Time is running out to register for our free webinar on Education 3.0.  American School Board Journal is partnering with Cisco for a free webinar on how to move your school district into the next generation. Led by Jim Lengel, a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, the session will feature a seven-step process on how to assess where your district is now and how to get where you need to go. The webinar will take place on Thursday at 2 p.m. EST. Register here.

Kathleen Vail,  Managing Editor

This past weekend was one for the record books for us in Washington, D.C. — a snow storm socked us with more than 20 inches of snow. Many of us are from colder areas (Pittsburgh, for me), but we’ve been here so long that we’ve acclimated to snow-less winters.

Schools and offices are closed all over the Washington, D.C., metro area and beyond. While we’ve been trying to come up with names for the big storm (Snowpocolypse, Snowmaggaden, and Snowtorious B.I.G.), yet another storm is fixing to dump yet another 10 to 20 inches on us.

For the snowbound, this is a perfect time to catch up on reading — and ASBJ.com offers plenty of useful and thought-provoking articles to keep you occupied as the snow piles up. Read what schools can and can’t learn from business in our February issue. Also, find out how administrators and school leaders are coping with the stress of the down economy.

While you’re in an information-gathering mode, register for a free webinar on how to move your district into the next generation. ASBJ is partnering with Cisco on this webinar, which will be at 2 p.m. ET on Feb. 25 and will feature a seven-step process on how to assess where you are now and how to get where you need to go.  Go here to register.

Social networking? Then follow us on Twitter for updates, insights, and other items for school leaders and anyone interested in education.  Are you on Facebook? Become a fan of ASBJ here.

Interested in federal education policy and legislation? Read our coverage of NSBA’s Leadershiop and Federal Relations Network conferences at School Board News Today.

Happy reading — Spring will be here, soon.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

What’s the toughest thing about being a leader? According to New York City schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, it’s knowing “when to put your foot on the brake, and when to put it on the gas.”

“You keep it on the brake, it will be a safe ride,” Klein says “You’re going nowhere, but it will be  a safe ride.” Put it on the gas “and you might go over the hill.”

Klein isn’t talking Driver’s Ed here; he’s looking at what makes a dynamic school superintendent. In this short video interview with Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, he boasts about the changes he’s made in the nation’s largest school system, discusses school leadership in general, and comes to the defense of fellow pedal-to-the-metal reformer, Michelle Rhee of the District of Columbia Public Schools.

My favorite line from the interview concerns Rhee’s often brusque management style. “Systems don’t change ’cause you charm them,” Klein says.

Is Detroit getting its very own “rubber room?” Don’t cheer. This would be a shame, says the Detroit News story, which is on the Eduwonk blog. “Rubber room” is the derisive term given to that place where New York City has put unproductive teachers whose union contracts make them almost impossible to fire.  According to the News, Detroit’s latest teacher agreement may set up the district for the same thing. 

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As a publishing arm of the National School Boards Association, most of our coverage, naturally, centers around K-12 education. But learning doesn’t and shouldn’t stop once kids graduate from high school. But just like their K-12 collegues, higher education officials are having to respond and adapt to changes in the market and workplace.

Today, for instance, I am at the University of Maryland, College Park, participating for the third year in a row, in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s recruitment fair. We’ve plucked a number of our interns from this distinguished J-school, but I wonder how has the college adapted to the changes that technology has brought to the field of journalism?

“We’re constantly looking and relooking at our curriculum,” says Chris Harvey, a UM professor, who teaches online journalism courses and is the college’s online bureau director. Harvey says the J-school overhauled their curriculum two years ago and is in midst of revamping their course offerings again, to reflect the dominance of Web 2.0 and social media tools.

Last year, for instance, more than 600 magazines closed up shop and venerable newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor, ceased its print edition.
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On occasion, ASBJ has advised school board members to learn more about how research can be used to better understand education issues—and also warned them how research can muddy the waters if used incorrectly.

The editors of ASBJ have had cause to heed their own words lately.

Working on an article on school choice for the November issue, senior editor Naomi Dillon came across a U.S. Department of Education study that concluded, in her words, that “students enrolled in online courses perform at consistently higher levels when compared to traditional classroom settings.”

She also noted a study indicating students at the Florida Virtual School “earned better grades, scored higher on state tests, and outperformed their traditional classroom counterparts on AP courses, too.”

All true enough. But what was the other side of the story? What of studies that found no significant difference in student achievement between online and traditional classroom learning.

Other questions arose. Did the Education Department study determine whether working online was the cause of improved student achievement—or did higher scores simply reflect that more high-achieving students have online opportunities than less-successful students?

And if Florida Virtual School students earn better grades, is that because students who sign up for online courses are more naturally self-motivated? What about students who regularly skip school and never bother with homework? Are they likely to enroll in online classes? Does their absence skew the comparison between online and traditional schools?

