Jamie McKenzie’s online journal – From Now On – has an interesting article entitled Writing the Right Way. The article addresses the false assumption that writing with a computer will automatically create better writers and suggests that teachers revisit the idea of process writing.
The No Child Left Behind Act charges the Secretary of Education with developing the nation??s third National Education Technology Plan. If you have comment or are interested in this process, you might explore the official web site for this process.
When you write about technology in schools, you constantly search for current statistics. Things change fast and it is difficult to provide a description of what is typical. Some commonly cited statistical sources are fee based — these sources appear to be oriented toward those making business decisions. Education Week offers an annual review of educational issues and trends under the title of Technology Counts. The 2003 issue is now available. If you visit this site or read the paper version (I think I paid $6), you still need to watch the dates for the data Tech Counts 2003 provides. You will see that some of it was gathered in 2000.
On more thing about this publication. Each year, in addition to giving updated state by state data on technology use, the publication has a topical focus. This year’s focus addresses the role of technology in assessment (online testing, online test preparation, computer essay grading).
Cindy has a very exciting opportunity this summer. She is going to spend 6 weeks in Japan as part of an educator exchange program.
There is strong technology emphasis in this project. Every Sunday evening at 9, Cindy uses CUSeeMe to meet with her Japanese language instructor online. I assume the unusual time has something to do with the time difference between here and Japan. When we happen to be out of town we have to look for a hotel with a fast Internet connection in the room.
While the teachers associated with this project get to travel, students in Japan and the U.S. will also communicate and work on projects collaboratively. Cindy, her colleagues and Grand Forks middle school students have been working on a web site as part of this collaboration. We welcome you to follow this project as it develops.
June 2003 has been designated as “National Internet Safety Month” by I-Safe Anerica. I-Safe is sponsoring activities for kids, parents, and educators.
Common Sense Media announces a new web-based media ratings system (New York Times).
I just finished finals week. One of the useful by-products of this time for me is the opportunity to read student papers. It becomes a useful way to increase the breadth of the material I normally read. A couple of papers this time dealth with high stakes testing and both papers cited the work of Arizona State Univ. profs Amrein and Berliner. These researchers assumed that any general benefit of high stakes tests would be evident on other standardardized tests administered in the state (ACT, SAT, NAEP and AP). They concluded “evidence from this study of 18 states with high-stakes tests is that in all but one analysis, student learning is indeterminate, remains at the same level it was before the policy was implemented.” This finding raises some interesting questions about what the tests actually accomplish.