Teacher education

I am thinking about attending this conference. It seems like it would be a good one and it is nice to see something that is K-12 based and not higher learning with k-12 tacked on the end to up the participants.
If there is something that we could do from up here in the cold, to assist in this conference just let us know. If you have some great ideas for a joint presentation or something we are all about partnerships…I have talked to my staff and asked them to submit proposals and I will send and pay their way if their proposal is accepted.

D. Cannell

P.S. Really like the new look of the blog.

Comment by Darren Cannell — February 6, 2008 @ 6:48 pm | Reply

Merry Christmas from VHSM!!!.

A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Virtual High School Meanderings!!!!!

In keeping with the season, a little Christmas Cheer for you in the form of a podcasted story from Stuart McLean of CBC Radio’s Vinyl Cafe Stories .

VC: December 15th, 2007, “Dave raises the Christmas turkey”

Enjoy…

Blogging About Virtual Schooling.

Still cleaning out that Bloglines acount… This time the topic is virtual schooling.

- Online learning experience suits some students better than sitting in class from Distance-Educator.com’s Daily News

- MIT adapts free online courses for high schools from Distance-Educator.com’s Daily News

- Illinois School Looks to Tech Tools to Teach from Distance-Educator.com’s Daily News

- Resources and Materials from 2007 VSS from E-Learning & Online Teaching

- Virtual schools offer flexible education – Sarah Horner, Duluth News Tribune from Online Learning Update

- Online learning experience suits some students better than sitting in class – David steindorf, Times Union from Online Learning Update

- Online learning resources make homework enjoyable (almost) – Dave Chalk, canada.com from Online Learning Update

- More students learning online – Stephanie Takach, the Triangle from Online Learning Update

- Eve: An Understanding Virtual Teacher – Bill Christensen, Live Science from Online Learning Update

- Illinois School Looks to Tech Tools to Teach – Larry Abramson, NPR from Online Learning Update

- More students logging on for class – Encarnacion Pyle, COLUMBUS DISPATCH from Online Learning Update

- ‘Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning’ – University of St. Thomas from Online Learning Update

- Online Learning Growing, Needs More Oversight – David Kopf, THE Journal from Online Learning Update

- University of Florida to Present Results of Online Learning Research – Government Technology from Online Learning Update

- And so it begins in earnest… from Situativity

- Online teacher Characteristics from Teaching and Developing Online

- In the News from Teaching and Developing Online

- Hybrid class instructor speaks out from Teaching and Developing Online

- Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools teachers among Canada’s most innovative educators from Teaching and Developing Online

- Web opening new classroom doors – AMY HETZNER, Journal-Sentinal from Online Learning Update

- Jeff Bush: Virtual schools here to stay; law, courts must adapt – Capital Times from Online Learning Update

Until next time…

Tags: blog , blogging , blogs , virtual school , cyber school , high school , education

Senator Kerry will host a Town Hall Forum tonight at 7:30. The event, held at Somerville High School, will be for those wishing to discuss important issues surrounding Healthcare Reform. This is a good opportunity to have a constructive conversation, and I hope many will come out to take part.

A copy of one of the bills being considered can be found here .

Download the Summer Newsletter!.
The newsletter is fine as marketing material goes but how about some information on up coming votes and what is on the legislative agenda. It would be nice to know what is coming up and where Sean stands on those votes??

MBTA will host workshops to discuss possible cuts and fare increases.

UPDATE: Governor Patrick has canceled all workshops and hearings until a review of the MBTA’s finances is complete. The report is to be completed by November 1, 2009. More info to come as it is made available.

Original Post – 7/24:

The MBTA will host a series of public workshops leading up to a hearing on the subject of fare increases and potential cuts. Below are is a list of locations and dates for the hearing and workshops. I encourage residents of Arlington and West Medford to attend thses events. Right now, I plan to attend the Somerville workshop on the 13th and the hearing in Boston on the 27th.

Contact me for possible dates and locations you would like to attend.

Estimates from Local Meals Tax released.

The legislature approved a measure allowing municipalities to raise the meals tax by .75%. The revenue generated from this increase would go directly to the city or town that produced it. Below are two estimates from Arlington and Medford if the local meals tax was adopted and in place on October 1, 2009.

These estimates vary drastically due to their different methods. It is also important to note that the increased local option meals tax must be adopted by the municipality.

Estimates provided by Department of Revenue. Special thanks to Chairman Kaufman and Chairman Donato for providing us with this information.

