Recently the United States government unveiled their guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of “2009 H1N1 influenza”  in schools. Now that school is starting again in most countries in the Northern Hemisphere, there is a growing concern about what’s going to happen.

What does all this mean for people working in schools?

Basically, it’s a guideline for good hygiene, like hand washing. In addition to this, both students and staff members with flu-like illness (showing symptoms of flu) are requested to stay home at least 24 hours after fever symptoms have ended.

The government also urges schools to have plans ready for continuing the education of students who are at home, through phone calls, homework packets, Internet lessons and other approaches. They also suggest seting aside a room in school for people developing flu-like symptoms while they wait to go home,  and the usage of surgical masks for ill students or staff and those caring for them.

This all sounds reasonably simple, but takes a lot of coordination and resources from schools. It would require an “influenza action team” on all schools.

How is your school handling this? Are you doing anything special or is your school just waiting to see what happens? I’d love to hear from you, so please post your comments …

A big portion of president Obama’s stimulus bill for the US economy is reserved for education. So is this good news for everyone working in education? In the new plan, education gets about $150 billion in new spending, including $79 billion for state education aid and billions more for (much needed) school modernization.

I personally think this is a important signal that the government is sending out: it emphasizes the shift of the U.S. economy from “tangibles” to “intangibles”:

The tangible sector includes industries producing or distributing physical goods (e.g. construction, manufacturing, retailing, and transportation). These industries are in free-fall, with massive and repeated job cuts, because of a global oversupply of manufacturing capacity and weakness in demand for goods such as cars and electronics.

On the other hand the intangible sector, led by health care and education, is expanding, even in the current crisis. In a knowledge-based economy, there’s still demand for more education, there’s still demand for better health, and there’s still demand for new and better ideas.

Let’s hope this renewed focus on education is permanent though. I’m keen to hear your views on this subject!

A new pilot has just started in Canada (link) to supply 4 year old kindergarten students with laptops, to be used in the classroom. During the pilot, the computers will be used “in both reading circle and outside the building to explore nature”.

Huh, what is that I thought? Exploring nature with a laptop?

Anyway, the people behind it find it important that “from the beginning, children will experience the technology that will be a part of their lives”. Well, it’s debatable whether that is something desirable, there’s lots of technology that you don’t want your child to experience at age 4: Game consoles, certain websites etc.

I encourage the use of computers in classrooms as a helping tool, but for kindergarten students to walk around with laptops (think about the weight they have to carry around!) sounds to me like one step too far. Although the mentioned “enhancements in their intelligence, non-verbal skills and problem-solving” are undoubtedly substantial, it probably does not help their social and emotional development. Guidance by a skilled teacher in this experiment will be very important.

Nevertheless I’m curious how this pilot works out, and whether these children are really better off later in life. The people behind the idea claim that “The younger they’re exposed to it, the better”. Well, I guess only the future can tell.

I was looking for information of teaching jobs on the website of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and found some interesting statistics that I wanted to share with you:

In the USA, of all occupations in the elementary and secondary school category, there are 64,000 preschool teachers, 160,000 kindergarten teachers, 1.4 million elementary school teachers, 640,000 middle school teachers, 1 million secondary school teachers, and roughly 400,000 special education teachers.

Impressive numbers. However, I was more stunned when I noticed the number of management jobs (almost 300,000) and other occupations in this category: There is a grand total of 8.4 million people working in elementary and secondary schools, including financial managers, marketing managers, lawyers, school bus drivers, cooks, dishwashers, librarians etc. So, roughly only two thirds of all the people working in elementary and secondary schools are actually teachers.

Some other interesting statistics are that 80,9% of the elementary and middle school teachers are female, and of all preschool and kindergarten teachers even 97,3% (!) are female.  Where are all the men you wonder

Last week I posted a message about the utilization of new media on primary/elementary schools. I then thought of some reasons why the usage of internet and computers is still relatively small. After speaking with some teachers, I found out there are at least two other good reasons:

1) Money. Let’s face it, although governments all over the world claim that they want to invest more in education, most schools just don’t have the money for computers. Often schools rely on volunteers that can organise IT related matters for them.

2) Change can be hard. A lot of teachers have been doing their own ‘thing’ for years, repeating the same stuff every schoolyear. They feel comfortable with it, and also the lack of time prevents them from working with computers and discovering ‘new media’.

A great example of these reasons in real life is the usage of audio cassette tapes in classrooms. Yes, audio cassette tapes, they are still being used!  While most consumers threw out their cassette recorders somewhere in the late Eighties, schools and teachers are still relying on them heavily.

Is there no money for cd players, or is it that teachers don’t know how cd or mp3 players work? Didn’t anyone explain them what streaming media is? Or aren’t new teachers trained in these things on graduate schools and universities?

I really don’t know what the reason is. What I do know by now, is where the term oldschool comes from

I read a newspaper article today here in the Netherlands about the usage of new media in primary/elementary schools. Although the article mentioned a distinct rise in internet and computer use in general, it is currently only used in 26% of all schools. Granted, it has risen from 15% last year, but I still think it’s a low number.

When I look around on the internet, I see lots of sites with useful materials or even online software that is just sitting there waiting for teachers. So why aren’t we using it here in the Netherlands? Other sources tell me that the usage of new media in English speaking countries, especially in the US, is much higher. 

I think the main difference is scale: English is of course spoken all over the world, and as a result the number of interesting websites is always higher for the English language. Another reason is probably the non-existence of homeschooling here in my country. Everybody goes to school, it’s a small country and travel times to schools are always short. Therefore I can see a less need to create online learning opportunities.

I wonder how this situation is in other countries. I am keen to learn how the use of internet and computers is in your country!