Odds and Ends

Parents beware - Facebook has changed its policy regarding minors and their pages.  From the New York Times:

Facebook has loosened its privacy rules for teenagers as a debate swirls over online threats to children from bullies and sexual predators. 

The move, announced on Wednesday, allows teenagers to post status updates, videos and images that can be seen by anyone, not just their friends or people who know their friends. 

They’re hitting kids from a neurological weak spot. Kids don’t have the same kind of impulse control that adults do,” said Emily Bazelon, a journalist and author of the book “Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy.” 

Two stories from The Stranger on Suzanne Dale Estey.  One about the public disclosure e-mails and the other a story they did when Suzanne Dale Estey worked as a lobbyist for WaMu.  I was wondering when they would get to this and the last paragraph in the story says what we have all wondered; what does this big investment her wealthy supporters are putting into her campaign mean?  They got a good quote from her, too:

In our SECB meeting, when we asked her about her endorsements from the scandal-tinged Peter Maier and ineffective incumbent Michael DeBell, she told us: "Just because someone is supporting me doesn't mean I embrace all of their weaknesses."

Except that Peter Maier served on the Seattle School Board and was ousted precisely because of his "weaknesses" as a Board director.

Great story from Wired about a teacher in Mexico who changed the way he teaches...to great effect for his class.  More about the student-centered learning movement.



For five years, he (Sergio Juarez Correa) had stood in front of students and worked his way through the government-mandated curriculum. It was mind-numbingly boring for him and the students, and he’d come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time. Test scores were poor, and even the students who did well weren’t truly engaged. Something had to change.

He began reading books and searching for ideas online. Soon he stumbled on a video describing the work of Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in the UK. In the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, Mitra conducted experiments in which he gave children in India access to computers. Without any instruction, they were able to teach themselves a surprising variety of things, from DNA replication to English.

Paloma was silent, waiting to be told what to do. She didn’t realize that over the next nine months, her experience of school would be rewritten, tapping into an array of educational innovations from around the world and vaulting her and some of her classmates to the top of the math and language rankings in Mexico.

Comments

Kidding Me? said…
I just read The Stranger article regarding Dale Estey and Im feeling concerned.

Dale Estey worked for WaMu and was opposing the monorail while pushing the monorail with TCC. This story indicates that Dale Estey has the ability to speak -out of both sides of her mouth.

I saw an article written by Cliff Mass that links to a video of Estey tellin a group that she doesn't know her top five contributors- which happen to be amongst the richest individuals in the world.

Estey is backed by a PAC and the peole that pushed I 1240. Are we really to believe that she doesn't support charter schools?
Po3 said…
I think that Estey was approached by the PAC backers to run and was told money would and staff would not be an issue.

If she is elected she will owe these backers.

Question is, what will they want?
mirmac1 said…
Damning SLOG comment to the second Estey story which recounts her doublespeak during her WAMU lobbyist days:

"I remember getting her email when I was at WaMu. It was the first time anyone at the company had ever heard from her. There were so many internal complaints about the email that the executives quickly distanced themselves from it. WaMu's CEO was doing a company roadshow that week, and when asked about the email by an employee during Q & A, he said "I was out of town at the time" it went out. Needless to say, Suzanne never sent out another email like that again."

mirmac1 said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
mirmac1 said…
KOUW has a report on the differences between Peters and Estey (although with the latter's shifting positions it's getting hard to tell sometimes...)

Nice to see more reporting about this race.

Seattle School Board Candidates Clash On Testing, State Standards

I heard the other day that now Estey opposes the MAP. That's a new one. She must've had her expensive campaign consultant do some polling...
Viva El Amor said…
Cut Copy and Paste Melissa Westbrook !!!
mirmac1 said…
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