Schools Advised Not to Turn Away Undocumented Students

One of the recurring questions that I receive from pre-service and in-service teachers is about the legality of undocumented students in our schools. Many are under the impression that these students are not allowed to attend schools given their legal status. This belief is held by many and has evolved into a sort of "folk theory" that has become a practiced truth.

Folk theories, i.e. theories that are based on common, everyday experiences, but not subjected to rigorous experimental techniques, policy, or truth often determine our actions. For years, many state education agencies have been telling educators they cannot ask students about their immigration status in accordance with the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe, which gives all children the right to a free K-12 education in this country regardless of their immigration status.

School officials can ask parents or students for proof of residency in a school district to determine priority for enrollment purposes, but not for a Social Security number or other proof of citizenship.

Frequently school personnel rely on their common sense rather than law and ask for immigration information when parents try to register their children for school.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has decided to address this violation of federal law in New Jersey. MyHeraldNews.com provides thorough coverage of the story.

New Mexico First State to Adopt Navajo Textbook

The following story was provided by the Associated Press. Many have the mis-conception that bilingual education is for Spanish speaking Latino participants only. Given the range of languages covered by dual-language programs this story should be of interest to all.

Albuquerque

In the Navajo language, there's no one word that translates into "go" — it's more like a sentence.

"There are so many ways of 'going,'" said Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, a Navajo professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "It states who is going, how many of us are going, where are we going. So the tense, the adverb, the subject, the number of people, all of that is tied up in one little tiny verb."

Those verbs are part of what makes the Navajo language one of the most difficult to learn, she says. Yazzie is hopeful a book she recently wrote will provide a user-friendly way for New Mexico students to learn not only the language but the culture of a tribe that long has tied the two elements.

State officials formally adopted Yazzie's book, Dine Bizaad Binahoo'ahh, or Rediscovering the Navajo Language, Tuesday in Santa Fe. While other books on Navajo language exist, state officials say New Mexico is the first to adopt a Navajo textbook for use in the public education system.

About 10 school districts in New Mexico provide Navajo language instruction. Out of seven American Indian languages that were taught in the public school system during the 2006-07 school year, 5,024 students were learning Navajo.

The Navajo language long had been an oral language, and many Navajo elders fluent in their native tongue cannot read or write the language. Tribal officials have expressed concern that the language is dying among the youth, leading to some immersion programs on the reservation.

Yazzie said there is a shortage of written material available not only in Navajo but other American Indian languages.

"Whatever comes out, they're so eager to get their hands on it," she said.

School districts in New Mexico, as well as U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, can review Yazzie's book and decide whether to use it starting in the 2009-10 school year. The book will be accompanied by a CD with the voices of Yazzie and her brother, Berlyn Yazzie, a former educator and administrator on the Navajo Nation.

In the Navajo culture, certain topics — such as how to build a hogan or cradle board and how to care for cattle and horses — should be addressed by men. Other topics, including the preparation of food, clothing and caring for children, should be addressed by women.

"I wanted to be culturally correct, so that's why we included the male and the female voice," said Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, who has taught Navajo language at NAU for 18 years.

Each chapter of the book, which Yazzie said is suitable for students of all ages, begins with a cultural lesson and guides readers through verbs, sentence construction, clanship, clothing, formal education, telling time the Navajo way, the reservation, Navajo teachings, corn fields, livestock, textures, shapes and the Navajo government.

It also includes pictures of people who have lived on the Navajo reservation, which stretches into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Yazzie said she looks forward to students sharing the book with Navajo elders and "pretty soon conversation will be sparking around fires."

"It has culture, it's manageable, it's easy," she said. "It invites you in, it's captivating. They'll (students) see that their language is important enough to put in a book like this, and they will be more proud of their language."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

U.S. Higher Ed Bill Calls for Teacher Prep for ELL's

For the first time, a new Federal Education Law (H.R. 4137) requires colleges and universities to do something in regard to preparing teachers to work with English-language learners.

