In Florida district, academic competitions splinter as school choice expands

For their project, Gussie Lorenzo-Luaces and three classmates at Deer Park Elementary in Tampa, Fla., wanted to find out what kind of paper allows a paper airplane to fly the farthest. After five trial runs, they determined copy paper, with its smooth surface and stable weight, worked best.

Gussie Lorenzo-Luaces, a third-grader at Deer Park Elementary School in Tampa, was one of more than 2,000 students participating in the 33rd annual Hillsborough Regional STEM Fair last week.
The boys’ exhibit was among more than 1,800 presented at last week’s 33rd annual Hillsborough Regional STEM Fair, which featured 2,000 students from district schools, charter and private schools, and home schools.
That diversity was a big plus for Gussie’s mom, Susie, who was curious where other students in the county registered on the science track.

“I just feel they don’t need separation,’’ she said. “I like seeing them all together.’’
Increasingly, though, Hillsborough students are not all together in academic competitions.
In the past year, district officials have begun excluding charter schools from some districtwide contests, including Battle of the Books, a reading competition, and the Math Bowl and Math League for elementary and middle school students.

The reasons for the splintering are not clear. But everything from cost, to fear of competition, to a desire for charter schools to be more independent, has been suggested. At the least, the move points to potential pitfalls as school choice options mushroom across the landscape – even in a district with a choice-friendly reputation like Hillsborough.

“They’re all our children,” said Lillia Stroud of King’s Kids Academy of Health Science, a new charter in Tampa. Stroud said she can relate to the district’s concerns, but “separation at any level is disheartening.”
It’s also not clear whether similar trends are happening in other Florida districts. Robert Haag with the Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools said he had not heard any such stories in his home county of Broward or beyond. Dwight Bernard, who oversees 120 charters for Miami-Dade Public Schools, said the trend in his district is, if anything, “moving toward more inclusiveness.”

Meanwhile, Mike Kooi, who heads the school choice office for the Florida Department of Education, said he has heard similar stories across the state – though none had risen to the level of a complaint to his office.
According to Hillsborough district officials, increasing costs to staff the events and the growing number of charters – 43 now, with seven more expected to open by fall – make it difficult to continue to invite them.
As participation in such events has grown, district expenses have climbed considerably, said Jenna Hodgens, who oversees charter schools for the district. At the same time, Hillsborough lost a chunk of state money it receives to monitor charters, she said. A change in law two years ago reduced the administrative fee for “high-performing charters” from 5 percent to 2 percent.

“That does change the landscape a lot,’’ Hodgens said. When it comes to charter schools, she said, “we always try to go above and beyond. But I think the bigger we have grown, the more sense it made to let them do for themselves.’’

Despite multiple requests, the district did not provide redefinED with district costs for the events, or estimated savings from excluding charters.

For events that are strictly district run, like Battle of the Books, and the Math Bowl and Math League, charters are no longer invited. But the district has provided staff assistance to help the schools create their own events, said Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia.

“We want to help them,’’ Elia said, but “charters want to be independent, too.’’
The charters themselves offered mixed views.

Gary Hocevar, a former charter school principal and past president of the Charter Leaders of Florida, a group that represents charter operators in Hillsborough, said the district’s move was appropriate.
“I personally think that MaryEllen made the right decision,’’ he said. “She’s not anti-choice. They’re receiving less funding from the state. When the money was coming in from the Legislature, we were included in many events.’’

With recent cuts, “there was not a thing we could come up with for a compromise,’’ he said.
Instead, Hocevar advised his charter school peers to grab the opportunity to create their own competitions. “Invite the traditional schools,” he told them, “and blow them away.
”
Charter school operators told redefinED they are pushing ahead. They held their own Battle of the Books last school year and will do so again in May with eight or nine charter schools participating.

“Last year, we had to scramble,’’ said Catherine Gorman, media specialist at Advantage Academy of Hillsborough in Plant City.  The school, with 300 elementary students and 150 middle school students, had already ordered the books for the contest when they learned they were no longer a part of the district-run competition.
“Somehow we pulled it off,’’ she said, noting the experience was “kind of nice. If you … do it on your own, you can see what went well and make the changes you want to.’’

Eventually, charter operators hope to hold math competitions and, maybe, form their own sports league similar to the Florida High School Athletics Association.

But some charter leaders, who enjoyed the friendly competition with district schools, are disappointed about the divide.

Tahvia Shaw of Terrace Community Middle School in Thonotosassa said the district notified her a week before last school year’s Math League competition that charters no longer were included.

“We were very surprised and disappointed,’’ she said. Her parents, whose children has been preparing for months, barraged the district with phone calls. The district relented.
Terrace Community ended up placing first overall.

“This year, unfortunately, we are unable to defend our title,’’ said Shaw, who hopes to organize a similar but charters-only event in the spring. The competition was good not only for her school, Shaw said, but for the district.

