Test Prep and Math Realities

By Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

As another school year is getting well under way, educators are faced with starting the process all over again for preparing students for standardized testing. It's not something that can be put off until the last moment. Failure to pass "the test" sometimes prevents high school students from receiving their graduation diplomas. Elementary students might be retained in a grade. There is the usual dilemma of teaching to the test versus incorporating activities that help students develop 21st century skills valued in the real world....

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Hacienda La Puente USD Expands Online Language Arts Program

California's Hacienda La Puente Unified School District is expanding its implementation of the MY Access! language arts program from Vantage Learning. This district is now making the online writing tool available to more than 13,000 high school, middle school, and fifth-grade students through an expanded, $486,000 license, Vantage reported....

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San Francisco and Tampa Districts Deploying Hundreds of Whiteboards

San Francisco's Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD), Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District (FSUSD, Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), and several other Bay Area districts, along with Tampa, FL's Alachua County Public Schools, have deployed several hundred Smart Technologies Smart Board interactive whiteboards in classrooms....

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NACOL Releases Online Education Quality Standards

The North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) has released National Standards of Quality for Online Courses, a publication detailing quality standards for judging the effectiveness of online education....

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Skype, Annick Press Connect Students with Authors

VoIP chat provider Skype Technologies and book publisher Annick Press are jointly presenting LIVEbrary, a series of online classroom programs that will connect middle and junior high schoolers and their teachers with various authors over a five-week program starting Oct. 15....

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Adobe Launches Digital School Collection

Adobe has launched a brand new version of its Digital School Collection, incorporating two new digital media tools released Sept. 24: Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6, along with Acrobat 8 Professional and Contribute CS3....

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Jason Project Charts Course Through Monster Storms

The Jason Project, a subsidiary of the National Geographic Society, has come out with new science curriculum called Operation: Monster Storms. The first in Jason's new line of curricula, Operation: Monster Storms was developed over a two-year period in cooperation with NOAA, NASA, and the National Geographic Society and is targeted toward fifth- through eighth-grade classes....

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Share Your Best Practices

T.H.E. Journal is currently looking for the following types of articles for future issues and for our eNewsletter, T.H.E. SmartClassroom:

• School Perspectives - discuss a specific topic, trend, or concern about education technology.
• Case Studies - have you implemented technology and learned a lot from the experience? If so, share your efforts about what worked -- and what didn't.

If you have a potential article, or questions about the above topics, please e-mail [email protected]

EduHound.com

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The site boasts thousands of visitors per week, as well as a weekly newsletter, EduHound Weekly.

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