Today was Earth Day 2007. Current concerns regarding global warming should prompt a great deal of attention to this event and the issues it is intended to highlight. Visit the web site.
One resource we found to be useful was a pdf that provided some concrete suggestions for what each individual can do to help. For example, by replacing three light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs you can reduce your carbon footprint by 450 pounds per year.
I am feeling much lighter already.
This week is the 10th anniversary of the Red River Flood of 1997. This post is for those who were there with us and for those who helped.
We left Grand Forks to stay with relatives in Hinckley, Minnesota until the waters retreated. There are many stories associated with the experience. Some of these stories we tell in the first chapter of the book we wrote about the Internet and education. The connection may not be obvious. The type of web applications we take for granted now were very new 10 years ago, but the opportunities to tell the stories of the flood and to communicate with colleagues and family we may have been forced to abandon in the middle of the night may have been the first time the Internet’s power became concrete for us (try this link – I wrote this content and took these pictures ten years ago).
I do have a little unfinished business. Our “relatives” have given us trouble for years about the way we describe our adventures following the flood in our book. It is true – we did not bother to reveal their names. So – Scott and Denise Ellingson – thanks for being the relatives in Hinckley.
Here is an interesting site (with tutorials) provided by the Berkeley School of Journalism. The site identifies stages in the creation of a story (selection, storyboard, field work, editing, assembly) and then links tutorials and resources to each stage.
Widgets offer a convenient way to add functions to web sites (and blogs). WidgetBox is a site providing access to a variety of widgets. If you want to add unique features to your blog, you might want to give widgets a try. The widget I have added offers the opportunity to search within my blog (I know you can already do that, but I needed something I could test). I also know that a search widget serves little use within a blog entry, but as they say on television – “This is only a test.”
I found a second example. I wrote about my fascination with the social music service Last.FM in a previous post. The following widget shows the music I have listened to recently as stored by this service.
We spent the last week in Chicago and in the journey getting from here to there and back. The event was the American Educational Research Association convention (2007). The one presentation I attended that may be of interest to those who read this blog concerned the evaluation of math and reading software I just described last week. A presenter from Mathematica and a discussant from Stanford considered the results of the first phase of the study. Here are a couple of comments that I found helpful.
Even though the study involved many schools, teachers, and students, treating school and teacher as units of analysis required, based on a power analysis, that the researchers expect an effect size of .15 to regard an effect as significant. In this situation, it was not possible to evaluate the impact of the 16 individual instructional packages that were used and the overall effect of reading or math software did not achieve statistical significance.
Based on tracking functions present in some of the software programs, the researchers estimated that use of the software replaced approximately 10% of traditional instruction. The discussant noted that for approximately $25 per seat (the average cost of the software) it might be argued that 10% of teacher time was freed to attend to the needs of individual students. This “spin” on the results was kind of interesting and at first I thought this to be a positive statement and quite optimistic given the very guarded approach taken by the researchers. However, while potentially true, it would also seem that this flexible time must not have been used productively or achievement gains would have been generated.
The data from the second phase of the study is still under review. The second phase will allow a comment on individual software packages.
Representatives from a couple of software companies were in the audience and noted that the software was implemented with the minimal amount of technical support and inservice preparation. The presenters accepted this description, but countered that this was the level of support that schools normally purchased.
The presenters were careful to stay away from speculating how the results of the research would be interpreted by politicians and policy analysts. The presenters argued that the results could be spun in different ways.
We did have the opportunity for a little recreation. The Sunday before the conference we were able to watch the White Sox and Twins. It was cold, but Santana was pitching for Minnesota and we are becoming big Twins fans. Twins won.
Blogged with Flock
The results of the NCLB mandated evaluation of reading and math software is now available (see press release).
The pdf of the full report is available for download.
A report based on a second year of data collection will be released at a later date.
if:book has an interesting post concerning the future of print media – most specifically newspapers. The post references material suggesting that print will be around for a long time for certain applications.
Print reading, he says, tends toward the sustained and immersive, the long-form linear narrative. Computer reading, on the other hand, is multi-tasky — distracted, social, bite-sized, multidirectional. (Cory Doctorow)
The post also includes reference to a new eye-movement study that concludes readers process online stories more extensively than that traditional newspaper format (see if:book link for more information and link). Such data may require careful interpretation – newspaper stories (if I remember how writers create stories) are written in a way that positions important and summary information early within the story and then provide details. Such stories are written to allow readers with different motives to process the stories differently. My point – the media type and the media format may be confounded and this connection must be considered in interpretation.