Something for Canadian and American Schools to Think About

Why High School Graduates in China and India Are More Ready for College

By Deborah Williams

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While American schools are wrestling with budget cuts, school officials in India and China have significantly increased their spending on public education.  The United States still spends more per student than these countries, but China and India’s investment, it seems, has been paying off.  Kelsey Sheehy, writer for the U S News and World Report’s School Notes blog, reports that high school graduates in China and India are better prepared for college than American high school graduates:

• High school students in India and China are going to college and finishing at a higher rate than America’s 50 percent college graduation rate.
• Many of their college graduates are STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—majors.  China graduates about 1.5 million college students with STEM degrees while the United States graduates less than 500,000 such graduates.

Part of the reason for the disparity seems traceable to programs in lower grade levels.  Ann O’Leary, director of the Children and Families program at the Center for the Next Generation, believes that high school graduates are not getting the level of training needed to succeed in college-level STEM programs.  She suggests the U.S. needs to do the following:

• Improve teacher training
• Provide access to job shadowing and internship experiences to all high school students in STEM courses

New Literacies

The following article below goes back to what I have been saying all along about literacies. Times have certainly changed, and the younger generation seems oblivious as to what is not appropriate in terms of writing. There is no self control with the youths of today. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Man gets offensive restaurant bill that curses his ‘needy kid

Joe Gibson received this bill after dining with his son on Father's Day. (Photo via Gawker)Joe Gibson probably didn't expect the shocking treatment he got on Father's Day while sharing a meal at Friendly's sports bar in St. Louis, Mo. with his son.

After sharing chicken, soda and french fries with his three-year-old son, he received a bill with one unusual item at the bottom of the receipt:

"F**kin needy kids."
Naturally this upset Gibson who took to posting the bill on the Facebook page of local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The paper then ran a story about the issue and interviewed the Friendly's sports bar owner.
"Normally, we don't let anyone in who's under 21. But the guy said he was with his kid for Father's Day... so I said 'sure,'" Denny Domachowski tells the paper.
Also see: Debate over kind gesture on restaurant bill
Domachowski claims that the offending words were a joke written by the waitress and intended for the kitchen staff only. Those types of comments are normally deleted from the bill before given to the customer, but they were accidentally left on.
"I can understand why the gentleman was upset," Domachowski says. "And that's why I apologized." He also claims that the waitress has been reprimanded.
However, while Gibson acknowledges that accidents happen, he is less than appeased.
"If it happened to me, it could happen again," he says. "What else are they writing about other people?"
Also see: Unusual message over mom's restaurant bill
Apparently, Gibson is right. Because he is not he only parent to receive a restaurant bill with derogatory remarks about his kid.
In 2009, a British couple received a bill from Cactus Joe's restaurant that referred to their two-year-old daughter as a "little f*****." The wait staff who wrote the comments was fired and the restaurant apologized.
And there are other types of offensive restaurant bills with customer insults.
Last year, a New York City woman of Asian descent was served a bill from Papa John's restaurant chain that referred to her as "lady chinky eyes." She posted the bill on Twitter, which went viral, later prompting a public apology from the pizza chain, as well as the termination of the waitress responsible for the bill.
What are your thoughts on bills of this nature? Are they innocent mistakes or part of a larger problem with restaurant policies? Sound off in the comments.

Schools for the Future

School Vision Centers

By Deborah Willia

One of the most frustrating issues for a teacher is having students with visual impairments who don’t have their corrective eyewear in class.  This is compounded when a teacher has several students with vision problems in the same class.  Often, the problem is that their parents cannot afford to pay for proper eye care, or they cannot pay for the eyewear that is prescribed for their children.  A non-profit department of Luxottica, an eyewear company will help the students at Public School 188 on New York’s Coney Island and Public School 18 in the Bronx by establishing vision centers inside both schools in September.  This venture is part of a partnership with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and the centers will be funded by Medicaid reimbursements as part of the UFT’s Community Schools Initiative to strengthen social services in schools.”
According to The Huffington Post article by Rebecca Klein, this is not the first time that this has been tried.  Last year, the UFT partnered with OneSight to establish a vision center in an Ohio school with a significant low-income population.  OneSight Executive Director, Dr. Jason Singh, noted that OneSight found that 64% of the students examined at the school needed glasses.  Dr. Siingh noted, “Eighty percent of what we learn is visual, and yet one in four kids have an undiagnosed vision problem.”
Here is an overview of the impact of the OneSight Vision Center at Oyler School:

Are more adults going back to school?

