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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Rock Hill School District News #rockhill #rockhillschools


Congratulations to . . .
Rock Hill Schools on being recognized by Keystone for a 2013 Outstanding Achievement Leadership Award.
 
Tornado Drill Set for March 5
March 3-9 has been declared as Severe  Weather Awareness Week. The National Weather Service will initiate a statewide tornado drill on Tuesday, March 5, approximately at 9 a.m. This annual drill is a way for students to learn simple precautions that could save lives.

Elaine T. Baker
Director of Information Services
Rock Hill Schools

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Rock Hill School District News #rockhill #rockhillschools


Rock Hill High "Showcase of the Arts"
The Rock Hill High Fine Arts Department will present a Showcase of the Arts on Thursday, Feb. 26, at 7:00 p.m. in the school auditorium. The evening will include performances from the band, orchestra, chorus and theatre students. There will also be a display of artwork by visual arts students in the auditorium lobby. The showcase will be free and open to everyone who enjoys the arts.
 
Spring Musical at South Pointe High School
The Theatre Dept. at South Pointe High will present "All Shook Up" in the school auditorium February 28-March 2 at 7:00 p.m. On March 3, the show will be held at 2:00 p.m. Tickets will be $5 for children/students and $10/adults. The musical will be directed by James Chrismon.
 
Elaine T. Baker
Director of Information Services
Rock Hill Schools

Friday, February 22, 2013

Rock Hill School Board Business Meeting on Monday #rockhill #rhschoolboard

Click here for a link to the full meeting information package.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

What is Light?


Click here for a link to the video.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

South Pointe and Northwestern's Road to Columbia #rockhill #rockhillschools

The South Pointe High School Boys basketball team and the Northwestern High School Girls basketball team continue their journey to the state championship tonight (Tuesday).
Click here for a printable link to the bracket.


Click here for a printable link to the bracket.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Internet Content and Schools #iRockrh

From the connected learning blog:

What Schools are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media

The Digital Edge
The debates about schools and social media are a subject of great public and policy interests. In reality, the debate has been shaped by one key fact: the almost universal decision by school administrators to block social media. Because social media is such a big part of many students social lives, cultural identities, and informal learning networks schools actually find themselves grappling with social media everyday but often from a defensive posture—reacting to student disputes that play out over social media or policing rather than engaging student’s social media behaviors.
Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students. Or they believe social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience. Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content. I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective.
In one class my graduate assistant and I are working with a teacher in a Technology Applications class. Our goal is to reinvent the classroom and, more important, the learning that takes place. We structured the learning to be autonomous, self-directed, creative, collaborative, and networked. We decided to let the student teams pick which digital media project they wanted to pursue. Some students elected to team together to produce a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that target teens. These students liked the idea of using digital media to tell compelling stories about the challenges of teen life. Other students wanted to produce short narratives. They were excited about creating worlds, characters, and narrative dilemmas that allowed their artistic identities to flourish.
In one of our first activities we selected a sample of teen produced PSAs and narrative shorts for the students to study. We asked them to view and critique the different styles, aesthetics, narrative strategies, and technical approaches to digital media storytelling. The teacher posted the links to the videos online and provided the instructions. Suddenly one student raised her hand. She could not access some of the videos. Another student raised her hand. She was having the same problem. At least two of the videos that we asked them to critique were posted to YouTube. The teacher and I had overlooked the fact that YouTube was blocked. A few students used proxy servers to access the videos, a typical workaround in this school. As we struggled to figure out a way to proceed with the learning activity it was clear we needed to recalibrate the design of the class.
We faced a similar challenge in a game design class we are working with. Some of the students were intrigued by the prospects of using a Facebook poll to conduct research to build ‘user personas’ of their peers. We thought the poll would be useful in teaching them some of the principles of human-centered design and also expand their social media repertoire. But because Facebook is blocked the poll could only be conducted outside of school. This prevented us from working with them in the classroom. It also posed a problem for some of the students who either lacked access to the internet at home or have to share computers with parents and siblings.
We are learning a lot about how young people from this community, which has been hit especially hard by the recession and the growing wealth gap in the United States, are managing their participation in the digital world. The old theories about the digital divide—the access narrative—only explain a small part of what is happening in edge communities.
The real issue, of course, is not social media but learning. Specifically, the fact that our schools are disconnected from young learners and how their learning practices are evolving. The decision to block social media is inconsistent with how students use social media as a powerful node in their learning network. Can social media be a distraction in the classroom? Absolutely. Will some students access questionable content if given the opportunity? Yes. But many students use social media to enhance their learning, expand the reach of the classroom, find the things they ‘need to know,’ and fashion their own personal learning networks. We have met students who have used YouTube to learn how to play a musical instrument—a not so insignificant fact for students whose families can not afford private music lessons. We have seen students use YouTube to help them pursue an interest in building their own gaming computer or share a multi-media project that they developed. Last summer I wrote about students from this same school and how they created a dynamic learning community to support their interest in creating games. Many of them shared YouTube videos with each other in order to learn how to use the game authoring software, GameSalad. (Because it was a summer program, the students and their teacher successfully lobbied to have YouTube unblocked).
A key part of the work we are doing with students reaches beyond the typical new media competencies such as computer, information, and digital literacy. The teacher believes network literacy is also crucial. That is, teaching students what Henry Jenkins explains is, “the ability to effectively tap social networks to disperse ones’ own ideas and media products.” Cathy Davidson’s students at Duke made a case for network literacy, that is, “using online sources to network, knowledge-outreach, publicize content, collaborate and innovate.” A number of these students are creators and makers. They design blogs, websites, games, and graphic art. By blocking social media schools are also blocking the opportunity:
  1. to teach students about the inventive and powerful ways communities around the world are using social media
  2. for students and teachers to experience the educational potential of social media together
  3. for students to distribute their work with the larger world 4) for students to reimagine their creative and civic identities in the age of networked media
In the not so distant future the notion that schools should block social media will become difficult to defend. Before that happens schools will have to reimagine their mission in the lives of young learners, the communities they serve, and the extraordinary possibilities of networked media and networked literacy.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Rock Hill School District News For February 14, 2013 #rockhill #rockhillschools


