For-profit Educate, Inc., goes private (Sylvan Learning, Hooked-on-Phonics)

June 15, 2007

Educate, Inc., the parent company of Sylvan Learning Centers, traded for the last time on the NASDAQ exchange yesterday.

No, the company didn’t go out of business. It was taken private by its management, after being a public company for three years. From the Baltimore Sun morning e-mail:

Educate becomes a private company

Educate Inc. has completed its transition into a private company, ending its three-year run on public markets.

Best known for its Sylvan tutoring centers, the Baltimore company, which was purchased in a management-led buyout, traded for the last time on the Nasdaq yesterday.

The investor group that purchased the company is led by chief executive officer R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric, other executives and affiliates of Sterling Capital Partners and Citigroup Private Equity. They paid $8 a share for the company in the deal valued at $535 million.

The company announced this week that more than 75 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which came as the firm has struggled with poor product sales.

Internal reorganization was swift.  The company’s website carried this note this morning:

On June 13, 2007, through a merger transaction, Edge Acquisition, LLC became the owner of Educate, Inc. In a related series of simultaneous transactions, the companies which were part of Educate, Inc. have been split into the following independent companies:

  • Educate Services, which includes Sylvan Learning, Catapult Learning, and Schulerhilfe;
  • Hooked on Phonics, Inc., which includes Hooked on Phonics, Reading Rainbow, and GPN;
  • Educate Online, Inc., which includes Catapult Online and eSylvan;
  • Progressus, Inc.; and
  • Educate Corporate Centers Holdings, Inc., which is a franchisee of various Sylvan Learning and owner of Sylvan Learning Centers.

The companies are now operating independently to better serve students, families and schools across the country. To learn more about the merger and related transactions, click here.

Making a profit delivering education is rare.  Milton Friedman notwithstanding, free market rules do not apply to educational enterprises in the same way they do to other services.  This is one more example, or set of examples, that should give pause to any rational person considering making public schools “compete” for money to improve education for any child, especially any group of children.  Sylvan Learning Centers are considered to be the top of the heap in their niche; Hooked-on-Phonics is a cliché success story.  And they “struggle with poor product sales.”

I hope the company finds the education answers, the magic bullets, and can retail them at affordable prices.

The answer, by the way, probably is not 42.

1 Comment | Brain learning, Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Education success, Free market economics, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Time capsule shaped like a ’57 Plymouth Belvedere? You’re all wet!

June 14, 2007

Alas!  Initial word out of Tulsa is not encouraging.  The buried 1957 Plymouth Belvedere was in a concrete vault, and sealed in plastic, to protect it from the effects of being buried.  It may not have been protected well enough — when the cover was pulled off the vault yesterday, the vault had several feet of water.

The story is told well, here, on the Route 66 News blog.

Photos do not encourage me.  The residue on the sides of the vault is a rust color.  That could be from the red soil (does Tulsa have red soil?) — or it could be from rust from the car.

Here’s hoping the car was protected from the water . . .

Official opening is set for tomorrow, June 15, 2007.

1 Comment | Archaeology, Capturing history, Cold War, Current History, Teaching, Technology, Transportation, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the Moment: Marjorie Rawlings

June 12, 2007

Marjorie Rawlings' Royal Typewriter, FCIT

 

Typewriter used by Marjorie Rawlings to write books such as South Moon Under, The Yearling, and The Sojourner.

Photo credit: The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida; click here for larger picture at FCIT site

1 Comment | Books, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Stranger maps: Flights of fancy

June 12, 2007

How could you use these maps in your classroom?

Aaron Kobin maps documentation

Image and film from Aaron Koblin Design|Media Arts, UCLA; “Flightpatterns”

Remember the old World Book maps of states that featured oil drilling derricks and cows in Texas, and shocks of wheat in Kansas? This is just that kind of map, updated for commerce connected with air travel, showing commerce density and direction hour by hour.

