D1git@l Le@rn3r

2011 PA Budget More of The Same for Education

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:45:07 +0000

And that’s a good thing. (Although, those who don’t work in education or who do not sell in the education market may have very different feelings.)

It’s no secret that Rendell is attempting to create his legacy (or infamy) through education funding. Since he took office in 2003 he has raised basic education funding by 35% or nearly $1.4 billion. (The goal is 2.6B by 2014)

Rendell is now asking for a 4.9 percent increase in public school spending over last year for a total of $9.8 billion. This increase comes in the form of an additional $633 million into the basic education fund.

Opponents of the budget point out that this entire increase is created by the current federal stimulus bill. June 30, 2011 will mark the end of that program leaving a tab of $633 million if the basic education subsidy is to be carried forward at the same level.

This funding is completely separate from the $380 million in federal stimulus that is going directly to the districts for special education and low-income students.

Overall it looks like this will be a good year for education spending at the expense of gum, candy and personal hygiene products.

Governor’s Page with links to more information: http://bit.ly/9T6q7W

Great post on the Times-Tribune site detailing the NEPA schools and the amounts they will receive under the proposed budget. http://bit.ly/aGWyh0

Use CPS with Examview

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:46 +0000

eInstruction’s Classroom Performance System (CPS) allows teachers to get real time data while they teach. Sometimes though, there is not time to prepare questions or a teacher simply wants pre-built content.

Examview is a digital content gallery. Over the years it has amassed more than 14,000 standard aligned k12 questions from more than 60 leading text book publishers. If you’ve opened a new textbook and found a content cd in the back then you have the Examview content for that book.

This library can be used to build paper tests or electronic tests which can then be administered, graded and reported on quickly and easily with CPS clickers. As a bonus, Examview Test Generator is able to mirror the format of state tests and can generate a bubble type test which can then be read by a scanner.

For the purpose of this demo, we’ll show how you can quickly and easily pull the library of digital content into CPS. The first method allows you to choose the specific questions that you would like to teach.

Method 1: Pre-selected questions or test

Open Examview Test Generator
Choose “From Scratch” or “Wizard” (From scratch will allow you to pick and choose individual questions, wizard will allow you to choose question types but Examview will randomly choose the questions from the bank for you)
If using “from scratch” click the binoculars on the top toolbar.
Choose “Learning Series” and then continue to select your subject area, grade level and content area.
Once you click “OK” it will load the bank or banks of content that you selected. Click on the check box to the left of a question to select it and add it to your test.
When done click “finish” and your test will be generated. You can now print the test or save it to import into CPS.
Make a note of where you’ve saved the test. The default is in the Examview folder in tests.
Open CPS
If you are adding this test to an existing lesson then go to the prepare tab and click on the lesson. If you don’t have a lesson yet then go to the prepare tab and click new – select lesson.
Once you have selected your lesson and it is highlighted click the “add files” tab. Browse to the folder where you saved your test, select the test and click “ok.”

Method 2: Import all questions in a bank

Open CPS
In the prepare tab create a new lesson or select the lesson that you would like to add content to.
Click on “add files”
Browse to the Examview folder, Learning Series then the subject area, grade level and content that you would like to import.
Click “ok” and the entire bank of selected questions will be imported to the selected lesson.

Loading Multiple Addresses Into Google Earth

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:46:05 +0000

As a visual learner I sometimes struggle to translate rows/columns of data into meaningful information. Graphs, charts and other means of visually reporting data are a huge help to me.

I’ve used geotagging in Google Earth before with good results. At one time I needed a way to better market an event and used addresses from attendees to map about 15% of my total attendance. This gave me a quick snapshot of where to market based on attendance patterns.

Most recently I needed to visually gauge the schools in Northern PA and plan some of my upcoming trips. I wanted to quickly view groups of districts and easily see where I needed to be and where I had already been. I’ll quickly outline how I tackled the process, you can then apply the method to your own needs. If you are aware of a more streamlined process please let me know.

