Performance Education . . . Daily Stuff

Performance Education recently completed a presentation of their new PE Unlimited program to staff of Albemarle County Schools, based in Charlottesville, VA including the executive Director of Division & School Improvement, the Principal of Jack Jouett MS, and several members of their social study curriculum development team. Presentations were made to staff at both the middle and high schools. The group was so impressed they signed a 2 year subscription program for the entire PE Unlimited product line, the Comprehensive Plan, for their 9 middle and high schools in the division.

Kathryn Baylor, Principal of Jack Jouett MS was emphatic in her praise.

“Your product is great! I’m just mad I didn’t know it was available last year. It would have saved me and my staff hours and hours of work. My teachers and my students will love this”. Backing up her strong opinion she went on to say “Frankly, if the school division doesn’t buy it, I will buy it for my own school – it’s that good”. That wasn’t necessary as Executive Director, Luvelle Brown heard similar comments from staff at the high school, and had no hesitation in going forward with signing up for a 2 year subscription.

George Shirey, CEO of PE was obviously delighted with the reaction to this new program. “We always knew we were offering a good product, as evidenced by the thousands of individual teachers that buy from us every year, but now we have a program specifically designed for schools and school divisions that can help make those products accessible to more and more of our social study teachers and students throughout the country. That’s exciting”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides for $100 billion for education and is designed to create a historic opportunity to stimulate the economy and improve standards of learning. But it can be a very confusing and complicated Act to understand and most important tap into for the benefit of you, your school and/or your school division. Funds have been appropriated for a wide variety of programs, some new and some existing.

$44 Billion of the funds have already been made available with a further $49 Billion coming later this year.

The majority of the $100 Billion funding from the ARRA falls into 4 categories, 3 of which are existing (Title 1, IDEA, and Pell & Works) and one, the State Stabilization Fund is a new program. The breakdown can be summarized as follows:

	Aprili ‘09	Later ‘09
State Stabilization Fund
Governer’s Fund	$32.5B	$16.1B*
Secretary Fund		$5.0B**
IDEA Parts B&C	$6.1B	$5.0B
Title 1 Part A	$5.0B	$5.0B
Title 1 School Improvement		$3.0B
Pell & Works		$17.3B
Other Programs	$0.6B	$2.6B
Total Funding	$44.0B	$54B

*State Funds allocated based on state populations to Governors. 81.8% of these funds are reserved for education, and 18.2% is reserved for the governor to use as he or she sees fit. The 81% or $37.5B for education will be allocated using existing funding formulas.

** The Secretary Fund has been established to support two new initiatives called “Race to the Top” and “What Works & Innovation”. These competitive grants will be awarded to States making most progress towards assurances, and made in Late Fall 2009 and Summer 2010.

We plan on keeping you posted on further developments regarding this huge and very complex program, and will aim to provide information that can assist you in finding ways to utilize these funds. In the meantime, visit www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/presentation/index.html for a good power point presentation on the key elements of the program, its objectives, and administrative process.

Please Note: Performance Education products are ideal for utilizing in most of the major categories of programs identified here, and meet the guidelines established to qualify for Title 1 grants as well as being extremely appropriate for IDEA Part B funding. Please contact us regards additional information on our products at resources@performance-education.com .

What’s happening in the world at a glance.

TimeSpace is an interactive map that allows you to navigate articles, photos, video and commentary from around the globe. Discover news hot-spots where coverage is clustered.

Use the timeline to illustrate peaks in coverage, and customize your news searches to a particular day or specific hour. (Many Washington Post stories appear at midnight; others are published throughout the day as news happens).

Maybe a good use for a daily current event discussion in your social studies classroom?

What other tools do you use in your classroom? (Use comments to discuss.)

Special thanks to jclerch for the tweet about this site.

I’m looking for some help here . . .

Metrics always brings a mixed response - on the one hand we should definitely know if we are effective in our methodologies BUT we don’t like being judged by a standardized set of questions that don’t take into account the unique nature of each situation.

We were recently asked to suggest some ways to better measure the impact our methodologies are having on students not just in terms of academics, but in true preparation for life beyond school.

If you were emperor of all things metrics - how would you measure success and failure.

Think outside the box on this one and let me know in your comments. I promise I’ll be grading on a curve :-).

Academics. I love the exchange of ideas. Unfortunately life and bills tend to get in the way! This morning, however, I was able to follow some twitter links to some academic sites (thanks for the tweets jclerch) when I came across a great little blog -> http://educatorblog.wordpress.com/. The exchange of ideas on at least one of the posts was very refreshing for me. Great job TeacherC, keep up the good work.

What sites do you turn to for inspiration and idea exchange? Please use the comments section to let me know.

Somalia is an international hotspot, not only with the pirates, but also a source of concern for terrorist ties to al-Qaeda.  Make sure to let your students know where it is located on a world map!

At the end of each round (beginning at the end of round 2), we will be choosing a winner of a single subject subscription at PE Unlimited, our 24/7 online access to our digital library of products.

