February 28

February 28

"Finish every day and be done with it. you have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your nonsense."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the News
Classroom Revolution: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/051010/10edit.htm
"Students of almost every age are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy. This is especially true of younger kids with younger parents. So how is this digital revolution affecting education? A binary answer: Not enough. According to a federal study, most schools are essentially unchanged today despite reforms and increased investment in computers."

Global Kids, Inc. and NewsHour Extra Launch Newz Crew: http://www.newzcrew.org/
The site combines Global Kids' unique, interactive approach to public policy education, youth leadership and online learning with NewsHour's stories and background reports, to stimulate rich online dialogues involving youth in the United States and around the world.

Janice Friesen's Page: http://jfriesen.net/index.html
You can see how she uses her blog, view her portfolio, and more!
She says: "Transparent means to me that the technology is not the main point. The main point is the curriculum. You cannot say "how would I integrate technology in Science?" The question should be the essential question from whatever content area you are dealing with.
Technology is not transparent when you say that you have a computer and start with "How can I use it for this lesson?". The result of this approach is often that the technology becomes the focus (you become limited by what software you have or what connections are available).
Instead start with a specific question or goal and think about how technology can enhance what the students learn. If they are learning something about current events (the discussion of Intelligent Design) there is a good reason to use all of the technological resources available. If you are doing something like studying frog mutations or types of rocks the Internet might have some information, but it is SO much better to look at real frogs or rocks.
In science and in other topics technology allows you direct contact with experts from all over. It can also connect you to non-experts who experienced something like a hurricane to help you understand it.
So, it is not a simple answer. Teachers need to be immersed in technology and aware of what is available in order to make good decisions in lesson design. We owe it to the students because they need to be thinking this way when they go out into the real world.

New York State Education Department: Office of Higher Education: http://www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/teach/selfreg.htm
This site lists resources for teachers in New York State. Also, by registering (free), you can find out what certificates you now hold.

nySTART (New York State Testing and Accountability Reporting Tool): https://www.nystart.gov/nystart/u/index.do
The nySTART website includes detailed reports on test results for New York State (NYS) assessments, including the NYS Testing Program (NYSTP, the tests given to most students in grades 3-8), the NYS Alternative Assessment (NYSAA, the tests given to students with severe cognitive disabilities), and the NYS English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSESLAT). Scores for the NYS Regents Examinations will be reported beginning in the 2006-07 school year.

Plagiarism
Avoiding Plagiarism OWL (Purdue University's Online Writing Guide): http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_plagiar.html

Plagiarism and How to Avoid It: http://ec.hku.hk/plagiarism/content_brief.htm
Plagiarism And How to Avoid It was written for college students. It is useful and accessible for high school students as well. There are informational pages and writing samples, as well as a self-test.

Research Resources: What Is Plagiarism?: http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_home.html

Copyright and Fair Use
Copyright Lesson Plan by Laura Kaemming: http://www.cyberbee.com/copyrpln.pdf
This online lesson plan was designed for 8th grade students to be implemented over the course of several days. It guides students in grappling with the complex issues underlying copyright laws. Kaemming's worksheets used for this workshop summarize the laws clearly and briefly.

Copyrights and Copying Wrongs: http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml
This site answers questions about what can and can't be freely used in lessons, presentations, reports, and on school websites. It also gives an overview of public domain works.

Copyright Kids!: http://www.copyrightkids.org/
This kids site is from the Copyright Society of America. The multimedia Yearbook Club shows kids at Lincoln Middle School dealing with copyright issues while creating a school yearbook. There is a Copyright Challenge quiz at the site.

Copyright Website: http://www.benedict.com/
This intriguing Internet site features examples of plagiarism in many different media or formats.

Copyright With Cyberbee: http://www.cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf
This page introduces students to the issues involved with the use of copyrighted materials for the reports and projects they are likely to create.

How I Learned to Love FAIR USE...: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2003_07_minow.html
or how to bring a $300,000 lawsuit down to $0 if you're a library, archive, or nonprofit educational institution
This comes from Stanford University's Fair Use Site: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

Open Source
These are open source sites that are especially geared toward education.
International Open Source Network, Education Primer: http://www.iosn.net/education/foss-education-primer

Free software in education: http://www.gnu.org/education/education.html

http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianEdu

http://www.schoolforge.net/index.php

UK Schooleforge: http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/index.php/Main_Page

Open Source Education Foundation: http://www.osef.org

Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation: http://www.hosef.org

Canadian Open Source Education & Research: http://www.canopener.ca

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/16/2156205

Roundup of Educational Linux Distributions: http://lwn.net/Articles/34864

A Tutor Learning Content Management System: http://www.atutor.ca

Open Source Course Management System: http://moodle.org

Organization for Free Software in Education and Training: http://www.ofset.org

KDE Edutainment Project: http://edu.kde.org

School Library.net: http://baldwinets.tripod.com/linux.html

http://edge-op.org/grouch/schools.html
Advocacy page, many articles on why Open Source in schools

Simple End User Linux: http://www.seul.org/edu

SchoolNet Namibia: http://www.schoolnet.na

Linux Terminal Server Project: http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html
This site shows how to setup an entire lab very cheaply. Basically you have one main server and all of the other terminals run off of the main server, so even an old 386 computer would be use-able.

Additional Information
A good source for further information is Windows Explorer: Managing Your Files: http://www.duke.edu/~dhewitt/tutorials/explorer/explor.html

Games We Play: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/games/
Cornell's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections explores the evolution of games since 1800 in this exhibition of antique and contemporary games, and rare books.

Nature Online: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/
A PBS Web site, Nature, has short video clips of lots of different animals, as well as a collection of games and puzzles. The For Teachers section has lesson plans that can give you ideas of how to integrate video and the Internet into lessons about animals.

Seven Principles of Good Teaching Practice: http://www.agron.iastate.edu/nciss/kingsat2.html

This site began in March 1998 and was created by Janet Luch. This page was last updated on January 19, 2007 .
Email to studyplans@yahoo.com.