Assignments

All students will start today writing in their blog. The assignment is on the blogmeister and below. I encourage you to go back and edit some of your entries today.

Web 3: We are going to progress to a more advanced type of animation. Do this globe animation. I suggest watching the entire tutorial first THEN going back and doing the work. I put a map you can use in the UDrive. If you watch this and think it is too advanced see me and we will find another tutorial for you.

Web 2: Complete project 3 editing. Analyze other students' work. Clean up any files, check for errors, etc...

Web 1: Continue Project 3 work.

There is an interesting article in the NYTimes. A teacher in New Jersey is assigning homework to his students and their parents. The parents need to log-in occasionally (once per week or so) to comment on the topics in class. Research is clear that meaningful parental involvement in school is very important for student success. This article seems to show that the teacher is providing thoughtful and productive assignments. I am certain that if teachers, parents, and students learn together it is a far more productive environment.

Shouldn't our expectations be:

• Students learn something new.
• Parents learn something new.
• Teachers learn something new.
• Everyone shares and collaborates.

If only the student is learning something new I think it is much less fun, productive, effective, or efficient. Modeling life-long learning is probably the most important thing we can do in a world that will be changing drastically. Remember, we are training you for jobs that don't even exist yet, to solve problems we don't even know about yet (for example, the internet industry is HUGE; but didn't exist ten years ago).

A parent in this article says "I'm too busy, and I'm done with school! I graduated.". Lets accept as a truism that successful parents and student are way too busy. I agree. I also obviously agree that any "assignment" must be truly collaborative and meaningful for all.

But, shouldn't parents be very involved in classroom work? Is this type of parental involvement more meaningful than helping with fundraisers or other activities? What do you think?