South Carolina Recycling Champs
Keep America Beautiful, the nation’s leading nonprofit that brings people together to build and sustain vibrant communities, announced yesterday the winners of the “Recycle-Bowl,” the first nationwide recycling competition for elementary-, middle- and high-school students.
     
While a school system in Indiana won the national award, the Applied Technology Center placed first in S.C.’s “Recycle Bowl,” with a prize of $1,000, and Finley Road Elementary placed second. Their selection was based  on having the highest per-capital recycling rates. Recycling coordinators at the winning schools are Pam Jackson (ATC) and Donna Elliott (FR).
      
Smiling from ear to ear hearing the announcement, Assoc. Supt. Tony Cox stated: “We’ve developed an innovative recycling relationship with the City of Rock Hill, and Rock Hill Schools can now boast that it has the premier recycling program of K-12 in the state.”
 
An Invitation from the Palmetto Reading Council
The Palmetto Reading Council will hold its annual banquet on April 18 at the Cotton Factory. The featured speaker will be Storyteller Ron Jones. .
 
Worth Knowing
The district's latest "Facts & Figures":


  • Sullivan Middle has two new grant winners. Gwen Lindsay, Asst. Principal, received a $700 grant from Target for a “college field study trip” for eighth-graders; and Owen Privette, PE/health teacher, received $1,650 from Piedmont Medical for a hydration station for the school’s football teams.
  • Joe Gulledge, Director of Bands at Rock Hill High, has been elected as President of the S.C. Band Directors Assn. Joe is the first band director from Rock Hill Schools to be selected for this prestigious honor
  • Local radio station WRHI (1340 on AM dial) will interview one of our Chinese students who’s attending school this week at Northwestern at 7:40 a.m. Feb. 15. “Lucky,” his American name, is the house guest of Jason Moree, Asst. Principal at Old Pointe Elementary, who was “Lucky’s teacher last summer in China.
  • §John Rosemond, a psychologist, family therapist and nationally known expert on parenting issues, will speak at St. John’s UMC in Rock Hill on Sunday, Feb. 24. 
Elaine T. Baker
Director of Information Services

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Best Reading Media? #iRockrh


Paper Because

It's easier to learn on paper.

Reading is necessary for living, learning, working and so much more.

