This article on tools to catch/thwart cheating made me sad. This kind of stuff has no place in a school context. If we need video cameras to monitor students we must be designing schools and assessments wrong. Our systems need corrected, not supplanted with monitoring technology. Totally grossed out right now.
Wow, the team that designed the new New York City subway cars and JetBlue's touch-screen terminals now comes out with furniture for the modern office. Designs that are about creating warm, workable, interactive spaces. I love the aesthetics. Read more at FastCompany.
How do you create an effective workspace? Does furniture matter? I think about this a lot when looking at classrooms. Some people are really pushing how aesthetics of a space impact performance. Just think about the average classroom where all desks face the blackboard. It suggests that the info is at the front and is being delivered to the kids - that's not necessarily bad, it is just what the room creates. Do we need to change that? I'd argue generally, yes.
I've shared this with a few people and thought I'd share it more widely. Two years ago my school came up with a social networking policy for faculty and staff. This gives the adults in our school clear guidance about what is expected of them. If you use it, please credit it back to The Hewitt School. We fully expect this policy to evolve as our online lives evolve. This just happens to be where it is right now. If you're looking for other policies Alex Ragone recently shared this link, which has quite a lot on it. We've been thinking about this more and more as our school just launched it's official Facebook fan page.
Policy on Social Networking
Faculty and staff members are only to interact online with students in school-sponsored "spaces." Interactions on CourseWeb, Hewitt e-mail, and other Hewitt-sponsored online spaces are appropriate, while interactions via commercial sites such as Facebook, MySpace, etc, are not. If a faculty or staff member is contacted by a student via non-Hewitt channels, the corresponding division head should be notified.
A colleague at another school posted a message today about the struggles they are having recruiting male teachers in their school. I'm quite sure there are unlimited numbers of possibilities of why schools get into a gender equity challenge. In responding to her I passed on a helpful resource from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, "Recruiting Male Teachers." I found it helpful, and hope you do, too.