Well, mystery solved – it was a picture of the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California.

Now the next mystery is why was Walter Reed the backdrop for his speech anyway? Many people believe that an image of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was supposed to be featured behind McCain, but one of the tech guys on his campaign goofed and put up a picture of the school.

Nothing in McCain’s speech had anything to do with the school, or any school for that case, and it took technicians five minutes to figure out their mistake.

How could they mess up like that? I did a little experiment and went into Google and typed Walter Reed to see what would come up. The first three search results were for the Walter Reed medical center. There was, however, a related search link at the top that was for the middle school.

Interesting, but I still think it would be easy to determine that McCain would want the medical center, not the middle school.

Due to all the contacts from the press, Walter Reed Middle School will be making a public announcement sometime today to confirm that the building in McCain’s backdrop was in fact their school.

This is the picture that McCain used of Walter Reed Middle School.

And this is the picture of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

If you’re in the same boat, or don’t have any older siblings, here is some advice from high school students that have been through it all, courtesy of the Kansas City Star.

Freshman Year

• Consider getting involved in student government. Most students don’t think about running for office during their freshman year and once you get in, it is easier to stay involved.
• Go to a homecoming game
• Get to know your teachers – believe me, this is not dorky. Getting to know your teachers can help with letters of recommendation and extra tutoring if you ever need it
(Advice from Katie Mussman, a graduate of Davis High School)

• Get all your required courses out of the way as fast as possible – then your senior year you won’t have to play catch-up
(Advice from Kevin Davidson, a sophomore at Beyer High School)

• Don’t be afraid to try out for a sport
• Get to know everyone in your classes – you can never have enough friends
(Advice from Dionne Evans, a senior at Johansen High School)

Sophomore Year

• Try out different electives – you never know where you’ll find your passion or a new hobby (Kevin Davidson)
• Help a freshman that looks completely lost – you were in their shoes last year
(Advice from Emily Shrader, a junior at Enochs High School)

• Go to a school dance – at least one, and don’t worry about looking cool
(Advice from Victoria Pardini, a junior at Modesto High School )

• If you took a language course freshman year, continue it. This is helpful for college admissions. (Dionne Evans)

Junior Year

• If your school has a powder-puff game, definitely participate  (Victoria Pardini)
• Stay focused on school work – this year really counts toward college admissions
(Dionne Evans)
• Do as much extra credit work as possible – this can really help boosts grades at the end of the term (Dionne Evans)
• Take a college course – you can get college credit and explore your interests before heading off to school
(Advice from Amelia Varni, a junior at Central Catholic High school)

Senior Year

• Attend one school event that you have not attended during the past three years
(Emily Shrader)
• Keep focused on school and college – avoid getting senioritis too early (Victoria Pardini)
• Bring a camera to school and take pictures of you and your friends in your favorite spots (Victoria Pardini)
• Organize a road trip with your friends before you all go off to college – maybe over winter or spring break
(Katie Mussman)
• Visit colleges – this will give you the best idea of where you want to go (Dionne Evans)
• Save money – next year you will be paying for more things, so save all that you can and get a good summer job (Dionne Evans)

A new legislation has gone into effect which requires New York public schools to record the weight and body mass index of students. Childhood obesity has become a pressing issue.

New York students are obligated to acquire a student health certificate.  Doctors will collect this information during the mandatory visits, and submit it to schools.

Health officials will analyze the data and determine obesity levels based on geography. All information is confidential.
New York City has been collecting data independently for the past two years under the “culture of fitness” program. Over 1,000 NYC schools participate in the program.

She also argues that many high school students need more time and by having an extra year, more students would graduate and earn better grades. With higher qualified graduates, more students will also go to college, so she is also pushing to expand college scholarships from private donations.

Currently, Indiana’s graduation rate is at 76.5% and students that decide to take an extra year don’t count toward the graduation rate. With Thompson’s plan, the extra year would be incorporated in the graduation rate.

Thompson’s goal is to achieve a 100% graduation rate within the next five years.

For each student that spends an extra year in high school, the school will pay anywhere between $6,000 and $11,000 per student. Not all students will take advantage of the 5-year plan, but those that do may put a strain on a school’s budget.

I don’t think this plan is all that bad. I personally would wrap it up in 4 years, but for students who need a little more time, this can help them get their diploma.

From personal experience, most people I knew that struggled through high school or didn’t take it too seriously didn’t go on to college. Or, if they did, they didn’t stay long. However, they may have changed their ways if they had the option of staying behind an extra year to get their act together.

I am interested in seeing how Thompson’s proposal will hold up in the upcoming election. Thompson is up against Daniels, who is proposing a plan to pay for the first two years of community college for high school graduates – an excellent plan in my humble opinion.

The trend I wandered into yesterday was the thought of Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The idea that our education system is based on the industrial revolution model and we are living in an information revolution world.

