TECHNOS

November 20, 2008

April 2006—Vol. 3, No. 4

Welcome to the technos.net e-newsletter, published by AIT’s Technos Press. You’ll find valuable information here about AIT products and services and other noteworthy news from the world of education. Please let us know what you think, or what you’d like to see here, by emailing us at: editor@ait.net. Thank you!

Featured Interview

Featured Interviews

The Field Museum of Natural History

The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is affectionately called “The Field.” Besides its extensive Exhibits (Permanent, Temporary, Online and Traveling) and its Research & Collections, The Field provides Education Programs. This area is one of The Field Museum’s most active and visible. Included in Education Programs are Field Trips for teachers and students, Outreach Programs, Online Learning, Professional Development for teachers, and the Harris Educational Loan Program. A trip to The Field for classrooms of kids or families is a fascinating trek into natural history that teaches science and about scientific discovery as well as historical perspective. But even if you can’t go to Chicago and physically visit The Field Museum, you can make a virtual visit through its Web site and its various online resources. Technos spoke recently via email to three officers in the Education Programs group: Monica Garcia, Manager of Teacher Programs and Partnerships; Vickei Hrdina, Manager of expeditions@fieldmuseum®; and Beth Crownover, Public Programs and Operations Director.

Read the interviews.

Featured Article

Take a Field Trip to Chicago’s Field Museum in Person or Online

Ever wonder why an excursion outside a school building is called a “field trip”? At The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, it’s pretty obvious…because a field trip goes to The Field Museum!

Founded by Illinois State decree in 1893 as the Columbian Museum of Chicago to house the biological and anthropological collections of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, The Field Museum was renamed in 1905 in honor of Marshall Field, its major benefactor. In 1921, the Museum was moved from its original site in Jackson Park to its present site on Chicago Park District property near downtown, where it is part of a lakefront Museum Campus that includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium.

The Field’s mission is both scientific and educational in nature. According to its mission statement, “The Field Museum is an educational institution concerned with the diversity and relationships in nature and among cultures. It provides collection-based research and learning for greater public understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live. Its collections, public learning programs, and research are inseparably linked to serve a diverse public of varied ages, backgrounds, and knowledge.”

Read the article.

What’s New at AIT?

Lessons ALIVE—Free Online Lesson Plans Feature AIT’s Programs

AIT’s new Lessons ALIVE feature provides free lesson plans corresponding to AIT’s products. We give teachers ideas for going beyond our videos’ teacher guides and for developing lesson plans that combine media from different series or select segments from programs. The lesson plans highlighted in Lessons ALIVE will promote contemporary ideas about structured learning environments and will model best practices in teaching.

For April, and looking ahead to May, we have a Transportation lesson available: “Trekking Across America: A Look at the Development of Transportation,” for grades 5–9. This Lesson features four AIT Products:

Tracks: Impressions of America, program 7, “Westward Ho!”
America Past, program 6, “Roads and Railroads”
Inventing Flight for Schools, Curriculum Starter Video, “Visions of Flight”

In this most recent Lessons ALIVE entry, students examine the development of new transportation in the 19th century and evaluate the impact of transportation on society, the economy, communication, and travel—and they complete an inquiry project about modern modes of transportation.

Check out our previous Lesson ALIVE lessons.

Let us know if you’ve created your own unique lesson plans by submitting them to the Technos eZine editor at: editor@ait.net. Selected entries will be published in future issues of the eZine.

Tech Notes

Blaise: Free, Open-source Software Provides Paperless Support for Writing Courses

By Rahul Simha, Sean Hanlon, Michael Gaiman, Jared Kiraly, and Eisuke Arai

Blaise is a software/hardware system designed to support writing programs. Students write papers using the Blaise editor—a simple text editor—and submit them electronically to a back-end database. Instructors download student papers from the database onto a tablet PC and then use pen-like electronic markup to grade the papers. These papers are then returned electronically to the students. Because modern writing programs emphasize working through drafts and peer review, Blaise maintains multiple drafts for each assignment and also supports multiple graders. Furthermore, the back-end database allows students to maintain long-term writing portfolios and enables institutions to track and collect data for assessment of writing programs. Blaise is free, open-source software available from the Blaise Web site: www.blaise.gwu.edu. Because it is written in Java, Blaise can be used on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

First Things First: What Is Blaise?

Computers and Internet technology have made their presence in the modern educational institution. Universities and schools both use back-end databases for records and are increasingly using computers and Internet applications in the classroom itself. In addition, related technologies such as PDAs, projectors, and smartboards are helping transform the way courses are conducted.

One relatively new and growing technology is the tablet PC, which unlike regular PCs is based on a pen-like interface: users use a pen on a touch-sensitive screen to point-and-click as well as to mark up documents. This electronic pen has appealed to users in a wide variety of applications, both for its distinctive use as well as for the simple convenience of doing away with keyboard and mouse. The pen-like interface is also a natural for grading term papers—an instructor who must grade a Microsoft Word document, for example, prefers to print and mark up with a real pen rather than type laboriously into the same document with a differently colored font.

Recognizing the value that tablet PCs can provide, and the fact that no free open-source product was to be found in the marketplace, we decided to develop Blaise, a complete software system for writing courses. Blaise is named after Merlin’s eponymous scribe in the legend of King Arthur. In consultation with George Washington University’s writing faculty, we added features to support modern writing programs.