Mrs.Chili
June 3, 2006 at 8:36 am

No, Contrary, they haven’t called, nor have they emailed. I’m still waiting. It’s okay, though; I’ve got a zillion things to do to keep me occupied while I wait (though I do have to admit to being slightly disappointed when the phone rings and it ISN’T LHS…)

Reply

11 Comments.
Sarah
June 2, 2006 at 9:17 am

I read Heart of Darkness in high school and actually really liked it because it just wasn’t like anything I had read before. I am not sure how to describe it, perhaps, ’strange’ is a good word to use, but that doesn’t seem to quite get it either. But it was good nonetheless, though sometimes discussing it in class was hard because some of my classmates didn’t ‘get it’ – the whole Imperialism thing was lost on some of them, though that discussion in itself is kind of beat now.

I actually have not read The Poisonwood Bible yet, though the discussion is making me want to! I have always enjoyed reading, but with the busy semester I had last fall and everything going on lately, the last book I can actually say I read was ‘The Kite Runner’, which I definitely recommend. It’s a slow read and something I normally wouldn’t have been interested in had my aunt not insisted I read it. Since today is my day off, I may have to go to the library and check it out today so I actually have something worthwhile to contribute to the discussion

Reply

Someone who knows the intricacies of web design, especially for a professional scientific journal that’s published periodically, will serve you better as a consultant in the design of the proposed Philippine journal of education. Unfortunately, I am not yet in that league.

Look at some of the subscribed online journals to give you an idea how they look and operate. One good example is The American Journal of Medicine [Official Journal of the Association of Professors of Medicine] where you will note that certain articles may be accessed by registered subscribers only while others are open (free) to the public.

Then again, your organization may have other ideas. Like making certain articles available to non-registered subscribers for a fee. Or, matching your goals to an appropriate web hosting plan . Etc. Etc.

Of course, we all know that the proposed journal will live and survive on interesting, intellectually stimulating, scholarly articles and an uncompromising editorial staff which has the backbone to discriminate against the sophomoric and “extraneous” stuff. [E.g.: the UP Press and the Philippine Folk Literature series.]

The pot just gets more interesting with the inclusion of an undetermined number of mother tongues as MOI in the equation. It is, however, encouraging to note that Papua New Guinea, with its more than 800 languages, has managed to have its own Papua New Guinea Journal of Education (PNGJOE) .

-

Poverty, Malnutrition, Education–and Soybeans.

A few posts ago, we were unto the pedagogy of poverty, the effects of malnutrition on the quality of education and educational reforms and why soybeans, if propagated domestically and integrated into the Filipino diet may yet be the difference-maker for an entire nation–and then we have the following one-paragraph article full of statistics and grim numbers to prove that half the nation is mired in poverty:

SWS: Half of Filipino families say they are poor ABS-CBN – Wednesday, August 5

MANILA – Half of Filipino families in the country believe they are poor while another 27 percent put themselves on the borderline, a new survey by research firm Social Weather Stations said Tuesday. The June 19-22 survey showed that an estimated 9.3 million Filipino families believe they are poor, compared to the 8.7 million recorded in February 2009. Self-rated poverty rose by 17 points in Mindanao from 45 percent in February to 62 percent in June. It also rose by two points in Balance Luzon from 42 percent to 44 percent. It dropped by seven points in Metro Manila and four points in the Visayas. It rose slightly from 43 percent to 44 percent in urban areas and from 53 percent to 58 percent in rural areas. SWS said the Self-Rated Poverty Threshold, or the monthly budget that poor households need in order not to consider themselves poor in general, remained sluggish for several years despite considerable inflation. “This indicates that poor families have been lowering their living standards, i.e., belt-tightening,” it said. As of June 2009, the median poverty threshold for poor households in Metro Manila stayed at P10,000, even though it had already reached as much as P15,000 several times in the past. “The National Capital Region median poverty threshold of P10,000 per month for June 2009 is equivalent to only P6,378 in base year 2000 purchasing power, after deflation by the CPI. The deflated poverty threshold for NCR of below P7,000 per month is a throw-back to living standards of over twenty years ago,” SWS said. For those in Mindanao, the median poverty threshold stayed at P5,000, though it had already been at P10,000 before. The median poverty thresholds of poor households rose slightly to P8,000 in the Visayas, while it fell to P6,000 in Balance Luzon. In both areas, however, median poverty thresholds had already reached P10,000 in the past. Self-rated food poverty up The Second Quarter 2009 Social Weather Survey also found that 7.2 million families considered themselves as Food-Poor, 33 percent put themselves on the food-borderline while 28 percent consider themselves as not food-poor. SWS said the one-quarter rise in Self-Rated Food Poverty is also sharpest in Mindanao. It rose by 11 points, from 36 percent in February to 47 percent in June. The median food-poverty thresholds for poor households rose slightly to P5,000 in Metro Manila, while it stayed at 3,000 in Balance Luzon and Mindanao, and at P4,000 in the Visayas. These levels had already been reached several years ago. The Second Quarter of 2009 Social Weather Survey was conducted over June 19-22, 2009 using face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao, and 600 in the Balance of Luzon.

