On Monday, I wrote about Common Core, the over-testing that is stressing our kids, and the emphasis on tests that is causing teachers to need to focus their lessons only on what will help their students fill in the right answers on a Scantron form. We attended the One Voice United rally to help protest all of this.
When we arrived, there were already a lot of people gathering. Buses had taken people from Long Island, Buffalo, and lots of places in between. Everyone was converging on the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY and many people were carrying some amazing signs. It was quite a sight to behold. I could use more words to describe it, but I think I’ll let these photos tell the story.
On Saturday, B, the boys, and I joined somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 other people in a rally to protest the state of education in New York. There are many problems, but they all seem to stem from two words: Common Core.
Awhile back, it looked like we had a problem. Our students were graduating high school and college and finding that the job markets demanded much more from them. So a solution was devised. And, in typical politician form, it was decided that students’ progress needed to be measured. After all, we needed to make sure, at every step of the way, that kids were being taught in the right way and that teachers were teaching in the right way. Anything else would go against the politicians’ great plan.
The federal politicians demanded that all schools follow set guidelines. However, they neglected to include one important piece to help schools follow said guidelines: funding. This was what is called an "unfunded mandate." Basically, they said: "You are required to follow this but we won’t pay for it at all." So school districts were faced with a difficult choice: Raise taxes or cut extraneous subjects. Where "extraneous subjects" are things such as art and music that don’t get reflected in the test scores.
Ah, the tests. Remember how I mentioned that the teachers and students needed to be measured at every turn? Well, the best way to do this (if you are a politician setting the rules) is by requiring the students to take tests. In New York State’s case, it was decided that next year would be the first year that "Common Core" was implemented but that this would be the first year for the Common Core tests. How can you test on something that hasn’t been implemented yet? Easy. You call it a baseline. Scientists use it all the time.
Of course, scientists don’t typically experiment on children without their parents’ permission.
So the kids were forced to take extremely difficult tests. Couldn’t get much worse, could it? Of course, it can.
First of all, remember that the teachers are being tested too. No, they’re not filling in Scantron forms. Instead, their students’ scores will reflect on their annual reviews. If their students do poorly, they do poorly. Never mind if their students include kids with dyslexia or other learning disabilities that make tests a poor method of measuring knowledge. Also, you should probably ignore that the kids, already stressed by the prospect of difficult tests, will find additional pressure on them once they realize that their beloved teachers will get punished if they do poorly. No pressure.
In fact, once you tie teacher reviews to the test, you create a situation where the teacher HAS to teach to the test. Any time that the teacher spends outside of test preparation is time lost and the potential test scores decrease. The entire curriculum becomes All Test All The Time.
This isn’t hypothetical. Many kids are experiencing this already. A friend of mine, Mitch (aka GayNYCDad), has had his elementary school child come home all school year with practice test questions and practice tests as homework. His entire course of study has been designed to prepare him to answer some multiple choice test questions correctly. Time spent actually learning is time lost because the only thing that is important is The Test.
And just as one final insult, the test is designed and run by Pearson Education. New York State pays Pearson $32 million over four years to administer the test. With millions of dollars (not to mention millions of children’s futures) at stake, you’d think there’d be some accountability, right? The tests are definitely open to inspection by educational professionals who make sure the questions are developmentally appropriate? Right?
Wrong.
The tests are super-secret. Teachers aren’t allowed to look at them at all. Parents are forbidden from seeing them. The tests are to be filled out by the students and then sent back to Pearson for grading. Once graded, the tests "vanish." I know of at least one instance where a child, overwhelmed by the stress of the situation, vomited on the test. When State Ed was contacted, they said to bag the puked upon test up and send it back to them. Under no circumstances were they to simply toss it in the trash!
As for the test questions, I know of four teachers (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) who peeked at one question. These four teachers (who all have advanced degrees) answered the question themselves and they each came up with different answers. Just to be clear, this was a multiple choice question and one teacher came up with A, another B, a third C, and the fourth answered D. If teachers have trouble answering these questions, what chance do our kids have?
It gets worse, though. Pearson has included passages from their books in the New York State tests. So districts who buy books from Pearson have an advantage over districts who don’t. Yes, Pearson is leveraging the tests to increase their own sales. Big business helping itself get bigger at our kids’ expense!
What about the politicians who are forcing this on everyone? Surely they can be reasoned with, right? After all, they are elected officials and so answer to the public. Unfortunately, New York Education Commissioner John King, Jr. has dug in his heels against all opposition In fact, King’s communications director, Tom Dunn, has tried to bully a principal who blogs on the side into taking down a critical blog post about the tests.