Until the latter part of the 20th century, reading was generally done on paper. But with the arrival of the computer, and more recently devices like smart phones and eReaders, many people are doing some of their reading on screens. And while there is no question about the convenience or scope of the information available online, experts are discovering that if you are trying to learn something, in many cases it is easier to do using printed documents.
All around the world, researchers and experts in literacy, memory and cognition, verbal learning, neuroscience and human communication are examining the question of whether information is better assimilated by reading on paper or on screen. Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert noted that: “The online medium lends itself to a more superficial processing of information, you’re just surfing the information; it’s not deep learning.”1 
In his article, The Decade Google Made You Stupid, author and New School University professor Douglas Rushkoff refers to a similar phenomenon, which he calls Internet ADD (attention deficit disorder). He points out that we don’t slow down to read things or go into issues in depth2 when we read from a computer. We skim the page, often while doing something else, and fail to assimilate much at all.

A number of studies have focused on the question of learning on screen.

These include a recent Kindle DX pilot project, sponsored by Amazon at seven universities throughout the U.S. The in-class experiment yielded some interesting (albeit disappointing for the sponsor) findings about the eReader. At the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 75-80% of participating MBA students said they would not recommend the Kindle for in-class learning. Michael Koenig, Darden’s director of MBA operations, explained that the students felt the eReader was too rigid for use in the fast-paced classroom environment, noting that you can’t move between pages, documents, charts and graphs simply or easily enough compared to the paper alternatives.3
Meanwhile, at Princeton University, students felt that using the eReader “somewhat worsened the classroom experience” compared to printed textbooks. They admitted that the absence of paper documents made group discussions difficult and that it was hard to go back and review e-materials later in the semester. They also felt that the inability to efficiently take notes lessened retention.4
In another study at Reykjavik University, many students (40%) indicated that while “[books and computers] are different tools and both are equally useful,” 70% of survey respondents said it was preferable and easier to learn from books than from a computer.5
So, why is it that people seem to prefer reading from printed documents and feel that they learn better? A paper published by Rank Xerox Research Centre in Cambridge6corroborates the notion that readers like to be able to take notes and highlight passages. They also find printed pages easier to navigate than an electronic or online document that requires scrolling and can offer numerous distractions. According to researchers from Wayne State University, reading on paper is actually 10-30% percent faster than reading online, in part because it is easier to track where the reader is on the page.7 The Cambridge study further concluded that to learn, you need to summarize, and to summarize you need to understand a topic in-depth, which is often more difficult online. 
Paper has been around for almost two millennia and it has proven itself an effective and enduring method of transmitting information. In fact, learning from books continues to be one of the building blocks of a child’s future. According to a new study published in Research in Social Stratification, children who grow up in households with many books go further in school than those without books, and this regardless of what country they live in or the socio-economic or educational level of their parents. Conversely, another study of public school students in North Carolina suggests that access to home computers between fifth and eighth grades seems to actually reduce a child’s scores on math and reading tests, likely because of the distraction they provide from homework.8
While there is no doubt that computers are an invaluable part of the modern educational experience, and eReaders may eventually find their place in the classroom, today’s students seem to still prefer to study from the printed page. And many experts agree that paper is a more user friendly not to mention more effective learning tool.9
1    What Gets Lost When our Finances Go Paperless, Barbara Kiviat
2    The Decade Google Made You Stupid, Douglas Rushkoff
3  
  Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment  
4    
The E-reader pilot at Princeton
5    
Books vs. e-material What is the deal?  (information accessed through paid subscription)
6    A Comparison of Reading Paper and On-Line Documents, Kenton O’Hara and Abigail Sellen, Rank Xerox Research Centre in Cambridge, 1997
7    
Reading Online or on Paper: Which is Faster? Sri H. Kurniawan and Panayiotis Zaphiris, Wayne State University, 2001
8    
Growing up with Books Boosts Child’s Education Attainment
9    
Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement, Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor, Duke University, July 29, 2008

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Elementary iPad Tips #irockrh


Sunday, February 10, 2013

Rock Hill Board to Meet Monday Night #rockhill #rhschoolboard #rockhillschools #iRockrh

The Rock Hill School Board will hold it's February Work Session at the District Office on Monday, February 11, 2013. Click here to see a copy of the meeting information.

