March 15, 2010 | Author: Ken Royal

Archimedes Academy a Bronx Gem

The ancient Syracuse problem-solver Archimedes would have appreciated his namesake Archimedes Academy in the Bronx. This 6-12th grade math, science, and technology NYC public school is run by Miriam Lazar—a modern day mathematician, principal, education entrepreneur, author, and problem solver. Unlike Archimedes, her tasks are a bit more difficult—and require a bit more work before shouting Eureka.

Running a successful school, getting corporate sponsorship, providing quality curriculum, with energetic teachers and the technology to back it all up, needs the right person at the helm. I doubt many can say no to “Ms. Miriam” when it comes to her kids, teachers, and school. Makes sense that kids travel from all over—some taking 3 buses, to attend there—and that the school population increases each year. Every space in the building is used. If you’re looking for a school example where success breeds success, Archimedes Academy stands at the top of t…

[Click here to read entire story at Scholastic.com]

Deployment, anxiety, and hard work are constant factors in this Texas district.

“You know what’s hard about being the new kid at school?” asks Gail Siller, superintendent of Fort Sam Houston Independent School District (FSHISD). “Not knowing where to sit at lunch.”

Siller’s district serves children of active military personnel currently stationed at Fort Sam Houston, an Army installation in San Antonio, Texas. Each year, there is a 35 percent student turnover. “All of our PreK–12 students are military kids, and this means that they are moving in and out of the district throughout the year,” Siller explains. “Our district has to serve our students’ social and emotional needs so they can get on with the business of learning.” Her district has learned how to best take care of a mobile population, from accepting out-of-state class credits to keeping an open roster for sports clubs and extracurricular activities.

The district is comprised of three campuses, which serve a total of 1,300 students. While most students live on the installation, others live outside the district boundaries but have a parent who is assigned to base. Fort Sam has earned high ratings in Texas’s public school accountability system and made Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind. More than 94 percent of its students achieved mastery in English and writing on the 2008–09 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, while 84 percent showed mastery in math and science. Both marks are above state averages.

The Only Constant Is Change
“One year, we tried to figure out how long our 70 high school seniors had been in our district,” says Roland Rios, the district’s instructional technology coordinator and the former principal of Cole middle and high schools. “Only nine had been here since their freshman year, and just three had been in our schools since sixth grade,” he recalls. “Because we have such a high turnover, we need to be creative and flexible in our approach.”

Like many other states, Texas is currently working to institute electronic files for student records. However, since both records management and graduation requirements can vary widely by state and district, FSHISD works to ensure students are placed in appropriate classes and can pass the Texas graduation exam. “We’re not going to refuse a child because they show up with the wrong stuff,” Rios notes. “We’re going to work with them and their families to ensure they can have a successful experience here. The recent Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children that’s now used in 21 states helps us do that.”

One family with three children had moved 16 times in 17 years, says high school counselor Becky Ownby Smith. These students had already taken multiple state history courses and numerous state exit exams. The two seniors ended up going to summer school and taking extra courses this year so they could graduate with a Texas diploma, she says.

But making sure students’ academic needs are met is only part of the battle. “We want all new students to feel like they’re a part of the community. To accomplish that, we use the Student 2 Student Initiative created by the Military Child Education Coalition,” Siller says. “With S2S, our current students reach out to newcomers. Not only are new students welcome at the lunch table, but they also learn from their peers about the San Antonio area, sports and extracurricular options at our school, and popular trends and activities.”

Since students enter Fort Sam throughout the year, the schools’ sports teams and clubs welcome new members at any point. “If we just had tryouts once a year for a team, that would mean many of our new students simply couldn’t participate,” Siller explains. “We make sure all teams and after-school activities are always open to taking on new people.”

Embracing Tech Tools
Approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of the district’s students have a parent presently deployed overseas, either in combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, or in Asia or Europe. “We did an analysis of our district’s website, and most of our visitors are in the U.S., followed by Germany and Iraq,” Siller says. Given that, the district’s teachers and administrators have worked to make the website accessible and informative.

“We use eChalk, which allows parents to access students’ webpages, find teachers’ contact information, keep track of assignments, and look at students’ grades,” Rios explains. “Parents can access this information no matter where they are in the world.” The secure site also allows students to upload assignments, maintain their own e-mail addresses, and have online class discussions. “This electronic learning environment is valuable for our parents and our students,” Siller adds.

Since deployment may coincide with important milestones in their children’s lives, parents can use the website to look at slideshows of sports and other activities and even watch a live feed of the graduation ceremony. Christina Bertran, a Fort Sam graduate and a second-year English teacher in the district, says none of this was available when she was a student. “After 9/11, my dad was deployed overseas. I talked to him on the phone once a week at most,” she recalls. “But now, I may have a student get a text in the middle of class. It’s from his dad in Iraq reminding him that he has an English test this Friday.”

Dealing With Deployment
at the elementary level, fshisd offers support groups for children whose parents are currently deployed. “Because teens may not be comfortable in that kind of setting,” Siller says, “we have a school clinic that’s run by a physician [who specializes in adolescent medicine]. We want to make sure our students always have the opportunity to talk to someone in a safe environment to get support, both for themselves and their families.”

The Brooke Army Medical Center is on Fort Sam Houston, and many students come to the base because their parents have been wounded…

[There's more! Read the entire article at Scholastic Administrator Magazine by clicking here]

"Forwarding Dallas" is a collaboration among Portuguese architects André Almeida (Atelier Data), Carolina Pombo (Atelier Data), Inês Vicente (Atelier Data), José Niza (MOOV), João Calhau (MOOV)

A rundown area of Dallas, TX is being given an eco makeover by the Re:Vision Dallas winners, Atelier Data and Moov. Their plan is to create Forwarding Dallas, a sustainable community that spans an entire city block that will include hill-shaped buildings adorned with green roofs that grow produce to feed locals.