I’m not opposed to tests in general and better educational standards are a laudable goal. However, over-stressing and over-testing our kids is wrong. Taking teachers and confining them into ONLY what is on the test is wrong. And pouring millions of dollars to a big business with no accountability is wrong.
Awhile back, we were trying to decide what to do for JSL’s first birthday party with friends. Should we go to a bowling alley? Play mini-golf? Maybe head to Chuck-E-Cheese. Then, while buying some fabric at Jo-Ann Fabrics, we spoke with some lovely ladies doing a demonstration in the front of the store. They mentioned classes they were giving on cake decorating (as well as other crafts). Then, they mentioned that they did parties also.
Looking at the options, we spotted a pirate party. This piqued our interest as well as JSL’s. After all, JSL is a BIG fan of both pirates and crafting. The more we heard about it, the more we knew that this was the best kind of party for JSL and his friends.
We got there the day of the party and a Jo-Ann Fabrics employee named Alex was setting everything up with her assistant (also named Alex). Slowly but surely, kids began to arrive and the party began.
First, the kids got to paint treasure chests. JSL painted his gold. NHL went for silver and some other colors. Some kids went a very colorful route.
With the treasure chests painted and set aside to dry, it was time to make some treasure to go in the chests. After all, no self respecting pirate has an empty chest.
I knew that they were going to use modeling clay for this so I wasn’t surprised when they brought this out. What did surprise me was when they brought out glitter as well. The kids rolled the clay in the glitter, twisted the clay to mix the glitter in, and then shaped it. Pearls, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and gold coins began to take shape.
Eventually, all of the treasure was formed and set aside. (Pro tip that Alex told us when we started the party: Always write the kids’ names on the plates. Otherwise you’ll never be able to tell whose craft is whose.) The table was cleaned and all hands were washed. Now, it was time for the most fun craft of the day: cupcakes!
We had been instructed to bring unfrosted cupcakes and had plenty in our cupcake carrier. Alex, meanwhile, had just about everything a kid could want to top a cupcake with.
There was squeeze tube frosting in a rainbow of colors, glitter gel, and sprinkles of every shape, size, and color. Just being near the box was enough to give one a sugar rush. The kids got frosting in the colors they wanted, frequently changing to get new colors on their cupcakes. Glitter gel was applied on top and then sprinkles upon sprinkles were added until the cupcakes could take no more.
We lit a candle, sang happy birthday to JSL, and he blew out his candle. Then, the kids dug in. Those cupcakes which they lovingly spent time decorating were gone in seconds. And they enjoyed every moment of it. (Nothing makes a cupcake taste better than decorating it yourself.)
After this, we had a second round of treasure chest painting. The chests had dried so the kids were able to add some additional details to them.
Before we knew it, it was time for the kids to leave. JSL said goodbye to them all. They left with their treasure chests and treasures. They also left with a pirate bandana, rubber ducky, and snacks that we had brought with us.
JSL and his friends had a fantastic time and the staff at Jo-Ann Fabrics had a big hand in this. We left with NHL saying he wanted to have his birthday party there as well. Whatever we do, our thanks go out to the staff at our local Jo-Ann Fabrics for making JSL’s party so memorable.
Disclaimer: I wasn’t paid, compensated, or otherwise encouraged to write this blog post. We paid for JSL’s party and just wanted to share a wonderful experience we had.
When Twitter released Vine, I honestly didn’t see the point. I can see having short text conversations with people, but 6 second video? I just don’t see the point. It’s not like there aren’t video apps out there already. You could easily post a short video of yourself on your YouTube channel and link to it. I understand that Vine has it’s own "social network" where you can follow people and like their videos, but so does YouTube (again, without the 6 second limitation). In the end, though, I couldn’t even try it out because Twitter released the app for iOS only and we have Android phones.
When Vine came to Android, I decided to give it a try. After all, way back when, I turned my nose up at the idea of Twitter. Why should I converse with people I don’t know using only 140 characters or less? What good could possibly come of it? Well, once I tried it, I saw the use. (Present day me laughs at six-years-ago me.) Perhaps Vine was the same thing. Perhaps, once I used it, I’d see the breakthrough social need for this and my life would forever be altered.
So I shot a Vine video and….
I’m underwhelmed.
My expectations weren’t high, but Vine didn’t even really live up to this. Yes, it’s a short video shooting tool, but taking the video just seems clunky and the purpose behind it still feels unnecessary. The more I thought of it, the more I began to think that the best use for this would be replacing animated GIFs with short stop motion videos.
Still, this seemed tedious. There was no way of re-doing a shot if you messed it up. (For example, if your hand happened to be in the shot when the camera went off.) The only solution was to stop and redo the entire Vine video.