The iRock Critique Teams will make a report. You can read the minutes from their meetings by clicking on the appropriate links below:


  • Learning Critique Team -  Chaired by Ms. Mary Chandler.  Includes a school board representative, parent representatives from each school and community members at-large.
Meeting Date (s):  February 6, 2013 (4:30 pm – 7:00 pm)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes/Supporting Documents:   PDF format
  • Evaluation Critique Team -  Chaired by Dr. Marshall Jones.  Includes a school board representative, district office representatives, teacher representatives and principal representatives.
Meeting Date (s):  February 7, 2013 (4:00 pm – 7:00 pm)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes:  To be posted upon availability from Critique Team Chair
  • Teacher Involvement (Internal Stakeholders) Critique Team -  Chaired by Mr. Jeff Venables, Rock Hill Schools Teacher of the Year.  Includes a school board representative, Teachers of the Year from each school, and one representative per school from the Palmetto State Teachers Association and/or The South Carolina Education Association.
Meeting Date (s):  January 31, 2013 (8:00 am – 1:00 pm)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes:  PDF format
Supporting Documents:  PDF format
  • Community Involvement (External Stakeholders) Critique Team -  Chaired by Mr. Wayne Wingate.  Includes a school board representative, community members at-large, and one parent representative per school.
Meeting Date 1:  January 31, 2013 (6:00 pm – 7:30 pm)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes:  PDF format
Meeting Date 2:  February 19, 2013 (6:00 pm – 7:30 pm)
Agenda:  To be posted upon availability from Critique Team Chair
Minutes:  To be posted upon availability from Critique Team Chair
  • Finance and Resources Critique Team -  Chaired by Mr. Gary Williams.  Includes school board representatives, business leaders, and one parent representative per school.
Meeting Date 1:  February 1, 2013 (11:30 am – 1:00 pm)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes:  PDF format
Meeting Date 2:  February 6th, 2013 (6:00 pm – ?)
Agenda:  PDF format
Minutes:  PDF format

Rock Hill School District News #rockhill #rockhillschools


Congratulations to . . .
  • Serena Williams (District Office) on her invitation to join the board of the York County Community Foundation
  • January grant recipients from the Rock Hill School District Foundation:  Martha Compton (Finley Road);  Becky SandersonMichael Skellett & Kimberly Le (York Road w/ Rawlinson Road); and Melinda Reid(Ebinport).
  • January grant recipients from Family Trust Federal Credit Union: Laura Adkins & Paul Nutter (Northside); Jenna Burris, Carol Edwards, Meghan Switzer & Susan Westbrook (Sunset Park); Martha Compton, Ann Mauney & Melissa Shaffer (Finley Road); Tracy Craven & Lynn Hayes (Oakdale); Margaret Casey Davis (Rosewood); Samantha Goodman (Saluda Trail); Shannon Higgins (Independence); Laurel Hilton (Old Pointe);Kimberly Le, Becky Sanderson & Michael Skellett (York Road w/Rawlinson Road); Julie Marshall (Rosewood); Seberina Myles (Lesslie); and Colleen Brook Rice (Rawlinson Road).
  • Chris McLean (Sullivan), grant recipient from LEGO Education.
 
Description: cid:image001.png@01CE0374.321ACD30Northwestern to Present GREASE
(From Tamara Altman, drama teacher at Northwestern:
Yo Big Daddy & Greasers of all ages!  For the first time ever, Northwestern Choral and Theatre
Departments will do the "Hand Jive” together onstage Feb. 14-16 in the musical GREASE at 7pm
all dates and at a matinee at 2pm on Feb. 16 (with discounted tickets). And just to razzle your
berries, they would like to invite district employees to one complimentary gig of their choice.
Just show your ID at the door. Can you dig it? Please show your support by bringing a patron. 
Tickets will be $15/adults and $12/students. You’ll be cranked to see such talented cats and you’ll Have a Blast from the Past, so come on out while we twist and shout next week in the Northwestern Auditorium.
 
Noteworthy Events
Winthrop Basketball and Back the Pack are co-sponsoring a competition among elementary schools on February 23. The admission to basketball games on Feb. 23 will be a food item for Back the Pack. The elementary school with the highest number of people attending the games will win $2,000.
The Boys & Girls Clubs York County will host a one-mile fun run and an 8K run on Sat. March 16, beginning at the Winthrop Coliseum. For more information, go to http://www.bgcyc.org/.
 
Elaine T. Baker, Director of Information Services, Rock Hill Schools

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Rock Hill School District Foundation Awards Grants #rockhill #rockhillschools


Rock Hill, SC - The Rock Hill School District Foundation has awarded 3 grants for the January 2013 funding cycle to the teachers listed below. Since 1983 the Rock Hill School District Foundation has partnered with the Rock Hill School District to promote excellence in the classroom through teacher grants. Grants are an investment in educator leadership and the development of unique approaches to ensure student success.To learn more about past grant recipients, how to apply for a grant or how to contribute to the Foundation visit www.rhsdfoundation.org.

