This idea is upsetting a lot of people. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and California State Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss want to release teacher scores on value-added assessments that evaluate their effectiveness as teachers. Duncan asks, "What's there to hide?" Personally, I think it is a great idea to publish teacher scores, with a few restrictions:If the public knows who the best teachers are, every kid that doesn't need the best teacher will have a parent on the phone trying to get that teacher. The kids who are behind grade level probably will not be that involved with the scheduling process, and will get dumped in the classes that will be awful for them. Let's not force it on the parents. Put it on a web site, but don't post it at the school. Make it known to parents that students will be placed in effective teacher's classes based on need. If a student really needs to catch up, they will get the best teachers. If a student is above grade level, or will learn the material regardless, they will get the teachers that need improvement. Teachers will improve or leave. They should be given time to improve and perfect their craft. If they are awful, and refuse to improve, we wouldn't want them in the schools anyway. They probably don't enjoy it much, either. "In the 6,000 teachers you studied, you have a minimum of 1,000 amazing teachers that are beating the odds every single day." So says Duncan. If you have 83% of your teachers that are at risk, you have a major problem on your hands. That is a lot of teachers that you will need to find to replace all the bad ones. That is a monumental task! So, instead, focus on the lowest 17%. They are as far away from helping students as the 1,000 amazing teachers are going above and beyond to help students. Create a way for the teachers who are in the middle 60% to improve themselves. Be it scheduling observation time, paying effective teachers more to train the others, whatever. Do something to provide support to make the top 17% grow into the top 80%. With great power comes great responsibility, and stress. Those effective teachers are going to feel immense amounts of stress and anxiety trying to live up to their potential. They will need support in maintaining their current level as well. This is certainly a complicated problem. There is no easy solution. From the article: Researchers have consistently found that within a school, teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in a child's ability to learn.If that is the case, that means that we need to focus more on teacher effectiveness. We need to know WAY before the state test whether or not the students are learning. Thoughts? Have a Good Life.

  Weekly Summary for Week of Mon, Jan 17th for Jethro.jones Daily Summary Budget Food Exercise Net +/- Weight (lbs) 1/17/11 500 0 0 0 -500 241.2 1/18/11 500 0 0 0 -500 241.2 1/19/11 500 0 0 0 -500 241.2 1/20/11 500 0 0 0 -500 241.2 1/21/11 500 0 0 0 -500 241.2 1/22/11 500 5,087 250 4,837 4,337 241.2 1/23/11 505 3,676 0 3,676 3,172 242 7,509 calories over budget for the week Gained 0.8 pounds this week Nutrient Summary % Calories Fat 393g 41.2%    Saturated Fat 124g Cholesterol 878mg Sodium 12,582mg Carbohydrates 928g 43.3%    Fiber 56g    Sugars 320g Protein 333g 15.5% Exercise Summary Calories Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred 30 Min 250 Total 250 Report generated by Lose It!. For more information or to sign up for your free Lose It! account, please visit http://www.loseit.com

When I was about 11, my dad told me I was Jethro-centric. I didn't know what that meant, so he told me to look up Heliocentric. That self-centeredness has grown into self-confidence. I don't believe there is anything that I cannot do. I believe that I can do anything I want to do. In my religion, we believe that we existed before we came to earth and that we will exist after this life as well. One main outcome of that belief is we believe that our minds are more powerful than our bodies. That is a long introduction the point of this post. I didn't cheat on this diet. Not once. Part of the reason why I didn't cheat is because I wanted to prove to myself that my mind is the one in control, not my body. It is especially important for me to note that for a long time, my body was in control. My appetites ruled me, and I gave in, repeatedly. There are many reasons why the weight gain happened, but they don't really, matter, because they all lead to the same thing: my body ruled my spirit and my mind. That is backward. My mind and spirit should always rule. Tomorrow morning I will have my new maintenance weight. I am excited for the weigh in. I was hoping it would 30 pounds less than when I started, but I am pretty sure it will be about 28 pounds. And that is a lot of weight to lose in just a few short weeks. I am really excited about this, and excited to keep my mind and spirit in control from now on.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

