ALABAMA SUPERCOMPUTER AUTHORITY

The E-rate Funding Year 2006 (FY2006) Form 471 filing window will open at 12:00 pm ET on December 6, 2005 and will remain open for 73 days until 11:59 pm ET on February 16, 2006.

Through the E-rate program, schools in Alabama have been able to receive discounts on telecommunications services, internal connections, and Internet services.  What does all that mean?  It means that the resources of the world become easily accessible to students in geographically remote places.  It means that teachers can be shared across the Internet.  A good example of what E-rate can do for education can be found in northeast Alabama.  Spanish classes would not be available to the students at Discovery Middle School in Madison, AL without the distance learning technology made available through E-rate, the Internet connectivity provided by ASA/AREN, and the Toyota Distance Learning Program. Click here to read the full story.

READING ABOUT EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Search engines have become an increasingly important part of the online experience of American internet users. The most recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from the comScore Media Metrix consumer panel show that about 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day.

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/167/report_display.asp


EDUCATION AND THE INTERNET

Disasters: How They Happen, How We Cope Over the past year, Planet Earth has seen its share of disasters--starting with the Southeast Asian tsunami in December 2004, and continuing through 2005 with landslides, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, gas and oil explosions, train wrecks, plane crashes, boat accidents and the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. While frightening for sure, disasters also have a way of bringing out the best in people, and because of our long history of dealing with disasters of all kinds, humans have developed many practical and effective ways to prepare for and recover from them. Introduce your students to some of these methods as you explore various types of disasters in this month's MarcoGram. Use the activities to get started, then scroll down for more links and resources on this topic. http://www.marcopolo-education.org/MarcoGrams/Dec2005.html.

America Supports You highlights what Americans across the country are doing to support our troops. Learn about ways to let our servicemen and servicewomen know how much we appreciate them. Send messages of appreciation and read responses. See photo essays, newsletters, and a list of non-profit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families. http://americasupportsyou.mil/americasupportsyou/index.aspx

An American Success Story: The Pope House of Raleigh, NC tells the story of Manassa Pope, the first black man to receive a medical license in North Carolina (1886). After practicing medicine and helping establish a drug store and insurance company in Charlotte, Pope moved his family to Raleigh. There he continued his medical practice, built an elegant house (equipped with the latest technologies) located in the best place allowed for a black family in a segregated city. He later ran for mayor. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/124popehouse/

At a Crossroads: The King of Prussia Inn recounts the history of this inn, built originally as a farmhouse in 1719 at an intersection of two roads northwest of Philadelphia, not far from Valley Forge. The inn provided hospitality to travelers when the colony was just a scattering of farms. In part because of its location, it became a prosperous tavern, inn, and social center for the evolving community of the same name. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/119king/

The Old Mormon Fort: Birthplace of Las Vegas, Nevada recalls the individuals and events leading to the creation of Las Vegas. In 1855, Brigham Young sent 30 men to farm, convert Indians, and build a settlement along a trail to the Pacific. After the mission closed, a miner established a ranch, which grew to be the largest property in the county under later owner Helen Stewart. With the coming of the railroad, Las Vegas became a town. Railroad officials laid out a grid for the new city in 1905. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/122fort/

National Middle School Science Bowl 2006 is two competitions: an academic competition in which middle school students answer fast-paced questions about math and science and a model fuel cell car competition that challenges students to design, build, and race model cars. In 2005, more than 2,000 students participated in 24 regional competitions. http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/nmsb/default.htm

Space Science Education Resource Directory helps find NASA space science resources for learning. Hundreds of resources can be sorted by science type (earth, physical, or space) or by grade range. Topics include algebra, atoms, big bang, black holes, comets, cosmic distances, energy, force and motion, geometry, graphing, gravity, heat, light and color, measurement and estimation, planets, satellites, solar energy, solar system, space missions, stars, telescopes, and waves. http://teachspacescience.org/cgi-bin/ssrtop.plex

Music in America Visit this Community Center to explore a variety of primary sources focusing on music from the Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_literature.php

* Jan.: The Great Depression

* Feb.: Civil Rights

* March: Her Story

 

Primary Source Sets! Take a look at these new resources - ready to download and use in YOUR classroom. Sets currently include:

           * The Constitution http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_wethepeople_kit.php
           * Native Americans: Assimilation Through Education http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_nativeamerican_kit.php

NEWS YOU CAN USE

Space Foundation Launches Science Lesson Bank The Space Foundation has developed a comprehensive bank of science lessons for grades pre-K through high school. The lesson plans meet national science standards. This new resource is free to educators, and new lessons will be added periodically throughout each year.

