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Scoop and one of his many fans.

Last January timesunion.com blogmaster Michael Huber expressed dismay at discovering a rival to Scoop, the Times Unions beloved newspaper mascot and paragon of the printed page.

While the Daily Gazettes Newsie, a pseudo-hipster foam imitation, (think Clone #4 in the film Multiplicity), has been around for years making appearances at community events, it is only recently that the print mascot reached out to newspaper fans on Facebook, which garnered Hubers attention and sent Scoop into a melancholy funk for several days.

The rival newspaper also referred to our printed friend as an old flyswatter and derided his appearance:

He’s got these deranged, crazy eyes; Ludwig Von Drake-style eyebrows; a tuft of red hair like Woody Woodpecker; and a strange smile that looks like he might have guzzled one too many shots of Maker’s Mark bourbon

Dismayed that others would fault his dashing looks, Scoop considered hiring a local seamstress for a nip and tuck procedure until New Visions students pointed out that Newsies photo shoot only received 3 likes from Facebook fans. Also, there are worse things than being called a flyswatter, for example being classified as litter box liner.

We also reminded Scoop that creatures with red hair are a rare species and known to be fiery, intense and passionate, necessary qualities for the kind of reporting that appears daily in the Times Union thanks to a staff that includes revered editors such as Mike Goodwin, Rob Brill, Hank Domin and Teresa Buckley, and writers such as Paul Grondahl, Jimmy Vielkind and Cathy Woodruff, and one of the finest investigative reporting teams in the country.

As for Scoops bug eyes, what better tools for seeking the truth and reporting it accurately, and his strange smile is a product of knowing that the Times Union consistently scoops the competition- who wouldnt smile?!

To celebrate Scoops special relationship with the New Visions class and to showcase his diverse talents as a rap star, dancer and print ambassador of truth delivered free of bias and in accordance with the SPJ code of ethics we asked him to collaborate on a music video, the results of which can be viewed below. So if you see Scoop at an upcoming event, be sure to shake his hand and congratulate him on his dashing looks and his fine dance moves.

This time next week I will be in Philadelphia for ISTE. I’m pretty excited about it. Some really great things going on there. Plus I get to see a lot of people face to face. many of these people I have met in person before but many of them I will be meeting face to face for the first time after interacting with them through this blog, through Twitter, and through email. The face to face meetings are the best! If you will be at ISTE I hope you will look me up either at the Microsoft booth or one of the sessions I am attending. I will be at a number of the SIGCT promoted events and several bigger Microsoft events. I’ll have a full “what is Microsoft doing at ISTE” with an emphasis on what I’m up to (hey it is my blog ) tomorrow but if you want a jump start visit the Microsoft at ISTE page now. And now for some more links.

Microsoft has opened up voting for the “People’s Choice Awards” of the worldwide Imagine Cup. Please take some time to see what these amazing students are doing and to vote for your favorite! Thanks!

Myra Deister, CS and math teacher and member of the CSTA Board of Directors, asks how to you set your Priorities for making sure everything gets done. She notes that teaching computer science takes more time than teaching math. Is that the same for everyone I wonder?

Challenge, discovery, insight, surprise: Rader & Grzeda AP Students accepted ‘missions’ in InterroBang that had an impact in the community and once completed, each ‘deed’ was given points correlating into the grading process.

In case you missed it, Microsoft released the beta of a supported software development kit for the Kinect Sensor device for use with Windows. (I wrote about it here) Earlier when the news that this SDK was first coming one of the demos what a drivable lounge chair that was controlled by hand motions and a Kinect. Last week those nice people at released information about how to do it yourself – Jellybean, the Kinect Drivable Lounge Chair Do you have a robotics or engineering program as well as a programming course? This may be the cross curriculum idea or at least the germ of a whole bunch of new ideas.

In computer history news, IBM turned 100 last week. Yes, the former Calculating Tabulating and Recording company has been around since long before computers.

