Free Education Week Live Webinar: Using Data to Improve Student Achievement

Extra Credit for EDU101 students who attend this webinar!!! Contact Dr. Randolph for more details.

Free Live Webinar:Using Data to Improve Student Achievement

Using Data to Improve Student Achievement
Tuesday, December 1, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time
Also available "on demand" anytime 24 hours after the event
Free registration is now open.

Partly because of the No Child Left Behind Act and partly because of advances in technology, a major push is under way to gather data about student achievement that can be used to inform a wide range of educational decisions. Through funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, states are now being encouraged to create statewide longitudinal data systems to help track student achievement. But is the increased collection of student data yielding commensurate improvements in achievement? Join us for an in-depth discussion of why data is helpful, how best to collect it, and how it can be used to help support achievement.

Guests:

Martha Greenway, deputy superintendent of organizational advancement, Fulton County, Ga., schools

Baron Rodriguez, director of state data systems, Data Quality Campaign

This webinar will be moderated by Katie Ash, staff writer, Education Week and Education Week Digital Directions.

Click here to register for this free, live event.

All Education Week webinars are archived and accessible "on demand" for up to six months after the original live-streaming date.

Making some extra income selling your lesson plans?

"Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare."

Read this NYT article to find out more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/education/15plans.html?em

What do you all think about selling lesson plans?

Executive Function

"Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today."

Read more on the executive function in this N.Y. Times article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html?em

Spring 2010 Field Experiences

For Elementary Education students who will be participating in field experiences for Spring 2010, applications are now available and can be picked up in my office (Room 406). These are due by October 1, 2009! Stop by and pick up your application today!

Ramona Johnson
Administrative Assistant
Elementary Education Department

Watch Obama's Talk to Students, Available Sept. 8, 12 pm et

Elementary Educational Promotional Video

Flip video recorders available for recording education students' lessons

The El. Ed. Department recently purchased three new Flip Ultra digital video cameras that education students may borrow to film their lessons or to integrate video into teaching. They are very easy to use--just hit the red button and the Flip will record for two hours. The USB port flips out to easily download the video to your computer. It also has intuitive software built in to easily edit videos. Contact Dr. Randolph or Ms. Johnson to arrange to borrow one of these honeys.

Elementary Education Lab Schedule

You can view the Elementary Education Lab Schedule at:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=30hamdtr6g7r7qb54g5ikaueqg%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

Spring '09 Alumni Newsletter

Click on the following link to download the Spring '09 Alumni Newsletter.

http://sites.google.com/site/fueledarchive/Home/newsletter_spring_09_v1.pdf?attredirects=0

The Benefits of Recess

"A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics studied the links between recess and classroom behavior among about 11,000 children age 8 and 9. Those who had more than 15 minutes of recess a day showed better behavior in class than those who had little or none. Although disadvantaged children were more likely to be denied recess, the association between better behavior and recess time held up even after researchers controlled for a number of variables, including sex, ethnicity, public or private school and class size."

Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/health/24well.html?ref=education

Stand up desks

What do you think about the stand-up desk?




Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/us/25desks.html?em

Siftables

What other educational uses can you think of for these?

Piaget Slideshow: A movie slideshow made in EDU201

Culture and Diversity in the Classroom: A movie slideshow for EDU201

Opportunities

Follow the link below to find out about a secondary English position in Calumet, about how Michigan teachers can teach in Taiwan, and about dates for the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification.

http://sites.google.com/site/fueledarchive/Home/Dr.LaureneZieglerscanstuff.pdf?attredirects=0

Education Club Recognized for Toys for Tots Achievement

A collection for the (younger) ages

"Finlandia’s Maki Library has more than 3,200 books in children’s lit section."

Read the full article about Finlandia's children's literature section in the Daily Mining Gazette:


http://www.mininggazette.com/page/content.detail/id/503667.html

The Art of Teaching without Teaching

Ken Ken is the new math craze--and perhaps the new math instruction craze. Check it out at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/arts/09ken.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Its developer was a Japanese educator who believes in the "art of teaching without teaching."

Education is all in the brain

"AS Department of Education officials consider how best to spend billions from the economic stimulus plan, they would be wise to pay attention to which programs actually help children’s achievement — and keep in mind that sometimes very small influences in children’s lives can have very big effects."

Read more of this NYT article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08nisbett.html?em

Annual Mean Michigan Elementary Education Teacher's Salary

$56,170

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_mi.htm#b25-0000

Tax Cuts for Teachers

One of the smartest stimulus moves we could make would be to eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I’d also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers. . .

Read more great ideas on reviving the economy through improving the state of U.S. education from Thomas L. Friedman's opinion column in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11friedman.html?em