District administrators said events that lead to state competitions, such as Odyssey of the Mind and Hillsborough’s STEM fair, will still include students from school choice sectors.
But even the STEM fair, among the largest in Florida, is feeling a strain.

Five years ago, there were 150 schools participating and $45,000 in the operating budget, said Larry Plank, the district’s director of K-12 STEM education. This year, the number of schools doubled and the costs rose to $75,000.

The district pays the rental fees for use of the Tampa Convention Center, Plank said, and its schools each pay a $75 registration fee. Charter schools used to pay the same amount. But to help offset some of the rising costs, they now they pay $150 – just like the private schools, Plank said.

The bulk of other funding comes from the Hillsborough Education Foundation and its event sponsors, which included the Moffitt Cancer Center, Mosaic, Verizon and the Port of Tampa.

Also contributing: John Kirtley, a Tampa businessman who serves as chairman of Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and co-hosts this blog.
The hope, said Hillsborough Education Foundation President Phil Jones, is to be able to raise enough in future donations to offer all the schools a discount.

“We have a real strong belief in including every student,’’ Jones said.
This year’s STEM fair featured the most private, charter and home school students ever, organizers said.
Teacher Karen Solomon brought some of her students from the private Hebrew Academy  in Tampa. The school didn’t participate this year, but hopes to next year.

“They are getting ideas and seeing what the judges are looking for,’’ Solomon said.
And that’s exactly what the fair is supposed to do, organizers said: inspire young minds no matter where they go to school.

“It’s kids – kids enjoying science, technology, engineering and math from all walks of life,’’ said Pam Caffery, the district’s supervisor of middle school science education. “To me, of course it’s a positive. It’s a positive for any kid.’’

This content was originally posted  by "sherri-ackerman" on "redefinedonline"

 

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Marketing Plan And Strategy For Startup Company

Marketing astartup company can be hard; it can be even harder for startups without a proven plan, strategy and guidelines built from personal or corporate experience. With new brands and companies popping up daily, how do you make sure your startup comes up ahead of the rest? Well, one thing you can do is abandon ship and work towards a medical assistant diploma. But that’s giving up. To be a successful startup you need tenacity and perseverance.

Usually a startup has all their ideas and business operations inline without thinking much into marketing efforts. It’s difficult for a startup to allocate money from a tight budget into the marketing pot – luckily, in the digital world we are now living in, content marketing and social media are relatively cheap practices. Below are a few marketing tips for startups to bear in mind:
Who Are You Marketing Too?

First things first: There is no way your startup can progress or move forward without knowing who you’re marketing to. Almost as important as that, you have got to know what your audience is missing (this may be the reason why you have launched your startup – to fill a void), how your audience make their decisions, who they currently listen to (competitors) and where they congregate both on and offline.
Start Slowly, Build and Tweak

Even if the startup you are representing or working for is lucky enough to have a big marketing budget, the best way to put that money into a strategy is starting with small campaigns. This way, any mistakes or ineffective strategies will be forgiving learning opportunities, rather than massive crippling blows. It also allows for tweaking and editing work you may have done towards a strategy, landing page, and any conversion process funnels. Once you have launched, tested and tweaked a strategy, you’ll reach a point of review and analysis.  This allows you to make informed budget decisions (whether to increase or decrease) based on real data, real experiences, and real insights..
Primary Branding Opportunity

There are many marketing tips for startups out there, so it can be overwhelming to hone in on specific practices. The product experience starts when new users visit your site. Your startup can use digital banners plastered across the Internet for promotion.  There are free landing page web applications such as LaunchRock, making it extremely easy to setup a beautiful landing page.
Social Media Reach

It is a well-known fact that one of the most effective marketing techniques to use is social media. Online networks create potential sales and referrals, with content pointed towards a product away from the social media network.

Social media is an excellent breeding ground for startups. Interact with people expressing initial interest and provide relevant content and information on your startup, without being only focused on selling points. Through social media, engage and demonstrate your startup as an expert in your field and prove it is indispensable to followers. This helps create a referral engine or sales funnel for your company, on a virtually free platform.
Only Go Above the Line When Everything Below Has Been Achieved

When we say “above the line”, this refers to budget and resources within the startup. If you happen to go above the line without achieving what you set out below the line, it could end up being costly and inefficient. Set out what you hope to achieve from the budget you assign early on, prior to implementing a marketing strategy. This may include visitors to the site, signups, or even a certain point in revenue. Only once these objectives have been ticked off should you move on the next step and go above the line.

    Allow time for online marketing strategies to mature.
    Anticipate changes with careful preparation, such as staying on top of industry practices, innovations and social listening.
    Online marketing  simultaneously evolves with startups.

