15-year-old bilingual author

Maria Vilchis, an ESL 8th grader in New Jersey, plans on becoming an author in both Spanish and English (Miguel Juarez in Tri-Town News).

Sandvox, a new web publishing tool

Sandvox is a new web publishing software tool for Macs (OS 10.4.3) \that's beta now but soon to be released. Alwin Hawkin's brief but enthuasistic review led me to download it, and, yes, it's beautiful! From the site:

Sandvox, for Mac OS X. "Dig in" and download our Beta today.

Sandvox: A powerful, playful new website creation tool, for Mac OS X (version 10.4.3 "Tiger" required). From Karelia Software — the developer of Watson®.

Instant Gratification. Sandvox makes website creation elegant, intuitive and fun. It's the Macintosh way — the way it should be: drag and drop content, watch your site take shape as you create it, and publish. Sandvox makes it easy to keep in touch via the Web with friends, family and customers.

Express Yourself. Sandvox will help you be more creative on the Web. Small business owners, show your customers your latest products and services. Authors, publish your stories. Photographers, share your libraries with the world. Families, keep your friends up to date with more than just a holiday letter.

There's More to Life than iLife. Sure, iWeb looks cool and similar to Sandvox in many ways, but it's just a toy. Can you afford to tie yourself to .mac? Not everybody wants, or needs, a .mac account — especially businesses who need their own domain name. iWeb has very limited choices for designs or pages; Sandvox will be extensible. iWeb provides no opportunity for custom HTML content when your needs demand it; Sandvox fits the bill. If iWeb isn't quite enough for you, then dig into the Sandvox.

Some of the features you can see at the website are drag-and-drop web assembly, pagelets, podcasts, video, and photo integration, and more.

NCLB vs. ESL

Michael Winerip of the NY Times reports on the problems Somali children are having learning English in Massachusetts schools, which have only English immersion classes. The children sit in class lost without translators, and no help seems to be forthcoming. Because there are only two translators, and they spend much of their time traveling from school to school by bus, one proposed solution was to cluster Somali children to ease the translation problem; however

Springfield officials have given a variety of reasons for not doing so. Last spring, according to Mrs. Caldwell, school officials said that clustering too many Somalis at one school would bring down its scores on state tests and the school could be labeled failing under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Mrs. Caldwell, a retiree who does volunteer work for several Somalian families, has filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights.

Principles of learning

Bob Reynolds (via Stephen's Web) writes about "Parables on learning -- the basic principles." Reynolds writes,

There are ten basic Principles of Learning that, when practiced, help us grow in understanding and make us successful in whatever we attempt to do. These ten basic Principles of Learning are really a series of actions that successful people people can take in their daily lives. In fact, since learning is such an integral part of living, these rules might more appropriately be called the basic principles of a good life.

What makes it interesting is how he contrasts the examples he gives for the principles with what happens in education.

Blogging and audience

Bill Schachner of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a nice article on blogging, "Freedom of speech redefined by blogs: Words travel faster, stay around longer in the blogosphere" It begins:

Jessica Prokop thought the textbook for her class at Seton Hill University was biased and that its author "seems like a bitter man." In the annals of student rants, nothing extraordinary there.

Except she didn't just blurt out those words in her journalism class. She blogged them. Soon, the author himself was responding all the way from England, pledging to re-examine an upcoming edition given her critique.

The article gives quite a few stories leading to real-world interaction, and although most postings do not lead to such interaction, the potential creates a forum of real writing for real audiences: another reason for incorporating blogs into writing classes.

Purposeful blogs and grading

How to grade a blog? For Ken Smith's rubrics, Aaron Nelson provides links here and here. Aaron also has his own summary of those grading guidelines focused on the purpose of blogging:

1. Grading around audience
2. Grading around freshness
3. Grading around developing a “house style.” - I really thought this was neat. Voice!
4. Grading around how well participants connected and built community.

All of these items make sense, but they're also abstract, which makes them difficult to grade and difficult for students to use in developing their blogging: the more abstract, the more understanding of the rubric can diverge among teacher and students. If the class discusses these guidelines and comes up with concrete examples, they could work not simply towards "purpose" but also in transferring to new contexts.

Aaron also cites James Mathew, who has his own article on purposeful blogging. Along the line of grading, James states,

Students should know exactly what is expected of them when it comes to blogs and the topics they blog about.

Performancing for Firefox

Performancing is a new blogging extension for Firefox 1.5 and above.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Performancing can allow you to post into Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and Live Journal, and guidelines for using Performancing are available from Jed Brown. Of course, one can simply go about posting the normal way.

