after the bell

Vicki Davis is a Georgia computer science teacher who has emerged over the last year as a voice for utilizing aspects of the read/write web in classrooms.  In December, she partnered with Julie Lindsey, a teacher at an International school in Bangladesh, to span the globe with a FlatClassroomProject wiki that was created by their [...]

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This weekend, while grading some nicely done unit plans, I listened to an extremely disturbing radio show. This week’s episode of This American Life was entitled “Shouting Across the Divide” and featured tales of being Muslim in present-day America. The first story broke my heart, as it described the experiences of a young [...]

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I ran across this post by Chris Lehmann, a former tech coordinator and now principal of the Science Learning Academy in Philadelphia. He talks about two ideas that are probably central for a principal at a “progressive” school: Making decisions that push the envelope of traditional schooling and empowering students to deal with freedom [...]

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The public radio show “Speaking of Faith” has devoted two episodes to Einsteins spiritual and ethical views. The podcasts as well as a significant collection of related resources can be found in the SOF Archive.
In the ethics episode, I was especially interested in S. James Gate’s discussion of Einstein’s concerns for the apparent discrepancy [...]

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Anthony, Diana, and I saw this NYT article and thought it interesting.  This article reports on NAEP test results for elementary and middle schoolers.  It would be interesting to know more about the assessment items.

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I ran across a Washington Post article by Jay Matthews that summarizes a history of standardized testing.  Though it was interesting learn about the roots of standardized testing, the article does not delve into the influence that state-level testing plays or should play in daily instruction.  To illustrate this point, there is a sidebar article [...]

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One difference between teaching a college course and teaching a high school course is the lack of continuity. Our teaching methods class meets one evening per week. This is very different from seeing students an hour each day every weekday. When you see your students everyday, you share what is going on [...]

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