Register Here. (Teachers and Administrators Only)

What is Performance Education Unlimited?
Performance Education Unlimited provides unlimited access to the complete library of Performance Education (PE) products. Thousands of social studies teachers and specialists have benefited by using Performance Education’s effective, student centered, easy to use workbooks. Our library includes the revolutionary Teacher Toolbook Series, our extremely popular Testbook Series, and our brand new Reading, Writing and Predicting the Past Series. Performance Education Unlimited makes all these resources available online, 24/7.

With annual subscriptions, teachers have unlimited access to our materials. Not only do they get materials from our current library, but all new titles and product types that are currently in the works.

Details here.

Round II Voting is halfway through - a few thoughts:

Moses vs. Hammurabi - Moses as expected is knocking this one out of the park.  Kinda tough to see Hammurabi go out so early, but when you meet a powerhouse like Moses, its kinda inevitable.

Socrates vs. Homer - Homer is asking lots of questions about what’s going wrong here.

Aristotle vs. Hippocrates - a bit of a shocker in my mind - while this one is still a bit close to call, I’m surprised by the lead that Aristotle has.

Julius Caesar vs. Napolean - as most would guess this one’s a virtual dead-heat.  This one will come down to the wire . . . encourage your friends and colleagues to vote.

Marco Polo vs. Mansa Musa - as the kids keep saying . . . Marco Polo has a game named after him. Kinda hard to compete with that.  In terms of impcat, I do kinda agree with this posters comment:

He was important because he was instrumental in establishing a relationship between the homeland of Islam and Africa. Driving the spread of Islam in Africa is far more important to history than Polo’s exploration. Just think of the relevance to the modern world! Help Mansa make a come back!

Elizabeth I vs. Lady Murasaki - again when you go up against a buzzsaw, you might get cut.  Sorry Lady M.

St. Thomas Aquinas vs. Dante - pretty close one here - Post a comment and make your case on this one.

Machiavelli vs. Shakespeare - Sorry Mac, but anyone who can make Elvis look like minced meat is gonna be tough to beat.

Genghis Khan vs. Magellan - Magellan is way behind, and as a huge fan of geography, this one is hard to accept.

Issac Newton vs. Peter the Great - Peter is falling fast.  (I know bad joke.)

Louis XIV vs. John Locke - what a great matchup - divinity given by God vs. inalienable rights of man.  Looks like the population is speaking .  .  . sorry Louis!

Stalin vs. Franklin D. Roosevelt - not much of a surprise that this one is still too close to call.  I wonder how much the voter’s geographic bias is influencing the slight lead held by FDR.

Hitler vs. Gandhi - this reminds me of that short movie made in the 80s, Bambi vs. Godzilla.  Even though it’s clear that Hitler is running away with this one, there ares some great comments in support of Gandhi.  Here’s a great one:

Hitler is dead and all of his ideas are discredited - fascism, the Holocaust, the Nazi Party.
Gandhi is dead, but his philosophy of nonviolence lives on . . .
Vote Gandhi!

Nasser vs. Nelson Mandella - No shocker here.  But make sure to let your students know that Nasser was incredibly influential to today’s world!

Mother Theresa vs. Mikhail Gorbachev - This one is good and close.  A great matchup that proves whether a world leader or humble servant, you can influence the world.

Ronald Reagan vs. Dalai Lama - Reagan is pulling ahead a bit.  Not too late for a resurgence on the side of Dalai Lama though.

Anyway, have fun vote and tell your friends to vote.  Use this page to let them know about the tourney.

selected comments:

While the traditional mid-March arguments arise over UNC vs. Duke or why UCLA will win it all this year, we hope that some debates of a more scholarly nature will occur. We want students, teachers and the general public to vote on the most influential people in world history. Q How does it work? A Each round you vote on the matchups. At the end of each round we will tabulate your votes and move the winners to the next round of voting until only one person remains.

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The field will start with 64 history makers including world political and cultural leaders, religious figures, scientists, explorers, inventors and authors. After five rounds of voting only one will stand and be crowned the most influential person in history.

While the tournament will certainly be entertaining and good for debate, it has been developed to serve a much greater purpose, to educate. Performance Education products and events are based on a fundamental finding of research and common sense: most people (youth in particular) learn better when they are actively engaged in a task.

Classroom discussions and the debates that ensue will get students thinking at the highest possible level. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy evaluation is the highest form of learning, and this tournament is all about evaluation.

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1. Download and print bracket here for you and/or your class.
2. Vote on the match ups - either as an individual or a class.
3. Comment on the matchups you feel particularly strongly about.
4. Let us know who we missed! See the Snubs page and vote there too!

March is Women’s History Month and Encyclopedia Britannica has a great article and bios on 300 women who changed the world.

For millennia, women have left their mark on the world, at times changing the course of history and at other times influencing small but significant spheres of life. Only in the past century, however, have concerted efforts been made to represent women’s contributions more fully in history books. Consequently, changes in status for many women in modern times—the right to own property, to vote, and to choose their own careers—may obscure the accomplishments made by women of earlier eras. In selecting 300 influential women, Encyclopædia Britannica has included both contemporary women who are changing today’s world and those whose contributions have endured through the ages.

Read the full article here.