Articles in the Announcements category

Checking in with education leaders

For the past couple of months, BoardBuzz has commended the Learning First Alliance for their engaging interviews with education professionals, leaders, and celebrities that help to keep us up-to-date on the most recent education news. Now, we are reliving the excitement as Public School Insights has recently added the transcripts from the interviews we have enjoyed so much.

If you missed them the first time, take a minute and read about these interesting developments that Public School Insights has shared:

Best-selling author Dave Eggers tells us about his plans for a documentary on the professional lives of teachers;

Teacher Simon Hauger describes how he and his students at urban West Philadelphia High School created the world’s first high-performance hybrid car;

World-record breaking polar explorer Will Steger talks about the importance of environmental education

Fitness guru Richard Simmons shares his plan to get physical education into American public schools

Principal Tamala Newsome tells us about her groundbreaking green public school in Portland.

BoardBuzz is happy to enjoy them again and hopes you find the time to check them out and share what you think. Special thanks to the Learning First Alliance for always keeping us informed!

Andrew Paulson|June 17th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, NSBA Opinions and Analysis|

A silver star

In the interest of shameless self promotion, BoardBuzz would like to announce that we’ve received not one, but two SNAP awards! The blog and our podcasts earned silver EXCEL awards at a ceremony last night.

And we’re in pretty good company too. Our friends at ASAE took home the top honors for their blog, Acronym, while the National Association of Manufacturers was honored with the gold for their podcasts.

Bravo!

Andrew Paulson|June 11th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, Governance, NSBA Opinions and Analysis|

Young inventors

BoardBuzz is amazed at some projects inventors presented at the National Press Club on Friday, which included a football game for the blind, a tongue spray to change the taste of foods, and a new strategy for making bioplastics, but something else impressed us even more. All these innovative ideas came from groups of students who are all under 18 years-old!

That’s right, these young inventors, in grades K-12, met in Washington, D.C. for the 16th annual ExploraVision awards. The competition, run by Toshiba and the National Science Teachers Association, has had students working hard for months to create prototypes and Web sites to showcase their inventions.

BoardBuzz recommends taking a look at this article in USA Today to learn more about the competition.

Congratulations are definitely in order to all the students, who will take home laptops and DVD players for their schools. The first place winners also received a $10,000 savings bond. We are thrilled with their enthusiasm and applaud the teachers and executives who work hard to get students interested in science. Great job!

Andrew Paulson|June 11th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Hope for education

Samsung is holding an annual Hope for Education contest. The contest invites students from schools across the country to write a 100-word essay about how technology benefits and helps education. This year’s question asks students: “How has technology educated you on helping the environment and how or why has it changed your behavior to be more environmentally friendly?”

Essays should focus on:

  1. How current or emerging technologies increase your awareness and understanding of environmental issues, and cause you to make environmentally friendly changes in your life.
  2. How technology products can be made, used and disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner.
  3. Why technology will play an increasingly important role in educating people and helping them to change their lives in an environmentally responsible way.

This year’s top winner receives a grand prize of over $200,000 worth of Samsung technology, Microsoft software and cash grants from DIRECTV, as well as the School Choice® educational television programming package (BoardBuzz‘s imagination runs wild with what students could accomplish with that!). Entries are open now. The contest will run until August 31, 2008.

Andrew Paulson|June 4th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement|

Buzzing about the wee speller at the bee

BoardBuzz couldn’t “bee” more excited for Sriram Hathwar, age 8, the youngest speller to ever take the stage in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Hathwar’s correct spelling of “impervious” in a regional bee near Pointed Post, N.Y., was the winning ticket to the competition. And in the preliminary round of the national bee, he nailed the word “elicitation.”

Preparing for the national spelling bee requires years of dedication. An avid reader, writer, and speller from a young age, Hathwar’s preschool teacher’s often relied on him as their “spell checker.”

Hathwar soon became obsessed with words — playing Scrabble, constructing his own crossword puzzles and constantly asking his parents how to spell things he saw around him.

“When my dad would take me places, I’d read words on different [signs] and would start to write them out,” Hathwar said. “I got better and better at spelling them.”

Unfortunately, Hathwar did not score high enough on the written test to advance on to the bee’s quarterfinal’s round. However, with only 90 out of 288 spellers advancing, BoardBuzz thinks Hathwar deserves a pat on the back for his veritable propensity for spelling (and we can’t wait to see his verbal SAT score!). We know we’ll be seeing him again…

The Scripps National Spelling Bee quaterfinals are airing today from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m. Check the Web site for a schedule and more information. BoardBuzz also challenges you to take their online test to see how you would fare in the bee. Let us know how you do!

Andrew Paulson|May 29th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, Governance, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement|

Public school teachers take the big screen

As promised, the Learning First Alliance has released their final installment of their interview with best-selling author Dave Eggers at the Public School Insights Web site.

BoardBuzz was happy to have the scoop on Egger’s plans for a documentary that depicts the lives of public school teachers. Eggers will collaborate with Vanessa Roth, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker to illustrate the every-day challenges that teachers face in their professional lives.

