From the Editor RSS Feed
Ideas To Watch
Anne Wujcik — Friday, October 16, 2009
If you’d like an idea of what on educator’ minds these days, you can get a glimpse by looking at ISTE’s new crowdsourced keynote project. The International Society for Technology in Education produces the National Educational Computing Conference each year. Planning for NECC 2010 in Denver, ISTE is offering its members, past conference attendees, and educational leaders the opportunity to help choose one of the Conference’s keynote speakers. Read More »
Reauthorization Heats Up
Anne Wujcik — Friday, October 09, 2009
Work has begun in earnest on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA/NCLB). The House Education and Labor Committee has begun a series of hearings and the Department of Education has scheduled a series of meetings to gather public input for the reauthorization. Initially the focus is on teacher effectiveness, the new spin on NCLB’s teacher quality requirements. Read More »
Permission To Fail
Anne Wujcik — Friday, October 02, 2009
If you’re interested in getting an idea of what went on at EdNET, we’ve posted presentations and handouts from many of the key presentations. Go to http://www.schooldata.com/ednetagenda.asp and scroll through the conference agenda. Click on the name of a speaker for a PDF of their presentation. An Education Week article on the disappointing results students posted on the American Diploma Project Algebra II exam got me thinking about how we deal with failure in American education. Read More »
Common Core Standards
Anne Wujcik — Friday, September 25, 2009
Congratulations to Lexia Learning Systems, Inc., SMART Technologies and CDI America, EdNET 2009 Industry Award winners. The Awards ceremony was just one of the highlights of this year’s EdNET Conference. As always, attendees (the highest number in years) were torn between listening to a great roster of presenters and networking and deal making in hallways and meeting rooms. New to the industry or long-time player, energy was high, with people intent on building for the future. Since we took a short break last week, there is a lot of news. This would be a good week to visit the News Alert web site to be sure you see all the news; there was just too much to include it all in the e-mail issue. Read More »
Tweeting, Meeting and Collaborating Catches On
Anne Wujcik — Friday, September 11, 2009
Everyone on the MDR/Heller team is scrambling to wind up regular business and get ready to head off to EdNET. I’m lucky this year, since we are gathering in Chicago and I get to exchange airports and airplanes for a simple trip downtown. I look forward to seeing many of you, to catching up with long-time friends and meeting new ones. We have a great (and growing) list of attendees and a really terrific roster of speakers and sessions. This will be a short note, but I did want to very briefly highlight the many announcements recently around social media and collaborative platforms. Read on… Read More »
Things You Need to Know
Anne Wujcik — Friday, September 04, 2009
Lot’s happening that you need to know about. The Department of Education is looking reviewers for Race to the Top grant competition. Two new polls indicate that the public’s opinions on some aspects of American education may be changing (or could be changed). Open source continues in the spotlight with a grant to NASBE from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to help ptomote Open Education Resources. And the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has begun work on the National Broadband Plan. Read More »
Take the EdNET Survey
Anne Wujcik — Friday, August 28, 2009
We’re beginning to get a very preliminary picture of how the schools are spending their stimulus dollars, a topic we’ll address in several ways at EdNET in just a few weeks. In my portion of EdNET's “View from the Catbird Seat” presentation, I’d like to be able to present some preliminary data on the supply side of that picture. To do that I need your help. Click Here to take a short survey and record your experiences and I’ll share the results at EdNET and afterwards with the wider community. Read More »
ACT's Take on College Readiness
Anne Wujcik — Friday, August 21, 2009
ACT released its annual report on college readiness among 2009 graduates. Depending on your point of view, the news is either somewhat encouraging or somewhat dismal. Fewer than one in four graduates are ready to succeed in first-year colleges courses in all four subject areas tested on the ACT—English, math, reading and science. That number speaks of the significant challenge schools face in achieving the goal of graduating career- and college ready students. Read More »
Textbooks in Transition
Anne Wujcik — Friday, August 14, 2009
Lots of textbook news, much of it in the college market, but some in K-12. College publishers, looking for ways to counter students’ complaints about the cost and relevance of textbooks, are launching solutions designed to make their products more widely available and more appealing to today’s digital natives. In K-12, where cash-strapped states are the buyers, open source materials are being explored as a less expensive alternative. Read More »
Getting Ready for EdNET
Anne Wujcik — Friday, August 07, 2009
Just a few quick notes this week. Today is the last day you can take advantage of the Early Bird registration rate for EdNET 2009. Go to http://www.schooldata.com/ ednetconference.asp for all the EdNET details and be sure to check out the agenda. The team has put together a set of right-on topics and a terrific roster of speakers. For those of you already registered for EdNET we urge you to take part in the networking and community building that is a hallmark of EdNET. Read More »
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