There is some debate on whether younger students should be encouraged to blog in school. Opponents may object to the student’s personal information being published online and have concerns for the safety of students. Proponents might say that the web is an increasingly important communication medium and students should learn how to use these new tools to better prepare for the future.

According to Wesley Fryer thought leader and author of the blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity,

I definitely think middle school students should be blogging, as well as elementary and high school students. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, students need to practice their writing skills regularly, and blogging is an excellent way to do this. We get better at things we practice regularly. It is common for kids to be required to read regularly during and after school, but regular writing assignments are less common. Blogging provides a way to both encourage and empower students students to write regularly.

The second main reason I’d argue students (including middle school students) should be blogging is so they can learn how to properly and responsibly use hyperlinked writing. Hyperlinks are one of the foundational technologies of the Internet. Students use hyperlinks by clicking on them, but far fewer create their own hyperlinks as part of their class assignments. Certainly the prevalence of social networking platforms has increased opportunities for students to use hyperlinks in their writing, but voluntary student use of social networking platforms does not necessarily result in students learning about hyperlinking and responsible use of hyperlinks.

Students should be encouraged to blog responsibly so they can discover their own voice. This is not the case for everyone, but some students are able to really discover their own voice via writing. The encouragement and positive feedback which young writers can receive through writing on blogs and other social websites can play an important role in defining identity for a young person. Students can and do often discover the power of their words, and the importance of sharing thoughts as well as ideas.

I personally think it is great when students blog. A blog is like a individual’s personal newspaper column. Blogs require updated content, which encourages a blogger to think critically and write often, an important skill in the workplace. Student’s can also learn about publishing online and if they are really ambitious they can learn about HTML code to customize their site. The great thing about the web, is that anyone can publish. It doesn’t matter if they are a Pulitzer prize winner or a student. If you write great stuff, people will read it. Who knows, a student who starts a blog today could become the next William Shakespeare tommorow.

What do you think? Should schools encourage students to blog? Is there educational value in blogging?

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Tandem for Schools provides a free school calendar for schools to display online or print out. It allows you to add as many events you want to a yearly calendar for the 2008-2009 school year or the 2009-2010 school year. Tandem basic also includes several free features-

1. Customize calendar by adding your school logo.

2. School calendar can be synced with parent’s work or home online calendars such as Outlook, iCal, Google Calendars, Yahoo Calendars, or Cozi. When there is a cancellation or a change in the date of an event, everyone who has synced the calendar will receive automatic notifications.

3. You can add or edit the calendar at any time.

Any changes made by the calendar administrator will be immediately reflected on the online calendar that is seen by parents, staff, and students.

4. The calendar is hosted for free.

All you have to do is provide a link to the online calendar to staff, parents, and teachers.

5. Improved communication

Tandem’s free school calendar dramatically improves communication between staff, students, and parents about important school dates and events. No longer will parents have to call the main office to ask what time the football game starts.

You can sign up for the free annual school calendar at http://www.intand.com/basic.htm.

Once you finish the set up, which takes about 20 minutes, you will given a website address for your school’s free calendar, so that you can link to the online calendar from your school’s website or provide the web address to parents and students.

The Kindle 2 is a really great tool for learning, although the price ($359 for a Kindle 2) may be restrictive. The Kindle is the best e-book reader currently on the market, mainly because of it’s ability to wirelessly access the Amazon store for free from virtually anywhere. In about a minute you can download a digital book to your Kindle which are usually cheaper than the paperback copy. There are several other useful features that make it one of the best learning tools available, if your school can afford it.

Browse previews of virtually any book

Most books that were recently published are available at the Kindle store. One of the cool features of having a Kindle is that it is like having a book store in your hand. The Amazon store lets you preview the first chapter or the first dozen or so pages of any book that is available.

Holds 3,500 books

Instead of carrying around heavy books, having a digital copy can be pretty convenient. It is nice to be able to access your entire library.

Text books will be available

The new DX version of the Kindle has a 9.7 inch display, which makes it easier to read textbooks. According to The Times Online,

“Three textbook publishers – Pearson, Cengage Learning and John Wiley & Sons, which between them publish 60 per cent of all higher-education textbooks – have agreed to sell books on the device.”

This may or may not save students or schools money depending on the cost of the digital copies compared to the hard back editions.

Free Classics

You can get lots of free classics books on your Kindle. I recently downloaded The Three Musketeers for free. There are some available at the Kindle store but you can also Google “Free Kindle Books”.

Free Internet

One of the best features on the Kindle is the “experimental” internet browser. Although, Amazon could get rid of this feature at anytime since it is advertised as “experimental” it seems unlikely that they would without a significant consumer backlash. This feature is great for browsing text sites and works virtually anywhere where a cellphone would work.

Upload Documents

You can email documents to Amazon, which will convert and upload them to your Kindle for a small fee, or you can do this yourself. If you convert the text to a .txt you can upload it from your computer to your Kindle.