The documentary will include footage from four public school educators and individual footage from video diaries that teachers from across the country have been recording for the past year.

The two hope that the documentary will be a breakthrough moment and tipping point for creating support for public education, like an Inconvenient Truth did for the environment. BoardBuzz hopes so too!

Don’t forget to check out the website Egger’s mentions in the interview,Once Upon A School , which was created to inpsire adults to support their local public schools and to collect 1000 stories from those who take the challenge to participate.

BoardBuzz gives special thanks to Public School Insights for sharing Dave Egger’s great plans — we recommend you check it out!

Andrew Paulson|May 27th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, NSBA Opinions and Analysis|

Update: Doodle 4 Google

BoardBuzz previously announced that voting had opened in the Doodle 4 Google competition where K-12 students were invited to reinvent Google’s logo. This year’s theme of “What if…?” had quite the gamut of creative ideas from a fish swallowing Google to world peace. And where there were many finalists, there is now one Grand Prize winner!

The winning doodle—from over 16,000 entries—was created by Grace Moon, a 6th grader at Canyon Middle School from Castro Valley, California. Grace’s doodle, titled “Up in the Clouds,” will grace the Google homepage today, May 22, 2008. Grace had this to say about her creation:

My doodle, “Up in the Clouds,” expresses a world in the sky. This new world is clean and fresh, and people are social and enlightened. Every person here is treated as family no matter who they are. The bright sun heats this ideal place with warmth, love, and brightens everyone’s day.

BoardBuzz finds the optimism of this young student refreshing. We are happy to share that Grace will receive a $10,000 scholarship as well as a $25,000 technology grant for her school. Congratulations Grace!

Andrew Paulson|May 22nd, 2008|Categories: Announcements, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement|

Early Father’s Day

Mother’s Day, Bosses’ Day, Bring Your Daughter/Son to Work Day, Grandparent’s Day, Earth Day, and now, Take a Father to School Day. While we at BoardBuzz often ponder the value of some of these designated days that sometimes seem force-fed, Pittsburgh’s Take a Father to School Day seems like a novel idea. School Board member Mark Brentley Sr. is hosting the 10th annual event and all men who are involved in a child’s life (dads, grandparents, uncles, et al) are invited to participate this Friday, May 23.

It seems like a great idea since many men are often overlooked or underappreciated in schools. As more and more men plug themselves into the lives of their children and family members, the whole community will benefit. CUBE’s recent study, What We Think, examined parent perceptions of school climate, including the 30% of respondents who were male. That was a surprising revelation for the author and gives us more reason to celebrate the men who helped shape us. Does your district do something similar to Pittsburgh? Leave a comment to let us know.

Andrew Paulson|May 21st, 2008|Categories: Announcements, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Boards, Student Achievement|

The Super Bowl of science

BoardBuzz was excited to see this story of some high school students who really know their stuff. This team of four high school students placed first in the National Science Bowl by correctly answering six graduate-level questions.

The event, sponsored by the Department of Energy, is a “competition among teams of high school students who attend science seminars and compete in a verbal forum to solve technical problems and answer questions in all branches of science and math.” Like the spelling bee, but with science questions instead.

The winning team, from Santa Monica High School in California, beat out 66 other schools.

“They did not crack under pressure,” said Coach Ingo Gaida, a science teacher at the school. “I’d been telling them all year long they had the potential to do this. This was the strongest team we’ve ever had.”

The team began preparing for the bowl in September, and since January had been practicing daily in the fields of math, earth science, astronomy, biology, chemistry and geology. The level of difficulty of some questions in the final round was equivalent to graduate school, Gaida said.

The question that clinched the win: “For the Maclaurin series of the function e2x, what is the coefficient for the x4, in the simplest form?” Answer: 2/3.

“There were some close games, but I always felt like we had a good chance to win,” said Dimitry Petrenko, 18, a senior who has been on the team for three years. “I feel satisfied, almost relieved like I’ve done my job and can graduate.”

The other team members are Alexandre Boulgakov, 16, Marino Di Franco, 16, and Ian Scheffler, 17. The team won a trip to the International Youth Science Forum in London this summer, $1,000 for the school’s science department and a 6-foot-high trophy.

To say that BoardBuzz is impressed would be a gross understatement! Congrats to the team. We can’t wait to see what you’re up to next!

Andrew Paulson|May 7th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Get your learnin’ on

October will be here before you know it and along with that comes NSBA’s T+L Conference. Registration opened today for what promises to be a conference chock full of great learning opportunities.

Held in Seattle from October 28-30, this year’s conference boasts an impressive lineup, including keynote addresses from Stanford University professor and futurist Paul Saffo; education “revolutionary” Joe Caruso; and educator David Warlick.

You can read all about it on the T+L web site and in NSBA’s press release.

We’re also looking for leaders in education technology to be recognized as the latest group of “20 to Watch”. You can learn more about it and submit an application here. Check out last year’s group here.

Andrew Paulson|May 6th, 2008|Categories: Announcements, Conferences and Events, Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Boards, Teachers|
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