The SAFE System

Teacher Absenteeism puts students at a loss – USA Today, February 12, 2013

admin — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:45:50 +0000

New research suggests that teacher absenteeism is becoming problematic in U.S. public schools, as about one in three teachers miss more than 10 days of school each year. The nation’s improving economic picture may also worsen absenteeism as teachers’ fears ease that they’ll lose their job over taking too many sick days, researchers say.

First-ever figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, compiled in 2012, also show that in a few states, nearly half of teachers miss more than 10 days in a typical 180-day school year.

Among them:

Rhode Island: 50.2%
Hawaii: 49.6%
Arkansas: 48.5%
New Mexico: 47.5%
Michigan: 45.6%
Schools serving larger proportions of African-American and Latino students are “disproportionately exposed to teacher absence,” notes researcher Raegen Miller, who studied the federal survey data for the Washington-based Center for American Progress, progressive think tank.

Miller noted that providing substitutes for all of those absent teachers costs schools at least $4 billion a year — about 1% of schools’ budgets. Absenteeism also lowers student achievement: A 2007 study by Duke University researchers estimated that for every 10 teacher absences, math achievement dropped by the same degree as if a school had replaced an experienced teacher with a novice one.

Cincinnati School Shooting La Salle High School Student Shoots Self Inside Classroom, Authorities Say – Huffington Post, 4-29-2013

admin — Tue, 07 May 2013 22:09:36 +0000

Authorities in Ohio responded to reports that a student pulled a gun and shot himself inside a classroom Monday morning, 10TV reports.

Administrators placed La Salle High School in Cincinnati on lockdown and all students were escorted to the gymnasium following the incident, according to WKRC. There is currently no active threat.

A student at an all-male parochial high school pulled out a gun in a classroom Monday morning and shot himself in an apparent suicide attempt, police said.

The youth was taken to a hospital, and there appeared to be no threat to other students at La Salle High School, a private school west of Cincinnati that was immediately put on lockdown as a precaution, police said.

At around 8 a.m., “a student produced a gun inside one of the classrooms and shot himself, and we’re dealing with that now,” Green Township Police Chief Bart West told reporters. School officials said the shooting was during the first class period of the day.

West said the student apparently was trying to kill himself, but he had no other information on why he fired the shot. He said authorities weren’t aware of any threats made concerning the school or any other students. Authorities said all other students were safe.
The Hamilton County sheriff’s office said that the student was rushed to a hospital with a self-inflicted wound, according to the Associated Press.

Bill Gates on Education: We Can Make Massive Strides – Fast Company, April 15, 2013

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:59:13 +0000

Pop quiz: Is Bill Gates a) the savior of American public education or b) a cloistered billionaire who should stick to something simple like eradicating polio? Both views have proponents. There’s Malcolm Gladwell’s hero’s tale in his book Outliers about the young Gates spending “10,000 hours” in computer labs honing the skills that would spawn one of the world’s most important technology companies. And there’s the counterpart: the standardized-test obsessive, the avatar of school privatization, the sworn enemy of teachers’ unions. “We’ve gone far down the track of Bill Gates deciding how our children are going to be treated and educated,” says Leonie Haimson, a parent-activist with the group Class Size Matters. “Parental rights are going to be meaningless because the richest and most powerful man in America is going to decide what is best for us.”

Both notions are caricatures. When Fast Company sat down with Gates recently for an exclusive conversation, a more nuanced, portrait emerges. Gates is endearingly wonky–during a keynote speech at the South by Southwest conference, in March, he expressed his big goal for education in graph form–but his passion softens his technocratic impulses. Reserved at the start of our interview, he quickly warms up, bouncing one foot crossed over his knee and cracking a slight smile when he gets in a zinger.

Updated New Details on Bill Gates’s $5 Billion Plan to Film, Measure Every Teacher – Fast Company, April 15, 2013

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:46:10 +0000

Actors do it. Professional athletes do it. Now Bill Gates wants the country to spend $5 billion to overhaul the evaluation system for every teacher in every classroom in every district, including filming them in action.

The new system would include videotaped lessons, classroom observations by trained observers, student satisfaction surveys, and value-added calculations based on test scores.

Among all his foundation’s educational initiatives for things like smaller schools and new technology, Gates has increasingly zeroed in on effective teaching as the key lever to improving education, as he discusses in an exclusive interview in Fast Company this month.

But how do you know effective teaching when you see it? Judging teachers by their students’ test scores alone is crude and incomplete. In a talk he gave for a TED special on PBS to be aired May 7 (filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on April 4), Gates discussed the plan to measure teachers, its estimated $5 billion price tag, and the pilot program he funded–the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET)–conducted with 3,000 teachers in seven districts. They reported three years of findings in January on a teaching evaluation system that combines test scores, student evaluations, and classroom assessments, where teachers are graded by impartial observers.

