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 Going the Distance!
Newsletter Articles:
Greetings from GCI SchoolAccess Bering Strait School District Connects Lower 48 Students with "IditaProject" Not only did students in the Lower 48 benefit from learning about a culture different from their own, but the students off BSSD were able to learn how to write, produce and broadcast news stories using video and audio equipment. Participants in the IditaProject included Rick Holt, Curriculum Specialist and musher (BSSD); Randy Fleharty, Coordinator of Technology & Student Broadcast Team Coordinator (BSSD); and Mia Concilus, Student Broadcast Team Reporter. GCI's SchoolAccess provided a connection at the finish line in Nome and technical support for the project. BSSD set up an IditaProject Web site at http://mushing.bssd.org. Visit the site to write comments, view an interactive map and watch instructional multimedia clips from the project. Arizona: The First State to Assess Students' Technology Skills Source: Learning.com http://www.learning.com/pressreleases/01-24-06.htm As state legislators all over the country realize the importance of preschool education, programs designed for three- to five-year-olds are now part of most states' budgets. In Alaska, for example, the government is trying to implement the first free, state-funded and state-created preschool project. Last year, Governor Frank Murkowski asked for a task force to examine costs and structure for pre-K programs. Now he is proposing $750,000 in funding to the state legislature to start developing a childhood literacy project. In New Mexico, waiting lists to enroll kids in state-funded preschools is commonplace. As part of a $5 million pilot program paid for by the government, 1,538 children across the state attend two weekday gatherings where they learn about colors, numbers, letters and animals. "With a pre-K education, they do twice as well as kids without one," said Eugene Field Elementary Principal James Lujan, from Albuquerque, NM. Initiatives like this benefit parents who acknowledge the importance of pre-K education but can't afford private schools. Sources: Anchorage Daily News http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7443502p-7354347c.html and The Albuquerque Tribune http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_education/article/0%2C2564%2CALBQ_19857_4391866%2C00.htm President George Bush's budget proposal for the fiscal year 2007 requested Congress to shrink federal spending on education by more than $3 billion, a 5.5 percent decrease in relation to FY 2006. Under the FY 2007 budget proposal, the Enhancing Education Through Technology funding (E2T2), the primary vehicle for federal funding of state technology programs and the only source of technology support in more than 25 percent of the states, would be eliminated. The argument is that districts can use other funding to integrate technology into teaching and learning. In addition, the largest source of federal education aid to states, the $12.7 billion Title I program for low-income students, would receive no new funding under the president's proposed budget for fiscal year 2007. On the other hand, Bush proposed a 4.6 percent increase (about $1 billion) for new NCLB programs, including $200 million in school improvement grants to help states meet NCLB goals. The president also created the "American Competitiveness Initiative," which includes $250 million for elementary school programs intended to boost math achievement and $90 million to train 70,000 additional teachers for math, science and foreign language advanced placement courses. Sources: Stateline.org http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=86486 and TechLearning News http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180200599#article1 (Requires free account) Give Your System a "Data Makeover" Obsolete databases, systems that can't communicate with each other, missing information and disorganized statistics are all problems commonly faced by technology coordinators and school CIOs. These IT professionals, more than anyone else, know how important these data are for school operations. Databases include phone lists, student records, HR payrolls and a variety of other vital information. Low-quality data and incompatibility between systems are generally caused by the same set of circumstances: a wide variety of data repositories created at different times, for different reasons, and sometimes with varying tools, techniques and technologies. When a school is diagnosed with this kind of problem, it's time for a big data makeover. The Problem Solver this month is going to present you four quick steps to keep your school data organized, efficient and high-quality. * Step 1: Set your goals: Define what functions you need to perform, and what data you need in order to accomplish your goals. Source: School CIO http://www.schoolcio.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175001861 (Requires free account) 3rd Conference on Personalizing Education
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