The bill, signed into law on Aug. 14, 2008 by President Bush, requires colleges and universities to set annual goals for increasing the number of teachers for instruction of English language learners (ELLs) and other areas where there are teacher shortages.

Here's what the new higher education law says under Title II, Section 206:

"Each institution of higher education that conducts a traditional teacher preparation program (including programs that offer any ongoing professional development programs) or alternative routes to state certification or licensure program, and that enrolls students receiving federal assistance under this act, shall set annual quantifiable goals for increasing the number of prospective teachers trained in teacher shortage areas designated by the Secretary or by the state educational agency, including mathematics, science, special education, and instruction of limited English proficient students."

You can view the entire "Higher Education and Opportunity Act" on Libary of Congress' THOMAS legislative search engine.

The law also requires that each institution provide an assurance that "general education teachers receive training in providing instruction to diverse populations, including children with disabilities, limited English proficient students, and children from low-income families."

For the first time the nation has a statutory requirement for colleges and universities to set goals related to teacher shortage areas, including ELLs.

H.R. 4137 also includes a provision in Title II to establish graduate fellowships for teacher educators in second language acquisition pedagogy and theory. Including bilingual education and ESL teacher preparation as high-priority areas in the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GANN) program is also a small, but significant, step by lawmakers to try and address the needs of ELLs in the classroom.

For a more thorough coverage of this story visit Mary Ann Zehr's story on Education Week.

Updated National Technology Standards For Teachers Released

A renovated set of standards for how teachers should improve learning through the use of technology was released last week in San Antonio, Texas at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, the nation’s largest K-12 educational technology conference.

The standards try to shift the focus from technology tools to raising academic achievement and preparing students for highly skilled jobs of the future. These standards suggest the facilitation and inspiration of student learning and creativity. Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.

Conference themes suggest the end of isolated individual learning and teaching. Instead they are seeing a shift to connected learning and teaching that transforms the classroom into a digital learning portal to the outside world, a world where students and teachers have almost the same access to information and where collaboration and sharing of knowledge are taking place across the globe to construct higher levels of knowledge.

A major theme of the National Educational Computing Conference this year was that the K-12 world is becoming flat—meaning that long-standing hierarchies of educational authority are giving way to more collaborative approaches to teaching and learning such as the use of wikis, blogs, and social networks.

To help educators face that challenge, ISTE unveiled a major revision of its educational technology standards for teachers. "The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers" outline the skills and knowledge that teachers need to use technology more effectively in the classroom.

The first version of NETS-T, released in 2000, has been adopted by numerous states and teacher-preparation programs.

View an overview of the New Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (PDF download).

The new standards emphasize the need for teachers to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, to model digital-age work and learning, to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, and to engage in professional growth and leadership.

Digital Content Trends in Classrooms Revealed in New Report

"State of Digital Content in America’s Classrooms, 2007-2008"
Reveals Current Use of Technology in American K-12 Schools

Denver, Colorado -- American classroom teachers currently use digital content for a small percentage of their classroom time, but teachers would prefer to use technology more often, reports a new study from Quality Education Data, Inc. (QED), an education market research and database firm, a subsidiary of Scholastic. QED researched technology trends to collect the most current data on digital content in American schools.

State of Digital Content in America’s Classrooms, 2007-2008, asked educators about the types of digital media that they have access to in their schools and that they use in their every day instruction. The study also asked teachers to identify barriers to technology use in their classrooms and to report the most common technology-based activities in which their students participate.

U.S. teachers use digital content for just a small share of classroom time, according to the survey. Just 9 percent of teachers report spending more than half their instructional time using digital technology, including computers, LCD projectors, and interactive whiteboards, while 16 percent do not use such technology in class, the report says.

Elementary school teachers most often said they used educational games, word processing, and drill exercises on computers. Middle and high school teachers most often reported using computers for Internet-based research, word-processing software, and multimedia presentations. Eighty-five percent of teachers said a barrier to their use of digital content was having insufficient computers in the classroom.

