- No one should fault the Charleston County School District for spending thousands for on-line books for students to read, as reported by the P&C in Monday's edition. After all, since the money comes from capital funds, it can't be used for the operating budget, where it is really needed.
- The issue is, are teachers being given the training to use these programs effectively? Connie Diopierala, CCSD's district coordinator for media services, says such training is in the works, but won't those funds come straight out of the operating budget?
- Meanwhile, students enjoy reading books on-line. As one says, "'It's like they give sound effects, and they read the books for us.'"
- Before you explode, consider that third graders are being interviewed. What's not clear yet is if such experiences raise reading ability. At present no measures exist.
- In fact, North Charleston Elementary's media specialist says that she "hopes teachers receive the training they need so they can make the most of the expanded collection."
- And that it doesn't function merely as a babysitter while the teacher attends to other pressing needs.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Reading On-line in CCSD: Not a Kindle
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1 comment:
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this description of capital vs operating funds. E-books are capital while training teachers how to use them is operations? This makes sense to accountants but how long will it take for CCSD to turn this into a real boondoggle? Sort of like having $50 million to build Wando's middle college while not having one cent to fund the program. BTW, does the $183 million Mt. Pleasant is having to spend on widening US-17 have anything to do with CCSD's decision to place Wando at the edge of nowhere? The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing at CCSD. That's true for most of them, but someone must know what they are doing. How else did those few get the rest of us to give them almost limitless capital spending?
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