Local Time:

GMT:

Feedback welcomed:
Help-Desk

Opt-in to stay posted.

Links

Contacts:

Kate Dewey (sp?) of Dewey & Kay, consultant to the plans of the Foundations to pump money into various facilities. 412-434-1335, ext 11. Kdewey AT dkiinc.com. Also working with a part-time helper, Evilin Whitehill.

Not open as of April 16, 2004: http://www.saveoursummer.com/

John Denny, Hillman Co. 412-338-3409. His boss is Mrs. Elsie Hillman.

Rec Centers with a focus for SOS

The list of seven Rec Centers from 4-16 include:

Brookline, West Penn, Greenfield, Arlington, McGee, Crowley, Orbsby.

Lesson Plans

Open Book Project

Pointers are posted in another directory, pps.CLOH.Org/lessons/

• NASA Teacher Site Teachers who want the chance to join the Educator Astronaut Program may apply using the Educator Astronaut site
• Caring Habits Reduce violence, bullying, and drug use while building character
• GraduationProjectHelp.Org
• Ed4AllKids.org
• Communities In Schools
• National Right To Read Foundation

PARENT SBDM HANDBOOK from Kentucky
PTA Parents following the regular session of the Kentucky General Assembly. Information on the role of PTAs in school-based decision making, parent election procedures, responsibilities of the parent representatives to the school-based decsion making council.

TEACHER PERFORMANCE MOST IMPORTANT PREDICTOR OF ACHIEVEMENT
Carnegie Challenge Paper, "Teaching as a Clinical Profession: A New Challenge for Education," offers a concept -- treat teaching as a modern clinical profession. Too often school reform comes without teaching reforms. Reducing class sizes, raising student standards are self-fulfilling improvements. Quality of teaching is the single most important factor influencing student achievement. http://www.carnegie.org

Commonwealth

• Pittsburgh Communities dot org - new in May 2003.
• List of PA Education Committee Members
• Online Professional Education Network (OPEN) provides online professional education programs to eligible Pennsylvania educators.
• Tech Council Asks for Quick Fix for PPS Bickering

School Technology

LUGs (Linux User Groups)

• YHSLUG in Virginia, Jeff Elkner is the teacher in charge.
• The Beacon School, huge Free Software GNU/Linux component. Chris Lehman is the teacher in charge.
• TASK: Technology Advancing Student Knowledge, practical ideas, techniques, and methods for integrating technology into the classroom. Education World calls TASK, "without question, the best in-house teacher resource I have ever seen!"
• Schoolforge
• K-12 Open Source Org
• Web Logs (blogs) in Education
• Ggradebook is the fully-featured GNU gradebook, an application for tracking student grades for teachers.
• The Story Behind Free and Open Publishing at OpenSourceSchools.org
Part I, Part II, Part III.
• Robert Maynord, the tech guy at a small school where the whole shcool uses Linux.
I have developed a series of scripts (PHP language) that can be inserted into the HTML of a school or classroom's current web page to make it interactive in exactly the same way as TeacherWeb. When a teacher wants to update the content of any page, they simply click the blue wrench at the bottom of the page, enter their secret password, and they see an identical version of their page, except that all of the content that is dynamic shows up as a web form for editing. A teacher can also add sub pages to their pages creating a mini web site. The scripts are open source (free and expandable) and can be freely downloaded from the web site. The project is called "Blue Wrench" and the URL is:
• Blue Wrench for tech savvy educators with HTML, PHP and MySQL. Demo or click the blue wrench at the bottom of each page and enter "br555" as the password, and edit (keep it descent). From David F. Warlick, http://landmark-project.com or http://landmarks4schools.org
• Teacherweb.com
• School Notes.com
• Article Technology in the Classroom: Asking the Right Questions by Lynne Schrum, President of "ISTE" (International Society for Technology in Education). Teachers must take the lead to find the best ways to use technology to enhance teaching and learning.
• Center for Advanced Technology in Education at University of Oregon, College of Education, http://netizen.uoregon.edu
• Learning Objects Tutorial
• Online Learning Magazine
• Open-content textbook on Learning Objects, http://reusibality.org. Challenges the purely robotic approach to sequencing learning objects.
• Responsible Netizen Institute, http://responsiblenetizen.org
• David Wiley, authoring an opencontent textbook on Learning Objects, has a free online course on sustainable education
• Tux4Kids.org produces open-source educational software and games, i.e, Tux Typing, Tux of Math Command, and TuxPaint, and offers independant or supplimental project hosting for others.
• National Academy of Sciences predicts fundamental changes in the way universities function due to the introduction of information technology. "Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University," proposes that changes in technology could lead to a future in which instructors sell course material to many institutions and students assemble an education from courses at several schools. Mark F. Smith of the American Association of University Professors expressed concern over the notion of an educator as "more of a consultant or a coach than a teacher," as the report states, saying that information technology cannot substitute for human interaction. The report makes a number of suggestions for how institutions should adapt to the role of technology in education.

  Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 November 2002

States Slow to Implement High Educational Standards

President Bush hails education as a top priority, and promots an educational system holding all children to higher educational standards and results. However, the states haven't even performed requirements adopted in 1994 with similar goals, which function as a prerequisite for the January reforms. Meanwhile, the Department of Education has been lax in carrying out Federal Oversight.

Testing

Peabody High School Hosts IT Competition

Should be interesting.

jCert

jCert, a skills testing and certification-focused consortium of Java vendors whose mission statement is "Certified once, recognized everywhere" and whose aim is to reduce exam redundancy. Oracle Corp. slipped out.

Standards

• IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC), http://ltsc.ieee.org
• STANDARDS-BASED REFORM: A CIVIC IMPERATIVE Conference where grassroots school reform activists learned best practices and proven interventions for improving local schools with numerous tools, papers, and presentations from top-notch experts and presenters.
• National Institutue for Urban Schools Improvement

Discipline

Other Schools

1. Central Catholic High School
2. Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School
3. Kiski Prep
4. St. Edmund's Academy
5. Vincentian Academy Duquesne University
6. Shady Side Academy
7. Carlow College Campus School
8. Mercersburg College Prep
9. The Linsly School
10. Valley School of Ligonier
11. CityHigh.Org
12. PG editorial on Indie SchoolsHamilton Clark (former headmaster of Sewickley Academy): Why independent schools work
Notes:
• Reflections of the diversity
• Reach out to, attract, enroll, include and retain talented students
• interested in learning and willing to work hard.
• opening our students' minds to a wider world.
• To train students for success, we must prepare them to live in a global world where they will have to interact with all different kinds of people.
• Fostering exchange programs, sponsoring and enrolling foreign students, organizing student travel tours and homestays and requiring community service that forces students off campus to interact with others in different parts of the region.
• Our schools are effective because we expect a great deal of our students both in terms of their academic performance and their behavior.
• Academics always come first, but we do believe in supporting excellent programs in the arts and athletics as well.

What disturbs me most is when I hear about capable students who are discouraged from learning in their present schools. This spring I heard from a student who moved to an independent school from his local public school because he had been beaten up for being a good student. In too many schools in America today, it is not "cool" to achieve. Some students have to hide their interest and intellect. What kind of America do we create when students who want to learn are prevented from doing so when the peer environment in school discourages achievement?

Too many students attend schools that do not challenge, interest or involve them, and we end up wasting some of the valuable human potential of Pittsburgh. We cannot afford to allow this to continue. We must provide every student who wants to learn the opportunity to do so in safe, clean and structured schools that will fully challenge and engage them.

Independent schools work because we stay small, we involve our parents, we make sure that every child is heard and known and we keep our standards high. We have a model that works -- at a per pupil cost not far different from good suburban schools. We would welcome imitation.

Educational Position Pointers

Teacher Education Acronyms

Report: When School Reform Lasts

Bottom Line on PARENT ACCOUNTABILITY "Our job is to teach the kids we have -- each and every one. Not just the kids who have responsible parents," writes Bill Page.

The greatest educational problem for the US is to improve opportunities and outcomes for students who are placed at risk of educational failure. Ed.Gov Bulletin

The Center for Teacher Formation

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) Fed agencies formed a working group to make hundreds of federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find.

Character Education

Leadership

Teacher leadership ideas posted by Mark Rauterkus to a K-12 administrator list.

• K-12 Leadership (Selected Research and Readings)
• Leadership Matters: Building Leadership Capacity
• On Becoming a School Leader: A Person-Centered Challenge
• Building Leadership Capacity in Schools
• Measuring Leadership Potential
• Can Instructional Leaders Be Facilitative Leaders?
• Visionary Leadership
• The Strategies of a Leader
• Followership and Leadership (several articles)
• Leadership for Student Learning: Reinventing the Principalship (October 2000, pdf)
• Creative way to build funds for OR schools

Tutoring

Church in Carrick, Brittany, 412-886-1864

Funding

News

Article in PG in July 2002 by Pgh Middle School Teacher, Melinda Suska Conturo

Jonathan Jacobson of the Standard and Poors School Evaluation Service explains extensive evaluation of school districts and PPS spending levels, dropout rates and test results from 1360 AM, The Point. Surf JerryBowyer.com

PG: Finance plans save PPS $Ms

Dr. Butterfield Given Suspension

Tteacher planet.com

Charter Schools

• Propel Schools