Key findings include:

• 86% of teachers have desktop computers available in their classrooms; 67% of teachers have access to laptops for their students if they need them; and only 5% of teachers have no access to computers of any kind.

• 9% of teachers spend more than 50% of instructional time using technology, while 16% of report no use of technology during classroom time.

• 85% of teachers report not having enough computers in their classroom as a barrier to using digital content, either always (23%) or sometimes (63%).

• Nearly 95% of teachers use technology to search for free content for use in their classrooms; 36% report that they do so at least three to four times a week.

• 17% of teachers participate in online social networking. Nineteen percent of teachers participate in an online professional community.

• Students of all ages are creating multimedia presentations in school: 58% of high school students, 49% of middle school students, and 22% of elementary school students.

“The findings from the new State of Digital Content report underscore the importance of schools across America making a commitment to providing access to up-to-date, relevant technology for both students and teachers,” said Andy Lacy, President of QED. “Teachers are telling us that they recognize the importance of technology as both a motivator and an instructional tool and as an essential part of a 21st century classroom.”

A New Online Clearinghouse Offers Help for K-12 History Teachers

A new online clearinghouse for history education has been established to provide curriculum, research, and professional-development resources for K-12 teachers.

The National History Education Clearinghouse, launched this month by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Stanford University History Education Group, is underwritten by a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The free Web site, www.teachinghistory.org, includes links to journal articles, Web-based documents and other historical collections, and examples of best teaching practices.

New Research Casts Doubt On "UNZ" Initiatives

Initial findings from studies commissioned by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Linguistic Minority Research Initiative at University of California, Santa Barbara, suggest that states that have replaced bilingual education with structured English immersion have seen little benefit, according to Mary Ann Zehr in Education Week. Though the language and implementation of the referenda that brought this change varied slightly from state to state, findings from the studies indicate that the achievement gap on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in both reading and math is wider in California, Massachusetts, and Arizona than in two other states that still require bilingual education. Russell Rumberger, director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute said "there's no visual evidence that these three states are doing better than the national average or other states," with regard to educating English Language Learners, based on NAEP results.

Researchers found instead that other factors - such as whether students have books at home - have greater impact upon English Language Learners' (ELLs) achievement than state instructional policies. However, the NAEP data did show that rigorous academic standards reduced the achievement gap between ELLs and their non-ELL peers in the fourth grade, and that those with the lowest proficiency in English benefited most from specialized English instruction.

For further details visit the Education Week site and read Mary Ann Zehr's piece "Researchers Study Impact" of Unz Initiatives.

‘Reading First’ Not Helping Students Grasp Meaning, Federal Study Finds

The $1 billion-a-year Reading First program has had no measurable effect on students’ reading comprehension, on average, although participating schools are spending significantly more time teaching the basic skills that researchers say children need to become proficient readers, a major federal report finds.

The long-awaited interim report from the Reading First Impact Study, released May 1 by the Institute of Education Sciences, says that students in schools receiving grants from the federal program have not fared any better than their counterparts in comparison schools in gaining meaning from print.

To read an overview visit the Education Week site and read Kathleen Kennedy Manzo's article: Reading First Doesn't Help Pupils 'Get it'.

Stanford University Offers Free Videos on How to Teach English-Language Learners

Stanford University is now offering a series of videos on how to teach language-minority students.

In a video that I recently reviewed from the Stanford offerings "Ms. Griego" models for "Ms. Sullivan" how to give English-language learners "think time" during a lesson and how to guide students to chat with a "shoulder partner," whoever is sitting next to him or her. Ms. Griego is a coach for teachers of ELLs, and Ms. Sullivan is a teacher being coached. The video doesn't name the schools where the teachers work.

The video captures excerpts of Ms. Griego's model lesson delivered to ELLs in 3rd grade, and conversations between the two teachers. It's available online from Stanford's School of Education. The coach explains, for example, why she thinks it works best to assign ELLs to work in groups of four, with students of different levels of proficiency in the same group.