“The design proposes a series of hillside structures, with public spaces and trees located in the valleys, and solar panels and building-integrated wind turbines on the peaks,” Inhabitat says of Forwarding Dallas. “Renewable energy will completely power the community, while rainwater will be collected and stored for use within the complex.”

The block will include housing and public amenities like a coffee shop, gym, daycare and “a spiritual space.” Construction for Forwarding Dallas will begin in 2011.

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/forwarding-dallas

Our thanks to BeiBei Song from Essinova for an inspiring overview of the Cleantech Open event last month. Cleanech Open 2009 Annual Expo and Awards Gala

00:05:18 – Uploaded by Song Essinova, LLC on November 27, 2009

Essinova Host BeiBei Song reports on the Cleantech Open’s Business and Ideas Competition awards ceremony and exposition, and interviews a number of contestants.

Dubbed the “Academy Awards of Clean Technology”, the event was held at the Masonic Center in San Francisco on November 17th, 2009. It drew thousands of cleantech enthusiasts, and showcased the best national and international teams selected from the year-long competition.

Watch the video here:

http://essinova.com/video/show/221-Winning-Ideas-for-a-Greener-World

Bronx Cheer by Christine Weiser, Managing Editor

March 12, 2010

I’ve been reporting on education for a long time. I’ve been to countless education conferences, reviewed thousands of press releases, and talked to hundreds of educators about how they are changing the lives of young people through the effective use of education technology.

But I don’t get to visit them that often.

That’s why it was a refreshing break from the office to visit the Archimedes Academy for Math, Science, and Technology in the Bronx at the invitation of the principal, Miriam Lazar.

The Web site describes the school as “a 6-12 public school whose mission is to provide a rigorous, innovative, college preparatory education focused on math, science, and technology applications while regularly celebrating the accomplishments of its diverse student body… Our dedicated staff works to improve the abilities and talents of all students through hands-on programs and project based learning.”

When I walked into the Academy building, it was not the urban oasis of cutting-edge tech I expected. The building smelled like most high schools: of paint and sneakers and sweat. Now in the classroom, I was impressed. There was a comfortable atmosphere in the room that buzzed with conversations from the students. Their seventh-grade math teacher was a young man who worked through a math problem on an interactive whiteboard. In front of each student was a math textbook, a notebook, a TI graphing calculator, and a Qwizdom student response system. I had seen these tools demoed plenty of times at conferences, but it just wasn’t the same as seeing them in action. Watch, for example, as these students work through the math problem using their tools:

You can see the kids thinking, using their tools not to solve the problem, but as a means to tap into those higher-order thinking skills so crucial to real learning.

We stopped next at a sixth-grade math class. The atmosphere was slightly more subdued, but the students were still engaged. Every student was participating. If they chatted, it was clear they were talking about the problem that needed solving. This teacher (also a young man) used a traditional whiteboard instead of an interactive whiteboard, combined with a projector and an interactive slate to demonstrate problems in front of the classroom. Again, the class worked through the problem and answered using their clickers. The displayed results were anonymous, but each clicker is linked to a specific student, so the teacher can gather data on the class or individual students who may need support.

We next visited the robotics lab. The school implements project-based learning, partnering with Vision Ed, a company that specializes in bringing emerging technologies to teachers, students, and administrators in high-need areas. The kids demonstrated their complex robot design that they will be entering in April’s Robofest contest:

After the class tour, we returned to a small back room of the library, where I was impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of Principal Lazar…

[There's more! Read the entire story at techlearning.com by clicking on this link]

Kara BrooksFox59.com

PolyVision eno Interactive Whiteboards and Qwizdom Student Response Systems in use in Bloomfield School District

INDIANAPOLIS – Remember the days when students would raise their hand and then write their answers with chalk on the chalkboard?

Well, those days are long gone in this sixth grade classroom at IPS School #391. They’re using “virtual ink” and writing on a giant digital screen. The teachers call it “3-D curriculum.”

“What makes it amazing in 3-D is that it’s interactive, and students can come up and visually move things. they can write on it with a pen, ” said teacher Christine Strattman.

[Go to Fox Indianapolis for full story]

The Cleantech Open’s 2010 National Competition Launch took place Friday, Febrary 26 at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco. If you don’t know who Art Rosenfeld is, don’t feel bad. Uma Subramanium posted candid thoughts and information about Art Rosenfeld on the Cleantech Open blog.

His message to the Cleantech Open alumni:

“Work on things which are relatively simple. If you’re going to solve a problem, first do it with efficiency, and then move on to supply-side development.”

Here’s the interview that aired on KQED, just a few days before the event:

Channel 6 broadcasts from an Indianapolis Public Montessori school which recently hosted a classroom media event to demonstrate how eno Interactive Whiteboards and Qwizdom Student Response Systems are changing the way that children learn and engage.

Story here: http://www.theindychannel.com/video/22590951/index.html

By Tim McKeough

If all goes as planned, a self-sustaining, mixed-use project conceived by a team of Portugese architects will be constructed on a city block in Texas.

In December, Portugal-based Atelier Data and MOOV were named the winners of Re:Vision Dallas, an international competition put on by the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (CDCDC), an affordable housing organization, and Urban Re:Vision, a national nonprofit group dedicated to responsible city planning.

Read article: Architectural Record Magazine website

Pittsburg Primary School hosted a demonstration to share the remarkable difference that technology like PolyVision eno Interactive Whiteboards and Qwizdom student response systems have made in their classrooms. Channel 7 captured some of the fun.