the teens turn 19½ if they complete a diversion program.

The teens told Detective Chris Horn in separate interviews that they were drinking with Dietrich and a few other people at her home in August 2011 when they were left alone with the heavily intoxicated Dietrich. They said they lifted her shirt, pulled down her pants and penetrated her vagina with their fingers because, according to one of the teens, “we thought it would be funny, but it wasn’t.” They said they took two or three pictures each, put Dietrich’s clothes back on and carried her upstairs to her room. Numerous other teenagers told police that the teens showed them the pictures, according to police reports.

Dietrich later learned of the teens’ plea deal, which she considered too lenient, then tweeted their names and complained about the court’s treatment of her. The lawyer for the accused at first sought to have her held in contempt for exposing what was, at the time, a confidential juvenile court proceeding. Dietrich and her parents gave permission to use her name.

The older of the two teens told police in his interview that he molested Dietrich because “she was fine with it.”

“How do you know she was fine?” police asked him.

“I mean she could have definitely been like, ‘Stop, don’t do this’ and we would have stopped, but she didn’t,” the boy responded, adding that she was conscious but “very drunk” and had “low eyelids.”

Before they were charged, the teens pleaded with Dietrich in several text messages not to go to court over what happened, according to copies of the texts released in the files.

“Savannah I know u probably think I’m the worst person in the world,” the younger teen texted her in December, asking if they could meet with her and apologize, according to the court records. “There is another way to deal with this other than jeopardizing our lives forever.”

When the older teen said their lives could be ruined, Dietrich responded in a text: “You don’t think you ruined my life forever? How would you feel knowing you basically got raped. Knowing people are seeing your pictures, tell me who all saw these pictures? It’s humiliating I feel exposed.”

Richwalsky says he told Dietrich and her mother about the plea deal and denies telling her she needed to move on or get over anything, calling the allegations “preposterous.”

The teens pleaded not guilty in March and were put on house arrest though they were allowed to go to previously scheduled college visits.

On June 26, they pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and voyeurism; their sentencing was put off for seven weeks for a required sexual-offender risk assessment.

Both teens have had to withdraw from their Catholic high school. Details about the younger teen were not available, but the Department of Juvenile Justice said the older teen had a GPA of 3.83 and was ranked 25th out of 328 students.

Jefferson County Public Schools said he would have to attend an alternative school because of the charges.

Does your school give favored treatment to a specific group of students?  Or are all students treated the same?  The perception of favored treatment is a difficult one for schools to overcome.  I believe that schools need to recognize students who “give back” whether they perform in school plays, play in the orchestra of play in sports. However, most school recognition programs favor athletics and athletes.  We give them recognition, jackets, dinners and trophies.  Why not give the same recognition to academic achieving individuals?  Schools were built to recognize academic achievement as well as athletic achievement.