Peformancing will eventually incorporate RSS feeds and Technorati tags, too. The advantage, I suppose, is the convenience of integrating all of one's web tools into one application, the browser. But I must add that keeping up with the greatest and latest in web technology takes a considerable amount of time. Right now, I'm trying to decide on which personalized web page to go with: Yahoo, Google, or Netvibes. Then, if something else comes along, will I take the time to investigate that one, too? Will Flock, the first browser incorporating a blogging editor, come back with something even better?

On a sidenote, Firefox has many extensions available, such as Flashgot and del.icio.us. One of my favorites is NoScript, which provides an extra layer of security:

Extra protection for your Firefox: NoScript allows JavaScript, Java (and other plugins) only for trusted domains of your choice (e.g. your home-banking web site).

Dual-language programs in Texas

(Via L. Lamor Williams, Star-Telegram) Texas has a large percentage of Hispanic students: more than 30% of 80,000 students in Forth Worth and more than 30% of 16,000 in Arlington. Dual-language programs are becoming popular; there are 231 programs in Texas with approximately 606,000 students. In these programs, both English and Spanish speakers are in the same class with a curriculum taught half in English and half in Spanish for a period of years so that the students become fluent in both languages.

According to Mildred Vazquez, a bilingual teacher in the article, the students need to continue through the fifth grade (they begin in kindergarten) for the program to be effective. Obviously a school needs a large number of L2 students for the program to be viable, which limits the programs primarily to Spanish. And it's not a small commitment on the part of families, but if I had the opportunity, I would place my son in such a program.

God vs. composition class

Two postings earlier (Oct 2), I noted how Ed Madden "disenfranchised religion from the process of democratic deliberation" with one word. In a non-ESL, university composition course at Victor Valley Community College, Bethany Haulf received a grade of F on a paper for using the word God 41 times (Leroy Standish, Daily Press). Michael Shefchik, her teacher, had approved the paper's topic, Religion and its Place within the Government, but forbade the use of "God."

Shefchik claims teacher prerogative to design class assignments, and Hauf claims freedom of speech. Putting a positive spin on both sides, I can imagine that Shefchik, like many teachers, avoids topics or content (e.g., abortion) that leads to regurgitation of concepts instead of critical examination of those concepts. I can also imagine that Hauf has a different worldview that Shefchik's, a worldview that is excluded from the privileged perspective of academia.

Question: In what ways is (ex/in)cluding cultural backgrounds of students in our schools different/similar to (ex/in)cluding religious worldviews? Is there room in diversity and multiculturalism perspectives to include strong religious positions?

New TOEFL, new obstacles

A new TOEFL will greet students this Saturday (AP via CNN). It will include a speaking component that may disadvantage Asian applicants who have focused on reading and grammar rather than communication.

Now that test has undergone a major makeover, aimed at better evaluating how well applicants can communicate in English. As the test debuts Saturday, some students, particularly Asians, are worried they'll be disadvantaged because of how they were taught English in school.

ePortfolios

Matt Villano (in Campus Technology via Educational Technology Weblog) covers the development of electronic portfolios.

Driven by a variety of goals—including assessment and professional development— the electronic portfolio technology has caused a good deal of excitement in the academic world during the last few years; for some schools—those fully adopting the technology—it is dramatically changing the way they require students to demonstrate competencies.

It wasn't clear from the article how students changed other than from print to electronic with the ability to include a wider and flashier variety of data. Is there greater competenece in their major or career? Eportfolios needs to go beyond simply showcasing more of one's interests: They need to improve competence, if only in reflection.

More software tools

From Educational Weblogs:

schtuff.com: a free wiki service

Schtuff is a FREE Wiki service. A Wiki is a website that lets anyone easily create and edit pages, promoting group collaboration.

photon: another free software tool.

Smart, intuitive, and highly configurable, Daikini Photon gives you the power to manage your Movable Type™, TypePad™, Blojsom and WordPress photo-blogs in the familiar surrounds of Apple iPhoto.

It's the missing link between the world's greatest photo management software and the world's favorite blogging platforms.

English up but foreign languages down

BBC News reports that the number of teenagers taking "GCSE language exams has fallen sharply," physical education and religion rising the most, and math and English having the most entries.

Blogs in law classrooms

For those interested in ways of incorporating blogs into the classroom, consider reading law professor (Ohio State U.) Dan Doublas Berman's Prawfsblawg posting (via Depraved Librarian). For one example, he has a link to Sentencing Law and Policy, a blog he used for one class.

