| Secondary Division Best Practices | |
| From Doug Wagner, Director of Adult, Career and Technical Education, School District of Manatee County | Experts: FCAT overrated (Miami Herald © 12/12/2007) The state relies too much on a standardized test in judging the performance of public schools, students and teachers, testing experts said in a report. The University of Nebraska's Buros Center for Testing recommended that the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test be combined with other measures in the report, which was summarized for the State Board of Education at its meeting Florida school board to consider funding for industry-certification school.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/16/Southpinellas/Assignment_plan_bogs_.shtml Vocational Ed Ph D program |
| Free Tools | Florida Teachers and Parents |
Diane P Sarasota County November 18, 2007 |
1. Our county implemented a purchase with Promethean to install ActiveBoard in every teacher's classroom in our district. The impact this has provided to our students is phenominal. In addition, a district-wide professional development program has been put into place to assist teachers with becoming familiar and using the equipment as well as the peripherals that are available such as ActiveVotes and ActiveSlates. If anyone is planning to attend the FETC conference scheduled for late January, Mike Horan will be presenting a workshop to discuss the merits of this project. 2. Classroom student numbers is a real concern for our Business, Health, and Industrial teachers. When the legislators masterminded this budget initiative did they consider that our programs are based on individualized instruction and that we don't have 25-36 students doing the same thing at the same time. Each of the 24 students in my classroom are working at their own pace and if I require them to work on the same materials at the same time then advanced students become stiffled and challenged students become frustrated. Classroom numbers for project-based, individualized-learning environments should be maximized to 12-15 students for optimal success of all student capabilities. Has anyone done a study on these issues? |
| Gail Bruder-Werner Booker High School Digital Design Instructor Career & Technology Education Department gail_bruder-werner@sarasota.k12.fl.us |
1. Not sure exactly what you want me to share or who is ahead of the curve,
but I have started using Angel which is a district software that allows us to communicate with our students via e-mail and post articles, send them their grade, fill out a rubric and take a test that will automatically grade it for you. 2. Also I have in the works beginning an exchange with one of Sarasota's sister cities of which we have seven. My digital design class will begin collaboration with a high school in Treviso, Italy and a plan is in the works to create a video or Flash movie introducing them to our school and what our campus activities, academic, VPA, sports etc. are like. In return they will be sending us their video of their high school. My plan is to also have my Information Technology students introduce themselves through e-mail and begin to gather data about the students in Italy and input that into a database and create some graphs and charts around the similarities and differences between schools in each country. 3. We have also created a presentation of the students Font Creatures made from letters that were part of a Typography lesson, to be sent to the elementary schools in our district to share and have the students use there writing skills to identify and write a story about the animal. |
| Fran Tomarchio Viera High School tomarchiof@brevard.k12.fl.us |
Beginning in Miami Dade - lesson plan standards have been increasing. You have to list your Scans skills, your basic skills, your objectives and the list goes on. So here is my answer to all that. Lesson Plan template |