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Volume 2, Number 45, May 4, 2007
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| Editor's Note | |
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I received an interesting alert from CoSN this week. Politico.com, with MSNBC's cooperation, is asking visitors to its site to vote on questions to be asked during the May 3rd GOP presidential debate. The site claims that f ully one-third of the 90-minute GOP event will be devoted to questions submitted over the Internet and voted on by Politico users during the program. CoSN was asking for support for a question posted by Mary Ann Wolf of the State Educational Technology Directors Association , seeing it as an opportunity to get the candidates talking about education technology as it relates to competitiveness! It's an intriguing idea, though the debate will be largely limited to 30-second responses from each candidate. If you check out the site you can sort by topic and there are over 90 education-related questions posted. While the people posting questions are probably far from a representative sample, it's interesting to see what appears to be on people's minds as we enter this seemingly endless run-up to the election. Strong American Schools, the $60 million project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation hopes to ensure that the nation engages in a rigorous debate and to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election. The ED in '08 project wants a serious nationwide debate on education reform where every presidential candidate addresses three priorities that hold great promise for improving education: a call for stronger, more consistent curriculum standards nationwide; lengthening the school day and year; and improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures. Over the last three months there have been many reports and calls for action around education reform. Just last week, four national organizations (Alliance for Excellent Education, the Center for American Progress, Jobs for the Future, and the National Council of La Raza) gathered to applaud the introduction of the Graduation Promise Act. The Graduation Promise Act, designed to improve high schools and reduce dropout rates, would authorizes $2.5 billion in new funding to: create a federal-state-local secondary school reform partnership focused on transforming the nation's lowest performing high schools. During their recent meeting the Council of Chief State School Officers spent time discussing the emerging push for common national academic standards, as well as issues related to NCLB's reauthorization, such as the need to strengthen teacher quality and to improve assessment and accountability systems for English-language learners and special education students. In March, Tapping America's Potential, a coalition of 16 of the nation's leading business organizations, today joined U.S. business and higher education leaders to unveil "The American Innovation Proclamation," which urges Congress to act now on an innovation agenda to maintain U.S. competitiveness. Their goal is to double the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates with bachelor's degrees by 2015. In late February, at the National Governors Association Winter Meeting, governors focused on the importance of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in creating a competitive global economy. STEM education is one of the central elements of NGA Chair Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's Innovation America initiative. Also in February, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness, a report that grew out of the Chamber's concern about the fact that “U.S. schools are not equipping our children with the skills and knowledge they-and the nation-so badly need.” The Chamber issued a Joint Platform for Education Reform that focuses on four core goals—better teaching, more innovation, better data, and better management. And as 2006 closed out, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce delivered Tough Choices or Tough Times, calling for radical reform of the American school system if America is to maintain its place as a world economic leader. According to the Commission, “The core problem is that our education and training systems were built for another era. We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself.” This report made many recommendations for change, a number of which appeared to be quite controversial. There clearly is a lot of concern, many definitions of the “problem” and numerous approaches to possible solutions. The rhetoric is strong, but overall I have been amazed by how little real debate these various reports and recommendation occasioned outside the academic community. Maybe we're not using the right words. While we want to stir concern, we also want to energize people, seeking the wisdom of the entire American community about what we want and expect from our schools and how to get there. A passionate spokesperson seems to be the missing element here. Maybe we will find it in the political arena. But failing that, it seems a shame to let the moment pass. What might happen if we were able to engage the entire country in an ongoing discussion about American education at the start of the 21 st Century? If it were possible to bring all the players together and distill their recommendations, that might be a starting point. It won't be easy, but it certainly is among the most important debates we can engage in and those of us who work in the education market have to play a leadership role in helping to get the discussion started. |
Lead of the Week A