  Weekly Summary for Week of Mon, Feb 14th for Jethro Jones Daily Summary Budget Food Exercise Net +/- Weight (lbs) 2/14/11 512 508 0 508 -4 217.2 2/15/11 512 498 0 498 -14 217.2 2/16/11 504 538 0 538 34 216 2/17/11 496 521 0 521 25 214.8 2/18/11 496 564 0 564 68 214.8 2/19/11 489 511 0 511 22 213.8 2/20/11 484 513 0 513 29 213 159 calories over budget for the week Lost 4.8 pounds this week Nutrient Summary % Calories Fat 77g 17.9%    Saturated Fat 17g Cholesterol 826mg Sodium 4,554mg Carbohydrates 458g 46.9%    Fiber 93g    Sugars 220g Protein 344g 35.2% Exercise Summary Calories Total 0 Report generated by Lose It!. For more information or to sign up for your free Lose It! account, please visit http://www.loseit.com

I've got a free trial code for educator.com if you are interested. I am a member of Bzzagent.com, which is a site that gives you products to review. For the last couple years, I haven't been very engaged in it, but this educator.com offer caught my eyes.  For the last year or so, I have been trying to teach myself how to code, which has been difficult at best. I am not very good at teaching myself stuff. I need someone to direct me and guide me. I like to have someone talking to me. So, what educator.com does is allow me to watch actual professors giving lectures. I think this is better than iTunesU in that it doesn't just put a camera up in their lecture hall and call it good. They actually get the professors into a room with a touchscreen monitor and a pen. So, you have three views in the videos, as shown in the pic below.  There is the computer monitor, which is an annotated slideshow, and then there is a camera on the professor. Finally there is a navigation window that allows you to skip forward in the presentation to different parts.  Overall, I think this is a pretty good way to learn. In schools, it would be a good supplement if a student didn't get something. For a non-student student, it is a really great way to learn on your own. Allegedly, you can even make comments on the videos and have them answered by professors so that actual help is provided. I am not sure yet how that works in real life, but that is one of their plugs.  Here is the best part: A school can have this in their labs for free. It costs $35/month or $240/year for home use. I really like the idea that this is free for schools. It is actually a pretty good marketing strategy because kids will never have enough time to watch all the videos in all the courses at school, and if it helps them, it would be a good way to get some help at home, at a much lower cost than a personal tutor.  Courses are available in Math (from MathMagic to Basic Math all the way up to Calculus and AP Stats), Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Computer Science (HTML Training, CSS Intro, Java, JavaScript, Introduction to PHP, Wordpress Training). They also have many AP courses available. All the courses are focused on Science and Math.  So, if you want to give it a shot, follow these steps:  Go to http://www.educator.com and click on "Create Account" or "Subscribe" Make sure "Basic Plan" is selected. (Code Will Not Work Otherwise) Enter your account information. Disregard "Payment Type", you will not be asked to pay. Below the "Continue" button, check "Special Billing" and enter EDUCBMF30 Press "Continue" and you are done. <img src="http://img.bzzagent.com/image/educator.jpg?Type=activity&Activity=6241636359&Campaign=3072098672&Uid=103020&token=13223cc80ca092dff4c0a3f8832bfab1" alt=""/>

So, it looks like 214.6 is my stabilized weight. I was at 213.0 on Monday morning, and then by Wednesday, I was at 214.6, where I have stayed every day since. With my weight being 214.6, I have lost 27.0 pounds on this round of HCG. I would like to get down to 180, so I still have 34 more pounds to go. If I can do that, I will no longer fit my insurance company's definition of overweight. I didn't do any exercising this week because I wanted to stabilize my weight by watching my caloric intake. I have felt the best when taking 1300 calories. I haven't been hungry and I have felt like I have more energy when I keep the calories that low. I feel like I have gorged myself whenever I get close to 1800 or 2000. This week I hope to do some exercising and see if I can sneak off a couple more pounds before I start HCG again.

But, if you haven't checked it out yet, http://educator.com is pretty awesome. Code for a free month: EDUCBMF30. Glad that I got this trial from bzzagent.com.

So, I have wanted to use the precision editor in iMovie ever since it was introduced in '08. The only problem is that I never use 2 cameras to shoot the same thing. Well, finally, I found multiple views of the same event, and so I gave it a shot. Here it is: