If you have used one of our books you may remember our accounts of student multimedia “butterfly projects”.
Today, I encountered a description of the Univ. of Minnesota Monarchs In the Classroom web site. This is a great site for science teachers wanting to rear monarchs as classroom projects, follow the migration, etc.
Assessment has been a high profile topic. Here is a new perspective on the issue.
Just what skills should we be assessing? This is really the core question. The controversy is not whether or not we need to know what students know and can do, but whether the assessment techniques employed really evaluate important skills.
Instead of avoiding assessment or complaining about the narrow focus of the high stakes tests many students are required to take, why not expand the scope of what skills are evaluated.
For example – “The Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment, which will be introduced at about two dozen colleges and universities later this month, is intended to measure students’ ability to manage exercises like sorting e-mail messages or manipulating tables and charts, and to assess how well they organize and interpret information from many sources and in myriad forms.”
See complete report int he New York Times. (Note: You may have to register)
Every so many years someone authors a book or takes a public stand claiming there are biologically based group differences in some form of aptitude. The most recent of these claims originates from the President of Harvard University and claims that women are less likely to be successful in math and science.
A later attempt at explanation claimed remarks were intended to contest claims of bias in supporting the success of women scientists.
eweek reports that hackers can use the Windows media player to install spyware and various other bad code on your system.
If you have followed my blog, you know that I was a big fan of TechTv. I used to love the show and felt it was a great source for information. I liked Leo (he was the old guy) and Patrick. Then, the channel was bought out, Leo left, Patrick left and the program was mixed with lots of game programs. I find gaming very interesting but felt most of the programs were worthless. I always wondered what happened. I happen to come across this interview of Leo and his comments explain a lot.
An InfoWorld article on spam provides some statistics I found very interesting. The article claims 2/3 of email is spam and 24% of spam involves scams and fraud.
Today Steve Jobs did his usual show and tell at MacWorld.
The news – a Mac for less than $500 (without keyboard or monitor). I am not sure this is a machine for schools (price with add-ons would still be more than eMac). I suppose the stategy of selling stripped down machines works on the Windows side so Apple decided to try the same. See Washington Post description.
Apple explains logic behind Mac mini.
As I think more about this product, it would make a great personal server. You could use the default Apache server, set it up using any old monitor and keyboard, and turn it lose for under $500.
Some of the standard software has received some very interesting features.
1) iChat AV allows four people in a video chat. This should allow some interesting opportunities for educators.
2) iPhoto has some useful extensions including image editing.
3) iWork is a new product that is a follow-up to Appleworks. The “Pages” component is an interesting document creation tool.