I’m thinking, one quiz would be to name the sites of most action. Another would be to calculate how many people are in the air at any given time (notice the count of the number of airplanes; you’ll have to assume about 100 people per aircraft, or more if you can find figures; notice there are no fewer than 4,000 aircraft in the air at any time over the U.S. — ponder that figure for a while, considering an average cost of more than $10 million per aircraft, the miles covered, and compare it to the maps showing the voyages of European explorers to America . . .)

What other maps can your kids make? Water flows of rivers? Train commerce? Highway commerce? Food transportation?

Geography should be an awfully fun topic to teach, and even more fun topic to learn, no?

Check out Koblin’s other work — see the crystals dissolve, science teachers?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Stranger Fruit, via Pharyngula.

3 Comments | Business, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Maps, Pedagogy, Science, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Another nail in the coffin for geology and geography texts, in print

June 11, 2007

The Physical Environment offers a text for geophysical classes, on-line. It sorta looks like it’s free. In any case, check it out.

Then look at the supporting blog.

Is there any inherent reason you can’t do that in your classroom? You could start by using this “book,” The Physical Environment.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Geography - Physical, Natural history, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Explore ancient Rome, from your computer, in 3-D

June 11, 2007

Can you figure out some way to make this work in a classroom?

Science Daily reports that a team at UCLA working with a lot of others completed an 11-year project to map out Rome as it appeared when it was the commercial and political capital of the western world, three centuries into the first millennium:

“Rome Reborn 1.0″ shows almost the entire city within the 13-mile-long Aurelian Walls as it appeared in A.D. 320. At that time Rome was the multicultural capital of the western world and had reached the peak of its development with an estimated population of one million.

“Rome Reborn 1.0” is a true 3D model that runs in real time. Users can navigate through the model with complete freedom, moving up, down, left and right at will. They can enter important public buildings such as the Roman Senate House, the Colosseum, or the Temple of Venus and Rome, the ancient city’s largest place of worship.

As new discoveries are made, “Rome Reborn 1.0” can be easily updated to reflect the latest knowledge about the ancient city. In future releases, the “Rome Reborn” project will include other phases in the evolution of the city from the late Bronze Age in the 10th century B.C. to the Gothic Wars in the 6th century A.D. Video clips and still images of “Rome Reborn 1.0” can be viewed at http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu.

Now we need to wonder: Will it be available for classroom use?

More below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, History video sources, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Internet search tips from Google, on posters

June 6, 2007

Have you tried out Google for Educators?

Google is a powerful search tool that is way under-utilized by most of us. Working with students, I constantly find they have difficulty using Google or any other search engine to cut out worthless material and focus on specific items they need for their research.

Google for Educators has several posters offering tips on searching to help out.  Click here for .pdf version of Book Search, from GoogleBook Search poster, from Google for Educators

You can download the posters as .pdf files in a format suited to 8.5 X 11 inch pages, or for 17 X 22 inch pages. The larger size can be printed on the color “blueprint” printers your school’s drafting classes have (This is a good opportunity to go make friends with the drafting instructor — you can use those machines for great maps, too.).  If your school lacks such printers, you’ll find commercial copy centers will reproduce them (we have Kinko’s here) — though my experience is it can sometimes be cheaper to have them treated as photos and processed at a local photo center (Ritz/Wolf’s/Inkley’s, etc.)

I particularly like the “Better Searches, Better Results” poster.

The Texas teacher evaluation forms encourage evaluation on stuff hanging on the walls fo the classroom — if you lack stuff to hang, especially stuff that helps students in times of need, Google offers several posters.  Make the most of it.

[Has anyone else noticed that, as important as visual displays are supposed to be, very few schools make arrangements for easy display of materials?]

