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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday Open Thread

The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested.  It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio.  (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Read more

Breaking It Down: Where the District Might Close Schools

Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read).   end of update    Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update   I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board.    To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up.   But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, gr...
Read more

Education News Roundup

From the ever-amusing Washington Policy Center : Vouchers are Pell Grants for students under 18.  Vouchers are no different than Pell Grants or GI benefits, except the money goes to the families of students younger than age 18.  Except they are. Pell Grants were created to help needy students and that's not really the goal of the voucher program.  The Pell grant website does have a couple of great studies on why low-income students drop out before finishing their higher ed and what makes a difference.
Read more