When to start the school day?

There's a significant amount of press and evidence out there that teenagers benefit from school starting later in the day. Here's one such example, a story from NPR, on the subject.

What are your thoughts?

Rewards, punishments, and helping students learn to be self-motivated. Where do you land on this article?


http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/4566

To train or not to train?

Swapped a few emails with the Wolfram folks this week around a really cool simulation I was trying to show (struck out ~ still not sure why). They, of course, were pushing to get us to try their stuff. I know it's super-powerful, but when is change too fast? My teachers do a good job with graphing calculators and have learned and are incorporating GeoGebra a across many courses. Wolfram offers more power, but it's also more demanding/technical software.

NEASC, PowerSchool, new year (with many of us teaching new courses), Common Core, InterWrite Boards.

My sense is that adding a new instructional software would be an overload.

I'm all for taking time to sharpen the axe while cutting down trees, but I think we reach a point where adding new & potentially improved axes can retard the tree cutting (and we don't have a luxury of time in this business). So when do we retool? How long do we stick with a good tool even when new tools might be better. We're in an age where new tools are coming all the time. I'm no luddite, but it sure feels hard to stay "cutting edge".

Seems poignant in the context of our PowerSchool transition.

Blogging with 'e's

Why blog?

Here's are two posts by Steve Wheeler:

1. Seven reasons teachers should blog

2. I think, therefore I blog

Thoughts?

Two articles to give a think

These two articles created quite a stir. What do you think?

1. In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores

2. Schools, technology, test scores, and the New York Times