Leave a Comment » | Libraries, Maps, On-line education, On-line learning, Plagiarism, Public libraries, Student projects, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Jack Kerouac

June 6, 2007

Jack Kerouac's typewriter, in Lowell, MA - Beat Museum on Wheels

Jack Kerouac’s typewriter, on display in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kerouac attended Lowell High School, and Lowell hosts an annual festival to Kerouac. Photo from the on-line photos of the Beat Museum on Wheels (image downloaded and linked on June 6, 2007)

Kerouac appears in almost all U.S. history texts for high schools, and is to cover the post-World War II poetry mentioned in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Poet and author Jack Kerouac was the “King of the Beats.” The Beats were a group of poets and authors who gave rise and verse to the “Beat Generation.” The word “beat” is short for “beatitude.” Not only do most high school kids struggle with this character from U.S. history — in what should be a very fun section — many high school teachers have only vague understanding of the whole Beat movement. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Books, Lesson plans, Literature, Music, Poetry, Teaching, Technology, TEKS | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the Moment: Legal clip art for the classroom

June 5, 2007

Royal Typewriter, from legal clip art

Visit Clipart ETC for a great collection of clipart for students and teachers.

There you go: Legal clip art, properly attributed (though not necessarily properly footnoted — that’s another topic). How can you get more licensed clip art? See below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Business Ethics, Classroom technology, Education, Ethics, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Law, Leadership, Libraries, Maps, On-line education, Plagiarism, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Playing with maps

May 30, 2007

Okay, geography teachers — you’ve got a whole summer to figure out how to make geography fun and the most rewarding class your kids will take next year.

By then, Delta and Dawn the whales will be out of the Sacramento River (heck, they’re probably under the Golden Gate as I write this), so this map from the Sacramento Bee won’t be anything of great interest.  I found it via Google Maps Mania, though — and that site promises to provide a barrage of wonderful and bizarre maps.  Surely there will be other maps.  How about this post about street views of major cities?  If you have a live internet connection and a projector, you can show this stuff in real time.

Or, if you’re studying global warming, you can use this map to show what disappears if the ocean rises 1 meter, or 14 meters (from the post, “50 Things You Can Do With Google Maps“) Especially if your city is near the ocean, you can have your kids print these maps out and write a story about what it’s like to watch the ocean take back the land they grew up with.  (I wish the map would allow one to drop the level of the ocean, too — a lot more what ifs, and a lot more opportunities to discuss things like the migration of humans to America 37,000 years ago . . .)

I really liked this one:  What’s on the other side of the world?  In my childhood, more than once we set out to dig a hole to China.  Of course, had we gone straight through the Earth, we’d probably have found the Indian Ocean.   It’s a silly application — just the sort of thing that gets a class talking about and playing with maps, looking at the globe, and making the associations that qualify as “critical thinking” at test time.

If you can’t make a warmup, discussion or project out of the materials you find at that site, you need a Margarita (if you’re in Texas; perhaps a beer if you’re in Ontario, Canada).

Go have fun.

1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Lesson plans, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Girls and technology: Girl Scouts on the ‘net

May 26, 2007

Here, try this brain teaser.

Girl Scouts of America can be found on the web; some of the stuff at this “Go Tech” site could be useful in the classroom. The design appears to encourage girls to pursue the use of technology, and to open them up to possibilities for careers where women are badly needed, but too seldom go. That becomes clear with this .pdf, 14-page guide for parents, It’s Her Future: Encourage a Girl in Math, Science and Technology.

I wish more organizations would put up sites for kids to use to learn. I’d love to see some interactive sites with great depth on several topics: Geography map skills, navigation, European explorers in the 15th through 20th centuries, market fluctuations for commodities and securities (for economics), Native Americans from 1500 through the 21st century, westward expansion of European colonists in America, time lines of history, great battles, etc., etc. etc.

We are missing the boat when it comes to using computers as tools for learning. Like unicorns and centaurs standing on the dock as Noah sailed away, education as a whole institution and educators individually are missing the boat (with a few notable exceptions — pitifully few).

Where is the Boy Scout site with games and material for the boys?