It started with Clay Burrell and Beyond School, who has retired from teaching and is now diligently, perhaps feverously, attempting to teach the rest of the world the lessons in great literature that he felt he had to gloss over when teaching in public high schools in the U.S.

Just as a warning Clay starts with Gilgamesh and questions the very foundation of Judeo-Christian faith, not to mention sex scenes. Then he moves on to point out that Socrates and Jesus were killed for teaching students critical thinking.

From Clay I moved on to Dr. Scott McLeod and Dangerously Irrelevant as he disagrees with Jeff Utecht. But it is better to read Jeff Utecht and The Thinking Stick first.

Jeff teaches in an American school in Shanghai, so he still likes to comment on the state of American education. Though personally I think his students have many advantages that no student in country could have. He also has the chance to see things we here in the states often can’t or won’t see.

In this particular post Jeff is rightfully upset that the New York Department of Education would like to spend $400,000 giving kindergartners a 90 minute test. I think I have mentioned before expecting students to sit still and learn is difficult at the best of times. I have no idea how anyone expects a five year old to sit for a 90 minute test.

Jeff points out that in emerging countries like China and India students there have a pretty good educational system where they are drilled in amassing knowledge. The leaders of the education systems in those countries are attempting to change the focus of education from knowledge based towards thinking based education. The idea is that the leaders of tomorrow’s world will be the people who can create and design. Here in the U.S. many feel that the leaders of the education system would like to regress to a simple knowledge based system and choke off any creative thought.

Dr. McLeod disagrees with Jeff in that he believes the innovative thinkers in the U.S. learn in spite of the educational system and not through the system. I tend to agree with Dr. McLeod in that the majority of people in the U.S. would like our schools to be little learning factories.

It is time like Victoria Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher, says to Throw Down the Gauntlet.

• Reduce paperwork
• Create commonsense curriculum
• Commonsense leadership
• Digital citizenship in schools
• Reject ethnocentrism
• Look at the whole mind

Yes, our children need to learn the basics, reading, writing, and arithmetic, but those basic skills are just the beginning. Sometime around middle school and high school students need to shift the focus more from practicing basic skills toward understanding and applying those skills in the real world.

How about unlimited tutoring for 30 days? And to make things even better, packages start at just $19 per month.

It sounds too good to be true, but it is all a part of GlobalScholar’s Back-To-School Deals that are going on right now.  Here is a breakdown of what the deal includes:

• Unlimited tutoring sessions for a full 30-day period
• Tutoring in Math, Science, English, Social Studies, Test Prep, Economics, Spanish and more!
• One easy payment – starting at $19

It’s simple, really. You click here to view all the Back-To-School Deals, then choose a subject that you need some help in. Choose a tutor, make a payment, schedule a session. It is most likely the easiest thing you can do to boost your grades.

Unlimited tutoring leads to unlimited possibilities and academic success. Taking advantage of unlimited Test Prep, like SAT, ACT or AP, will benefit you when it comes time to take the test and to apply for college.

For more information, or to get started today, click here.

My second thought was really what good is one laptop without support of high speed network, collaboration for teachers and students, training or teachers, and so on. It turns out that sometimes the act of giving away something like a laptop is enough to get people excited and motivated in other areas. Computers may not be the silver bullet that saves education, but they are still such a special gift that many people believe that if they can not save education they at least improve it very much. So the very act of giving one away to a child can have a tremendous impact.

Reading this eschoolnews article on OLPC at Glen Iris Elementary School in AL the first thing that struck me was the comment about the effectiveness of using a non-windows operating system.  Personally, I think that is a positive for the program. Almost every trend I have been reading about in the technology biz has been about programs that are web based, or cloud computing, or what every name you use. That means the programs are specifically created to work over the web instead of with the specific operating system. 

Computers are a special tool in education in that the learning how to use a computer can sometimes be thought of as important as using a computer to learn. It isn’t. Learning how to use a computer is completely insignificant compared to using a computer to learn. Yes, that is correct, COMPLETELY INSIGNIFICANT. The computer should be almost as insignificant as a pencil.

Consider this for an example; I have a three year old who likes to go to a specific web site and play games. He can use a mouse or the touch pad, but he prefers the touch pad. Learning how to use the computer was not an issue. Yes I still navigate to the page, but that is because he can’t read not because he lacks the ability to perform the actions. Computers are a tool that facilitates learning.

Now what can you do with a laptop? That is the question. Our software (GlobalScholar) allows students to take tests, practice and otherwise, on line. It is scored and put into the gradebook automatically. Our software allows students to participate in discussions on specific topics, and assignments. Our software allows parents and students to ask questions in the middle of the night and not worry about interfering with teachers sleep habits. That is just our software. (Of course I’m going to mention the great stuff we can do) There is so much a laptop can do in the hands of a child it is amazing. If you like you can even participate in the discussion.

