March 2010


THE Cover Story

Flippin Out

Students and teachers alike are enthralled by the Flip Video camcorder, an easy-to-use project tool that is charging up the classroom in a way not seen since the arrival of the iPod.

By Katherine Grayson

It’s a typical school day and as you deliver the class lesson for the afternoon you conduct a mental scan of your students and their attention quotients. Two girls at the back of the room are whispering to each other; the boy in front of them is slumped forward in his seat, chin resting on knuckles, eyes glazed. Another boy has just yawned and dropped his pencil for the fourth time in 30 minutes, while the little blonde to your left is earnestly doodling. It’s about time to lay out the details of the next class project. This time, however, things will be different.


Features

A Custom Fit

The movement toward open educational resources turns teachers into the shapers of curriculum, mixing and matching educational materials to create content that is tailor-made for the needs of their students.

In his line of work, Ahrash Bissell meets with K-12 educators all the time. For most of them, he says, open content sits “just on the edge of their awareness.”


An 'A' in Abstractions

With assessment attracting increased focus in the push for 21st century skills learning, a new issue arises: How do you measure the immeasurable?

By Paul Tullis

If a district head or state superintendent wanted to intensify the focus of his curriculum on 21st century skills, he would do well to pay a visit to Tucson’s Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD).


THE Departments

Identity Scramble

Automated technology systems are working to keep personal information of district employees and students out of the wrong hands.

By Charlene O’Hanlon

Picture this: You’re a school administrator who has access to the personal files of every student and faculty member in your school district. You have a fairly common name that is shared by another employee in the district. Now imagine your surprise when...


A Quicker Clicker

Virtual student response systems turn any computing device into a tool for on-the-spot formative assessment.

By Jennifer Demski

At the start of this school year, the Northwest Independent School District in Justin, TX, issued 3,300 netbooks to its high school students. Each of them also received his or her very own “clicker.”


All That for a Football Game?

What if schools got the same attention that professional sports receive?

A bumper sticker I often saw in the 1960s proclaimed, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” I always thought the sentiment was naive and unrealistic. Yet recently...


Was I Wrong on Obama?

With his defunding of EETT, the new boss seems to many ed tech advocates to be just like the old boss.

By Geoffrey H. Fletcher

President Obama released his fiscal year 2011 budget request Feb. 1, and the news for the ed tech world, at least at first glance, was not good.


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