The video is one of a series on teaching ELLs that have been created by Stanford Professors Kenji Hakuta and Guadalupe Valdes. The one I watched was called "Modeling and Coaching SDAIE." The acronym refers to Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English, a set of strategies used in California to teach intermediate ELLs content and language at the same time.

The video lessons seem to be well-thought-out and and correspond with three Stanford courses concerning the education of ELLs.

I learned about them through Mary Ann Zehr's article "Learning the Language" in Education Week. Ms Zehr is an assistant editor at Education Week.

Ms. Zehr's article also highlights findings from a recent symposium on English-Language Learners. The "2008 English-Language Learners Symposium", sponsored by Educational Testing Services (ETS) and co-convened with the National Council of La Raza, addressed issues related to the instruction and assessment of English-language learners and research that begins to lay a foundation to craft educational solutions. Very useful Videos and Lecture Notes of the symposium are also available on-line.

Multimedia Literacy - A New Paradigm for Education

Multimedia Literacy

Multimedia literacy is a new aspect of literacy that is being recognized as technology expands the way people communicate. 'Multimedia' is the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactivity). This is a concept of great importance to our teacher education program at the University of Southern California.

As personal computers and their software become more powerful they have the capacity to record and edit sound, still images and video and manage interactivity. This places multimedia creation in the hands of any computer. As multimedia becomes a more prevalent form of communication it becomes important to understand the literacies of “reading” and “writing” using multimedia, and for these skills to be taught in schools and other education institutions. This is one of the major objectives of the Rossier School of Education's Teacher Edcuation Program.

To better understand this concept I have provided an excerpt from Wikipedia, the free web encyclopedia, with a few edits, additions and explanations of my own. Please feel free to comment at the end of the BLOG.

The related study of mass media has long been part of the school program in many school systems either as a separate subject option in secondary schools or more often as a part of general literacy learning. Film Study has also been a school subject for some time using relatively expensive and complicated equipment to make film or video. The rapid development of multimedia via personal computing means that it is becoming a routine form of communication for a widening group of people. The line between mass media and personal media is becoming much more blurred. Non professional authors of multimedia products on the web or via podcasts can have large audiences.

Constructivist learning and multimedia

Multimedia literacy is a subset of the wider issue of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in schools. There is a widespread recognition that the rapid growth in the use of ICT in schooling is occuring in conjunction with the adoption of the constructivist learning theory. This theory supports active, hands-on learning. It is related to Cognitive Apprenticeship and the work of Jerome Bruner.

Some educators see ICT as being a major driver of school reform. This reform is towards a more constructivist approach, using related terms such as: student-centred learning, Problem-based learning and experiential education. Others point to the slow pace of such reform and suggest that ICT may support reform but it is by no means inevitable that it will do so.

Supporters of ICT as a powerful tool for constructivist learning point to its capacity to provide:

- active and highly motivating engagement with students
- powerful tools to create text, art, music, sound, models, presentations, movies etc. that produce high quality products and - remove much of the tedium normally associated with such creation
- an error-forgiving environment in which editing of a product fosters learning by trial and error
- easy communication in text, voice, video
- quick access to information and resources

Educators are finding, however, that while ICT can provide a technical environment for constructivist learning to occur, there needs to be high quality teaching to develop and sustain a human environment that will challenge and inspire students to learn.

Multimedia Literacy in Schools

Teaching literacy has always been the central business of schools. School literacy teaching had tended to focus on written literacy rather than on oral literacy, which is mainly learned outside of school. Literacy has never been a fixed body of skills but has evolved with the development of technology, such as pens and paper, and the needs of society as in the Industrial Revolution. For example, handwriting was a major focus of schooling during the 19th Century as the demand for clerks grew rapidly. Then the invention of the typewriter made neat handwriting a less important business skill. However, important literacy technologies such as the newspaper, the typewriter and the telegraph took decades to spread throughout society, giving schools time to adapt. Schools today are struggling to cope with the teaching of new literacies that are often less than five years old but are widespread in society.

