Legislature Set To Approve Funding Moves To Support Services

It appears there is no relief in the short-term for the financial woes that schools in Kansas and many other states are feeling. An article in today's edition of The Hutchinson News summarizes the results of last year's legislative post-audit. In a nutshell, it points to School Consolidation as a viable means for saving money. In fact, the report has two scenarios-one would reduce the number of districts in Kansas from 293 down to 266 districts. The other scenario would reduce the number of districts to 152.

Continue reading Deb's Debits

Our kids and I have a lot of fun with AudioBoo. AudioBoo is a service that makes podcasting and audio blogging a snap and can positively impact your classroom (See previous posts1, 2, 3 and 4). Although the service has previously pretty much been limited to iPhone users it is now available to everyone. Here's a screencast demonstrating how to use their recently released BrowserBoo feature which makes it possible to record to AudioBoo through any web browser.

View the screencast

I just received a new book by Van Walle.  Van Walle works are based on developmental thinking and learning theories.  I love his work because it discusses both sides of the "math coin".  Many people believe math is about memorizing facts, rules, and procedures.  Although this is one part, or one side, of the math coin, it does not take into account the other side "mathematical thinking and reasoning".  Many people do not even realize that there are two sides of the coin.  Why?  Think back to how we all learned math in school.  The phrase, "We don't know what we don't know.", is so true.  If a person has never been exposed to thinking about math as thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, our lenses, which we view math is very narrow.