Articles tagged with San Diego

K-12 education leaders gather in San Diego for NSBA’s Annual Conference

Welcome to NSBA’s 73nd conference, held this year in San Diego. More than 5,000 school board leaders and administrators from across the country are attending the three-day meeting. Attendees will learn about education issues from a national perspective, gain insights into how federal legislation and court decisions will affect public schools, and bring home strategies to raise student achievement and save money.

A new feature this year: We’ve launched the new NSBA Annual Conference app that will serve as the virtual tote bag for attendees. Go to iTunes and search “NSBA 2013 Conference” or to m.core-apps.com/nsbace2013 to download the app on your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

The app will allow attendees to search for sessions and create a schedule, access session handouts, and use their devices to take notes and e-mail them. The app also includes Conference Daily, which will be in an all-digital format this year.

Some of the highlights of this year’s conference include:

Saturday’s General Session speaker will be Academy Award winning actor Geena Davis. Sunday’s General Session will feature astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Monday’s General Session features acclaimed researcher and author Diane Ravitch, who has become one of the most passionate voices for public schools. NSBA will welcome David Pickler, a school board member from Tennessee’s Shelby County Schools, as its 2013-14 President and introduce a new board of directors. NSBA also will introduce its new executive director, Thomas Gentzel, who will talk about what what’s in store with the “New NSBA.”

Learn more about the common core standards, new research on differentiated learning styles, and teaching “unteachable” children at the Focus On lecture series. Learn about new technologies for your classrooms as part of the Technology + Learning programs.

In addition to the education opportunities, NSBA will offer many opportunities to gain information to bring back to your district from the Exhibitors Hall. This year, we’ll have more than 285 companies, including more than 95 new businesses, on the show floor. While you’re there, make sure to visit the Tech pavilion, the Health Fair, Music Main Street with performances, the Green Zone, Cutting Edge AveNEW, Marketplace, and the architectural display.

The NSBA booth will feature a mini store, Sunday book signings, free giveaways, and the opportunity to speak with NSBA experts.

Andrew Paulson|April 12th, 2013|Categories: NSBA Annual Conference 2013|Tags: , , , |

Education Talk Radio previews NSBA’s 2013 Annual Conference

Kanisha Williams-Jones, Director of Leadership & Governance Services at the National School Boards Association (NSBA), was a guest today on Education Talk Radio providing a preview of NSBA’s 2013 Annual Conference. Thousands of school board members, administrators, and other educators will be coming to San Diego to take part in the April 13-15 event.

Listen to the broadcast:

Listen to internet radio with EduTalk on Blog Talk Radio

The conference will feature more than 200 sessions on timely education topics, including federal legislation and funding, managing schools with tight budgets, the legal implications of recent court cases, new research and best practices in school governance, and the Common Core State Standards. A series of sessions will focus on school safety and security.

Expanded education technology programming will include site visits to the University of San Diego and Qualcomm’s Mobile Learning Center to explore its research laboratory on mobile learning; Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography to examine the technology in science education and STEM; Encinitas Union School District to view its One-to-One Digital Learning Program; and the San Diego Zoo to learn about the cutting-edge learning tools used to teach at-risk students. U.S. Navy SEALs will show leadership and team building skills during another workshop.

The meeting also includes one of the largest K-12 educational expositions, with some 300 companies showcasing their innovative products and services for school districts.

General Session speakers include Academy Award winning speaker Geena Davis, who will be speaking about her work off-screen as founder of the non-profit Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Davis works with film and television creators to reduce gender stereotyping and increase the number of female characters in media targeted for children 11 and under. She will explain how media plays a key role in children’s development, and how her organization is making a difference.

Television star Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the world’s most engaging and passionate science advocates, will headline Sunday’s General Session. From PBS to NASA to Presidential Commissions, organizations have depended on Tyson’s down-to-earth approach to astrophysics. He has been a frequent guest on “The Daily Show”, “The Colbert Report”, R”eal Time with Bill Maher”, and “Jeopardy!”. Tyson hopes to reach “all the people who never knew how much they’d love learning about space and science.”

Monday’s General Session features acclaimed researcher and author Diane Ravitch, who has become one of the most passionate voices for public schools. Her most recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, makes the case that public education today is in peril and offers a clear prescription for improving public schools.

