Financial Literacy and Professional Development

A recent column by Michelle Singletary, a personal finance columnist at the Washington Post, caught my eye. "We are Flunking Personal Finance" looks at a recent study by the University of Wisconsin at Madison entitled Teachers' Background & Capacity to Teach Personal Finance. The study indicates that less than 20% of K12 teachers feel they were “very competent” in the six areas of financial literacy focused on in the study. Those areas included:

• Income and careers
• Planning and money management
• Credit and debt
• Financial responsibility and decision making
• Saving and investing Risk management and insurance

From the column:

This study reinforces the need to incorporate personal money management topics into educational opportunities for teachers, whether in undergraduate or graduate curricula for students studying to become teachers, or as postgraduate or in-service courses or workshops," says Ted Beck, president and chief executive of NEFE. "We have an opportunity to dramatically affect the quality of K-12 financial education by providing teachers with the subject matter expertise they need throughout their careers."

Increasingly, states are pushing economic education. The number of states that require students to take a personal finance course, or instruction as part of an economics class, increased to 13 in 2009 from seven in 2007, according to the Council for Economic Education. Although states are setting up financial education guidelines, an overwhelming majority of teachers who participated in the NEFE survey said they didn't feel qualified to offer instruction at the level of the standard set by their states, the researchers said.

Recent economic events have made it clear that financial literacy is vital to both the global economy and as a factor for personal success. How can these important life-lessons be incorporated into the classroom without professional development for the teachers who are expected to help the students?

Teaching the public to look ahead

Anyone who has attempted to pass a public funding referendum for education knows how difficult it can be to convince John and Jane Q. Public of the merits of certain types of teaching. We're facing a revolution in teaching methodology, largely due to emerging communications and collaboration tools. But it's a tough sell.

An article posted last month on the Twin Cities Pioneer Press website has generated over 150 comments, the majority of which are critical and even hostile toward those teaching with iPods. The story takes place at Somerset Elementary, where math, spelling and other topics are taught interactively using the devices:

For fourth-grader Gabe Rivera, running vocabulary drills and solving mathematical problems on his classroom iPod Touch is a fun way to learn, in part because it's "something that is more newer than paper."

Acer's School Library Technology Makeover Contest

Via eSchool News:

Acer and Intel are accepting nominations for Acer’s School Library Technology Makeover Contest, which will award 10 new Acer Aspire Timeline notebook computers, valued at nearly $10,000, and two all-in-one desktop computers to a deserving school library.

https://usspringpromo.acer.com/Campaign/SchoolLibraryMakeover/index.htm?LS=Intel

Bring Back National (or International) Thrift Week?

National Thrift Week had a 50-year run in our history before being dispensed with in the 1960s. It began on Jan. 17, 1916—the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, the “American Apostle of Thrift”—and soon spread to more than 300 communities. Everyone from the YMCA to the Jewish Welfare Board to the National Education Association sponsored the event. Indeed, educators, partnering with financial institutions and businesses, played a key role in promoting thrift during the week.

David Lapp, in a commentary for Education Week, proposes that we revive this product of the very early 20th century because of its relevance to our difficult current economic times. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Economic prosperity doesn't guarantee the future, and certain values that used to help protect us from fiscal disaster seem to have been lost, especially in the young.

But how could anyone become so excited about a mundane idea like thrift? Doesn’t thrift mean pinching pennies? Thrift leaders of that era were quick to point out that thrift is not synonymous with miserliness. They believed it was just the opposite. After all, they pointed out, the root of the word “thrift” is “thrive.” How is the thrifty person the thriving person?

Some good news in a bad economy: Stimulus aided teachers, laborers

MSNBC.com:

But based on preliminary information obtained by The Associated Press from a handful of states, teachers appear to have benefited most from early spending. That’s because the stimulus sent billions of dollars to help stabilize state budgets, sparing what officials said would have teacher layoffs.

In California, the stimulus was credited with saving or creating 62,000 jobs in public schools and state universities. Utah reported saving about 2,600 teaching jobs. In both states, education jobs represented about two-thirds of the total stimulus job number. Missouri reported more than 8,500 school jobs, Minnesota more than 5,900. In Michigan, where officials said 19,500 jobs have been saved or created, three out of four were in education.

Read more

Textbooks being replaced by digital

The New York Times reports that traditional textbooks are on the way out in some schools, replaced by much less expensive digital forms that are likely much more current as well.

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

“Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, La. “They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html

eSchool News: Schools understaffed for IT support and integration

Schools are struggling not just to maintain the technology they have in the classroom, but to train instructors how to use and implement it.

Given that most school IT departments already are working in reactive mode most of the time, "that's a recipe for disaster," said Betsy Graham, K-12 IT marketing manager for SchoolDude.

But "technician" wasn't even the most popular response when we asked where school leaders could use more IT help.

Topping the list was instructional technologist, which was cited by 85 percent of respondents. And that speaks to a key area where IT staffing shortfalls really hurt schools: If keeping technology systems up and running is a challenge, helping teachers use the technology to improve their instruction is an even taller hurdle.

Only 28 percent of respondents said they have enough IT staff to integrate technology into their classrooms effectively.

Click here to read more.

Atomic Learning provides flexible, on-demand training and tech integration for teachers, students, and administrators. We can be an invaluable part of your school's IT department, providing substantial cost savings and freeing your IT staff to focus on keeping hardware and software systems humming.