ZerostarOnline.com

A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.

The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.

The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.

“Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?” the judge asked them.

The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.

Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.

“My client is happy,” Webby said. “I think it’s going to help him.”

The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.

Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. “If they don’t pass, they’re going in for the 24 (months),” he said.

Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.

He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.

Source: Rob Leonard

Tom Chapin’s satirical song “Its Not On The Test” is worth a look. Even if you are a fan of No Child Left Behind this issues he raises need an answer.

I particularly like the jab at shout TV which reduces all discourse to name calling. Education reform is a deep and important topic and our current confrontational political culture isn’t serving us well in this - or many other - areas.
He has a web site with good links and more information at Its Not On the Test.
Yeah the video production values could have been better - but the music is great and the message is delivered in a fun way using the kids.

Source: Hurley Goodall

Crayon Physics from Kloonigames is a very cool serious game. I can see young kids in particular playing with this for hours. The designer said about one comment “Chris Baker wrote a great article about Crayon Physics Deluxe for Slate. He wrote that the game looks like it was designed by a third-grater. I take that as a compliment.”

If you don’t get video games this is an excellent video to watch. The kinds of puzzles kids are solving in Portal and World of Warcraft are very similar to the ones you see here. But with the interface stripped down to bare essentials you can get a sense of the brain work that is going on while players wrestle with the more complicated games.
If you want a sense of how engaging this kind of simple interface with some basic physics can be go play Linerider for a while. […]

Source: Hurley Goodall

Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.
While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader - on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.

Source: Hurley Goodall

Advertising isn’t working as well as it used to. In an age of information overload people are tuning out distractions as a matter of survival.
Here are two visuals to help make this point.
1. It is far more important to be found when someone is looking these days than to be visible when they are just scanning. To visualize this look at the graphic below

When someone is scanning (watching TV, reading a magazine, walking a tradeshow floor) it is relatively easy to fall into their visual field. When they are seeking (googling, reading blogs, using RSS) you have to be right on point for them to see you.
2. Don’t believe me - take this 20 second test.

As people adapt to the world of information overload they will scan less and seek more and advertising will become increasingly difficult to justify.
As usual Seth Godin sums it up nicely:
“Media rule […]

Source: Hurley Goodall

Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment.
Much of what Steve talks about has been part of a vision for education long before computers were going into schools. There is a clear link from Dewey, Piaget, Vigotsky, and even the constructivist critic Mayer to the ideas Hargadon lays out.
Both the technology and the culture that surrounds it have matured to the point where this vision can transform into the dominant paradigm. Quantitative and anecdotal evidence backs this assertion up.
He describes in some detail the following shifts that are taking place:

“From consuming to producing
From authority to transparency
From the expert to the facilitator
From the lecture to the hallway
From “access to information” to […]

Source: Hurley Goodall

See Opinion here.

Mason et. al. v. Home Depot et. al;  S07A1486

The issue is that the standard for experts in a criminal case is governed by a Georgia case called Harper.  The standard in civil cases is governed by Daubert, a federal case.

The court holds that it is not an equal protection violation because all criminal defendants are treated the same and all civil litigants are treated the same.

Source: Rob Leonard

What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind.
Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius Learning and former CEO of Houghton Mifflin addressed the real business of publishing – spreading ideas.
Reid Lyon (bio) the architect of Reading First and CEO of Synergistic Education Solutions tackled the question of context – how materials are used matters more than the materials themselves. Publishers need to think build this into their products and business models.
Hakan Satiroglu CEO of xPlana covered how new tools are changing the structure of what is offered and how traditional publishers are struggling with this new paradigm (see my post on this topic here).
Bobbie Kurshan CEO of Curriki talked […]

Source: Hurley Goodall