Rather than distract readers with a litany of research findings, we simply noted the cited research wasn’t the final word and went on with the main point of the story.
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The 30th annual National Educational Computing Conference wraps up today in Washington D.C.  And while I can’t confirm this, I’m pretty confident it’s one of the largest, if not the largest, ed tech shows out there.

Software, networking solutions, professional development, web-based products. There may not be a lot of money in public education (correction: there is no money in public education) there is a lot of money in the companies that cater to them.

As I roamed the exhibit floor, a feat that took two separate occassions and in hindsight probably a pair of good walking shoes, I was overwhelmed by how many products are out there, claiming to make the business of teaching, easier, faster, more fun, more rewarding, fill-in-the blank.

And fill out a check. Forgive me for being a little jaded, I’m a journalist by trade, after all.

While I’m sure, there are technologies that actually can help schools save time, save money and improve their performance, you can’t get away from the fact that it takes an investment. Yes, in money, but more importantly in staff training and implementation. A truth that was reinforced a number of times during the conference.

During one session, Ted Sakshaug, the technology coordinator at a small rural school district in New York, was asked whether his greatest challenges on the job were technical or user-related.

“When I started 10 years ago it was mostly equipment problems,” Sakshaug told the audience. “Now, 90 percent of the time, the problem is between the keyboard and the chair.”

Technology aside, or in front, or (let’s be honest) everywhere around us, still takes humans to make it work, to make it effective.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

U.S. students are not doing as badly as perceived, but could improve

Maryland district touts guide to academic prosperity, college readiness

NYC assistant principal dies of swine flu, more schools close

In digital age, interest in traditional yearbooks wanes

Sharpton, Gingrich host rally on 55^th anniversary of Brown decision

Legacy enrollments offered in two top L.A.-area school districts

Deepening budget crisis further threatens California schools

A couple weeks ago, our facility manager sent an email to all staff members, imploring anyone who had suggestions on how to reduce building costs to send it his way. Like all organizations and companies nationwide, finding opportunities to streamline operations and reduce costs has become of utmost importance.

Our building manager had already implemented several cost-cutting measures, his most notable and visual change being the installation of motion sensor lights, which not only saved us money but reduced our energy consumption.

Environmental consciousness, as a movement, has ebbed and flowed over the years. But it seems to have picked up steam lately, thanks to not only  a new administration but, ironically, a poor economy.

The recession is forcing everyone to be innovative in how they use materials, time, and energy;  propelling the green movement (as it is as often called) into a viable and lucrative approach to preserving budgets, while preserving nature.

April’s edition of ASBJ features a package of stories on this emerging trend, including a look at how environmentally-friendly practices have altered construction, curriculum, and behaviors.

Indeed, in my piece about green technology, I interviewed a number of school districts in various stages of implementation, and all of them agreed that changing behaviors was the hardest and most important part of employing any new technology. 

So check out our spread on the green movement and how you could implement it in your schools.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

The MacArthur Foundation just released a new study on teens and their online habits.

Billed as the most extensive examination of Internet and new media usage by U.S. teenagers, “Living and Learning with New Media” was conducted over three years by more than two dozen researchers who interviewed and observed more than 800 youth and their families.
Their findings: Kids are learning valuable technical and social skills that aren’t always understood or appreciated by adults.

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” says Mizuko Ito, the study’s lead researcher. “But their participation is giving them technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

Hear Ito talk more about what she and other researchers discovered:

Then check out American School Board Journal’s current cover story, “Protecting Students Online,” which explores how educators can keep students safe while still embracing and integrating the tools of the 21st century.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

As usual, I amassed a mountain of information for my latest ASBJ cover story, “Protecting Students Online” now available at ASBJ.com.

As the title suggests, ensuring students are productive, learning, and most importantly safe when they go online is more complicated than even I had originally thought. Of course, news reports have made cyberbullying and sexual predators well-known threats (though recent studies have refuted the prevalence of online stranger, saying it is overblown by the media.)

Rather it was the other, lesser-known hazards (at least to me) that were surprising. Who knew there was an entire cyber-subculture that promoting, or at least promulgating, eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia? Or that gang members had taken to the Internet to recruit and brag about their exploits, an activity that even has its own moniker: net banging.

It makes sense when you think about it, though. Just about anything you can find in the real world has its virtual counterpoint. So what’s an educator or a parent to do in this risk-laden world? Some, as you’ll discover, rely on filters, blocking questionable or even unfamiliar material. That’s only a temporary solution, however, says Sophie Reid, a clinical psychologist and research fellow at the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

“When a child comes to us and says I want to go rock climbing, you don’t say it’s too dangerous or I’ll do it for you,” says Reid who was one of the panelists at an online safety conference last spring. “Instead you go to a reputable establishment, put them on rope we know won’t break, stand at the bottom, attach the other end of the rope to us and let them go up; if they fall, we’ve taken up the slack.”

Reid says educators and parents need to take the same approach when addressing online youth safety.

“We need to engage young people in their space, we need to be a reliable and helpful presence on the Internet because that’s where they’ve gone,” she says.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor