Collaboration among business, government, education, and community groups is a basic requirement in shaping school reform, according to Judy London, a research analyst/writer covering education issues at the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

That’s the opinion of Ron Thorpe, Vice President and Director of Education at New York’s Thirteen/WNET, America's most-watched public television station.

Nothing less than America’s place on the world stage is at stake unless our approach to our children’s lives and education dramatically alters. Without systemic changes, the global political and economic power base will shift from the U.S. to other countries. And if that happens, it will be too late to do anything about it.

That’s the opinion of Ron Thorpe, Vice President and Director of Education at New York’s Thirteen/WNET, America's most-watched public television station.

Mike Donlin runs the 46,000-student Seattle school district’s anti-cyberbullying program, doing training, and managing grants and projects. He divides his time between the teaching and learning side of cyberbullying prevention and intervention, and the operations side in tech services.

Bill Destler is president of Rochester Institute of Technology, one of the country’s top career-oriented universities, with 15,500-students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries.

Can educators use a podcast rubric to evaluate student standards-based learning?

The actual student learning of the academic standard often counted for 1/6 or less of the rubric grade. Therefore, educators cannot use such a podcast rubric to evaluate student standards-based learning. A non-weighted or non-refocused podcast grade means very little (or nothing) in terms of content learning.

Media literacy has become critical as students spend more time reading print, watching online news, TVs and movies. Teachers can help students develop their media analysis skills.

Teachers often want ways in which to provide instruction or feedback so the students will be more receptive to  learning. Creating YouTube videos allows educators to do that, and provides an exciting media for student learning.

A teacher may have a put up a class Web site, a blog, a wiki, pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube, or social bookmarks. That teacher may produce excellent resources that can benefit other teachers. However, if the teacher has not tagged the material in an appropriate educational manner then the colleagues will not find the resources.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future

By Daniel Pink
Riverhead Books, New York, 2005.
260 pages
$10.00 for softcover
2006 updated edition

As a die-hard left brainer, I found the title of Daniel Pink’s text, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future, some cause for concern. Questions arose for me, such as: “Am I now an endangered species?” and “Will no one want to hire me?” Pink’s premise is not one of extinction for hard-core left-brain analytical types such as myself, but, rather, a guide to the transformation of our culture and senses needed to thrive in his explanation of our right-brain needy society.

Many educators, over the past couple of years, have had the chance to participate in a number of online synchronous professional development sessions, commonly called Webinars. Vendors often give product walk-through presentations using the WebEx online conferencing program. The International Society for Technology in Education presents professional development sessions using Adobe Connect, another Web-based presentation software. Other districts and educational agencies choose Elluminate as their presentation platform. Each of these products has similar components—they allow the participants to view a presentation, chat in a chat window to ask questions or make a comment, create polls to collect data from the participants in real-time, and sometimes even allow the use of a microphone in addition to a chat window. Usually, the sessions are recorded and archived so participants can go back and review the presentation or share it with others in their professional learning community.

This is Part Two in our series, "Technology Directors Leadership."

Leading a school district’s technology program is not for the faint of heart. There is never enough time in the day or money in the budget to solve all the problems. A key factor to helping manage the onslaught of issues is a strong and supportive team. With all the changes and demands of integrating technology across the range of district functions, support staff for technology are assuming a growing number of roles. Gone are the days when the technology team simply repaired equipment, provided training and managed network users. Those specialized activities have been replaced by a myriad of tasks more “mission critical” than ever to the success of a school district. Much emphasis is placed on developing and supporting our teachers and administrative leaders - and technology staff should not be overlooked. Spending time to reflect on the care and development of your technology staff should be a part of the planning process for every district technology leader. From improving departmental coverage to helping staff attain their professional goals, there is no shortage of areas on which to focus.

by John Nelson
For classroom teachers and curriculum developers
262 pages
$14.96

Although the book is based on integration of critical thinking in college classes, many of the activities can be used in upper middle school to high school.

This week I'm going to focus on a very simple tool that has so much potential. It's called Wordle and it will take you exactly 30 seconds to learn how to use it (according to my own timed test with actual teachers!). In order to understand the power of Wordle, all you have to do is play with it for a few minutes to start to see the possibilities for your classroom.

Check out these recent releases from top education publishers!

Part 1 of the Grant Writing Guide for the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation took you through Section #5: “Objectives and Plan of Action.”  This column picks up with Section #6: “Assessment and takes you through “Endorsements.” 

The heart of the process is the “Grant Writing Guide.”

My GrantSuccess process evolved from writing many technology integration grants on very short timelines. Over the course of a decade, I was asked to guide many teams of teachers as they applied for state funded computers. In these applications, many questions needed to answered. Are we eligible? What do we have to do? How will the writing get done? How will we find the time? It was out of this tension that GrantSuccess evolved. The heart of the process is the construction of the “Grant Writing Guide.” This column uses the Martha Holden Jennings’ Grant-to-Educators to show what a “Grant Writing Guide” looks like.

In my third column, I listed some guidelines for grant application text development. Remember, I recommended creating and using the Grant Writing Guide (GWG) of GrantSuccess. The GWG includes information from the Request for Funding Proposal (RFP) organized by sections of the narrative.