At $359, it may be smarter to invest in a netbook which can cost less than $300. Nevertheless, it is a great educational tool if it can be put in the hands of students.

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A web based school calendar that allows collaboration of school administrators can make it much easier to schedule events for a school or district. Often the school administrator gets bombarded with requests by email or other methods and has a huge challenge of organizing everybody’s calendars into the master calendar. Often this can lead to double bookings for an athletic facility or school facility, which can lead to a major inconvenience for everyone involved.

How Tandem for Schools solves this problem is by streamlining and simplifying the process.

1. School staff log on to the calendar and make requests for facilities.
2. Tandem automatically checks for any scheduling conflicts and sends a notification by email to the “master queue manager”
3. The “master queue manager” approves or rejects the request.
4. If the request is approved the event is posted to the calendar for all students, parents, and staff to see.

By allowing staff to collaborate to schedule the schools events in a simple and efficient way, Tandem can save a significant amount of time for everyone involved. School administrators and coaches don’t have to play phone tag to change an event on the calendar. The calendar also communicates with students and parents, who can receive real time notifications of any changes such as baseball rain outs or reschedulings. Students and parents can sync the school calendar with their other calendars such as Outlook, iCal, Google Calendars, or Cozi so that when a change is made, a notification is automatically sent to their calendar.

The book Brain Rules discusses how what we know from brain science can be applied in the classroom. It describes the University of Bologna, one of the first western style universities which was established in the 11th century. The science lab involved a mixture of astrology, religion, and dead animals, yet the classroom was remarkably familiar to today’s classroom. The standard 11th century Bologna classroom included a lectern surrounded by chairs, which begs the question – could it be time for a change?

A recent post at Open Education suggests a student-centered classroom instead of the traditional teacher-centered classroom.

As we move towards greater use of technology within education, there is a push away from the traditional, teacher-centered classroom to one that is student-centered. While offering some very interesting potential for teachers, one element that appears to be taken for granted as we seek to make a student-centered classroom work is the need for a motivated learner.

One of the most significant criticisms leveled against teacher-centered classrooms is that such an environment actually fosters a level of student passivity over time. The belief is that using more of a “guide on the side” or a discovery-learning approach featuring essential question formats would be far superior to our current practice of a set curricula driving classroom instruction.

That belief is founded in great part on the notion that curiosity is an innate characteristic in children. Therefore, in teacher preparation programs, the focus should be on developing a teaching arsenal that unleashes this fundamental human trait.

Such a belief has lead to a discussion that we should replace traditional pedagogical or “child-leading” teaching strategies with andragogical or “man-leading” approaches. The shift is seen as moving away from “taught” education to learning that is self-directed.

But as we noted earlier, such a shift is dependent upon a certain level of motivation from the learner as well as the notion that curiosity is innate.

If students were given a more active role in the classroom, I think it would make for a much more effective education system. The challenge is how to tap into the innate curiosity and desire to learn, which may be the “holy grail” of education.

The Microsoft keynote at this year’s RSA security conference in San Francisco featured Tandem for Schools to demo its new identification system called Geneva which provides authenticated information on a user (claims) to a third party application from the school’s existing information database (Active Directory). The third party app can then determine the permission level of the individual as it relates to the application based on this information. For instance Tandem for Schools can authenticate that an individual is a teacher from information received through Geneva from the school’s Active Directory and then grant them permission to add events to the school calendar.

Microsoft’s keynote at the 2009 RSA Conference by Scott Charney, VP of Trustworthy Computing, described Microsoft’s integration of the Geneva identification system with Tandem for Schools (you can view the keynote here which discusses Tandem at the 27:00 mark).

Security is important to everyone, and we here at Intand are dedicated to making sure that we are providing an easy, but safe, way for a school district to connect with their community. With the help of Microsoft’s Geneva Server, it becomes much easier for the IT staff at a district to manage the different identities and levels of permissions across their entire staff and community. This is a HUGE win for those at a school district in the IT department.

Intand is the first third party application to be tested with Microsoft’s new identity technology. Microsoft is currently piloting the system at the Lake Washington School District, which includes 50 schools and nearly 24,000 students.

According to Ariel Gordon from Microsoft’s Identity and Security Division, “What Intand has done is modify their application so that it can consume the claims that are coming from the district’s Active Directory through the Geneva server which conveys the users identities and rights and privileges. They have also made it possible for users to use an information card to sign in so they don’t need to type anything to access the app.”

When Geneva server is released by Microsoft, it will allow schools to manage security permissions for multiple third party applications from a single personnel database which can save the IT team significant time and energy.

Read more about Microsoft’s Identity Technology test with Tandem for Schools:

Microsoft tests identity technology in schools CNET

Microsoft tests online ID system in its hometown school district TechFlash

Microsoft: Internet, PCs Need New Security Model InternetNews

photo via ZDNet

Tandem for Schools is school administration calendar software designed to make the job of administration easier while improving communication with students and parents. What sets Tandem for Schools apart from other calendar options is the elegant design, ease of use, and time saving features. Not only will it make school calendar management way easier for staff, it will make parents happy because they can easily access the calendar of extracurricular events with real time updates, from any internet connection.