Martha Compton - Finley Road: Touching Technology: The purpose of this project is to provide a touchscreen computer for students' use with educational software targeting reading, math, and language skills. These elementary students with disabilities will benefit from this program approach through presentation of information and content in different ways. The will also help differentiate the ways that students can express what they know and stimulate interest and motivation for learning.

Becky Sanderson, Michael Skellette, Kimberly Le - York Road, Rawlinson Road:
The Orchestra Comes to Us!: York Road Elementary 4th and 5th grade students and RRMS band, orchestra, and chorus students will attend a performance of a quality professional orchestral ensemble in the RRMS auditorium. In preparation for this event, students will be able to identify orchestral instruments by sight and sound, recognize classical music selections that will be played during the program, become familiar with the composers of those selections, and demonstrate appropriate concert behavior. This project impacts at least 439 students with options for other schools to attend as well. This project funds appropriate iTunes downloads and iPad apps as well as the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. The grant committee applauds the collaboration between schools in planning for this special event for students.

Melinda Reid - Ebinport: M & M's - Mastering Math in Stations: The goal of this project is to improve the math skills in an Ebinport second grade classroom. It will involve students working with hands-on materials at six workstations during Math Workshop. In these stations, students are able to observe, model, support, and learn from one another. The math stations will enable students to be responsible and independent as they improve personal math skills. The stations address skills in understanding money, time, measurement, addition, subtraction and multiplication.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

February 6, 2013 #Rockhill School District News #rockhillschools


Salute to Guidance Counselors
Rock Hill Schools would like to salute its talented, compassionate and resourceful guidance counselors. This week is National Counseling Week and the focus is on the unique contribution of professional school counselors within U.S. school systems. Counselors help students solve personal problems; assist in getting scholarship aid; and help families in need. To each counselor in our schools, THANK YOU for the valued role you play in the lives of our students.
 
Hi-Tech Gala Set for March 5
At a news conference Feb. 5 in the district office, representatives of the Rock Hill School District Foundation, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, announced that a "Hi-Tech Gala" will be held on March 5 in the Richardson Ballroom at Winthrop University. Among those attending will be business and community partners who have currently invested over $125,000 in the Foundation's initiatives, in particular, one-to-one technology. Guest speaker for the evening will be Dr. Mark Edwards, Superintendent of the Mooresville (NC) Graded School District, one of the country's top leaders in one-to-one technology. 

Digital Learning Day
Today denotes the second annual National Digital Learning Day. Students in many of our schools have invited their parents to learn about the projects they've completed using digital learning tools. Some of the participating schools include SullivanMount GallantIndia HookRosewoodSaluda TrailThe Children's SchoolCastle Heightsand the Applied Technology Center.
 
Fundraisers
The Northwestern "Purple Regiment" boosters have two events coming up. They will host a pancake breakfast at Applebee's on Sat. morning, Feb. 16. For $7 one can enjoy a great breakfast and help the band at the same time. Boosters will also host their first "Purple and Gold Golf Tournament" on March 25 at the RH Country Club. They are looking for teams and sponsors, so those interested should contact Butch Bailey at 803.243-2394 or at butchb@comporium.net
 
 
Elaine T. Baker
Director of Information Services
Rock Hill Schools

Education Failing Technology #irockrh #rhschoolboard

As the Rock Hill School District looks to implement technology into the curriculum, it is important to read the post from edtech digest:

How Education Fails Technology (And What to Do About It)