Engrade Expands its Online Gradebook Suite Engrade, a provider of free online gradebook for teachers, has announced the launch of the Engrade Suite, adding a free online attendance book and assignment calendar to its existing free online gradebook. The new Engrade Suite now allows teachers to post attendance and upcoming assignments online for students and parents to log in and to see.

The Principal Difference, a new publication, draws on the latest research and personal case studies to give principals practical suggestions for improving leadership--tackling accountability, building professional learning communities, engaging students and parents, responding to diversity, and more. Click here to review the entire book online!

Delicious!  What is del.icio.us? del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. Use del.icio.us to:

Anyone can browse del.icio.us and see what others find interesting.  To keep your favorites on del.icio.us, you must first create an acount.

DEVELOPING A CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE Four years ago, voters in Mobile County, Alabama, approved a property tax linked to public education, the first successful tax increase for public schools in more than forty years. Schools in Alabama are chronically underfunded, due to constitutional limits on the state's ability to levy taxes, writes Carolyn Akers. So the local tax levy was a significant victory for those in the county who believed that education had been shortchanged for years. The passage was not considered a mandate, however. Voters expected to see results for those additional tax dollars. They expected to see changes in how the school system operated in the future. The demand for accountability increased. In the same year the property tax was passed, the Mobile Area Education Foundation (MAEF) was named one of five national sites for the Standards and Accountability grant awarded by the Public Education Network. The overall goal of the community effort was to create a deep willingness across the community to support changes that would ensure a quality education for all students in Mobile County, regardless of where they lived or which school they attended. The story of Mobile County is one of a true grassroots campaign in which the citizens voiced that not only did they need to do something about the county's schools, they wanted to. An intensive public engagement effort, coupled with a specific reform strategy, began the momentum for change. As a result, a new public story is emerging about Mobile County schools –- and about the community's role in improving them. Over time, the development of civic leaders and of civic stakeholders will be the vehicles that will mobilize the ongoing political will of the community to fund a high-performing public education system. In this way, a civic infrastructure is being built. http://www.annenberginstitute.org/VUE/fall05/Akers.html

THE ACHIEVEMENT TRAP Our education system increasingly is focusing not on developing children’s aptitude for learning -- their ability to absorb new information quickly and solve problems creatively -- but on their academic achievements -- their mastery of particular subjects and skills as proven by performance on standardized tests. To see why this is dangerous, let’s think about why we send children to school in the first place. "Getting an education" once meant helping children become cultured individuals and thoughtful citizens. In today’s world of economic anxiety, global competition, and an unraveling social safety net, many believe education’s main function is to help kids land high-paying jobs. Yet even if this is our goal, we're going about it the wrong way, writes Barbara Klein, John D. McNeil, & Lynn A. Stout. Our children are caught in an "achievement trap," an academic arms race that requires kids to demonstrate their ability to learn by actually learning more and more facts, at more and more advanced levels, all the hours of their young days that are not filled by such demonstrable time-eaters as soccer practice and violin recitals. In the process, American children are losing the chance to think, dream, explore, ponder -- and play. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/11/16/12klein.h25.html

WHAT VIDEO GAMES CAN TEACH US ABOUT MAKING STUDENTS WANT TO LEARN Why is it that many children can't sit still long enough to finish their homework and yet will spend hours playing games on the computer? Video games are spectacularly successful at engaging young learners. It’s not because they are easy. Good video games are long, complex, and difficult. They have to be; if they were dumbed down, no one would want to play. But if children couldn't figure out how to play them -- and have fun doing so -- game designers would soon go out of business. To succeed, game designers incorporate principles of learning that are well supported by current research. Put simply, they recruit learning as a form of pleasure, writes James Paul Gee. Children have to learn long, complex, and difficult things in school, too. They need to be able to learn in deep ways: to improvise, innovate, and challenge themselves; to develop concepts, skills, and relationships that will allow them to explore new worlds; to experience learning as a source of enjoyment and as a way to explore and discover who they are. It is ironic that young people today are often exposed to more creative and challenging learning experiences in popular culture than they are in school. The principles on which video-game design is based are foundational to the kind of learning that enables children to become innovators and lifelong learners. Yet how many of today’s classrooms actually incorporate these principles as thoroughly and deeply as these games do? http://www.edletter.org/current/gee.shtml

C-SPAN Programming Daily Email Alert! provides primetime and LIVE next-day event scheduling information, customized to your particular interests - available in either HTML or text formats. http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspanalert.asp?code=Watch

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