This is the greatest communication tool we have on campus. It saves me hours a week. The program itself is easy to use and the information is instantly available to our community. What more could you ask for?” – Vicki Storey – Library Teacher Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, California

Two full time people were managing our calendars. Now there is only one person. Tandem for Schools has made the process fast, easy and powerful.” – Teri Turner – Database Administrator Fremont County School District, Wyoming

These school administrators have found Tandem for School to be a tool that has made their job easier by cutting hours of time from their workload. Posting events on the Tandem calendar is very quick and it automatically checks for any schedule conflicts. It is also super easy to implement because the calendar is hosted on Tandem’s secure servers. It can take minutes to get up and running and integrating Tandem with your website is as simple as adding a link to yourschool.intand.com.

To learn more sign up for a free one on one demo on your computer via go2meeting, or try Tandem for Schools free for 30 days.

The state of Virgina has implemented a pilot program to use a math video game called DimensionM, which uses 3-D graphics and math orientated missions, to teach algebra. In 2008, the University of Central Florida conducted a study of students who played the game and concluded that it improved students’ understanding and significantly raise test scores.

According to eSchool News:

Students in the experimental groups who played Tabula Digita video games over an 18-week period scored significantly higher (in some cases, twice as high) on district benchmark tests than students in the control group who did not play video games, researchers said.

Also, four out of five teachers (and all 15 students) who were interviewed reported that students’ math understanding and skills improved as a result of playing the educational video games.

Often video games are given a bad name, but they also have the potential to increase learning if used in an educational way. I have heard anecdotes of schools in Japan issuing the Nintendo DS to students and there are many educational games available on the iPod touch that can exercise the mind or improve vocabulary. One of the reasons that video games can help learning is that it is fun and engaging for students. Also, games often have specific goals that must be accomplished to win, which can motivate students to keep trying until they successfully solve problems. This can build student’s resiliency when they can’t solve a problem on the first try, which author Malcom Gladwell argues is an important component of educational performance. Gladwell argues in the book Outliers, that one of the main reasons Asian students score better in math tests is because they have been ingrained with the habit to keep trying, a trait that is generally less present in American students. It seems that video games may not rot the brain after all.

photo by hiperia3d

You can get a free printable 2009 school calendar by signing up for the free version of Tandem for Schools, called Tandem Basic. This allows the school admin to create an attractive free annual calendar that can be posted online for public viewing, or printed out as a PDF.

This is ideal for schools who want a free printable 2009 school calendar with a list of key dates for the upcoming school year, such as holidays or school breaks.

Additional features of the free version of Tandem for Schools, is a way to sync the school calendar with Outlook, iCal, Cozi, and Google Calendar. You can also upload the school logo to the calendar, for additional visual appeal. Parents and students can also subscribe to an RSS feed of the calendar.

To get access to the free annual calendar for schools, you just need to fill out a registration form, but we think it’s well worth it. You can sign up for the free calendar at http://www.intand.com/basic.htm.

The Standard and Plus full versions of Tandem provide many more benefits for schools such as being able to manage all the school events on a single online calendar. School administration can save significant amounts of time by easily entering schedule information into Tandem, which automatically checks for any scheduling conflicts. Schools can communicate to parents and students more effectively with the online calendar that is publicly viewable online and instantly updates any changes or cancellations made. The Plus version also allows coaches and staff to request facilities or changes to the schedule, which can be easily approved by the calender administrator.

With an unprecedented $100 billion being invested in education from the federal level, is it possible that the investment will be canceled out by local budget shortfalls?

The Washington Post describes one county that is cutting their school budget in direct response to increased federal funding.

After hearing that an initial batch of $11.8 million in federal funds would soon arrive in Loudoun County, supervisors slashed $7.3 million from the schools budget. They also made clear that if more federal recovery money flows to schools, schools might be asked to give back an equal amount of county dollars.

This is a frightening case study because if budgets are slashed at the local level because the local governments know that they will be receiving federal funds, then the billions in additional funding could end up merely sustaining the status quo.

However, Secretary Duncan has warned schools of using such tactics. According to a Washington Post article:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has warned states against playing “shell games” with money aimed at schools. The stimulus law and regulations have strings to protect against big drops in education funding but allow the most cash-strapped states to seek some flexibility. “Where we see a state or district operating in bad faith or doing something counter to the president’s intent, we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks,” Duncan said in a March conference call with reporters.

The administration has high expectations for schools to show progress in order to receive subsequent rounds of funding and a share of the “Race to the Top” pot of funds. The “historic opportunity to reform education” may be in jeopardy if federal funds to improve schools are being used just to refill local budgets to necessary levels to avoid job cuts. With some communities already being forced to cut hundreds of school jobs, it may be mission impossible to reform education in this environment.

Photo by artemfinland