As a brief aside; this process could be much easier if Google would include the features of Google Earth Pro. Google, who have made their mark as a creator and promoter of open-source solutions, took the feature that is most useful to its users and made it part of the paid only version. If you would like to save the time and effort of the following tutorial simply go to www.thepiratebay.org or www.mininova.org and pirate the Pro version.

Step 1: Prepare your database

You will need a file that contains the street addresses and description of your points of interest (POI). For this project let’s use this pre-made Excel spreadsheet (links to my dropbox account since the original file requires winrar to unzip). The original spreadsheet comes from ExceltoKML which we will return to later in the project.

Step 2: Geotag your addresses

Geotagging is the process of translating a street/city/state/zip into a lattitude and longitude. I’ve experimented with several sites but found the highest accuracy and best results with the one below. The only drawback to this site is that it adds an additional step once we get back into Excel.

www.stevemorse.com – Copy the full address of your POIs into the box on the website and click “Process”.You will find that it returns the lattitude and longitude together. This means that when you paste the results back into Excel they will both be together in the same cell.

No problem! Highlight all your Excel cells that now have the lattitude and longitude. Click on “Data” on your toolbar and then select “Text to Columns.” This will bring up an option box. Make sure that “Delimited” is selected and then click next. On the following page uncheck “Tab” and make sure that “Comma” is selected. Click “Next” and if the preview looks good you may click “Finish.”

Step 3: Convert to KML

The free version of Google Earth doesn’t allow you to simply open up an Excel file. This means that we must now translate our geocoded data into a file type that Google Earth can read, a KML.

Go to ExceltoKML. Before we code the data we have a few options. If you scroll down the page you will see descriptions of the various fields in our Excel spreadsheet. At this point we can choose which icons we would like for each address. If you have many addresses I would encourage you to mark “TRUE” in the field that says “hide name until mouseover” This will simply put an icon on the map and only show the text description when you mouse over the icon. This cleans up the map a little if it is crowded.

At this point you can save multiple versions of your Excel file. For example: I might want a map that only has two icons. One for schools that I’ve visited this year and one for schools that I haven’t. Or I may want a map that has has a different icon based on which software solution the district is using. This is based entirely on your project needs. You can always go back and edit this file.

Once you have chosen your options you return to the ExceltoKML site and click the “Browse” button to find your file. Once found, click “View on Google Earth” which will give you the option to save the file to your pc. Do this, and make note of where your downloads are stored. Now you have a KML file that you can open in Google Earth anytime.

Digital Literacy Fueling Student Writing

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:14:26 +0000

Clive Thompson recently posted a great article on Wired.com (link to original post). The article, based on the studies of Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. The conclusion that Andrea draws is that the digital age of wikis, blogs, email, texting and other communication tools has led to a massive increase in student writing.

By Clive Thompson

As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids today can’t write—and technology is to blame. Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into “bleak, bald, sad shorthand” (as University College of London English professor John Sutherland has moaned). An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?

Andrea Lunsford isn’t so sure. Lunsford is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, where she has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students’ prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples—everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.

“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization,” she says. For Lunsford, technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.

The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.

But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.

The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.

Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision. At the same time, the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis—from sprawling TV-show recaps to 15,000-word videogame walkthroughs—has given them a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with others.

We think of writing as either good or bad. What today’s young people know is that knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing might be the most crucial factor of all.

Hats off to PA educators

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:20:57 +0000

Tracie Mauriello and Eleanor Chute of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette recently wrote this article detailing an independent report of PA testing score improvement.

In the midst of a budget impasse over how much the state should spend on education, Pennsylvania has received accolades for improvement in its state test scores.

Pennsylvania is the only state in which student performance on its own tests has improved in elementary, middle and high school grade levels in both reading and math as well as at three achievement levels — basic, proficient and advanced — for at least 2002 to 2008, according to a report released yesterday by the Center on Education Policy, an independent public school advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

Gov. Ed Rendell used the good news about test scores to stump for his education spending plan. “We need to keep moving forward,” he said during a rally in the Capitol rotunda. “We can’t stop now.”

The governor was joined by Jack Jennings, president and chief executive officer of CEP, and comedian and longtime education supporter Bill Cosby.

