Today I demonstrated the lathe to the sixth graders. There are six classes of sixth graders so we made a vase in each class. After we cut and sanded each vase, we drilled a hole and applied polyurethane. Above you can see the six vases we made today as demonstrations in each of the classes. Below is a slide show of pictures from class today.
I found your great videos on Teacher Tube. I really like the one titled "Using a Jig on a Band Saw. I was wondering how the Jig is set up. It shows the ease and precision of use, but does not show how the Jig was created or works. Could you send me more info on that?First of all thanks for the email asking about the circle cutting jig on the band saw. Here is a brief description of the jig and process with some photos. I will embed the schooltube video later.
boys remained “confused” as to whether or not there was track practice.
In 1902 J. L. Nichols & Co. published a book by Professor J. L. Nichols called The Busy Man's Friend or Guide to Success by Facts and Figures. Originally written in 1896, this book begins with a quote from Gibbon, the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one more important which he gives to himself.
Other useful information provided for a man in 1902 included:
How to find the size of a barrel.
How to find the number of common bricks in a wall.
How to calculate the weight of coal in a box.
How to figure the capacity of a wagon box.
How to measure ear corn in a crib.
How to measure hay in the mow or stack.
How to figure the advantage of an evener on a neck yoke for horses or oxen.This book also explains how to secure a signature from a person who cannot write:
In 1890 there were 4,777,698 mortgages in force in the United States,
amounting to $6,019,679,985. The annual interest charged on these is
$397,442,792.
In the March 4, 2009 article in Education Week concern for PISA testing and evaluation ability are presented because "questions asked on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys of students' beliefs and attitudes about science reflect an ideological bias, which undermines the test's credibility." I find this interesting that a education system that has repeated suppressed certain ideologies in the spirit of freedom while promoting other ideologies in the name of education is actually offended by the same thing when it is done on an international level. This article leads me to believe there may be a strand of integrity and a hope for an honest pursuit of fairness yet within our system.The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that focus on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. PISA also includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies such as learning strategies. PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of mandatory schooling. PISA is organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. Begun in 2000, PISA is administered every 3 years. Each administration includes assessments of all three subjects, but assesses one of the subjects in depth. The most recent administration was in 2006 and focused on science literacy. Results are now available.
PISA 2009 data collection will take place from September to November 2009 and will focus on reading literacy. The PISA 2009 National Report will be released in December 2010. The national contractors for PISA 2009 are Windwalker Corporation, Westat Inc. and Pearson.
Each year, on the day I introduce the band saw, I take the last few minutes of the class to demonstrate the band saw by cutting out some oak initials of a few of the students. We drill a hole in the top, tie a sting in it and call it "bling-bling". The only requirement is that they wear their new jewelry the rest of the day. By the end of the day the new fashion in the sixth grade pod is to have a piece of oak wood hanging from a string. The students will have the rest of the quarter to create their own wood projects on several of the machines. It is refreshing to see a kid with a cell phone and ipod in their pocket smile when you give them a piece of scrap wood on a string!
Because of this, when we take the safety test next week, any student who misses one question on the fill in the blank written test will fail the test and will repeat the entire written exam. They will take the test until they can score a 100%. Then during the operation of a machine there will always be a spotter watching them cut and holding a clip board to mark any violation of twelve basic safety rules. If there is a violation by the machine operator they will stop using the machine and retake a modified form of the written test.
Four elementary school books that I have from 1883-1904 belonged to my Grandmother and her family. My Grandmother was born in 1897 and would have used these books during her elementary years 1902-1909. The name and school written in calligraphy with an ink pen on the inside cover of The Modern Spelling Book (copyright 1883) is Ella Sonius, Prairie Queen School, Spencer , Iowa, Summit Township, District 4, Clay County. The four books are:This reader is intended as a basal reader for the sixth school year. The selections are made with due reference to the need of a wide range of ideas and a rapidly growing vocabulary to keep pace with the rapid developoment of the work in other subjects in this grade. The reading book in every grade should at once prepare the way for other work and add zest to it by the use of interesting related matter.I now quote a portion of a selection called "Character" by John Lubbock:
At twelve years of age the child is entering upon a definite period of noble impulses and exalted ideals. HIs school reader more than any other book stimulates these impulses and assists these ideals.