[http://ph.news.yahoo.com/abs/20090804/tph-sws-half-of-filipino-families-say-th-8061bf7.html]

Posted in Uncategorized

I received this message from Julie Heon via the AP Small Schools listserve. As she was describing the Virtual High School, I though it was worthwhile to post here.

We have used Virtual High School for three years and are quite satisfied. The quality of the instructors is very high, and they communicate very well with our students. Our state has formed a consortium and contracted with VHS in order to negotiate rates.

A very few students have taken AP Bio or Stats. The results on these AP exams have not been as high as in-school AP courses. But the students were satisfied to have the experience.

Online courses have worked for our students who have the capability and responsibility to work independently. We offer them time at a computer at school or they can work at home. Our coordinator for online courses is a guidance counselor who gets regular/bi-weekly progress reports on each student. This helps to prevent a student from getting too far behind before someone at our school intervenes.

Julie HeonDirector of Curriculum & InstructionPembroke Academy

I include it here because I believe it outlines a number of the things that I have often argued about the current state of virtual schooling.

For example, the students in the virtual courses did not perform as well on the standardized exam as students in the classroom courses (and the AP exams are pretty good standardized exams, as far as standardized exams go). The students have to “have the capability and responsibility to work independently”, characteristics of the typical adult learner and not necessarily of the adoloscent learner. The need for access to a cmputer at home or additional access at school.

Is it possible to design a virtual school experience, where students can have the same level of success as their classroom counterparts, which is accessible to students of all abilities and all socio-economic levels?

Tags: virtual school , cyber school , high school , education

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

- Virtual Schooling In The News
- Virtual Schools are worth a look…
- Virtual High School Online Learning Programs
- Virtual High School Option

bowyer
May 13, 2007 at 8:40 am

Although I am at risk of sounding redundant to some, neither M-Dawg’s experience nor Mrs. Chilli’s predicted results surprise me.

Grades mean little to the average student. I believe that this has become the norm for a few reasons.

1) Students don’t see any immediate reward or repercussion for performing well or poorly. They get what they get and we (teachers) generally move on anyway. [Fix - Make them repeat the material on their own time until they succeed. Don't allow them to accept a zero.]

2) Students don’t see any future reward or repercussion for performing well or poorly. Their friends and siblings seem to get into higher education or get jobs regardless of respective success in school. We laud the accomplishments of celebrities, politicians, business people, etc., when they succeed in the face of poor performance. (No one bothers to mention persistence, hard work, luck and other extenuating conditions of their successes.)
[Fix - Provide incentives and take away supports from those who willingly circumvent education. (This is a topic for another discussion and can not be properly addressed here.)]

3) We (teachers and our material) can no longer compete in a world of immediate gratification. Text messaging, cell phones, on-demand programming, DVR, mp3, and all of the other pieces of technology all allow people who make poor decisions like our students (although they are not the only culprits) to focus their attentions in and out of class on anything but learning. (Fix – Probably none, unless lawmakers want to play hardball with companies, parents, and students regarding our way of life.)

Society’s lack of respect or value for education is not lost on children. My class could be interrupted on any given day for general announcements, discipline by administration, tardy students, assemblies, fund raisers, phone calls to me from administrators, (Yes, during class. Sigh.), and various incidental interruptions from the student body or other teachers.

In the last week I know of a student who missed two afternoons of class for a doctor’s appointment for her one day and one for her brother on the other because she drove him there. When asked what this student’s parents used to do before she received her license, she replied that they worked around their schedules but now that she can drive it doesn’t matter any more.

Another student missed school for a hair appointment, when asked why she didn’t schedule it after school she replied that it would have interfered with her sport practice.

To wrap it up, school in general means almost nothing to the average student now (grades mean even less). Until we make success in school matter again, this mind set will remain and likely even proliferate among the masses as the “good” students see the other students “succeeding” with little effort or ability.

Reply