Learn more about the common core standards, new research on differentiated learning styles, and teaching “unteachable” children at the Focus On lecture series. Learn about new technologies for your classrooms as part of the Technology + Learning programs.

It’s not too late to register, visit the Annual Conference website for  more information.

Alexis Rice|March 6th, 2013|Categories: 21st Century Skills, Arts Education, Assessment, Athletics, Board governance, Budgeting, Bullying, Center for Public Education, Charter Schools, Computer Uses in Education, Conferences and Events, Council of School Attorneys, Crisis Management, Curriculum, Data Driven Decision Making, Discipline, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Educational Finance, Educational Legislation, Educational Research, Educational Technology, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Environmental Issues, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Food Service, High Schools, Key Work of School Boards, Legislative advocacy, Mathematics Education, National Standards, No Child Left Behind, NSBA Annual Conference 2013, Nutrition, Obesity, Online learning, Policy Formation, Preschool Education, Professional Development, Public Advocacy, Rural Schools, School Board News, School Buildings, School Climate, School Law, School Reform, School Security, School Vouchers, Special Education, STEM Education, Student Achievement, Student Engagement, Teachers, Urban Schools|Tags: , , |

Q and A with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, featured speaker at NSBA’s annual conference in April

Neil deGrasse Tyson isn’t going to tell you how to run your schools, or even how to teach science. The astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City says school board members probably have a better handle on these things.

“I’m just sort of a STEM person at large,” said Tyson, former host of “NOVA scienceNOW” and one of the keynote speakers at NSBA’s Annual Conference in San Diego in April. “It’s a report from the field, a report from the depths of our society and culture.”

It’s a society and culture, says Tyson — a frequent guest on television talk shows like “The Daily Show” and “Real Time with Bill Maher” — that needs to pay more attention to what’s going on in the worlds of astronomers and microbiologists. He talked recently with ASBJ Senior Editor Lawrence Hardy.

Are we as scientifically literate as we should be?

No. The nation is becoming profoundly absent of scientific literacy. Now I don’t want a law saying someone has to be scientifically literate. I want people to want to be scientifically literate because they feel empowered by it, enlightened by it, and it’s something that will stimulate a curiosity in them that they once had, or never knew they had, in their youth.

So we don’t know much about evolution or the asteroid belt.

It’s the combination of being a scientifically illiterate person and gaining cultural or political power. That’s a combustible combination because then you end up making decisions that affect countless other people based on ideas and thoughts that are missing the fundamentals of how the natural world works.

A few years ago your planetarium declared Pluto “not a planet,” thus upsetting the cosmological certainty of countless elementary school students. Were there repercussions?

Essentially, a file drawer of hate mail from third-graders. One of my favorite letters is, “Dear Scientest” (spelled T-E-S-T). “Why did you make Pluto not a planet anymore? It that’s people’s favorite planet, then they’ll no longer have a favorite planet. And if there’s people on Pluto, then they’ll no longer exist.” [People] thought we just got rid of Pluto.

And the media reacted?

Oh, my gosh. The subtlety of the argument didn’t make it into the headlines. In fact, the New York Times reported on it, [writing] “Pluto not a Planet? Only in New York.” That was the headline on Page One. I wrote a whole book on this. It came out in 2007. It’s called The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet.

I hear you also messed with America’s Favorite Movie (at least among teenage girls in the 1990s). Something about the night sky being wrong in Titanic?

I complained publicly only because so much of the marketing platform of that film was on how accurate it was. If authenticity is important to you, you should have gotten the sky right.

You said director James Cameron was annoyed but eventually reconsidered and, for the release of the IMAX 3-D version, changed the sky in a key scene to the way it would have looked that night in the North Atlantic.

The most important scene is the sky straight above Kate Winslet’s head when she’s singing deliriously, floating on that plank. So I gave him that sky. In fact, I gave him a little latitude because the exact overhead sky wasn’t as good as the one a little to the left. You can fudge that and say she wasn’t looking exactly overhead, but was looking at an angle. You want to give people artistic space to work with.

And they used it.

Lawrence Hardy|February 5th, 2013|Categories: NSBA Annual Conference 2013, NSBA Publications, STEM Education|Tags: , , , |
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