This content was originally posted  by "jesse-aaron" on "techmarketingbuffalo"

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Law Banning 3D-Printed Guns Up for Crucial Vote

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking at a government function in July when a man sitting a few rows behind him pulled a Liberator, the infamous 3D-printed gun that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recently defined as a "lethal weapon."

The gun posed no real danger. The man bearing it was just a TV reporter trying to prove how easy it is to sneak a 3D-printed plastic gun past security checks that include metal detectors.

SEE ALSO: First 3D-Printed Metal Gun Fires 50 Rounds and Counting

In the United States, a law prohibits amateur gunsmiths from manufacturing undetectable plastic guns to prevent such a scenario. However, the law is set to expire in just a week, on Dec. 9.

The Undetectable Firearms Act (.PDF) was passed in 1988, amid looming fears of plastic or ceramic functioning guns. The law has been renewed without dispute two times since then, in 1998 and 2003. But now that printing a functioning gun made entirely of plastic is actually possible, lawmakers are struggling to renew it. Others want to extend the law and make it even harder for gunsmiths to print guns like the Liberator.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) counts himself among the latter group. Israel has advocated for action beyond just reauthorizing the old bill. He's about to reintroduce his reform bill at same time as the House is set to vote on renewing the old one on Tuesday.

I just don't want to make it easier for criminals and terrorists to get guns through metal detectors.

I am a huge fan of 3D printers. I think that they will transform our economy and technology," Israel told Mashable in a phone interview. " I just don't want to make it easier for criminals and terrorists to get guns through metal detectors. I just don't want to make it easier for criminals and terrorists to get guns through metal detectors."

Israel's new bill will differ from the one he proposed in the spring, according to his spokesperson. It will require two or three major components of a gun to be made of metal, steel or a detectable material. For a handgun, the two components will be the slide and the receiver; for a rifle, they will be the receiver, the slide and the barrel.

But experts and critics think a new law could be an overreach and an attempt to regulate hobbyist gun makers or even 3D printing, which is widely considered a rising industry.

"The Undetectable Firearms Act was always a kind of a fake law that never really affected anyone's activity," Cody Wilson, the founder of 3D-printed guns organization Defense Distributed and creator of the Liberator gun, told Mashable. "Now it's just used for bad faith roundabout gun prohibition, just because these people are scared that digital manufacturing makes more people have guns."

By trying to regulate the manufacturing of 3D-printed guns, Wilson said Israel is just trying to legislate 3D printing indirectly. But Israel denied the accusation.

"That's just a ridiculous stretch," Israel said. "Nobody is regulating 3D printers in this bill. Nobody is regulating the ability of people to acquire digital blueprints in this bill. All this bill does is to stop, to make it harder for people who want to do us harm to get guns through metal detectors."

At the same time, members of the House and Congress are working on bills to reauthorize the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 for another 10 years. In the Senate, the bill is sponsored by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). In the House, the bill is sponsored by Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) and pro-guns groups like the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The House is set to vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon, according to Coble's spokesperson Ed McDonald.

For George Mocsary, a gun law expert and an assistant professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, renewing the old bill shouldn't be an issue. In his eyes, there's no need to extend it to cover receivers or barrels, like Israel wants to — a provision he defined as "arbitrary."

The old law doesn't really hinder the ability of those involved with guns as a hobby, who either use or manufacture them, Mocsary told Mashable. At the same time, he added, it ensures "invisible guns" can't be brought onto airplanes.

On Nov. 21, Philadelphia became the first city to ban the manufacturing of guns with a 3D printer. But even Steve Cobb, the director of legislation for the bill's author Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, said he doesn't know of any 3D printing gunsmiths in Philadelphia.

"It’s all preemptive," Cobb told Philly Mag. "It’s just based upon Internet stuff out there."

With just a week until the law expires and just a few weeks after the ATF warned of the dangers of 3D-printed guns, the clock is ticking. If the law expires without renewal or reformation, anyone will be legally able to possess, manufacture or sell 3D-printed plastic guns that can fire bullets.

This article has been amended to reflect George Mocsary's current occupation. He is not a visiting assistant professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law anymore. He is now an assistant Professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law.

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Bitcoin Tops $1,000 for the First Time

The price of bitcoins topped $1,000 Wednesday on Mt. Gox, the second largest exchange by volume, marking the first time its price has hit four digits.
Bitcoin first hit $100 in April and quickly doubled that same month. The price has increased fivefold in the seven months since, but it has also experienced significant fluctuations amid uncertainty about the viability of the digital currency.
SEE ALSO: These Startups Are Betting Everything on Bitcoin 

Across all bitcoin exchanges, however, its average price is still slightly below the $1,000 mark, as you can see in the chart below from blockchain.info.

The surge in the price of bitcoin follows a U.S. government hearing into the virtual currency, some notable stories of average people getting rich on the currency and efforts of a few big name investors and startup founders to bring bitcoin to the mainstream.

This content was originally posted  by "seth-fiegerman" "mashable"

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