CEP’s conclusion is based on a study of results of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment math and reading tests given from 1999 through 2008 for grades 8 and 11 and from 2006 through 2008 for grade 4.

“Pennsylvania is unique in that it has across-the-board gains, all [three] grades, all achievement levels in reading and math,” said Mr. Jennings. “Other states did not have a complete home run.”

Each state gives different state tests, some easier and some harder than others.

“We don’t reach a conclusion to say Pennsylvania is No. 1 in the country in achievement because every state has a different test, ” Mr. Jennings said.

The study also did not examine the causes of Pennsylvania’s improvements, but Mr. Jennings said, “Common sense says, changes of that scope, it has to be state action as well as local action. It can’t just be local action because then you’d have differentiated results. The state must be doing something right as well as local school districts.”

The state-by-state comparison became possible after 2002 as states implemented tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Mr. Cosby, who headlined yesterday’s rally at the governor’s request, was in Harrisburg to stump for Mr. Rendell’s education spending plan. He said he hasn’t been following the budget debate but is familiar with the struggle to fund education because it’s happening nationwide.

“Politicians in their speeches always [say], ‘Elect me and I will do good things for education.’ Two days after the swearing in, they talk about cuts,” he said. “No more cuts.”

House and Senate Republicans — who largely oppose Mr. Rendell’s spending plan — have not proposed cutting education spending, but they would keep it at current levels by using federal economic stimulus money. The governor would like to use the federal money to increase basic education spending and continue phasing in a new basic subsidy formula aimed at improved equity and adequacy.

Mr. Rendell argues the state will be left with a gap of about $700 million when stimulus funds dry up in about two years.

The governor also is concerned that the Republican plan would result in cuts to wealthier districts because the federal government requires most of the stimulus money to go to poor districts, said Mr. Rendell’s spokesman, Gary Tuma.

Steve Miskin, spokesman for the House Republican caucus, said, “There’s going to be a gap no matter what, but the gap under the governor’s plan would be gargantuan. Doing what Gov. Rendell wants — increasing spending with federal money he knows will expire — would lead to huge fiscal problems.”

Software Solutions for Response to Intervention in PA

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:40:35 +0000

The following was brought on by 2 separate roll-outs of RTI solutions by software companies in anticipation of PA establishing statewide RTI guidelines.

If you need a comprehensive description of RTI in PA then www.pattan.net is a good reference site. It breaks the system down into manageable pieces and also has the 42 page “brief” of RTI implementation guides for PA.

If you are a little ADHD like me then here’s the short version:

The discrepancy model has become a “wait to fail” model and has not proven effective at closing the achievement gap. Too many kids are being thrown into special ed classes due to reading or other scholastic issues. We need to fix this by identifying struggling students early (universal screening) and improve their achievement by using lessons matched to their instructional needs (flexible grouping and differentiated instruction).

RTI is usually administered in a 3 tiered model. Tier one is in the general education classroom, 80-85% of students fall under this category. Tier two is made up of students with marked difficulties who have not responded to tier 1. These students require an additional 30 minutes per day of small group instruction and more frequent progress monitoring. About 15-20% of students fall under this category. The final tier consists of intensive interventions provided in addition to core instruction with the goal of increasing an individual student’s rate of progress. This is the last step before special ed is prescribed.

Each tier holds fewer students and increases progressively in intensity. The team approach is crucial to the success of the program. Administrators need to be actively involved and monitor their educators to retain the fidelity of the program. This team also decides if a student is responding to the intervention and if they should be moved between tiers.

The bottom line: RTI is a fancy name for a common sense approach to education. Evaluate students to see where they are struggling in order to give them ability aligned lessons and prevent them from just being thrown into special ed.

This whole concept makes perfect sense in the education software industry. The foundation is already laid. Software makes it possible to quickly and accurately screen all students. Many programs can then prescribe the appropriate lessons or intervention needed. This addresses the most critical and problematic issue with RTI: That it be implemented by highly-trained professionals.