I began to wonder. Are there any mobile tools for making animated GIFs? That’s when I found GIFBoom for Android. (They have an iOS app too.) I decided to give it a go as well.
When I first loaded the app, I noticed that it has it’s own social network. It feels almost like an Instagram app, only instead of single photos you are creating animated GIFs. You can either set the camera to take a series of photos automatically or you can take them one at a time manually. (The later is my favored method.)
Once done, you can select which photos appear in the animation (excluding, for example, that shot that showed your hand), select a filter (black and white animated GIF anyone?), and then create the GIF. You then post it to GIFBoom’s network and it can tweet out a link for you. Your GIFBoom page also includes code to embed your GIF on your website.
Here’s a little tip too. You can use GIFBoom to create the animated GIF and then back out of posting it. Your GIF will still be on your phone. On Android phones, at least, you can browse the file structure to find the animation, and send it to another app or e-mail it to someone. For example, here’s this animated GIF loaded from my phone and uploaded to my website:
Bonus using this method of embedding versus Vine or the built-in GIFBoom embed? JavaScript is not required!
Do you use Vine? GIFBoom? If so, what do you think of them? If not, do you see a point in either?
Disclaimer Even Though I Don’t Need One: I wasn’t compensated by anyone for this post. Neither GIFBoom nor Vine nor any third party asked me to do it, paid me to do it, or contacted me in any way. All of the opinions above are my own.
In fact, there are so many exhibits and they are so much fun and so interactive, that the first time I went I didn’t take photos of many of them. That’s saying something because I take photos of EVERYTHING! Random flowers, food as I’m cooking it, the sky, food before I eat it, my kids… everything. And yet, I was having so much fun with my kids and their cousins the first time we went to MiSci, that I forgot to retreat behind the camera lens from time to time.
First up is Seeing. This was all about optical illusions and exploring how we see the world.
For example, this sculpture looks one way when viewed up close and another when viewed from afar:
There was another spot where you could toss a basketball into a net. Easy enough until you put a pair a lenses in front of your eyes. When you did this, it shifted your vision making you think that the net wasn’t where it actually was. The end result was that shots that you aimed right for the net wound up way off course. (NHL, thwarted the illusion, however, by all-too-quickly adapting his shots to compensate.)
Another station let you look into a viewing hole where you see a series of chairs. Looking in from the see-through side, however, reveals a different sight.
Other stations showed how eyes see objects (upside down – the brain flips them right-side up), how the apparent size of an object is altered its distance, and so much more.
Sadly, that exhibit has moved on. Thankfully, though, other exhibits will take its place. (Including Dinosaurs! in a month.)
Other exhibits at the museum showed off other properties of science, such as the wonders of magnetism, and technology (such as the evolution of the camera).
One of my favorites, though, was the planetarium show. We sat in the seats and the host began to talk about the show. Then, she began it by showing the Sun in the sky. (One of the few times when you can stare at the Sun and not hurt your eyes.) Unfortunately, you can’t see the stars during the day since the Sun’s light overwhelms them so much. Fortunately, a planetarium is a time machine of sorts and our host sped up time until the Sun set below the horizon. Little by little, the sky darkened and the stars began to come out. Eventually, we were able to make out some constellations.
The biggest impact, however, came when our host pointed out that the stars were still being overwhelmed. Not by the Sun, however, but by the lights from the city around us. Again, we were lucky and she was able to turn these off. Now, I’ve never had the fortune of seeing the stars from a location devoid of light pollution. When the city lights were turned off, suddenly thousands of stars appears overhead. There were so many of them, it felt like they were burning into my eyes. It was an amazing sight.
In the end, we have had two fantastic times at MiSci and can’t wait to go back again. Thanks to getting a membership, we can not only go back as many times as we like, but we can go to other museums like the Museum of Science in Boston, the Buffalo Museum of Science, or the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in New York City. It looks like we’re going to have a science museum filled summer and we couldn’t be happier!
On Saturday, B, the boys, and I joined somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 other people in a rally to protest the state of education in New York. There are many problems, but they all seem to stem from two words: Common Core.
First of all, remember that the teachers are being tested too. No, they’re not filling in Scantron forms. Instead, their students’ scores will reflect on their annual reviews. If their students do poorly, they do poorly. Never mind if their students include kids with dyslexia or other learning disabilities that make tests a poor method of measuring knowledge. Also, you should probably ignore that the kids, already stressed by the prospect of difficult tests, will find additional pressure on them once they realize that their beloved teachers will get punished if they do poorly. No pressure.
In fact, once you tie teacher reviews to the test, you create a situation where the teacher HAS to teach to the test. Any time that the teacher spends outside of test preparation is time lost and the potential test scores decrease. The entire curriculum becomes All Test All The Time.