Why Business Managers Should Go Back to School

At times, business managers may feel their career has come to a stall and they think about pursuing a degree to augment their academic portfolio. A survey conducted by the Bellevue University inferred that the demand of the economic setup is causing professionals to reevaluate their careers. On many levels, such initiatives are a worthwhile investment in terms of valuable networking and updated information. However, there are certain important considerations to be kept in mind.
Among the statistics that were obtained, as much as 47% said that the fluctuations in economy caused the pursuit of additional degrees. On the other hand, 26% said that their motives were driven on the account that their select career had far too low progressive opportunity.
The point of opting for a degree should be dependent on the end goals. The relevance of degree to the professional standpoint is paramount. The scope and the duration of the additional degree are dependent on what the individual can achieve.
For that matter, a number of organizations look towards managers who can multitask or are well versed with the attributes of project management. So if a manager already has an MBA degree, he/she can augment it with a project managed certificate like a CSU Certificate in Project Management from Cardinal Stritch and other course programs that come in handy when project managers are replaced by the traditional hierarchical structure. Such an approach is successful on the account that it’s highly directed.
In the current status quo, pursuing a simple course is a much more viable strategy than pursuing a full fledged degree. The reasons for this being the cost benefit analysis which is in favor of courses.
Another important parameter to consider is what the benefits of reverting back to academics are. The main benefit is updating on the latest concepts and how they can translate into becoming a better professional. In management, a number of new concepts have come in place which renders the previous ones obsolete.
Previously, business strategies focused on solutions in which each process was designated separately. Now the idea is to manage each aspect together using algorithmic approach. This is such a vital tool to add to a manager’s portfolio that a promotion at work is going to look brighter than ever.
The concept of socializing has also become more important. Gone are the days of isolated success, and now is the time of composite progress. Reverting back to academics will allow managers to socialize with the modern student sphere. This is going to help their creative process by adding more ideas.
Pursing education with their work will also give managers a good opportunity in terms of getting a target market as well. The growth of virtual classes has made it possible to manage study and work together.
A fundamental difference of the current educational paradigm from the previous one is the pursuit of indigenous research projects. This has a massive impact on the knowledge base.
The level of specialized education has increased during the last few years. It’s possible to get into those courses that are ideally suited to one’s of career. The important parameters to evaluate are the relevance and the cost factor. After all, no one wants going back to school and ending up in debt.
The recession may have constrained a lot of people’s choice in terms of a career, but there are ample opportunities for those who want to improve.

Technology in the classroom

Technological Literacy in the Classroom

Posted on May 29, 2013  by Laura Pizzirusso in Classroom Ideas, Literacy, Technology.
Tags: Literacy, Technology
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Just try to stop technology in the classroom, and you might have better luck trying to stop a freight train. Harry Keller, Editor of Science Education and Literacy for ETC Journal (educational technology & change), writes in Technological Literacy: The Key to Education Reform that by combining technology with literacy can we reform education. Much more than simply “one of the latest buzz phrases in education,” technological literacy is not isolated technologies such as interactive white boards and iPads that surface in classrooms followed up by literacy lessons. The concept is about knowing how to effectively use technology, hands-on, in the classroom.
But knowing how to use technology is the first step, and knowing how to effectively use it is the second step. I know an “old-school” elementary-level teacher who is not technologically savvy. For the most part, she doesn’t respond to parent emails with emails. She asks students and support staff how to use the classroom ipads. This doesn’t make her a bad teacher, she is simply “technologically illiterate” in a district that is becoming heavily technologically literate. But what Keller would say in this case is “the solution [to our current education crisis] is at hand, but without technological literacy in our schools right down to the classroom teacher, it won’t be implemented, and we’ll continue down the slope to increasing failure.” That kind of  implication makes me want to meet with her to gently show how these things work.
Just having technology available in a school system is not the answer – Keller argues that we now need “the ability to understand and evaluate technology” – both from a teacher perspective and district perspective. He writes that “anyone in the implementation chain must also be able to understand the implications of the decision to use a particular technology.”
Yet even our young students are technologically savvy, often referred to a “digital natives” – and we know that we can reach students this way. With the increase in online literacy programs like Big Universe and the multitude of learning apps for typical and special needs students, we need to use technology effectively, otherwise it becomes simply a replacement for a chalkboard.
Tonya Wright in Technology and Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom, writes that “the early childhood community has been slower to catch when it comes to technology. A recent survey of early childhood professionals by Child Care Information Exchange revealed that among child care centers, most that use technology only do so for administrative purposes such as accounting or record-keeping; and classroom use is often limited to educational software.” Yet “technology can positively impact classroom practices” – from “lesson plan ideas, recipes, and classroom themes,” even by preschool students.
She suggests using digital images (in a slide show), e-pal sites, create student electronic portfolios, and Word-processing and desktop publishing software. Her suggestions are great as the real-life applications to these includes technological literacy, a basic skill set for many of today’s jobs, and includes capabilities such as creating slide show presentations, interacting with others through digital means, and before even getting the job, creating a visual portfolio on a leave-behind CD after an interview.
This doesn’t mean the old school teacher I referred to has to throw out the chalk with the chalkboard. Clearly our district is pushing a current technology, and I’d like to see them be held accountable for teaching her how to use it. She’d be surprised how quickly it would become just another tool to effectively teach. Is your district pushing