Miami-Dade School Board offers glimpse at high-tech future – 04_08_2013

admin — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:02:44 +0000

Not a textbook or dry-erase board in sight, freshman agri-science teacher Surey Rios floated around pods of students at TERRA Environmental Research Institute on Monday, guiding them in a lesson on energy as a crowd watched.

Jessica Bustillos created an interactive poster on her tablet depicting how energy is both used and wasted at her Kendall high school. Joshua Garcia projected the costs and benefits of renewable energy onto a Smart Board 800. Around them, classmates used their fingers to operate a Smart Table, iPads to view a video on creating potable water, and a Steelcase media:scape to share thoughts on managing India’s growth.

In Miami-Dade, call this class of interactive technology and new-school teaching methods the class of the (near) future.

“I keep calling it the classroom of the future,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told a crowd of onlookers. “But really it’s the classroom of now.”

Today, that is true for some Miami-Dade classrooms, though not most. But that’s going to change now that the district has some $100 million to spend on technology as part of a $1.2 billion voter-approved project to renovate, rebuild, and upgrade school campuses.

EduCam360 rolling privacy feature V2

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:42:46 +0000

Download Video

Southern Nevada schools try out high-tech safety system

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:41:52 +0000

LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3) — Imagine being able to keep an eye on classrooms from a distance.

It’s already happening in southern Nevada. But will classroom cameras make schools safer?

A high-tech safety system that costs about as much as a computer alerts authorities as soon as an emergency happens. It was first brought to the Las Vegas valley because of a unique need.

The Nye County School District is more than 18,000 square miles, and campuses are hours away apart.

Nye County School District Superintendent Dale Norton has to cover an area of more than 18,000 square miles. What used to mean a great deal of travel moved into the digital age in 2011.

With the Audio Enhancement Safe System – which involves video, audio and security -– officials can go online and check into the classroom to make sure thing everything is OK in real time. Or in the case of an emergency, make the call for help.

In Nye County, there is no school Police Department. Some schools, such as Duckwater, are not around other buildings.

“That little school sits on a highway that’s traveled by who knows who,” Norton said, “and we have a teacher and an aide, and the next location is a mile and half down the road.”

Currently, this alert system is only available at one Clark County school: Schofield Middle School. It started using it in September.

The difference in Clark County is that Principal A.J. Adams and Clark County School District Police receive the alert at the same time, and everyone understands that the alert means the ultimate threat.

“This is not a system to activate if there’s a shoving match, a management issue,” Adams said. “This is if there’s an active shooter or someone on campus.”

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Classroom Security via VIEWPath – December 12, 2012

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:38:53 +0000

When we first met Jeff Anderson years ago, we were extremely impressed by the instructional value of the microphone his company, Audio Enhancement, designed for teachers to help enhance their speech in a classroom. But when he showed us the silent panic button functionality included on the teardrop lanyard mic, our jaws dropped.

A teacher in a classroom who sees or feels a safety threat can easily and silently register a distress call to the school’s main office or security personnel while simultaneously transmitting and recording live video from digital cameras installed in the classroom. We are very proud that Audio Enhancement’s VIEWPath system runs on SAFARI Montage (Pathways SM, Selective Video Streaming and CreationStation). VIEWPath was featured yesterday on CNN’s Headline News in a Georgia High School.
-Andrew Schlessinger
CEO & Co-founder, SAFARI Montage

via http://www.safarimontagehdnetwork.com/node/3058

NBCNews – 14 year old boy shot at Atlanta middle school, officials say 1-31-2013

admin — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:36:38 +0000

A 14-year-old boy was shot and a teacher was injured at a middle school in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon but an armed officer was able to disarm the suspect minutes after the incident, officials said. Police said the shooting took place shortly before 2 p.m. when a student fired several rounds in the courtyard of Price Middle School, a newer school southeast of downtown Atlanta.

Live video from NBC station WXIA-TV showed police, emergency vehicles and an ambulance swarming the area as crowd of anxious parents flooded toward the school.
Police said the wounded boy was taken “alert, conscious and breathing” to the hospital. WXIA, citing school district and fire department officials, reported that he was shot in back of the neck. The wound was not considered life threatening. The teacher suffered cuts and bruises during the panic of the incident, police said.

SAFE System Highlighted on KSL

admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:57:28 +0000

Tom Dobson, Senior Vice President of Audio Enhancement, was interviewed by Scott and Maria on KSL Newsradio about the SAFE System. To listen to the audio clip,download it here.