West Bend rejects school referendum It would have been state's largestBy DON BEHM
dbehm@journalsentinel.comPosted: Nov. 6, 2007
West Bend - Voters in the West Bend School District rejected a $119.3 million school building referendum by a 62.6% to 37.4% margin in Tuesday's special election.
The second annual Constructivist Celebration @ NECC 2008 in San Antonio is sold out!
I didn’t even get a chance to post it here. That’s why I’m almost afraid to write this - don’t hate me! We sent an announcement email to the list of people who had signed up on the Constructivist Consortium website, and emails to the customers of the six member companies. It got out on Twitter, too, and the event instantly filled up. Seriously, that fast.
Tags: Celebration, Constructivist, NECC, SoldHartford voters reject school referendums Expansion plan put at $25 millionBy LAWRENCE SUSSMAN
lsussman@journalsentinel.comPosted: Nov. 6, 2007
Residents in the Hartford Joint 1 School District soundly rejected referendum proposals to borrow almost $25 million and exceed state spending limits by $593,000 a year to help ease school crowding.
Met with my superintendent last week and he is sufficiently satisfied with the results of the four site pilot that we’re going to expand it to 10 and reevaluate at the end of the school year. The goal is still to make the changeover to the new site at some point late in the summer. I know that I’m jumping through more hoops than someotherfolks, but to be honest, on some level I’m glad we’re going slowly. It’s giving me a chance to wrap my brain around the whole process and how it will end up working.
Tags: Update, Weblogs, WebsiteLast year I recommended several documentaries as learning resources, in Global Civics 101. I just watched The War on Democracy and would add it to the list. This film, along with dozens of others on subjects from the environment to human rights are available for free viewing on FreeDocumentaries.org, an excellent resource for teachers, parents and anyone else interested in perspectives not provided by the mainstream media:
At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information. Unfortunately, many important perspectives, opinions, and facts never make it to our televisions or cinemas (you can watch movies in our media category if you want to know why).
Tags: Civics, GlobalYesterday was my 70th birthday. Ajit Joakar was kind enough to write the post here about the occasion. For the past four days I have been with my siblings on a holiday that included the celebration of two of our birthdays. But in terms of what is significant on the large scale both for me and for the times in which we live is the day after my birthday: September 11.
The terrorists attacked New York City, where I live, the day after my 65th birthday. At the time the planes struck I was in my apartment on East 85th Street, about seven miles from the burning towers. By noon, walkers from downtown Manhattan were streaming up Second Avenue at the corner of the block on which I live. Nine firemen from the 85th Street firehouse less than two blocks west of my building never returned after the guys from the station piled on the engines and sped downtown to help. Within a couple of days pictures of missing neighbors appeared taped to light poles: Have you seen . . . ? It was awful.
Tags: AwfulI’ve been placing Google ads on the site. Hopefully, you won’t even see them.
You see, I get a lot of search engine traffic for a few posts some time ago. Why not try to recoup some of the hosting costs?
Using Planet Ozh’s masterful plugin, Who Sees Ads, theoretically none of you should see the ads when you visit the site, and they should only show up for folks who come from a search engine or on posts that are over 30 days old.
Tags: engine, folks, Google, Only, Others, searchDr. Alice Christie from Arizona State University has a wonderful site packed with great resources and reading for constructivist educators looking for project-based learning resources. We know Dr. Christie well from her research on student collaboration and GenY, student voice, and many other student-centered papers, presentations, and resources.
The educational technology resource page lists subjects like geocaching, webquests, podcasting, multimedia, and more. Not only are there great examples and ideas, but links to many school websites showing these ideas in action.
Tags: Classroom, Constructivist, projects, Treasure, trove