Wikis have made their way into the classroom at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. Students working on writing projects are accessing their teacher's wiki from their Safari bookmark toolbar on their Macs via Apple's Rendezvous. The wiki is installed on the teacher's iBooks and is an adaptation of Instiki, which in combination with SchoolTool, an open souce management information system, streamlines the entire process. Apart from a couple of problems,--when the laptop is asleep or is outside the school the system breaks down--it gets the thumbs up from the students who use it. It takes away the burden of navigating file servers and word processor interfaces and lets the students focus on their writing.I like wiki's - they seem quite useful for the classroom.
Surely, the quote of the day:
''What's going to happen when they go into a store? Are they going to say, 'Do you happen to have 25 Cheerios so I can break it down?' " said Jacqueline Azulay of Roslindale, who sees her two daughters going to great lengths to break large numbers into manageable pieces. ''I think they need to teach basic math."Vanessa Parks dives into the math wars with many interesting quotes.
Proposed Elementary Strings Program Elimination
Listen now: 3.5MB mp3 audio file. WORT
Madison School Board President Bill Keys, Strings Teacher Jack Young, Parent Michael McGuire and Activist Barb Schrank.
Alliance Residential Management is reportedly now in charge of managing Fitchburg's Ridgewood Apartments. Visit Alliance's searchable apartment database here to check out the type of properties and prices they offer.
Mary Battaglia recently mentioned Fitchburg's possible condemnation of the Ridgewood Apartments.
It seems change is in the wind at Ridgewood, with implications for the planned Leopold expansion (Learn more about the Leopold Referendum) Leopold is 0.20 miles from the Ridgewood Apartments (map).
Carol Carstensen’s recent letter to the editor of the Wisconsin State Journal (“Carstensen replies to Robarts”) illustrates the choices before the public in this spring’s school board elections. Many of these choices revolve around the core question of whether one can support progressive ideals and challenge the board’s go along and get along status quo.
I believe that it is not only possible but necessary for progressives to question the status quo – particularly if it results in serious board consideration of balance between employee wages and benefits as part of a comprehensive search for ways to preserve our current staff levels and programs in view of current funding realities.
In her letter, Carol Carstensen erroneously reduces my suggestions to one simplistic idea and then condemns the idea as anti-teacher and ill-informed. Perhaps it is easier to attack a straw-person concept, but it doesn’t move the community or the board closer to the honest problem-solving that is required at a time when we need all of the input and ideas that we can get.
To set the record straight, I did not recommend cutting teachers’ wages and benefits. I did recommend looking for ways to keep their increases in line with the community’s ability to pay as part of a larger plan. I did not propose to hold teacher wages and benefits to any particular percentage or to roll back employee wages. I have not suggested that any or all of my ideas would eliminate the total budget gap for next year; I do believe that this is not a zero sum game and that any reduction in the gap is a step in the right direction, an idea that Carol dismisses in her letter.
The larger plan that I have promoted includes changes that Carol and others on the board have rejected: meaningful reductions in administrative staff, serious evaluations of whether we are getting a good return on our investments in educational programs such as reading and math, and reductions in purchasing contracted services.
If we are to solve the serious dilemmas facing our city and our schools, the board must engage in a serious discussion of facts, analyses, ideas, and clear proposals rather than posturing and labels. That is not happening with the current board. A board that calls itself pro-education, pro-teacher and progressive needs to do the serious work involved in keeping teachers and custodians in the buildings and with the kids. As a progressive member of the board, it is my right and my responsibility to continue to promote informed decision-making to make the best use of scarce resources for our schools and for our community.
Ruth Robarts
(see my article: Annual Spring Four Act Play: Madison School's Budget Process)
Member, Board of Education