Look What's Arriving at Seattle Schools

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yep! I'm excited! :)

MIF lover
8/28/14, 7:17 PM
Anonymous said…
Ugh.
-JL
8/28/14, 8:55 PM
Anonymous said…
Yesterday I spent 6 hours learning how to read the manual, which is not in any way complicated or difficult to understand. There was no mention of the bar model, number bonds. or anything else unique to Singapore. It was one of the most useless PD trainings I have ever received.
TS
8/28/14, 9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
8/28/14, 9:39 PM
Anonymous said…
Dear TS,

Who provided the useless Singapore Math PD training?

I took 3 online PD mini-classes on Singapore Math last school year. The instructor was based out of Puget Sound. These were above average as PD goes.

How does SPS make decisions as to math PD?

-- Dan Dempsey
8/29/14, 7:32 AM
Po3 said…
Wonder if the useless PD was by design as part of the undermining of the math adoption by a few in high positions at the district.
8/29/14, 9:25 AM
Anonymous said…
My trainer was a teacher who works in a district that uses MIF. She was fantastic, as a person and as a teacher. It was the content, or lack thereof, that was so frustrating. I'm not sure who decided on the content, Houghton-Mifflin or SPS? Forcing teachers into a super-hot crowded room for 6 hours, while they are taught how to read the table of contents, during one of the most stressful weeks of the school year, it's not the way to win fans.
On a positive note, it's so nice to finally have some curriculum!
TS
8/29/14, 5:19 PM
dw said…
re: "Look What's Arriving at Seattle Schools"

I'd love to look, it sounds like it might be something good. But all I see is a blank white box.

Melissa, very often you do what the industry calls "hotlinking", which is embedding a link on your own site to data/images on another web server. You can read about it here: Wikipedia Inline_linking.

It's bad practice for several reasons, among them legal/copyright issues, privacy and 3rd party tracking issues, bandwidth stealing, dangerous bait-and-switch (see Wikipedia Goatse for an extreme example of what can happen. Not for the squeamish!)

With bait-and-switch, anyone hosting an image that's displayed on your web site can change that image without your knowledge and now you can have an obscene or illegal image on your site. It happens, and it's not pretty.

In the case of embedded facebook images, if one's office or VPN has a facebook filter, for example, your blog text displays fine but the images are just blank. If the post is simply an image, like this one, well, you get the picture. Not. (pun intended) Also, it gives facebook information about all your readers, even if they are not signed into facebook, or even if they don't have accounts, because their browsers now request the images directly from facebook, not your blog.

All in all, it's a bad practice. With as friendly voice as I can muster, I would suggest reading up a bit, starting with the wikipedia link above. Other than that, just keep up the good work.
8/29/14, 10:48 PM
Samantha said…
Gates is thrilled that Common Core will allow for SO much product development:

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Breakthrough-Tools-for-Teachers?WT.mc_id=MBT_08212014_Tools_BMGFTW&WT.tsrc=BMGFTW

Some say that Gates signed an agreement with United Nation's Education Branch to promote Common Core and product development:


"Gates’ company, Microsoft, signed a cooperative agreement with the United Nations’ education branch, UNESCO. In it, Gates said, “Microsoft supports the objectives of UNESCO as stipulated in UNESCO’s constitution and intends to contribute to UNESCO’s programme priorities.” UNESCO’s “Education For All” key document is called “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments.” Read the full text here: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf"

For some reason, I believe Gates worked in conjunction with UNESCO to promote Common Core and another public-private partnership which Gates LOVES.
8/29/14, 11:06 PM
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