Lastly, the Microsoft Feed web site (on twitter ) did an email interview with me and posted it at Meet Alfred Thompson. IT came out pretty well if I do say so myself.

There is a very strong likelihood that U.S. News will change the way it computes “at graduation” and “nine months after graduation” legal placement rates that will be used in the methodology for the upcoming 2013 edition of the Best Law Schools rankings, as a result of recent action taken by the American Bar Association.

The ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has taken a long-awaited first step by approving new standards to report law school placement data. These new standards should result in a significant improvement in both the quality and quantity of post-J.D. employment data. U.S. News had been among those urging the ABA to take action to improve the credibility of the important consumer information.

According to Art Gaudio, dean of the Western New England College School of Law:

opefully the new reporting requirements will be in place for the next version of the ABA Annual Questionnaire in October, 2011. If so, it will gather data regarding 2010 law school grads. However various issues must first be resolved before that will be certain to occur and those matters have not yet been resolved. If the new reporting system is established with the assistance of NALP , NALP will provide the individual law schools with data derived from their individual NALP surveys. The law schools will then provide the data to the ABA on the ABA Annual Questionnaire.”

The new reporting rules, which have been reported on extensively by Law School Transparency, will require schools to report jobs data on whether a new J.D. grad is employed in a job requiring bar passage, in a job for which a J.D. is preferred, in another professional job, in a nonprofessional job, or in a job of unknown type. For those that are not employed, the categories of possible responses are will be pursuing a graduate degree, unemployed not seeking, unemployed seeking, or status unknown. In addition, the schools will have to report if the jobs are full time or part time and long term or short term. Schools will also need to indicate the number of jobs that are funded by the law school or university. Jobs will be broken down further in law firms of various sizes, business and industry, government, public interest, judicial clerkships, academia, and employer type unknown.

If more detailed information on types of legal jobs and full-time and part-time employment status was available from law schools for new J.D. graduates, U.S. News would collect it, publish it, and—where applicable—use these more detailed job type calculations in the law school ranking methodology. If the new ABA rules are implemented, U.S. News will use our own law school statistical surveys in fall 2011 to collect and eventually publish the entire new richer and more detailed set of employment and jobs data from each law school for 2010 J.D. graduates. When we gather this richer data set, we will be able to make a more exact determination of how our ranking methodology will change.

This is one of our new families. We keep learning about them the 100 kids who will start at our new charter school this fall. 50 kids will be in second grade. 50 kids will enter K1 (which is, outside of Boston, often called pre-K).

The mission of our school is to prepare kids from low-income families for college, particularly those whose families do not speak English as a first language. We already know that data: more than 80% of our families do not speak English as their first tongue.

However, a separate matter is the classification of a student as an English Language Learner not only is their first language not English, but they are, under the law, not yet able to do ordinary classroom work in English.

Since 44 of our 50 students in our 2nd grade will be coming from 1st grade in various district elementary schools (the other 6 kids are probably from Catholic or other religious schools), theyve all either been classified as ELL (or not). The district just sent us the data (thank you!): 28 of the 44, or 64%, are classified as English Language Learners. It remains to be seen what that will be the ELL % of our K1 kids, too (the 4-year-olds).

Were also getting the special education information, called an IEP (Individual Education Plan), for a number of kids. The IEP has both data on the specific learning disability, and the plan in place (from the kids prior school) to give the student a good education.

You can view photos of many of the families here.

These pics were taken a few weeks ago at our orientation, by a fantastic photographer, Gretchen Ertl.

Were also learning about our staff. The team is almost fully assembled: just 1 more K1 teacher to find. The permanent staff will be (not counting the full-time tutors):

Principal
5 classroom teachers
1 special education teacher
1 literacy specialist
1 music and movement teacher
1 operations director
1 nurse
1 MATCH Corps director

Im really excited for August 29th (first day of school for the 2nd graders). I think Kate has put together an all-star team, and those kids are gonna have a marvelous first year.