Half-finished or half-baked?

Here are some thoughts that are running through my head as we head into the weekend. They’re either half-finished or half-baked. I’m not sure which…

Silence (or else)!

I found a sad Tom Turner post through Alice Mercer (thanks, Alice!). Here’s a blurb from the original story:

A Roman Catholic elementary school adopted new lunchroom rules this week requiring students to remain silent while eating. The move comes after three recent choking incidents in the cafeteria. No one was hurt, but the principal of St. Rose of Lima School explained in a letter to parents that if the lunchroom is loud, staff members cannot hear a child choking.

Does anyone else think the school could have handled this differently?

Not so flat yet

As George Siemens reminds us, the world isn’t so flat yet. Karl Fisch’s presentation, Did You Know?, highlights that China, India, and others are up-and-coming, but the reality is that their gross domestic product per capita is still way below that of other countries.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

The quest for readers and subscribers is as old as printing itself. Lifehacker recently profiled some suggestions for bloggers who wish to increase their number of RSS subscriptions. Of course Lifehacker’s suggestion is the best of all:

Of course, our favorite method here at Lifehacker is to provide awesome content (ahem).

Speaking of half-baked ideas?

• Pennsylvania governor targets school administrators

Just in case we take our 2.0 selves too seriously

• Still in beta!

Dewey (or don’t we?)

I’ll conclude with this wonderful quote from Chris Lehmann, which I was reminded about by a recent post from Carolyn Foote:

It's really not about the computers. School 2.0 is older than that. School 2.0 is the tradition of Dewey. School 2.0 is born out of the idea that active, engaged, constructivist learning will lead to active, engaged students and people.

Is the difference this time that the ‘progressive’ approaches that Dewey advocated are increasingly being recognized by corporations and others as having economic value, as being essential economic drivers?

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Tags:  technology+leadership, McLeod, Lehmann, Foote, Turner, Mercer, School+2.0, Dewey, Rendell, Siemens, Fisch, Did+You+Know, Lifehacker, RSS, blogging, administrators

Comments

[A Mercer]

1.

Lets just say that silence ban reminds me of a school cafeteria near me, lol.

I had this GREAT school psychologist introduce me to the idea of antecedent conditions. In a "hypothetical" cafeteria that is "too" noisy do you have too many children in one sitting? If the kids are packed in close quarters, and there are too many of them in a space that tends to echo, maybe you need to re-think the cattle car approach to lunch?

I think as adults sometimes we have a "tin" ear about the noise. We either don't hear the noise when it's getting out of hand, or we over-react to any sound (I'm at that stage now in my class - BAD Ms. Mercer).

[Tom Turner]

2.

I guess I should check out the referring pages more often. Otherwise I would have missed this. Readers of my blog will know that I've started a new job as a tech. specialist at an elementary school. So happens my office is located in the cafeteria. Between the shouting and the "CONSTANT" belching from the whistle the para is using to try and get the kids' attention, I'm not sure how they get any eating done.