Leave a Comment » | Boy Scouts of America, Brain development, Brain learning, Girl Scouts, Pedagogy, Science, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fire on the Cutty Sark, to Mary Tyler Moore

May 23, 2007

Everything is connected.

Unaware that the Cutty Sark still existed, the news of the fire on the most famous of the clipper ships caught me by surprise.

Fire on the Cutty Sark

Our U.S. history texts these days mention the clippers, but little more. This wonderful chunk of history, showing great invention in the capture of wind power, and great romance of the sea, falls by the wayside.

Were a teacher so inclined, she might introduce some of that romance and admiration of invention with a bit more than two minutes spent on clipper ships.

For starters, what does “cutty sark” mean? Antiquarian’s Attic provides links to the news of the fire and enough background to make any teacher sound like an aficianado in just a few minutes. “Cutty sark” means a short shift, a very short skirt or dress — it’s from a poem, “Tam O’Shanter” by Robert Burns.

Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.

Hey, who knew there was a poem that gave the name to the hat favored by U.S. Sen. Sam Hayakawa, and the hat which played such a prominent role in the opening sequence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?

Tam O'Shanter in opening sequence of Mary Tyler Moore showConnections can get a bit out of hand, no?

I digress. Back to Cutty Sark.

Progress in transportation, particularly in speed, makes a solid unit of study in 8th and 11th grade history in Texas, fitting neatly in the advances in technology and how such advances push history along. Particularly with the defense of the America‘s Cup this year putting a spotlight on speed sailing and sailing history, there should be a lot of supplemental material to provide good lesson plan hooks to make a day’s diversion into clipper ships well worth the time.

Perhaps your class would like to contribute to the restoration of the Cutty Sark? Remember it was pennies from U.S. school kids that saved Old Ironsides, after Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., wrote a poem in tribute to her. See also the Ballad of Mad Jack.

Did you hear how Mad Jack saved “Old Ironsides” too,
From the scrapheap of flagships too old to renew,
At sixty-five years he inspected each shroud,
And promised the Navy he’d make her stand proud.
He collected the finest ship-riggers around,
From Boston, New Bedford, and Old Portsmouth Town,
He rigged her and jigged her and made her stand tall,
Then he sailed her around the world once and for all.

  • Ballad of Mad Jack by Steve Romanoff, performed by Schooner Fare, 1981

Leave a Comment » | Brain learning, History, History museums, Technology, Transportation, Travel, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The Bathtub is famous!

May 23, 2007

One Blog a Day features Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub today.

One Blog a Day logoOne Blog a Day probably qualifies as a sort of internet navel gazing — each day it highlights one blog of some interest. Generally it just points the way, but on a couple of occasions it has generated controversies, or at least discussions, in the comments (see the 726-comment entanglement on the original posting of Pharyngula’s feature).

Where else do you see history, exotic travel, biology and cream puffs clumped together like that?  Eclecticism has its place, and One Blog a Day appears to be it.

Tip of the old scrub brush and thanks to One Blog a Day.

1 Comment | Technology, Technology in the classroom, Travel, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Philip K. Dick

May 21, 2007

Philip K. Dick's typewriter and favorite mug, his "workstation." Image via GavinRothery.com

Philip K. Dick’s typewriter and favorite mug, his “workstation.” Image via GavinRothery.com

Philip K. Dick's typewriter and favorite mug
Philip K. Dick’s typewriter and favorite mug; photo copyright by Philip K. Dick Trust.

Also see:  International Herald-Tribune, “Philip K. Dick:  A Pulp Sci-Fi Writer Finally Wins Respect,” May 9, 2007:

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Books, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Where are your student blogs?

May 19, 2007

While you’re wondering about how to get your podcast going, have given much attention to getting your students blogging?  Student blogging is a great classroom tool, to generate interest, and to help gauge progress.  Here’s one from fifth graders, on science:  Steve Spangler.

Let me also mention this site, The Living Classroom, which shows how blogging can be integrated into a great program for very young students — kindergarten, first grade, etc.

3 Comments | Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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