Today the Internet is a major medium of communication and it is increasingly rich in multimedia. Children are regular users of the Internet and educators are recognising the importance of them being 'literate' in its navigation, searching, authentication and other skills. Most school systems in the developed world are including computer literacy or similarly named programs, into the curriculum.

Children learn much of their mass media literacy, as recipients, quite intuitively from film, television and radio. However, until recently, few have had the opportunity to experience being multimedia authors. Now, with relatively cheap digital cameras, free software and access to powerful multimedia computers, there is both the opportunity and the need, for quite young students to become authors as well as consumers in the new media.

The following sections provide information on skills that students of various ages may learn in order to be multimedia literate and information on software and hardware suitable for use in schools.

Video

Film making has been a major technology and art form for over a century. Personal video making makes use of many but not all of the techniques of professional film making. Student movie makers need to be familiar with the basic tools and techniques of the art, including familiarity with:

- camera shots: close up, medium, long shot, pan, fade etc in order to achieve different effects
- story-boarding: a pictorial frame view of the story line, showing camera views, times and shot sequence which provides the Director with a simple shooting script for a video.
- editing software replaces tedious and expensive film splicing with digital editing which is quick and forgiving of errors, and allows the insertion of audio tracks in sequence with the video track.
- sound tracks allow music, sound effects and voice tracks to be added to an existing film (see Sound).
- the so called Ken Burns Effect, in which the camera pans across a still image allows still images accompanied by a sound track to create quite powerful presentations.

The domination of photography by digital technology and the falling cost of storage has led to the collection of hundreds if not thousands of digital images on home computers. The development of free software (eg: Apple's iPhoto and Microsoft's Photo Story) that allows very simple editing of movies made up of still images, enhanced with the 'Ken Burns effect', sound, text and music, means that the world of movie making is likely to grow very rapidly into the home and school.
Hardware and Software

Digital video cameras are quite powerful and increasingly sophisticated. Many still digital cameras can take short movie clips. Readily available software such as Windows MovieMaker, Apple's iMovie and Microsoft Photo Story 3 (still images), provide free editing software.

This software can be used with still images from a digital cameral to make a still-frame movie with an audio track. Movies made with editing software are generally saved in one or more of the common web video formats such as Windows Media or QuickTime in a variety of file sizes. High quality, large files for storage on a computer or CD-ROM and small fles that can be emailed or placed on the web.

Sound

Three track recording:
Schools have used tape recorders for decades, but these have proved to be rather difficulty to use flexibly because of difficulty in editing sound and in cataloging sound bites for later use. Digital recording and software allows easy editing and manipulation of sound. Also, extensive files of sound effects and music can be integrated into voice recordings. Easy transfer of digital files across the Internet makes the use of sound much more flexible.

Learning: Most people are very familiar with the use of sound as a powerful tool in television, radio and film, but have little experience in using it themselves. Digital recording allows the user to experiment with the effect of sound features such as:
voice tone, pace, pitch, and of course music as an influence on mood and atmosphere. Sound effects can provide enrichment and context to a story.

Hardware and Software There are numerous applications for editing sound. The graphic display allows the user to select and edit very small sound segments. The multi-track display allows each track to be placed precisely where it is required on a time scale. This flexibility provides much greater editing freedom that was the case with traditional audio editing where tapes were spliced to achieve edits.

The free open source application Audacity provides quite powerful sound editing of multi-track recordings. Editing of sounds is very simple and a wide range of 'effects' can be applied to sound files.

Most personal computers include simple sound recording software that allows sound files to be attached to common office applications along with the provision for microphones to be connected. There are many portable digital recorders available that connect directly to computers. There are many sound recording formats of which MP3 is the most prevalent.

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Further discussions of this topic and related topics will follow on this BLOG, stay tuned.

Dr. G