Blaise consists of three mutually compatible software packages. The first, the Blaise Editor, is what students use to compose their papers; it is a simplified editor with some standard editing features such as justification and font style (bold, italic). Students also use the Blaise Editor to electronically submit their papers. Because Blaise supports multiple drafts, the Editor offers views of previously marked up drafts, each of which could have been graded by multiple instructors. The second component, the Blaise back end, is a standard relational database that stores papers submitted by students and graded papers uploaded by instructors. The third and signature component, the Blaise Grading Portal and Grader, is the software that runs on the tablet PC and is set up to incorporate both pen based mark-up as well as keyboard driven input. We describe each of these in detail through an example in the next section.

Read all about Blaise here.

etc. (News You Need)

The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) has worked with the Laboratory for Student Success at Temple University (LSS) since 2004 to build and support a new leadership network. The School Leadership Learning Community (SLLC) is comprised of the first 24 grantees chosen by the U.S. Department of Education to implement professional development programs for principals in high-need districts. The SLLC Network convened several times to share lessons learned, challenges, strategies, and promising practices. Free, downloadable copies of three quality publications containing insights about preparing and supporting school leaders are available here: http://www.iel.org/pubs/sllc.html.

A new national survey from the Carnegie Corporation of New York found that more than two in three adults polled (68 percent) say that the best way to improve public education is to concentrate on the district as a whole and improve the entire system of high schools in a community, while only 26 percent say the best way is to fix one high school at a time. The poll also points to the urgent need for reform. Carnegie Corporation commissioned the poll, which was conducted by Widmeyer Research and Polling, as part of its Schools for a New Society initiative.

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) has released its annual report on the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, “From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act.” The report, which is based on survey information from 50 states, 299 school districts, and 38 case studies, is a comprehensive analysis of how the law is being implemented by the federal government, states, and school districts. Some of the findings: 1) Many of the school districts report a narrowing of the curriculum; 2) 37 states said that the adequacy of state funds to carry out NCLB duties was a serious or moderate challenge; and 3) no significant difference was found in the percentage of high-minority enrollment districts and low-minority enrollment districts reporting that all their teachers are highly qualified—the first time this has happened since CEP started the survey and report.

QuestBridge is offering College Prep Scholarships for High School Juniors, designed to provide a risk-free opportunity for outstanding low-income students to explore and prepare for applying to the nation’s top-ranked colleges and universities. High school juniors who have achieved excellent academic results in the face of economic challenges can access the online application starting on April 15th (it will be due on May 15th).

The Internal Revenue Service has created an online educational feature intended to help high school kids and others uncover the “mysteries of taxes.”

AIT Products & Services

No foolin’ — April is a busy month! Spring has sprung, the clocks jump forward, it’s Math Education Month, and Earth Day and Arbor Day are celebrated. Here are a few of AIT’s programs that you might find relevant. For more information, including pricing and shipping info, go to our online catalog—or call AIT’s Customer Service Department at 1-800-457-4509 to order.

Cracking the Code recounts the history of genetic science and is a comprehensive resource for teaching the history and new science of genetics. Featuring lively animations and clever analogy, the five 30-minute programs present complex science information in a way that positively affects student attention and retention. The Pop band, Moxy Früvous, performs songs that assist students to recall key concepts and information. Both the history and social context of genetics is highlighted, so that viewers see the real-life applications of scientific endeavor. Appropriate for high school, yet rigorous enough to support post-secondary study. Visit the Cracking the Code Web site.

Naturimages is a collection of 52 six-minute programs for primary grades that teaches about the characteristics and habitats of a variety of species. The production, which includes a short program for each creature exploring its habitat and behaviors, is fashioned using a narrator's voice to explain key biology concepts. Naturimages is a great series for individual or group exploration.

For the baseball fans and sciences whizzes among you, AIT has a terrific new baseball-themed science series for grades 6–12 called 108 Stitches: The Physics in Baseball. Four 7-minute programs illustrating complex physics concepts within the familiar context of everyone’s favorite game are available for only $99. Visit the 108 Stitches Web site.

The month of May will be a good time to study the American West, because Lewis and Clark began their expedition on May 14, 1803; the Homestead Act went into effect on May 20, 1862; and the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met in Utah on May 10, 1869. AIT has some terrific social studies series for your classroom! Check out our new Lessons ALIVE Transportation lesson, too.

Tracks: Impressions of America is a standards-based upper elementary/middle school social studies resource that takes students on a journey of discovery through American history. The videos feature a pair of young adults who, through their summer travels, discover pieces of their country’s history from the time of its earliest pre-Columbian settlers through the technological revolution of the 20th century. The videos are designed as an interactive experience: questions, challenges, and revelations encountered by the two main characters are used as prompts to stop the tape and discuss, explore, speculate, or investigate. Twelve 15-minute programs for grades 4–8. Free Tracks Web site provides sample video clips. Now being sold as a CD-ROM with Teacher’s Guide for only $35.96.

Geography in U.S. History investigates the relationship between geography and history, demonstrates how knowledge of geography contributes to historical understanding, and develops historical and geographical literacy. Help students place historical events and trends in the contexts of time and place, utilizing fundamental geographic themes as organizing principles. Provide students with the perspectives, information, concepts, and skills essential to understanding significant historical developments from 1787 to the present. Ten 20-minute programs for grades 9–12.

* Before you sign off here, be sure to check out the AIT Resources for Teachers & Students section of our main Web site. It provides linked resources for educators who use our products.

Read previous issues of the TECHNOS e-Zine.

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