LEAD FOR YOU FROM QED's SCHOOL PURCHASING MONITOR WHAT: Mobile Digital Video Recorders |
Contents Feature
Story K-12 Market Headlines Higher Ed Market Headlines Internet/Telecom International Headlines Financials/Mergers/Corporate Product
Announcements She Snoops for Scoops: The
Personal Side of the EdNET |
Feature Story Secretary Spellings Seeks Public Comment on Campus and School Safety; National Dialogue on Safe Schools Albuquerque, N.M. — Last week, in the wake of the tragic events at Virginia Tech, President Bush called on U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt to lead a national dialogue on ways we can prevent tragedies in America's schools and on our college campuses. As part of this effort, Secretary Spellings met with state and local leaders, educators, mental health experts, parents, students, and local law enforcement officials in Albuquerque, to determine how the federal government can best help states and localities keep students safe. Secretary Spellings announced that she is seeking public comment online at http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/dialogue.html in an effort to expand this important discussion and gather thoughts and suggestions from across the country. Secretary Spellings will consider these suggestions as she develops recommendations for a report to President Bush next month. .Find the full story here. |
K-12 Market HeadlinesInterwrite Learning Unveils Workspace (Interwrite Learning, May 1, 2007) NEC Display Solutions Revolutionizes the Classroom with New Interactive Whiteboard (NEC Display Solutions, May 1, 2007) PaperTools Pro 2.0 – the Kind Tool for Writers and Editors (ePen&Inc., May 1, 2007) SRA/McGraw-Hill Adds “Reading Success” to Its Line of Intervention Programs (SRA/McGraw-Hill, May 1, 2007) Straight Curve™ Mathematics Series Aligns Lessons to Key Curriculum Standards for Difficult-to-Master Concepts (PLATO Learning, May 1, 2007) TADELL Gives Away One Hundred Free Multilingual Math Posters per School District (InterLingua Educational Publishing, May 1, 2007) Pearson School Systems Helps Rebuild Post-Katrina Community: Not With Bricks and Mortar, but with Student Data (Pearson School Systems, April 30, 2007) Videocraft Workshop Ships Start Editing Now! "Classroom Workshop Edition (Videocraft Workshop, April 24, 2007) |
Higher Ed Headlines Texas Christian University and GoalQuest Announce Successful Debut of Interactive Student Retention Program(GoalQuest Inc., April 27, 2007) University of California Selects SumTotal Software to Manage Systemwide Learning (SumTotal Systems, Inc., April 27, 2007) |
Internet/Telecom Free Online Activities: End the School Year with a Dream(Legacy Project, May 2, 2007) Fairfax County Public Schools Partners with TrueNorthLogic To Streamline Professional Services (TrueNorthLogic, May 1, 2007) Free Online Education Resources Help Students Prepare for Spring AP Exams (Course-Notes.org, May 1, 2007) Free Online Journal from Pearson Assessments Translates Research into Practice for Speech-Language Pathologists (Pearson Assessments, May 1, 2007) TexasLearn.com Promises High Quality Professional Development for K-12 Teachers (Avalon Consulting, LLC, May 1, 2007) Thinkfinity.org Offers Free Online Resources for Teachers To Bring Asian-American Heritage Month Studies to Life (Verizon Communications Inc., May 1, 2007) Discovery Educator Network Webinar Gives Students Behind-the-Scenes Look at Discovery Channel's PLANET EARTH (Discovery Education, April 30, 2007) Virtual High School Offers Year Long Summer School Courses Online for Credit Recovery (Virtual High School Global Consortium, April 30, 2007) e-Learning for Kids and ProtonMedia Announce a New e-Learning Course To Teach Kids about Books (e-Learning for Kids, April 26, 2007) |
International Headlines (THRASS, May 2, 2007) Students in Ireland Improve Reading Skills After Using Fast ForWord Products (Scientific Learning Corporation, May 1, 2007)Students at a Dublin school who used Scientific Learning Corporation's Fast ForWord products achieved significant gains in both reading accuracy and comprehension, according to a new study. Students aged 7 to 14 years made average gains of 14 months in reading accuracy and improved their reading comprehension by more than 2 years. http://www.qeddata.com/myaccount/ViewArticle.aspx?Id=6089 |
Financials/Mergers/Corporate Blackboard Inc. Reports First Quarter 2007 Results(Blackboard Inc., May 2, 2007) Teaching Strategies Acquires MindNurture, Publisher of the Abecedarian Home Visitor Curriculum (Teaching Strategies, Inc., May 2, 2007) Laureate Education, Inc. Reports Increases in Student Enrollment and First Quarter 2007 Revenues (Laureate Education, Inc., April 26, 2007) |
Product Announcements (Saf-T-Net, May 2, 2007) Education Strategy Consulting Taps Current, Former Big City Leaders To Spread Systemic Reform (Education Strategy Consulting, May 1, 2007) |
| She Snoops for Scoops: The Personal Side of the EdNET | |
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Greetings, friends! I hope it has been a good week for you. Sit back and enjoy the week's scoops…a lot of great news and some history for you as well! Jim Snyder at the Northwest Evaluation Association has been working in an Estimating Role where he supports NWEA's Client Enrollment team in their efforts to enroll school districts. As of May 23rd, he will be moving over to the Marketing Department as the organization's first Marketing Analyst. He is very excited about combining his experience both from the marketing and education side of the world with the data collection and analysis side he has been doing. Send your congratulations to Jim on his new role. I have not yet met Jim in person but have communicated with him via e-mail from time to time over the past several years. As an aside, in his spare time he manages the Northwest Education Cluster in Portland (www.nwedcluster.com). Friends, this is really an awesome group and something others of us across the country should be doing. Formed in 2003, the NW Cluster has more than three dozen Northwest area companies who network to learn about each other's businesses, discover synergies and explore the potential of the education/training industry as an economic driver for the city and its metro area. For example, they are convening later this month to network and describe their grant searching and writing experience, sharing stories and tips on what they look for and how they have both won and lost grants. The companies include e-learning businesses, content providers, testing and evaluation services, learning management system authors and many others at various stages of business maturity. I think this is just fabulous and commend Jim and all the other of our friends in the beautiful northwest who participate in this cluster! The Georgia Writers Association has nominated children's mystery book writer Carole Marsh for the Georgia Author of the Year Award. This honor joins the list of awards and recognition that Carole has received in the 25 years of writing for kids. Learning Magazine awarded Gallopade International and its Carole Marsh Mysteries Series with the Teacher's Choice Award for the Family. The author's ever-increasing nationwide readership is testament that her motto “give 'em what they want to read” is truly a secret for success. Three new book titles are coming out in the next week-The Zany Zoo Mystery, The Mystery at Thunderbolt Fort and The Secret of Eyesocket Island. These books will join the over thirty Carole Marsh Mysteries currently available, with more on the way! Please join me in congratulating the talented Carole on her accomplishments and this new honor. Educators Resource has announced that Dan Hartung has joined the company. As Customer Service Manager, Dan will ensure that Educators Resource continues to provide outstanding levels of customer service throughout the company. The functions of customer care and inventory control/purchasing will be more tightly integrated under his leadership of both areas. Prior to joining Educators Resource, Dan was Vice President of Client Services and Support for TeleVox Software where he built a world class service organization. He previously spent 20 years with Konica Minolta Printing Solutions where he held various positions leading the efforts in sales, service, logistics, purchasing and support. Join me on congratulating Dan on his new role! Gregg Festa at Montclair State University has been named the 2007 New Jersey Educational Technologist of the Year by the New Jersey Association for Educational Technology (NJAET). Each year, a practicing New Jersey educator who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in implementing the use of technology to improve education is selected for this distinguished award. Gregg will be presented with this award at the New Jersey Department of Education on May 8th. This is terrific! Haights Cross Communications (HCC) has announced the appointment of Gunnar C. Voltz as President and CEO of Options Publishing, publisher of supplemental education materials and intervention programs and a Haights Cross Communications company. Barbara Russell, the company's Founder, President and CEO is retiring to continue her work with various educational organizations and her family's foundation. Gunnar will report to Peter J. Quandt, HCC Chairman and CEO. He joins Options Publishing after serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Sundance/Newbridge Publishing Company, which is also owned by Haights Cross Communications. Prior to that, he was President of Educators Publishing Service (EPS). He has also held executive sales and marketing positions with several divisions of Harcourt Education, including Steck Vaughn and Rigby, American Guidance Services and the Psychological Corporation. He began his career as an elementary and middle school teacher in Wisconsin and was also an instructional consultant and school principal. I know you join me in wishing Gunnar congratulations on his new position and wishing Barbara every continued success! Carnegie Learning, Inc. has announced that former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will join the company's Board of Directors. As Governor of Iowa, Mr. Vilsack focused predominantly on issues relevant to children and families. He improved Iowa schools, expanded health care coverage to 90,000 uninsured children, established Iowa as a national leader in renewable energy and provided targeted tax relief to working families. A native of Pittsburgh, he announced a bid for the Presidency in early December and withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination in mid-February. He is currently a lawyer with Dorsey & Whitney, an international firm. He also teaches at Drake University Law School and is a consultant for MidAmerican Energy on renewable fuels programs. During his two terms as Governor, more Iowans finished high school and Iowa students ranked second in the country in average SAT scores and third in ACT scores. The state now has the fourth lowest high school dropout rate in the nation and ranks seventh nationally in the percentage of adults over 25 who have a high school diploma. Join me in congratulating Mr. Vilsak on his appointment to the Carnegie Learning board! Retention Education, Inc. has appointed Holly DeLeon as Senior