An electronic solution standardizes the process and frees educators to educate. It is still imperative that they monitor progress and contribute to the reporting, but the process becomes much less subjective. In addition software makes graphical reporting a quick and easy process to share with administrators or parents.

We have begun to work with two RTI software solutions. One through the American Education Corporation (amered.com) and the other through AutoSkill (autoskill.com). These two solutions share a degree of similarity but apply their solutions quite differently.

A+nywhere Learning System has introduced a system called Learning Link. It is an easy to use universal screener. It is administered via the web and for a small per student fee allows all students in a school or district to be benchmark tested. The test itself is short, 30-35 questions, however each question tests on a range of knowledge to determine not only comprehension but also some of the higher level thinking skills. The questions use flash animation and some require the student to manipulate the graphics to achieve the desired outcome. All results are quickly provided to the administrators. Math is Quantiled and reading results are Lexiled.

Learning Link is designed to compete with the Pierson, NWBA, MAP and Scantron type tests but takes it one step further: It prescribes the necessary lessons to fill in the knowledge gaps and bring the student back to skill level. This creates a “no brainer” situation for schools already using the A+ Learning System. Teachers apply the test and import the results to A+ to automatically create a detailed, individualized lesson plan for each student. Even if a school is not using A+, the simplicity of the testing process and cost make it an extremely strong contender as a universal screener.

AutoSkill has already earned the reputation as the leading remedial software provider on the market. Their Academy of Math and Academy of Reading programs have won numerous awards. Because of their foundation in these areas AutoSkill have added their own RTI solution. Unlike A+, AutoSkill focuses primarily on tiers 2 and 3 where they can apply their expertise in remediation.

The AutoSkill RTI module tests students reading fluency with 3 reading passages, and their comprehension with a cloze test. These oral fluency benchmark tests (ORF’s) have become the default method for many districts to determine the percentage of students are likely to meet, or not meet, established standards on state and/or local standardized achievement tests.

In the past however, the tests required the teacher to grade them on the spot. AutoSkill’s RTI module records the student so that they can be re-played as many times as necessary and so that they can be graded at the leisure of the teacher. These recordings are also powerful proof of a student’s gains after intervention.

AutoSkill has retained the expertise of Dr. James McCook, a respected RTI author and consultant for school systems across the nation. Because of this, the depth of their tracking, reporting and progress monitoring is extremely detailed. The module is a start to finish turn key solution for districts with high numbers of at risk students. Because of this, the RTI Package for the Academy of READING was Honored as 2009 Best in Tech by “Scholastic Administr@tor” and the 2009 SIIA CODiE Award for “Best k-12 Instructional Solution.”

It should be noted though that The Academy of READING is prerequisite for customers implementing the Response to Intervention and/or Oral Reading Fluency modules.

Like I said, there are some glaring differences between these two solutions. What you and your district consider RTI to be will be the differentiating factor. Many schools will be satisfied to choose a universal screening test and allow educators to build curriculum around the prescriptions. Other districts will find that they need to implement a full blown RTI solution because of the severity of their achievement gaps or reading deficiencies. Both companies offer solutions that will complement your RTI implementation when PA rolls it out to the rest of the state.

Interwrite Mobi gets great reviews

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:54:14 +0000

A quick history: in 1971 PA set up 29 Intermediary Units (IU’s) to help educate the educators and integrate technology in the classroom. Each IU has it’s own directors and paid staff to oversee it’s “territory.” The main contacts between the schools and the IU’s are tech savvy teachers, tech and IT directors called CFF Coaches (Classroom For the Future). It is a great concept and an asset to the schools. The organizations also do training, act as a liason between the School Districts and the PA Dept. of Education. There’s more at the main site if you’re interested, PAIU.

With that back story out of the way…

Last week Point Click Learn was invited to present the eInstruction products to IU #5 at their office in Edinboro. There were about 20 CFF coaches there and it provided a great opportunity to build a rounded presentation of the package.

We had pre-assigned names to the CPS clickers and distributed them at the beginning of the presentation for a review of their “homework.” We then transitioned into Examview and aligning lessons to state standards. The last portion of the presentation was using Workspace and showcasing the versatility of sandbox mode. The difficulty in Workspace is to narrow down it’s huge potential to the features that would be most often applied in the classroom.

