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I recently ran some workshops to prepare students to be peer mentors and to mentor younger students with Kodu. The method I suggest is to have mentors show students some small steps and then let the students try. The latest version of Kodu has some really nice step by step lessons that students can do on their own or with a peer. After a lesson we encourage the students to try the same things on their own from where the lesson leaves off. For example adding a second character and having that character do something similar but slightly different from what was done in the lesson. I also encourage students to explore a little as well. They keep discovering things and sharing them with partners or others in the class. The general pattern of show a few things followed by experimentation with those things and repeat seems to work very well.

It can’t be all lecture/demo or students get bored. <

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Connecticut’s new education commissioner is proposing a reorganization of his agency, saying it is part of efforts to provide more support to struggling schools and reduce red tape for high-performing districts.

Stefan Pryor started as education commissioner last fall. He has said he wants to streamline the state Department of Education so it can work more closely with local districts and others on reforming Connecticut’s schools.

He is scheduled to present his new organizational plan to the state Board of Education on Wednesday and to ask for the appointment of a chief operating officer.

That person’s identity and details of the proposed reorganization were not released Tuesday.

Pryor has visited dozens of school districts and attended professional organizations’ meetings statewide for suggestions on how the department could be improved.

Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2012

Presented here are the top 10 issues most likely to affect public higher education across the 50 states in 2012, in the view of the state policy staff at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities . This briefing is informed by an environmental scan of the economic, political and policy landscape surrounding public higher education, as well as a review of recent state policy activities and trends. Some issues are perennial in nature, while others reflect attention to near-term circumstances.

The Miller Grove boys team will play its second nationally televised game of the season when it meets Neal F. Simeon High of Chicago on Saturday as part of the Cancer Research Classic in Wheeling, W.V.

The game, which begins at 8 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN2, is one of seven to be played over two days, beginning on Friday with Wheeling Central Catholic taking on Central Catholic of Pittsburgh.

Simeon (12-0), which is ranked No. 1 nationally by ESPN, is the two-time defending Illinois Class AAAA champion and has won four state titles in six seasons. Simeon is lead by Steve Taylor, a 6-foot-7 forward who has signed with Marquette, and Jabari Parker, a 6-8 junior forward who is rated by Scout and ESPN as the nation’s top underclassman.

Miller Grove, the three-time defending champion in Georgia’s Class AAAA, was ranked No. 2 in the nation after a 6-0 start but has fallen to No. 34 after four consecutive losses to out-of-state competition. The Wolverines lost to Oak Hill Academy (Va.) 82-78 on Dec. 15 in a game televised by ESPN. Mil

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Last week an email passed though my inbox that said something like “my district is buying the latest shiny new computing gadget. What software should I get to teach computer science on it?” OK now I am a software guy and biased towards software but this question seems all wrong to me. I’ve always believed that first you figure out what software you need to solve your problem (or teach your course) and then you find the operating system and hardware that software runs on. As I Tweeted last night “Asking what software should I buy for my computer is like asking what kind of car should I buy for my tires.”

What far too many people, and unfortunately far too many people spending scarce educational technology dollars, are doing is finding some hardware and in effect saying “this is magic – let’s find some problems that it solves!” Now 38 years of using computers has taught me that once you have a computer and some software you will find all sorts of solutions to all sorts of problems many of which you didn’t know you had. But that is not the

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