Vice President of Sales. She will be responsible for building and managing the sales team for this company that develops educational workforce materials designed to improve the language skills of Hispanic adults. Under her direction, the sales group will continue to represent the firm in a number of industries, including food service, hospitality and construction. In addition, Holly will play a leading role in the company's entrance into the K-12 and adult education markets. Prior to joining Retention Education, she served as Executive Vice President of American Reading Company, where she was responsible for developing and expanding the sales infrastructure, establishing sales and marketing strategies and overseeing customer support. Earlier, she worked for LeapFrog SchoolHouse in positions ranging from Eastern Regional Manager to Vice President of Sales. She began her career as a Speech and Language Pathologist for the Fort Worth Independent School District, then went on to establish the Mid Cities Speech and Hearing Clinic, the first private speech and hearing clinic in Fort Worth, Texas. Please join me in sending warm congratulations to Holly on her new position. Have you been wondering what our long-time friend Shirley McCandless is up to these days? I like to keep in touch with Shirley and learned this week that she has a new job at the South Carolina State Budget and Control Board. She has been promoted to the State Software License Manager for South Carolina. She remains with the Division of the CIO, Information Technology Management Office, and will handle all software end user license agreements and other software license agreements for all government entities including education. But here's the really great news! Due to the job change, she will be coming to NECC this year and will be back in our midst working with the software industry. Look for her in Atlanta. Lee Shulman, president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, announced today that he will leave the presidency of the century-old independent education research and policy center effective August 2008. As part of his extensive legacy, Lee, who has served as president since 1997, has expanded the role of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, confronted challenges of assessment, advocated for moral and civic education and championed appropriate principles of formation in professional education. When he accepted the Carnegie presidency in October 1996, he presented the Board with an ambitious set of plans. He envisioned the first advanced study center for teachers from the worlds of both higher education and pre-collegiate education. He outlined a 10-year program of research on education in the professions that would build upon a century-long legacy of Carnegie studies beginning with the Flexner Report, and he imagined a significant study of the future of doctoral education and serious contributions to the challenges of teacher education. These plans have come to fruition in addition to many that could not have been predicted a decade ago. Lee will stay fully engaged in the work of the Foundation until next August, and the Foundation will stay fully engaged in ongoing programs. He noted that although deciding to retire was difficult, he knew the time was right. "I always intended to leave the presidency after 10 or 12 years, when the work we had planned was nearing completion, and when I might still have the energy and inclination to engage in new activities as well," he said. "The fact that the Foundation is in great shape and I will be nearing my 70th birthday a year from this summer helped me to conclude that 2008 was the right year to make way for new leadership at this extraordinary institution." Lee plans to take a full-year sabbatical beginning in fall 2008, during which he and his wife, Judy, will travel extensively and collaborate with other educational institutions. For nearly 25 years, Judy Shulman has been a staff member of WestEd, where she has served as director of the Institute for Case Development as well as the National Board Support Network. Recipient of AERA's 2002 award for Contributions Relating Research to Practice, Judy is the author or editor of eight books and many articles. What an amazing couple! Join me in congratulating Lee on his many accomplishments and wishing him all the best as he sets his eyes on retirement and the next stage of his life. Many of you have continued to ask about making donations in memory of Karen Billings' father, Norman Madson, who died several weeks ago. Her family has indicated that for those wishing to do so, donations could be sent to the Friends of the Britt Public Library, 132 Main Ave S, Britt, IA 50423. Karen has given in her mother's name for years, and she knows (and her dad knew) all of the people who work there. I know we all love and have been reaching out to our friend Karen. I had a note this week from the dear Dave Moursund about his most recent (free) book, A Faculty Member's Guide to Computers in Higher Education. You can access it at http://uoregon.edu/~moursund/Books/Faculty/Faculty.html. Dave says that the book is mainly intended for people who teach in postsecondary colleges and universities and is the ninth in a series of books he has written and made available (free) under a Creative Commons license. He is currently working on A College Student Guide to Computers in Education, and a draft of the first 50 pages can be accessed at http://uoregon.edu/~moursund/Books/CollegeStudent/CollegeStudent.html . The expected completion date is sometime during the summer of 2007. Our busy friend Dave is now completely retired from the University