More Hispanics take ACT

Hispanic PR Wire (via HispanicBusiness.com) reports:

More Hispanic high school graduates than ever before are taking the ACT and planning to attend college. But, test results from the graduating class of 2005 suggest that many of these students are missing some of the academic skills they’ll need during their first year of college. ...

just 48 percent of ACT-tested Hispanic students achieved an 18 or higher on the English Test, indicating they are likely to earn a “C” or higher in freshman English composition

Graduation and English Language Learners

According to the Associated Press via CNN,

Huge numbers of students who don't speak or read English well may be denied a high school diploma based on graduation tests that do not fairly measure their skills, a study suggests.

As the article notes, the issue arises between two conflicting interests: holding everyone accountable to the same standards and these tests not being able to measure English language learners ability in subject content due to language interference.

Interestingly, the article states that "these exams continue to have little connection to college."

Question: Should high school exams be related to going to college or not? Why?

Graduation and English Language Learners

According to the Associated Press via CNN,

Huge numbers of students who don't speak or read English well may be denied a high school diploma based on graduation tests that do not fairly measure their skills, a study suggests.

As the article notes, the issue arises between two conflicting interests: holding everyone accountable to the same standards and these tests not being able to measure English language learners ability in subject content due to language interference.

Interestingly, the article states that "these exams continue to have little connection to college." It's not clear to me why (1) exams should be tied to going to college rather than having proficiency standards related to high school and (2) the purpose of high school should be considered merely and only a stepping stone to college.

Social bookmarking and safe blogging

In today's posting, Will Richardson mentions that Rob Slater is developing a social bookmarking program for teachers called scuttledu and wants test drivers.

In yesterday's postings (Edu Blog Hosting), Will listed some possibilities for those wanting to begin blogging in their classrooms in safe ways, including features "that offer the teacher preapproval of student posts/comment moderation capabilities."

Understanding linking

On The Blog Herald, Duncan (via Anne Davis) has an excellent article on the role of links in "building traffic and gaining exposure for your blog." On accomplishing these goals, he makes some recommendations, the last one being,

"And the best of all: Link to others. Lead by example and link to sites and provide credit where credit is due. You’ll find that sometimes you get a link back! There is nothing worse than a blog or blogger that doesn’t give credit on posts where the idea is taken from elsewhere."

The notion of not giving credit resembles that of plagiarism in academia. Perhaps the concept comes to life naturally when ownership of writing is real as opposed to course requirements.

Why not diversity in testing?

In a The Times article, Alfie Kohn speaks out against standardized testing, stating that it leads to a "checklist" of what to teach and turning our schools into "test preparation factories." Although agreeing with Kohn's position on overrelying on test scores, William Librera, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education, responded:

"Standards that are vague are not useful," he said. "You need clear standards and rules. If you make them unclear and undefined, you have a wide variety of what is considered quality and that does not help."

Although somewhat sympathetic to the commissioner's position, I wonder, Why is diversity in many facets of education good but not in testing?

"Study great ideas, but teach to the test"

It appears that the five-paragraph essay is more important than learning great ideas. A NY Times article shows the pressures on teachers to teach to the test rather than to teach good writing. This summer, Becky Karnes, a high school English teacher, finished a graduate-level writing course on learning "better ways to teach writing to kids." Will she use what she learned when she returns to class?

"Oh, no," said Ms. Karnes. "There's no time to do creative writing and develop authentic voice. That would take weeks and weeks. There are three essays on the state test and we start prepping right at the start of the year. We have to teach to the state test."

For an excellent book on how high stakes testing and accountability dumb down the curriculum, read George Hillocks' book, The testing trap: How state writing assessments control learning.

Difficulty in writing

A friend has asked me to write a paper on the educational movement of Fethullah Gülen for presenting at a conference in Houston in November. It is quite difficult as I'm not sure where to begin. I know only a little about Gülen. I suppose I'll need to read some more of his writings and perhaps connect it to the concept of character education in the U.S., contrasting it with the type of character education that is transmitted through words rather than through the example of living. Perhaps I can tie education for life, civic participation, and service to humanity to the concept of Gülen's Golden Generation, a generation of complete human beings who live for others. Obviously, our K-12 system is oriented toward material and career success. What would be the outcome if our teachers and schools were oriented toward service to humanity? Would their embodying and modeling character (rather than teaching it) have a significant effect on our students? What will be the outcome if we do not change our orientation? How can we achieve such an orientation?

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