Although the eInstruction products are not as well know as some of the larger brands (yet), several of the coaches were already familiar with them. One of them pulled out this months Tech Learning and showed us this article, which we hadn’t seen yet. And then, as we were presenting, a technology director from Warren gave us an impromptu reference.

Apparently, she purchased a mobi for one of her math teachers while someone else was using her Airliner. When they tried to return the Airliner she wouldn’t trade back. There was more to the story but that’s the short version.

That’s a phenominal reference. Although we believe that eInstruction has the best product line in the education market, it’s always great to hear feedback from the educators in the field who are using it. Any other pleased educators? Let us know. And….if you’re in PA and would like a quick demo we’re happy to do that as well.

eInstruction to unveil updates at NECC 2009

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:07:22 +0000

Our regional eInstruction company rep was in town for a small show last week. It was great to hear the success stories that so many resellers are experiencing right now. Collaborative technology is exciting right now and thanks to the stimulus bill, quite accessible too.

As part of his visit we were treated to some upcoming news that will be unveiled at this year’s NECC in D.C. I think those people that are looking for the next evolution of the CPS clickers will be pleased. It is a natural progression since most districts do not have a 1:1 laptop/child ration and it;s not conceivable that students will all be treated to iphones and HTC touches any time soon.

So, in summary….keep an eye on eInstruction this July.

22 interesting ways to use twitter in the classroom

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:42:42 +0000

Here is a neat google docs presentation about twitter uses. Although targeted to the classroom there are several techniques, particularly geo tagging, which could be useful for other applications.

The full presentation can be found here.

Tweeting. It’s for the birds.

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:14:54 +0000

People can usually be divided into 3 camps when it comes to twitter.

“What is that?”
“I don’t get it, is this all there is?”
“I love it.”

A little while back I decided to add twitter to my other social networks on a 1 month trial basis. I’m still something of a neophyte but I’m quickly moving from bullet #2 to bullet #3. Part of its draw is the simplicity. No flash, no fancy languages or code. Just enter a few sentences and your done. The other part of the draw is how it can be scaled for nearly any use that you can think of.

But what’s the point?

The point varies based on your overall needs and purpose. At its core twitter is like a phone party line in text. It allows you to be part of a larger conversation and contribute and respond as you desire. With this in mind, you can keep a close group of friends, you can market your product, business or blog or you can align yourself with like minded professionals for topical discussion. A simply way to get started is to describe yourself so that others can find you based on similar interests. Head on over to wefollow.com and get listed. While there, you can also look for other people who might share similar topics.

One of the other benefits of twitter to the general public is that it serves as a real-time search engine. Since Google indexes (searches and shows results) of twitter conversations, you are able to see what people are saying about anything right now. From a marketing standpoint this is beneficial to monitor advertising and PR. It also allows two way conversation between a big corporation and simple folk like you and I. If you find that you appreciate searching twitter there are a few tools to help.

tweetscan is a simple web based twitter search.
twazzup another web based twitter search with a little more flair.
Sideline this search tool is installed on your computer and can handle many different searches and many options within those searches. it can also be set to refresh every second. Probably too much for the average user, but nice for a larger organization.

If you find that you are twittering more than you expected you might want to consider a desktop application. This means that you don’t have to login to twitter.com every time you want to post or read your tweets. The program sits on your pc and allows you do do everything from your desktop. All of these clients also have a basic search feature build in. A few of the more popular ones include:

tweetdeck just got an overhaul and sports quite a few features.
Twirl an nice looking simple program that was #1 before the tweetdeck upgrade.
Seismic this program is the next version of twirl, many new features.

The truth is, twitter might not be for you. But it can be used as a great tool for many. A mobile taco restaurant in L.A. uses twitter to let people know where they will be next. A professor used it to keep the students involved in a real-time conversation during lectures. That’s why “what’s the point?” is a difficult question to answer. My point may not be your point. In fact, you might be the person who discovers the next point. Are there any other great examples of people finding creative uses of twitter?