Eideard

Suggesting that physical textbooks are no longer the ideal learning tool, Apple on Thursday proposed a new platform and method of digital education: iBooks 2 for iPad.

Speaking to the press at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, said current textbooks are not very portable, they’re not durable, and they’re not interactive. He believes the iPad stacks up better, particularly with the new iBooks 2…

Demonstrating iBooks 2 on Thursday, Apple’s Roger Rosner showed off how iBooks 2 allows texbooks to start off with intro movies. He also quickly went across thumbnails for pages, and could skip across chapters.

Touting the new textbooks as “gorgeous,” Rosner argued that “no printed book can compete with this.” He demonstrated the ability to pinch into photos, and showcased 3D models of biological structures that can be rotated and manipulated in real-time — all of this interaction happens within a digital textbook in iBooks 2…

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After services at the Church at Cane Creek on a recent Sunday, a few dozen families held a potluck picnic and giggling children played pin the tail on the donkey.

The white-bearded preacher, Michael Pearl, who delivered his sermon in stained work pants, and his wife, Debi, mixed warmly with the families drawn to their evangelical ministry, including some of their own grandchildren.

The pastoral mood in the hills of Tennessee offered a stark contrast to the storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child discipline, which advocate systematic use of “the rod” to teach toddlers to submit to authority. The methods, seen as common sense by some grateful parents and as horrific by others, are modeled, Mr. Pearl is fond of saying, on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

Debate over the Pearls’ teachings, first seen on Christian Web sites, gained new intensity after the death of a third child, all allegedly at the hands of parents who kept the Pearls’ book, “To Train Up a Child,” in their homes. On Sept. 29, the parents were charged with homicide by abuse.

More than 670,000 copies of the Pearls’ self-published book are in circulation, and it is especially popular among Christian home-schoolers, who praise it in their magazines and on their Web sites. The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, “can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.”

The furor in part reflects societal disagreements over corporal punishment, which conservative Christians say is called for in the Bible and which many Americans consider reasonable up to a point, even as many parents and pediatricians reject it.

Few, if any, pediatricians would support the medieval ideology of the Pearls. I’m not surprised that many Christians adopt their practices. Everything else they believe in is equally out-of-date, divorced from modernity derived from science and civility.

RTFA for detail after detail of one more backwards facet of fundamentalists who would sing away while shutting down what freedoms we have remaining.

American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.

Over all, 20 percent of fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders and 12 percent of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Federal officials said they were encouraged by a slight increase in eighth-grade scores since the last history test, in 2006. But even those gains offered little to celebrate, because, for example, fewer than a third of eighth graders could answer even a “seemingly easy question” asking them to identify an important advantage American forces had over the British during the Revolution, the government’s statement on the results said.

Diane Ravitch, an education historian who was invited by the national assessment’s governing board to review the results, said she was particularly disturbed by the fact that only 2 percent of 12th graders correctly answered a question concerning Brown v. Board of Education, which she called “very likely the most important decision” of the United States Supreme Court in the past seven decades.

Students were given an excerpt including the passage “We conclude that in the field of public education, separate but equal has no place, separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” and were asked what social problem the 1954 ruling was supposed to correct.

“The answer was right in front of them,” Ms. Ravitch said. “This is alarming…”

History advocates contend that students’ poor showing on the tests underlines neglect shown to the subject by federal and state policy makers, especially since the 2002 No Child Left Behind act began requiring schools to raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject. The federal accountability law, the advocates say, has given schools and teachers an incentive to spend less time on history and other subjects.

“History is very much being shortchanged,” said Linda K. Salvucci, a history professor in San Antonio who is chairwoman-elect of the National Council for History Education.

Bragging about scant victories, the report applauds our school system for 42% of students knowing something of day-to-day economics. That’s the best our kids do on any topic. 42%.

If he was entering a Republican Party conference he’d be carrying bible action figures
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Department of Education responded to a letter of concern from the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), which is worried by applications from Christian groups to run free schools. It fears that schools might be exploited by groups seeking to promote a literal interpretation of the Bible at the expense of science classes.

However, the Department of Education confirmed that Mr Gove is “crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact”…

The BCSE expressed in writing its “extreme concern” about groups such as Christian School Trust who have made up to five applications to run free schools…

The Everyday Champions Church, in Newark, Nottinghamshire, submitted its proposal for a 652-place school in January. It claims that the parents of more than 660 children have signed up to attend the school.