of Oregon. His newest career, as a volunteer, is to work on improving the quality of teaching at the University of Oregon and in other higher education institutions. Although most of his previous books have been aimed at uses of computers in pre-college education, he is now focusing quite a bit of his energies on roles of computers in higher education. He added in his note: “Some may wonder why I now write books and make them available free. I am but one of a growing number of people who have decided that this is a good and right thing to do….I am particularly interested in finding good materials available on the Web that provide research-based evidence of our successes, failures and challenges in improving the quality of education that students are receiving in higher education. Please feel free to share resources and your insights with me. I am also interested in how various colleges and universities are taking faculty work in Information and Communication Technology into consideration in hiring, retention, salary, promotion and tenure decisions. If you are aware of an institution with a clear policy, please let me know.” For those of you who do not know Dave, he was a beacon of sorts for the entire educational technology movement. He founded the International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE) in 1979. ICCE later became the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in 1989 when it merged with the International Association for Computing in Education (IACE). Dave was the executive officer of ISTE from 1989 to 1998 and started the publication The Oregon Computing Teacher, which later became The Computing Teacher and was the predecessor of Learning & Leading with Technology. You see that Dave continues in his retirement to do meaningful work. And I know many of you will want to help me honor and congratulate a very special person, Bobby Goodson, who is going to be celebrating her 80th birthday on May 15th. I realize many of you reading this column are too young to have known and worked with Bobby, and for that, I am sorry - you missed knowing someone very special indeed! But for those of us older folks, we fondly remember that lovely and amazing white-haired wonder as the Mother of Computer Education. She and a handful of others in California interested in computers in education in the very early 80's or probably the late 70's got together and called themselves Computer Using Educators….and, of course, the vibrant CUE association lives on today. California was where everything was really happening in those early days of technology in schools. Bobby was teaching in the Cupertino schools at the time - you know, that city where those boys who developed the Apple computer grew up. When she saw the prototype of the first Apple II, she was hooked. Her junior high school purchased three 16K Apples and found some old black-and-white TV monitors, and Bobby worked to develop a curriculum and train others. She learned as we all learned in those days, by talking to one another and getting together to share ideas. It was the early 80's when I was working with a small group in Texas - we were hooked on computers and learning as well. As we founded the Texas Computer Education Association, we looked with respect and amazement at these California pioneers. Bobby and her colleagues, Ann Lathrop and LeRoy Finkel, ran an annual meeting of people managing software evaluation projects in their respective states or regions. Since I was managing the Texas-funded one through the education service center in Houston, I was privileged to be a part of these incredible get-togethers. As one of our colleagues, Eric Anderson, who was then known as the Wired Librarian (a whole other column needed there!) wrote in a 1985 posting, “Bobby Goodson runs the group meetings better than Ronnie runs the government.” I mentioned above that ISTE was formed in 1989 when the International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE) merged with IACE the International Association for Computing in Education (IACE). Bobby took over the ICCE presidency from Dave Moursund in 1984. I had the honor of working with her on that board and of following her as president the following year. George and I have stayed in touch with Bobby and her wonderful husband Chet over the years. They have a marvelous home in northern Idaho, which Bobby designed with one of her daughters who is an architect. All those many years ago in that Cupertino junior high, Bobby was a math teacher, and her love of and interest in math contributed to the design of her home which has not one right angle in it. Well, you readers have indeed gotten a history lesson this week. I could write on and on about this wonderful woman who contributed so much and touched so many of us in this industry, both professionally and personally. I so respect, honor and love her. So now…send your own birthday cards, messages, stories, love and thanks to our friend Bobby at HCR 61, Box 134, Bonners Ferry, ID 83805. Goodness, if I continue to be this loquacious, they might give me my own newsletter! Thanks for indulging my walk down memory lane this week. The late 70's and early 80's were such an exciting time when technology in education was just being born. As you read this, I will already be on my way to Trinidad for a week with some of my long-time Texas girlfriends. I see lots of stories, laughter, sun and fun, and a few of those umbrella drinks in my future. I will be back next week with more scoops on our community of friends, but I think what happens in Trinidad will stay in Trinidad;-) - Vicki, the Snoop
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