And that participation, that collaboration between teachers and students, student and student, teacher and teacher, parent and teacher, etc… is the reason computers can be the second most powerful tool in education. Second to good staff.

Here I have written this entire post and had it sitting around waiting to edit before posting when I see this video, read this article, and this article.

For some Dr. Mitra’s hole in the wall experiments show us that when learning is engaging and students want to learn they don’t even need teachers. Sometimes teachers can actually hold learning back. Which can be true, if you allow a side track for a second and look at programming. It has been known for decades that some programmers are better than others. But is a bad programmer just slower than a good programmer. Not necessarily. According to this thought, bad programmers might actually slow down the work that is being done. In other words hiring a bad programmer might actually be worse than not hiring that extra programmer at all.

When I taught middle school math I taught a very student centered program. Most of my low and average students loved the way I taught math. I think mostly it was because for the first time the hands on experiments and constant reflections I required helped them to understand what was actually going on, and suddenly they were starting to take ownership of the math in their lives (this is can be considered New Math or progressive education). My highest achieving students didn’t like my regular math class, but they loved my algebra class. For them the hands on math that related to the real world was just too messy. What they preferred was for me to give them formulas and algorithms to apply. Then they would practice with several different variations until they had it memorized and could apply the algorithms in various circumstances (this can be considered Old Math or classical education). For them that was understanding. Not understanding the math so much, but rather understanding when and how to use the correct algorithm.

In both classrooms I had to give the students a small part of the knowledge they needed to learn and get out of the way as they explored the possibilities. For some it meant exploring what does this mean and for others it meant how does this work. In either case the learning happened when the students explored either individually or in small groups, not when I presented the information.

Faced with this logic, or sometimes not, many observers will wonder how it can be so difficult to sit students down, keep them quiet, and drill them with knowledge until it comes out their ears. “This new fangled math isn’t necessary, we learned math just fine memorizing the times tables thank you very much. All this talk about student centered classrooms is just hogwash, students should be quiet and listen to the teacher.” I wonder how many of these same people can sit through an hour long meeting without fidgeting? How many can do it 6 times in a row with only a 2 minute break in between?

Being told to sit and listen is not only difficult, but it could be down right deadly.

This brings us to the inspiration for this post, Peter Shankman, skydiver, PR man, and admitted ADD sufferer (if sufferer is the right wording). Every business day, three times a day, Peter collects requests from dozens to hundreds of reporters, organizes them, writes a little blurb about what he is doing at the moment, and sends it out. Usually, he is running or biking, or sky diving, or flying somewhere, or just trying to  convince someone to buy him lunch.

Sounds like a pretty good life eh. Fly around to speaking engagements, spend a lot of time doing your favorite hobby, and send out a few emails everyday. You would almost think he wasn’t actually doing any work. You would be wrong. If you read Peter’s blog post you can see that he is actually working more hours than most people. It’s just that he doesn’t actually work in an office very often.

I wonder how Peter did in school? Did he spend most of his school career in trouble because he couldn’t sit still? Was he drugged with Ritalin? (I’m not saying it is wrong to treat a serious disorder like ADD with prescription medication). Did he have that one teacher who understood and made everything else tolerable? Did he leave school the very first second he could? Obviously, he was educated, but how? I can’t see a person like that sitting still waiting for education to come to him six hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a year.

To all those who think that education is going downhill fast I’m sorry but education hasn’t gotten worse. It’s gotten better. Instead of teaching to the “average” student and letting unconventional children like Tom Sawyer or Peter Shankman, slip through the cracks teachers today find a way to reach and educate these all children. At least they do their best.

The local school board adopted a new dress code in which skirts can be no shorter than three inches above the knee.

This sent the cheerleaders and their parents into a frenzy. They feel if the skirts are OK for games they are OK for school. The parents have said they will take their complaints to the board.

If the school did make an exception for the cheerleaders, would the swim team want to wear their suits to school? How about the track team? 

Having everyone, including the cheerleaders, follow the dress code, the school is treating everyone fairly. When you start making exceptions to rule, it appears you are favoring some students over another. If it is only the skirt that violates the dress code, the cheerleaders could wear their top with suitable pants.

Do you think the cheerleaders should be able to wear their uniforms to school?

Ok, maybe it won’t carry with it the same emotions, but it is still a contest and you could be the proud name provider of a brand new school district in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The school district is located in the southeast quadrant of the Salt Lake Valley and was approved last November. Everything has already been taken care of - a new school board and superintendent – except for a name.

All names must be submitted by September 12th and the district will vote on which name they like best. Prizes will be provided by local businesses to all finalists.

If you think you have the perfect name click here and remember to include a 250 word rationale on why your name is the best choice for the new district.

What do you think the school district should be called?