The Church’s leader Gareth Morgan told the BBC: “Creationism will be embodied as a belief at Everyday Champions Academy, but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory. We believe children should have a broad knowledge of all theories in order that they can make informed choice.”

In July last year Mr Gove acknowledged there were concerns about “inappropriate faith groups using this legislation to push their own agenda.” He told MPs on the cross-party Commons education committee that his department was working to ensure there were no “extremist groups taking over schools”.

A clear distinction between conservative politicians in the UK and US. The former resemble what traditional American conservatism used to embody – including disdain for populist pandering to religious nutters. That used to be left up to the Democrats in the United States.

Apparently when Nixon instituted the Southern Strategy to acquire the racist and bigot vote in America, they inherted the nutballs along with the whole package.

Remembrance Day at the Olympic Cauldron in Vancouver
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The government of Canada has confirmed that its military would end its combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2011.

The United States had asked Canada to continue the military effort in Afghanistan with other members of NATO, but Parliament had already set the timetable for withdrawing combat troops. Some soldiers will remain in the country after next year, training Afghan security forces…

Public opinion polls indicate little support among Canadians for continued fighting in Afghanistan.

Under the new plan, the current deployment of about 2,700 troops will be cut by about two-thirds by the end of next year. The 950 remaining soldiers will be withdrawn from Kandahar and train Afghan troops and police officers until 2014 on military bases near Kabul and possibly elsewhere. The remaining troops will also support Canadian aid and reconstruction efforts.

“This will not be a combat mission,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the House of Commons. “It will occur in classrooms, behind the wire and in bases…”

The Obama administration praised Canada for maintaining at least some military presence in Afghanistan until that date…

Canadians should be proud of both the hardiness of their troops – and the good sense of the electorate to make it clear to the government they want those troops home.

When Julie Sidder’s daughters were younger, her diaper bag was filled with coloring books, crayons, storybooks and little games in case one of them became restless.

Now that Sidder’s kids are 4 and 7, the diaper bag is gone, but the need for entertainment — especially in restaurants — is not, which is why two-thirds of the apps on Sidder’s iPhone are for her children.

“People have always brought toys, or something to entertain their child, into restaurants and stores,” says the mom, who lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan. “Now we just have better technology…”

More and more parents are discovering smartphones’ similar ability to engage squirmy kids at restaurants, in the car and anywhere else where youngsters grow bored.

Almost half of the top 100-selling education apps in the iTunes App Store were for preschool or elementary-aged children in November 2009, according to a content analysis by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, which promotes digital media technologies to advance children’s learning.

Expert Carly Shuler says the reason for this — assuming the majority of 3- to 10-year-olds don’t own their own phones — is because adults are taking advantage of the smartphone’s ability to act as a mobile learning or entertainment device for their children.

Shuler, a fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (part of the Sesame Workshop) calls this phenomenon the “pass-back” effect — as in parents passing their phones back to their bored kids.

Har! And it also makes good sense – presuming you’re bright enough to make good choices of what you store on your smartphone for your kid.

Meet Bailey. She’s a registered therapy dog, but you won’t find her in hospitals or nursing homes. Instead, Bailey makes weekly visits to libraries and schools. She sits quietly or snuggles up to kids as they read her a book. And no, she’s not napping, and the kids don’t have treats in their pockets. She’s actually helping these children learn to read…

The philosophy is simple. Children who are just learning to read often feel judged or intimidated by classmates and adults. But reading to a dog isn’t so scary. It won’t judge, it won’t get impatient, it won’t laugh or correct if the child makes a mistake. In a nutshell, dogs are simply excellent listeners. And for shy kids or slow readers, that can make all the difference.

Kathy Klotz is executive director of Intermountain Therapy Animals, which runs a nationwide program called R.E.A.D. — Reading Education Assistance Dogs. She says there’s another benefit of reading to the dogs that she didn’t anticipate: confidence.
“A factor that we never planned for, that turned out to be really important, is that the child feels like they’re letting the dog understand the story,” she says. “They get to be the teacher, the storyteller, the one who knows more than the dog for a change. …They just blossom when they get to be the one who knows more than the dog.”

The children know they’re not actually teaching the dog, of course, but the for the kids, the idea that they know more than the dog and can share their knowledge is a powerful one. And now that volunteers are aware of that aspect, Klotz says they actively foster the idea of the child as the teacher.

RTFA. Interesting, educational details and processes at work here.

We’ve a similar program here in Santa Fe for several years. Works well and – so far – none of the local bureaucrats or nutballs have gotten in the way. All it does is keep on producing results helping kids to read.