Save Our Schools

With the California state budget continuing to be buffeted by a series of cascading crises, public schools in many districts are being forced to cancel summer school programs that are critical to prepare low-income and historically disadvantaged populations of students for college, retain them in the school system and get them back on track for graduation, or just provide a constructive way to spend time socially off of potentially mean streets. Given the prospects for canceled classes, Virtualpolitik friend Mark Marino has put out a call for participation in the Save Our Summer (SOS) Project 2009 as a stopgap measure to encourage teachers and students to share videos, websites, and archival sources of information that meet the objectives of state curricula that run the gamut from enrichment to remediation. Although Marino remains an advocate for live pedagogical experiences, he also notes the usefulness of Teacher Tube and scientific demonstrations for subjects like chemisty on the YouTube site itself. He's hoping that people will tag content for grade-appropriateness and subject matter on content standards or at least engage with the social dimension of online tools. I know that when my own son was in 6th grade, he found the Math Train site helpful.

Update: The project now has a website.