SHIFT PARADIGM | by Mark E. Weston
Education has failed technology. Yes, you read that correctly.Education has failed technology.
To understand why this is, not vice versa, requires understanding what the research literature makes clear: It is possible to get all children learning at levels beyond their respective aptitudes. The same literature, however, makes clear that such levels of learning rarely occur outside one-to-one tutoring settings. Let’s unpack these seemingly contradictory statements to shed light on why education has failed technology and what we can do about it.
Nearly three decades ago, Benjamin Bloom (author of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives) led a research effort to find methods of group instruction that were as effective as one-to-one tutoring through which students performed two standard deviations higher than their classroom educated peers. Bloom named the target of his search the 2-sigma problem. The research-based solution he found was simple, yet profound. If certain instructional practices are used and specific conditions met then one teacher, instructing a group of students in a classroom, could help the students attain 2-sigma. The practices he identified that make 2-sigma possible include reinforcement, cues and explanations, corrective feedback, and cooperative learning. The conditions include student classroom-participation, student time on task, and classroom morale.
Despite Bloom’s work and thousands of subsequent studies by other researchers (e.g.John Hattie, Robert Marzano) that demonstrate the positive effect that specific practices and conditions have on classroom learning, 2-sigma remains a rare attainment for teachers. This is largely because in the current educational paradigm individual teachers must shoulder a disproportionate share of the pedagogical load for making 2-sigma happen.
The teacher-load conundrum is exacerbated by the organizational and operational design of schools that make load-sharing nearly impossible for 2-sigma oriented teachers. In such schools, a teacher trying to take a classroom of 30 students to 2-sigma must make it happen alone. That is a lot for an already heavily-laden teacher to do; a load even heavier if that teacher lacks the emotional, intellectual, or pedagogical wherewithal for unilaterally taking on 2-sigma. That these circumstances exist at all is a failure of the field of education, not the teacher. This failure is quite ironic given the intense pressure placed on the education field to get teachers to produce ever-greater student learning and achievement, mostly in the form of improved test scores.
When viewed through a produce-greater-student learning lens, school-level support for all teachers, especially the 2-sigma seeking ones, may be the most pressing, yet least recognized educational challenge of our era. My colleague Alan Bain and I call that challenge 1:X.
Sadly, schools are not designed for 1:X.
What can be done? The answer to that question must involve technology, because without its powerful benefits teachers stay in the same predicament and the educational paradigm stays the same.
During the past two decades many technologies have entered our lives. They brought with them lofty expectations for transformation of classrooms and schools. Implicit in such expectations was a belief that teachers and students with access to and mastery of technology would transform education.
While some evidence suggests that the personal lives of teachers and students may have changed as a result of new technologies, little evidence shows that their education lives have changed much. Technology has exerted little overall effect on educational settings and the teaching and learning in them. Student achievement test scores remain flat, school completion rates have not declined, and instruction is still mostly teacher-led in classrooms with neat-rowed desks.
The minimal effect that technology has had on teaching and learning is a failure of the field of education not a failure of technology. Teachers who strive to take their classrooms of students to 2-sigma, but have no school-level supports know this well. Further, those teachers know that the technology available to them barely connects to the real work that they do every day and the extra work they must do to make 2-sigma happen. And they readily admit that in many instances the technology that they do have actually increases their load. Not surprisingly, data show teachers rarely using technology in their classroom instruction.
What most teachers do not realize is that the lack of support for their 2-sigma work and the ineffectual technology they are given are symptoms of a much more pervasive failure.  Both are a result of the field of education failing to acknowledge its own research about what works. And each is compounded by the field failing to investigate and build consensus about how to take what works to scale. This failure of scale limits the field’s ability to provide direction to the technology industry. It in turn limits the industry’s ability to help schools attain 1:X and teachers attain 2-sigma.
Fortunately, these circumstances can be changed significantly. The way forward starts with you, me, and other like-minded educators embracing Bloom’s and other researchers’ findings about the practices and conditions that have the most powerful effects on teaching and learning. Then, girded with these findings, we push, pull, and prod to secure school-level commitments that those practices and conditions become the basis for organizational and operational designs and decisions. The designs and decisions will in turn support putting technologies in place that enable teachers, students, and other educational stakeholders to generate emergent feedback about the school-level support they receive and guide further refinement of their efforts.
The shifts that we must seek in educational thought, theory, and action require education to demand technologies that extend, connect, and develop the capacities of teachers, students, and other educational stakeholders to benefit from the research of Bloom and others.
Sound preposterous? Perhaps it is. Anything less, however, reinforces past failures.
——-
Mark Weston Ph.D., a co-author of The Learning Edge: What Technology Can Do to Educate All Children resides in Dunwoody, Georgia. He can be reached atshiftparadigm2011@gmail.com

Friday, February 1, 2013

Northwestern High School Band Students Get Honors #rockhillschools #rockhill


All-State Band Selections

January 31, 2013
Congratulations to Joe Booth, Sarah-Margaret Harris, Kurestin Miller, Kyle Thompson, and Tony Williams, on their selection to the South Carolina All-State Band this past Saturday.  Congratulations are also extended to Joe Booth and Jillian Faircloth for being named to the South Carolina All-State Jazz Band.  In addition, Northwestern High School had an additional 23 students selected to the Region 3 Honors Band.  The students earned these honors through a series of auditions over the past two weeks with over 7,000 students from across the state auditioning in the first round. 

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