The EDGE: Okla. pulls out of online exams over tech challenges

Online book collection open to Ore. students over the summer | High-school sports go high-tech | Ill. seeks solution to funding high-school writing test

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How are schools killing the love of reading? In Readicide Kelly Gallagher outlines four damaging instructional practices, and offers suggestions on how teachers can cultivate lifelong readers. Click here to read Chapter 1: The Elephant in the Room.

July 5, 2013

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Head of the Class

Okla. pulls out of online exams over tech challenges
Oklahoma has opted out of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers' online assessments being launched in the 2015-16 academic year after a survey of schools showed the majority did not have the high-speed Internet connections required to administer the tests. The problem was perhaps greatest in rural schools, where officials said it would be an expensive undertaking to provide high-speed Internet connections. Education Week/Digital Education blog (7/3)

eLearning

Online book collection open to Ore. students over the summer
The Oregon Department of Education has formed a partnership with myON, an online library collection that provides students and others with free access to thousands of digital books, through Sept. 15. About 70% of the online collection contains nonfiction works. The Oregonian (Portland) (7/4)

Systems Management

High-school sports go high-tech
In Illinois, a growing number of high-school sports fans are finding scores, statistics and other information using smartphone applications, such as Scorbitz, GameChanger and MaxPreps. "I hope (this new technology) doesn't keep people away from our games, but now they can kind of keep tabs on multiple games that are going on at the same time," Brimfield athletics director Jim Blane said. Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.) (7/3)

Managing Budgets

Ill. seeks solution to funding high-school writing test
Illinois has reinstated its high-school writing test for juniors, but state lawmakers did not provide the $2.5 million it costs to administer the exams in the state's budget. Officials say they now are working to find a way to pay for the exams, and one official said the costs will not fall to school districts. St. Louis Post-Dispatch/The Associated Press (7/5)

Schools and Social Media

Pew: Reddit usage is on par with Tumblr, skews young and male
Reddit is gaining ground as way for online users to discover content, with a Pew survey finding 6% of all U.S. adult tapping into the service. That's about the same level of usage as Tumblr -- and far behind Facebook's 67%. Reddit is particularly popular with men under 30, with 15% penetration in that bracket. TechCrunch (7/3)

Last Byte

One educator's lessons learned about leadership

In this blog post, David Penberg, an urban and international educational leader, shares leadership principles he has learned throughout his career. Among them are to embrace multilingualism, be accessible and know that schools are part of communities. He also writes that "leaders have to become impresarios of collaboration and partnering" and "[l]eadership resides in the quality of your humanity." SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Education (7/3)