Education: February 2008 Archive Page

Bennett Gordon, Science and Technology blog (Utne Reader):

Every diorama in the Home School Science Fair, which took place inside a shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota, had a biblical quote attached to it. A young woman whose project involved teaching her dog how to run circles between her legs decorated the words: "If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15) in pink lace fabric. This quote got to the crux of the science fair, in my opinion: parental commandment. These parents pulled their children out of school, away from their peers, and said, "Now prove that Darwin was wrong."

This blog entry gives the impression that one particular homeschool group's Creationist science fair is "the 2008 Home School Science Fair," perpetuating the meme that all home school families are the same.  I left a comment on the site that said, in part, "I understand and appreciate your desire to protect the name of science from those who misappropriate its terminology. I hope you'll also respect my desire to address misunderstandings about home schooling."  (My reasons for choosing home schooling are not religious; my wife and I simply don't want to entrust such an important task to strangers -- we want to be a part of it.)

Update: Gordon e-mailed me to thank me for the comment I posted on his site. He said he had thought that the word "Creationist" in the title of his blog entry was enough to contextualize this particular science fair, but noted that the comments his blog attracted have already made a pretty good case for correcting that. I suggested that he do a profile on a homeschool family that doesn't fit the stereotype.

Stephanie Rosenbloom, NYT:

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of "The X Files." On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

"Most guys don't have patience for this kind of thing," said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and "glitters" (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. "It's really hard."

[...]

Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

"Girls are trained to make stories about themselves," said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After work today, I stopped by the house of a colleague who had asked me to teach her about blogging.  Her eighth-grade daughter watched and kept nodding, nodding while I talked about the various options. She sparkled with happiness when I showed her where the style settings were, and urged her mother to start personalizing the blog right away. She already knows how to do HTML, and even knew about cascading style sheets. I was impressed!

As I was getting ready to go home, she pointed to a huge professional photograph of a ballerina hanging over the computer and said "That's me!"  The young lady had danced the role of Clara in The Nutcracker this Christmas, and the photo was taken for the lobby display.

I wonder whether boys are more likely to contribute to message boards... I haven't read this Pew study yet, I've got some other things on my plate I'll have to do first, but I always find the Pew reports insightful.

Frighteningly sad story from a San Diego TV station.

For 17 years Corcoran taught high school for the Oceanside School District. Relying on teacher's assistants for help and oral lesson plans, he said he did a great job at teaching his students.

"What I did was I created an oral and visual environment. There wasn't the written word in there. I always had two or three teacher's assistants in each class to do board work or read the bulletin," said Corcoran.

In retrospect, Corcoran said, his deceit took him a long time to accept.

"As a teacher it really made me sick to think that I was a teacher who couldn't read. It is embarrassing for me, and it's embarrassing for this nation and it's embarrassing for schools that we're failing to teach our children how to read, write and spell!"

Amanda Cochran, who was a student in my freshman composition class not too many years ago, went on to be the editor-in-chief of the student paper, and is now in grad school at NYU. She writes about taking on an assignment on short notice.

I was nominated to cover the story yesterday by one of my professors, and just on a whim, I said yes because the press credential online option was closing down and I was one of the only people in my class available to sign up.

So I did.

It wasn't just any assignment... she was to cover Hillary Clinton's Super Tuesday campaign party, and then report live on the NYU Tonight broadcast.  Minimal time to prepare; a chaotic environment; a pressing deadline; competition with a pack of dedicated professionals; then the added pressure of delivering the report live. What did she have to say when it was all over?

God, I love journalism.

Update: added screenshot via this entry.

Good literacy news from the Washington Post:

The share of kindergarten students in the county who can read simple books has risen from 39 to 93 percent in six years, according to school system data culled from reading assessments given each spring. Achievement is so high, and across so many demographic groups, that school officials plan to test future kindergartners on more challenging text.

The article credits the change from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten. One of the main reasons we started homeschooling is that we weren't really ready to send our son away for a full day, and there wasn't an option to send him for a half-day -- the teachers assured us that he would miss out on far too much. We thought that we would miss our son far too much.