What is necessary for true success in life? But "one thing is needful. Money is not needful; power is not needful; cleverness is not needful; fame is not needful; liberty is not needful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character alone - a thoroughly cultivated will - is that which can truly save us." (quote by Blackie, a Scottish author)There are several things worthy of comment or at least reflection in the above quote concerning philosophy, education and contemporary history from 1903. There are more quotes and other things I want to draw attention to in these books and other books like them in the next few weeks.
Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it. We cannot all be poets or musicians, great artists or men of science, "but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, I am not formed from them by nature. Show those qualities, then, which are altogether in thy power, -sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to luxury, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity." (quote by Marcus Aurelius, a famous Roman emperor and philosopher; you may remember him as the old Roman emperior in the movie "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe)
Never do anything of which you will have cause to be ashamed. There is one good opinion which is of the greatest importance to you, namely, your own. "An easy conscience," says Seneca, "is a continual feast" . . .
. . . No doubt, having regard to the realities of existence, the ordinary forms of ambition seem quite beneath our notice, and indeed our greatest men, Shakespeare and Milton, Newton and Darwin, have owed nothing to the honors or titles which governments can give.
team and football teams this fall made a run for state championships. After Friday night's win in the girls' state finals this new school's sports record stands at a combined record of 98-6 since it began this last fall. The only two losses IKM-Manning's 2A girls' basketball team had this year were to Ballard, the 3A state champion (a one point loss), and Sioux City North, the 4A state champion. Simply put this is very impressive.If you want to be a success, first, find out what you are good at and then do it all the time."I think schools need to do this.
Here is one of the first teachers in our middle school to use a blog in the classroom for both 
instruction of students and interaction between students. The teacher, Eric Voelker (two time NCAA national wrestling champion for Iowa State University and Hall of Famer), is using this blog in his social studies class. He is also experimenting with video recording of students making comments and explaining their learning and playing the best back on the the "big screen." I can foresee an awards ceremony with Oscar awards for the best presentation, best supporting student, best research, and, of course, best online blog comments in this seventh grade social studies class. Mr. Voelker is on the point of the spear in technology at Dallas-Center Grimes!If everything I said to students, or for that matter, everything I said in any setting where there were cell phones to record with, I would be in trouble with a lot of people including . . . well, pretty much everybody . . . but, I am probably unique. I am sure most everyone else would have no reason to be concerned.Who wants to play this telephone game? Anyone? Anyone? Hello . . . aren't you going to say anything??
Imagine if kids would record parents at home? or, if kids would record other kids at the lunch table or on the school bus and then turn that recording in for administrative justice? How about recording half time in the locker room? My favorite would be a recording of a conversation in the teacher's lounge played back at parent/teacher conferences. How about recording school board members as they talked after the Monday night board meeting? We could play that on the local talk radio station. We will all be jobless, friendless.
Question: If there is no teacher to hear the student cuss is it still considered profanity if captured on a cell phone?
Question: What would happen if I could hear everything you said to my own son? How about if I could hear everything you said about my son??
Question: How about if I record our next conversation?
850,000 students ages 5-17 homeschooled in 1999Parents tell why they homeschool at:
1,500,000 students ages 5-17 homeschooled in 2007
(see report here. Get pdf here.)
When I was in fourth grade, still back in the 1960's, my mom let me sign up for an afternoon paper route to deliver the Mason City Globe Gazette. This is when my paper route education began. (You can see my dad's 1963 Chevy in the background of this photo. I remember the day we got it. I helped wash the old 1955 Chevy one last time before dad traded it in. Dad was a vocational agriculture teacher and taught shop in the 1950's, but in 1963 he became a school administrator.)
The author Arthur E. Levine (photo to left) describes our typical education system in this article by saying:It puts all students through a common process tied to the clock; children progress based upon the amount of time they spend being taught in a classroom, with all students required to master the same body of knowledge in the same period of time . . . We now know that all students learn at different rates; the same individual even learns different subjects at different rates. It would make more sense, therefore, to have an education system that focuses on what students learn, rather than what they are taught, and sets common standards for what they must learn, rather than common amounts of time for them to learn those things.First, I think our school system at DCG is implementing this idea in many different classes and with a variety of strategies. I still think as a whole our entire society needs to renew their concept of the effective educational model and begin to think in terms of learning and not just teaching. To evaluate the process on outcomes achieved instead of time spent.
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