What Are We Teaching to Todays Youth

I’m not going to speak to this issue, instead I will let the original article that inspired me to blog this do the talking.

Are iPod-banning schools cheating our kids?

The larger, more interesting question is: Why do we devote so much time and energy teaching kids to memorize facts we know they’ll forget? We should instead teach critical thinking, creative decision-making and sophisticated information retrieval.

Education, Technology, K12 Education

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Filed under: Education, Educational Technology, K-12 Ed Tech, K-12 Education, Social Media, Technology, Web 2.0 , iPod, School

School Budget Cuts Still Not Deep Enough

With $40 million needing to be cut from the school district budget, the school board has approved cuts of $31 million this week. Part of the cuts include Data and Literacy coaches that work with students that are having trouble keeping on grade level or need extra attention to complete the material to move forward with the needed achievement. Also going are the ITT’s or Instructional Technology Trainers. This takes the district from 43 in the 2007-08 school year to 17 in 08-09 to zero in 09-10.

While we continue to here that the cuts are supposed to not impact the students directly. I don’t see how the above cuts fall into that line. Certain School Board members have been quoted as saying that these cuts are not to be excuses for not continuing to achieve higher or better scores next year, but with all the structure that has already been placed on the teachers in their teaching day, I don’t know where they are going to find the time to add what is being taken away. Reading blocks, writing blocks, mandated 150 minutes of PE a day, lunch, testing, the list of things the teachers have to do is long and barely fits into the 7.5 hour day. Teachers are going to be overwhelmed, scores are going to plummet, they are going to stop using the new technology because they are not getting the continued training, or they don’t have time to call the service desk to get a piece of broken equipment fixed.

Here are some ideas for things to cut:

• The extra busing to the Gifted school
• All Field Trips
• Extracurricular activities in middle schools
• The $12 million for the AS400 upgrade
• Sports that are not breaking even
• Extra sports assistant coaches
• Administrative positions like the school district police force
• Energy savings like I suggest in the post: Holidays, Technology and Energy

The energy savings alone add up to $676,000.

Filed under: Education, Educational News, Family, K-12 Education, No Child Left Behind , Budget, Sarasota, Schools

Want to write a Guest Post?

I am interested in accepting submissions for guest posts. My position has increased in responsibility which has cut down on free time to write, so I have decided to accept guest posts to keep the content flowing until I have settled into my new position.

I will not be able to use everyone’s submissions, and the one’s that I do use will be spread out over the course of the next month. I will try to use as many as I can, but I hope to be comfortable enough in my new position by July 4th.

Here is what am I looking for:

• Anything related to education and how it relates to technology.
• Posts of any length are acceptable, as long as they follow the theme of the post and relate helpful information.
• I prefer the focus of the posts on k12 education, but I will also accept higher education.
• I’m looking for content not published elsewhere.

How to Submit Your Post:

• Please write your post in MS Word
• Give the post a title (I may change it)
• Attach the post to an email addressed to guestposts.edutechation@gmail.com
• In the email include a byline and a link to your blog and/or any educational institution that you belong to or own. I will include this in your post, but please do not be a big self promoter. Your words should promote you.

Lastly, I reserve the right to edit a posts content for grammar, spelling, and non-factual or biased information. I will not post anything that oversteps the guidelines of ethics in education or public sensibilities. In short, use common sense and write something that would be allowed to be read in a school.

I look forward to seeing some great posts soon.

Filed under: Education, Educational Technology, K-12 Education, K-12 Schools , Blogging, guest posts